Wicked Little Stepchild:

Was Christianity the Offspring of Ancient Mystery Religions?

By Brian D. Wilson

One of the more popular attacks on Christianity today is that its beliefs are not really unique but adapted, borrowed, and stolen from the pagan past. But is that really the case?

That is what authors like Tom Harpur in The Pagan Christ believe. Harpur claims that there is nothing Jesus either said or did, “…that cannot be shown to have originated thousands of years before, in Egyptian Mystery rites and other sacred liturgies.”

What makes these claims seem so convincing is the way they are packaged. The author usually begins with a laudatory introduction of his credentials followed by his solemn purpose to ignore superstition and Theology, instead utilizing the tools of the modern historian, as if the great theologians of the past had no historical training.

Then comes the author’s striking list of comparisons of ancient religions to Christianity. Consider Hugh J. Schonfield’s claim that Christianity is related to the ancient religions of Mithraism (Persia) and the cults of Osiris (Egypt) and Adonis (Greece). In Those Incredible Christians Schonfield says that the god Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, was a traveling teacher, had 12 disciples, promised his followers immortality, sacrificed himself for world peace, and was buried in a tomb and rose again 3 days later.

Any honest Christian would find these similarities disturbing, yet there is no need for concern because the scholarship here is almost entirely inaccurate, if not dishonest. Lee Strobel (The Case for the Real Jesus) interviewed Edwin M. Yamauchi, widely held as the world’s leading scholar on Mithraism. Yamauchi holds a doctorate in Mediterranean studies, has studied 22 languages, published nearly 200 scholarly articles, as well as 17 books, and in 1974 he was invited to the Second International Congress of Mithraic Studies in Tehran, hosted by the empress of Iran, to deliver a paper.

Yamauchi’s conclusions paint quite a different picture than Mr. Schonfield’s. He calls the claim by popular writers that Mithras was born of a virgin completely untrue. Actually Mithras was born out of a rock, naked, fully grown, wearing a Phrygian cap.

This of course also dispels the claim that Mithras was born in a cave. While Mithraic sanctuaries were made to look like caves, that Mithras himself was born in a cave came much later in Mithraic tradition. Furthermore, no where in the New Testament does it say Jesus was born in a cave. This detail is mentioned for the first time in the Letter of Barnabas in the 2nd Century. While it is certainly possible Jesus was born in a cave Gary Lease in “Mithraism and Christianity” points out that even the scant tradition that does exist concerning Jesus’ cave birth can in no way be linked to Mithraic rites.

What then about the Date of December 25? Yamauchi says that no Christian has ever said that Jesus was born on December 25. “January 6 in fact is still celebrated by many Churches in the East.” We know that the Roman emperor Constantine worshiped the god Sol Invictus (the unconquerable Sun) before he became a Christian, whose day was celebrated on December 25, a day that he then appropriated on behalf of the Church to draw in more pagans. Before Christianity we also know that Sol Invictus (December 25) became increasingly linked with the day of Mithras by the Roman people as it became more popular. Sometimes both deities are depicted shaking hands. So the dates become related through the course of historical events but are in no way the result of attempts to fuse the religions, especially by 4th Century Christians trying to distance themselves from the pagan religions.

You may also infer from Mithraism that its adherents were promised immortality like Christianity, but such a claim is dispelled by its very vagueness. “That was the hope of most followers of any religion” Yamauchi comments.

The claim that Mithras was a teacher also falls apart upon examination. Yamauchi points out that Mithras was a god, and a distant one at that, not a teacher. That Mithras sacrificed himself for world peace is a complete misread. “He never sacrificed himself, he killed a bull,” says Yamauchi.

Was Mithras buried in a tomb, and was he resurrected on the third day? No. In fact, we have absolutely no evidence by art or written record that Mithras even died. Richard Gordon in, Image and Value in the Greco Roman World says that since “…there is no death there cannot be a resurrection.” Lastly Mithras had no disciples.

Perhaps the most devastating evidence against such claims comes from scholars like T.N.D. Mettinger, Swedish professor at Lund University. In his work, The Riddle of the Ressurection he says that the consensus among modern scholars-nearly universal- is that there were 3, or possibly 5 examples of dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity, and no others. Among this handful of dying and rising gods there exists no parallels to Christianity.

For example, nearly every one of the myths relates to the life and death of the vegetation cycle. Jesus’ death however is not repeated and is not related to changes in the seasons. Neither is there any example of dying and rising gods vicariously suffering for the worlds sins. Mettinger concludes with this stunning statement, “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.”

Whether Jesus rose from the dead is not the point. Even if for sake of argument the resurrection was false, merely calling a religious dogma false does not free its critics from proving that such a dogma originated in some pagan myth, which in the case we have examined has not been done.