How Apologists Evade the Christ Myth Theory

Copycats, parallels, and other irrelevancies to the art of mythmaking

If you ask Christians how their religion relates historically to all the others, they’re liable to say that Christianity is the only religion that deals with facts rather than myths.

Christianity is literally true, they say, because the key Christian events happened two thousand years ago in Judea, as a matter of historical fact. Jesus lived, died, and rose from the grave, saving humanity as part of God’s master plan.

But when Christian apologists address those myths, including the ancient ones that Christianity seems to have adopted, literalized, and thus oversimplified — arguably for nefarious reasons — the apologists deal mainly with a strawman notion of how religions relate to each other. Just as Christianity oversimplified the dying-and-rising-god mytheme in the first place by historicizing it, apologists oversimplify the Christ myth theory (that Jesus wasn’t a historical person), so they can dismiss the criticism.

Here are three examples of this evasiveness.

A “Copycat” Religion?

“Reasonable Theology” asks, “Was Christ a Copycat?” and the author takes the objection to be that, “if gods we consider false claim the same things that Christianity claims, Christianity must also be false. This ‘guilt by association’ mindset attempts to discredit the accounts of the Gospels by suggesting that life events attributed to Jesus are recycled bits of storytelling that are popular across different cultures and time periods.”

But notice the oversimplification set up by the titular notion of a “copycat.” If the New Testament doesn’t copy from older stories, Christ isn’t a copycat, so the criticism can be dismissed. And what do we think of when we think of a copy? If you type “copies” into a search engine, what you get mainly are lists and photos of photocopiers and photocopies. These copies are, of course, duplications of an original. All the details of the original are preserved exactly in the copies.

If that’s what the critics are saying, in which case Christianity is alleged to be a “copycat” religion, all the apologist must do is to point to some differences in detail between Christianity and the older religions. That would suffice to show that the early Christians weren’t acting like ancient photocopiers and attempting to duplicate the other creeds and practices.

And that’s what this apologist proceeds to do. He merely describes some details of the myths of Mithras, Dionysus, and Osiris. For example, he says, “There is no birth story recorded in regards to Osiris. He was eventually killed by his own brother, torn into 14 pieces, and strewn about Egypt.” Of course, Jesus does have a birth story, and he wasn’t killed by his brother, nor was his body torn apart and strewn across Egypt.

Thus, the apologist concludes triumphantly, “As you can see, claims of pagan plagiarism are unfounded and terribly inaccurate.”

Yet whoever thinks a new religion could ever begin as the equivalent of a photocopy is confused about the nature of religion, and that’s so whether the person is an apologist or a critic of Christianity. This idea of copying or duplication makes for an oversimplification, and in the hands of the apologist, it amounts to a strawman reply to the Christ myth theory.

Christian and Pagan “Parallels”?

“Evidence Unseen” employs the same gambit, asking “Was Christianity Copied from Pagan Myths?” The apologist tracks down this ‘ “copycat” interpretation’ to the German History of Religions School from the late nineteenth century.

Even if that were a fair representation of those earlier scholars’ work, which is doubtful, the apologist could steelman the Christ myth theory, rather than knocking down the weakest possible version of the criticism. Indeed, if the apologist were interested in religion and in the truth, rather than in preserving his tribe’s self-confidence, he wouldn’t content himself with this lame response.

But this apologist adds another dimension to the strawman. He proposes to show that there are only “poor pagan parallels.” And indeed, this is another distraction you’ll find in the Christ myth debates, both from skeptics and apologists. The allegation is supposed to be that Christian stories are “parallel to” older pagan or Jewish ones.

So what exactly does “parallel” mean? Notice how this concept is borrowed from geometry, which makes it metaphorical at best in the context of historical inquiry. We say that two lines are parallel to each other if they extend in the same direction, equidistant at all points, and never converging or diverging.

Do you see, then, how the concept of a parallel has the same implications as that of a copycat? The two lines can never diverge if they’re parallel. That means, once again, that all the details in the two myths must be identical. Otherwise, they’re not “parallel,” meaning they’re not comparable to parallel lines in geometry. And supposedly if the stories aren’t “parallel,” the Christ myth theory is false.

Thus, this apologist goes on to show that Attis, Adonis, Horus, and the rest weren’t born of a virgin, nor were they crucified or resurrected. In this case, the apologist is wrong and sloppy in that analysis. He says, for example, that Osiris wasn’t resurrected because he descended to the underworld. But Isis briefly brought Osiris back to life long enough for them to conceive Horus. The fact that Osiris doesn’t live for long on earth in his resurrected form makes for a stronger similarity to Christianity, since neither does the resurrected Jesus live for long on earth before he ascends to heaven.

But that’s neither here nor there since this kind of apologetics is thoroughly dishonest and shoddy from beginning to end, meaning that you wouldn’t expect the apologist to engage honourably and courageously with the evidence.

More importantly, the apologist is labouring under a misconception. Lines in geometry can be parallel to each other. Stories or religions aren’t lines, so they can’t be parallel. And who cares about that failure? This defense of Christianity is based on a simple category error.

Further Minimizations of the Commonality

The third specimen in this rogue’s gallery doubles down on the mania for parallels, asking “Were the Stories of Jesus Based on Pagan Parallels?” This apologist summarizes the Christ myth theory thusly:

In the simplest possible terms, here’s what these critics contend: The most marvelous claims in the Gospels — a miraculous birth, for example, as well as the idea of a deity who dies and rises again — are paralleled in religions that predate Christianity; therefore, early Christians must have fabricated these miracles based on their knowledge of pre-Christian religions.

But again, why would you reduce a criticism to the “simplest possible terms”? Why not deal with the strongest possible ones instead? Wouldn’t that be the wiser, more intellectually responsible course?

To be sure, this apologist concedes that “there are some surface-level similarities between ancient myths and certain events in the Gospels. Long before the first century A.D., the myths of Egyptian deities such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and Horus included tales of death and rebirth.”

Notice, though, a couple of rhetorical tricks even in that admission. First, the apologist mixes metaphors when he equates “parallel” with “similarity,” and admits only that there are “surface” similarities. If the geometric metaphor isn’t wholly misleading, a similarity that’s the same as a parallel would be a very strong similarity; indeed, both the surface and the essential features would have to be the same. Thus, the distinction between surface and essential features conflicts with the notion of “parallel” accounts.

Second, the apologist attempts to minimize the similarities further by speaking only of “certain events in the gospels.” On the contrary, if the similarities in question are about the god’s death and resurrection, those aren’t just any Christian events. Those are crucial to the passion narrative, which is central to Christianity.

Consequently, these similarities aren’t “surface-level” either. Indeed, the superficial details are the points that are more likely to differ from those of the pagan myths. The names of the characters and places, for example, would be superficial details, and of course they’d vary if the myths were written for audiences living in different locations and time periods, speaking different languages, and so on. None of those differences would have a bearing on whether the stories are nevertheless essentially the same in terms of their structure and deeper meaning.

The Art of Religious Myths

The latter apologist says, ‘The real question isn’t, “Are there similarities between the New Testament’s descriptions of Jesus and some previous religious myths?” Perhaps there are — although I must admit that every ancient parallel I’ve examined has turned out to be vague and weak when examined in its original context.’

That response to his admission is revealing, and it takes us to the underlying problem. The problem is that Christians no longer know what myths or even religions are. Christian literalists are so used to pretending that their religion survives scientific and philosophical scrutiny that they think religious truth is respectable only when it’s concrete and strong (as in empirical and falsifiable) rather than vague and weak (as in merely fictional, metaphorical, and subjective).

The wrongheadedness on display here is appalling, and it could have come about only due to a massive, millennia-long, proto-Orwellian campaign to stamp out spirituality and enlightenment in the name of Religion. That campaign was known as “Catholicism.”

Consider, for example, how literary or other art critics tend to differ in their assessments of some artwork. There may be canonical works, as in the finest novels, movies, paintings, or foods, but because the praises of those works are subjective and matters of taste, not only are these critics free to disagree but there’s no mechanism for determining which judgment is correct. There’s no such thing as the correct opinion about which novelist or filmmaker is best. Fashion might generate some consensus, but fashions come and go.

Now, does that mean artistic value is “vague” and “weak”? Far from it! Precisely because the value of art is largely subjective, art speaks to our inner selves and to what we care about the most, namely the universal, existential problems in life. That’s why myths can be relevant for centuries, whereas scientific models can become outmoded from one decade to the next.

Art’s “vagueness” or squishy “weakness” is what makes art so important. For notice what else is vague and weak: the human mind! Or what’s squishier and more protean than our brain? Were a brain to pour out of a skull, you wouldn’t have a clue what to do with the squidgy mess or what to make of all the neural convolutions. Nothing is as indecipherable as consciousness or as the self’s inner, mental nature. And art must be just as metaphorical and as flexible and multifaceted to speak to elite mammals like us.

So art’s so-called “weakness” is its greatest strength. And stories such as myths are works of art.

The Paradox of a Non-Religious Religion

What that apologist means, then, is that he thinks the similarities between Christian and certain pagan myths are irrelevant or insignificant. Of course, he thinks that because he’s tribally committed to upholding Christianity’s supremacy.

In just the same way, partisan art critics will defend their taste in this or that film, novel, or song. Opposing critics will point to contrary evidence, the other critics will dismiss those assessments, and there’s no mechanism whatsoever for determining which side is correct. There is no fact of the matter in any of those aesthetic judgments. That’s not how art or religion works.

What the apologist fails to see is that the ancient polytheistic view of religion, as a matter of civilizational branding — which brands could be combined in corporate mergers or crossover events — was the mature view, the one sustained by fewer delusions. The ancients thought their gods were real, but by “real” they didn’t mean “literal” or “physical.” That rigorous concept of objectivity was hardly ever mainstream before the Scientific Revolution.

No, the gods were considered real as social patterns or forces which were projected onto everything else in an enchanted, human-friendly engagement with reality. Positing a pantheon of gods explained society’s successes and failures, in lieu of the modern cunning detachment or “objectivity” which threatens to destroy all life on earth via the accompanying cynicism, selfishness, and anxiety that are such hallmarks of “developed,” consumer societies’ “progress.”

Literalistic Christianity is part of the secular problem, whereas what we might need is a genuine, sustainable religion, one that’s come to terms with the artistic basis of answers to our existential questions.

If Christianity isn’t based on myths, Christianity’s not even a religion. If Christian truth is merely literal and historical, there’s no reason to think the Christian narrative could have endured over the centuries without its having been imposed by coercion, systemic fraud, mind control, and mass regression. Again, mere literal truths come and go. Artistic metaphors can be more long-lasting.

In fact, though, Christianity is a religion because its Jesus narrative is fundamentally a myth. That narrative’s similarity to the other dying-and-rising-god stories is just the plain fact that these stories are all about suffering and/or dying gods or demigods that resurrect and/or ascend to a higher plane. Those gods stand in for the human potential to enlighten ourselves, to rise above monstrous nature and our ignorance and penchant for self-deception, selfishness, greed, and other vices. And that mythic narrative is the forgotten Christian art that makes Christianity potentially relevant to seekers of meaning in life.

Religious Artistry and the Priority of Aesthetic Standards

Artists and art critics understand how artistic expressions work. Even if you’re inspired by someone else’s artwork so that you’re inclined to pay that artist an homage, you don’t “copy” or “parallel” that other work in your derivative one, matching it detail for detail. This is because the details aren’t as inspiring as the theme, style, or essential meaning. You may be working in the same genre or subgenre as the other artists, but you can still insert your subjective take on the topic.

You might even try to subvert the original, as in a parody or a satire. And indeed, the Gospel of Mark may have been intended as a satirical takedown of the Greco-Roman dying-and-rising-god stories. Instead of your typical Homeric hero or deified emperor who speaks to manly pagan humanism, the Jewish version of the story depicts the suffering and rising god as a lowly, humble carpenter, Cynic, and antihero, as someone who doesn’t even succeed as a Jewish messiah. Jesus is “poor in spirit” and he subverts the pagan and Jewish expectations, as you’d expect in a satirical work of fiction.

Again, all of this is familiar from artistry and art criticism. It’s just that Christian literalists block you from applying those aesthetic criteria because they want their religion to stand out as a non-religious religion. They insist that their “religious” beliefs are rational (empirical and logically valid), whereas they should be more concerned with whether the Christian narrative still inspires them as a work of art in a postindustrial environment.