Debunking Atheist Myths: Was Jesus Copied From Pagan Deities?

Militant atheists frequently exhibit hostility, mockery, and a sense of superiority when discussing religion with Christians. Most will assert that there is historical evidence indicating that the bible stories of Jesus were derived from the legends of several pagan deities that existed prior to Christianity. However, ironically the “evidence” they share to refute Christianity is rooted in myths. The following are quotations from notable scholars and historians regarding the myths that the person and story of Christ was rooted in ancient paganism.

Atheist Myth on Dying and Rising Deities:

There is no evidence that Jesus’ resurrection was copied from any ancient pagan mythology. In fact, it seems that paganism appropriated their stories from Christianity:

“The first real parallel of a dying and rising god does not appear until A.D. 150, more than a hundred years after the origin of Christianity. So if there was any influence of one on the other, it was the influence of the historical event of the New Testament [resurrection] on mythology, not the reverse.” Dr. Norman Geisler

The conception that the god dies and is resurrected in order to lead his faithful to eternal life is represented in no Hellenistic mystery religion.” – Andre Boulanger, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?, pg. 161-162

“Allegations of an early Christian dependence on Mithraism have been rejected on many grounds. Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god and no place for any concept of rebirth—at least during its early stages.” Nash then goes on to say, “Today most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead issue.” – Professor Ronald Nash – ‘Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?’

The idea of dying and rising gods is largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts.” – JZ Smith, a historian of religion and Hellenistic religions

“From the 1930s. . . a consensus has developed to the effect that the ‘dying and rising gods’ died but did not return or rise to live again. . . Those who still think differently are looked upon as residual members of an almost extinct species” -Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East, pg. 4, 7

Various mystery religions did exist from early times in Greece; however, it is only after the first century a.d. that we begin to have much data on them. It is more likely, therefore, that the mystery religions, observing the success of orthodox Christianity, began to mimic its beliefs and practices, rather than the other way around as the authors suggest. – H. Wayne House, Christian Research institute

“Many of the alleged parallels to this event [Jesus’ resurrection from the dead] are actually apotheosis stories, the divinization and assumption of the hero into heaven (Hercules, Romulus). Others are disappearance stories, asserting that the hero has vanished into a higher sphere (Apollonius of Tyana, Empedocles). Still others are seasonal symbols for the crop cycle, as the vegetation dies in the dry season and comes back to life in the rainy season (Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis). Some are political expressions of Emperor worship (Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus). None of these is parallel to the Jewish idea of the resurrection of the dead. David Aune, who is a specialist in comparative ancient Near Eastern literature, concludes, “no parallel to them [resurrection traditions] is found in Graeco-Roman biography” – William Lane Craig, The Genre of the Gospels, pg. 48

In fact, most scholars have come to doubt whether, properly speaking, there really were any myths of dying and rising gods at all! In the Osiris myth, one of the best known symbolic seasonal myths, Osiris does not really come back to life but simply continues to exist in the nether realm of the departed.” IBID, Jesus and Pagan Mythology

“Parallels between the pagan myths of dying and rising gods and the New Testament accounts of the resurrection of Jesus are now regarded as remote, to say the least…If anyone borrowed any ideas from anyone, it seems it was the gnostics who took up Christian ideas.” – Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Modern Myths, pg. 121

“Not one clear case of any alleged resurrection teaching appears in any pagan text before the late second century A.D., almost one hundred years after the New Testament was written.” – Dan Story, Defending Your Faith, revised and expanded edition, pg 120

“Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of Attis. Attempts to link the worship of Adonis to a resurrection are equally weak. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger. After Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris’s dismembered body, he became “Lord of the Underworld.” – Ronald Nash

“Where do any of the ancient sources speak of a divine man who was crucified as an atonement for sin? So far as I know, there are no parallels to the central Christian claim. What has been invented here is not the Christian Jesus but the mythicist claims about Jesus… The majority of scholars agree… there is no unambiguous evidence that any pagans prior to Christianity believed in dying and rising gods.”[ – Bart Erhman, Professor University North Carolina

“None of this literature is written by scholars trained in the New Testament.” -IBID

“Anyone who thinks that Jesus was modeled on such deities needs to cite some evidence—any evidence at all—that Jews in Palestine at the alleged time of Jesus’s life were influenced by anyone who held such views.” – IBID

Atheist Myths That Jesus Never Existed:

Another myth spread by atheist is that Jesus never even existed. This myth is not held in serious scholarship:

No reputable scholar today questions that a Jew named Jesus son of Joseph lived; most readily admit that we now know a considerable amount about his actions and his basic teachings. – James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and Archaeology

There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more. – Richard A. Burridge, Jesus Now and Then pg 34

To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars’. In recent years ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus’—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels, pg. 200

I think that there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don’t know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus… So I think that question can be put to rest. N. T. Wright, “The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright”, in Antony Flew & Roy Abraham Vargese, There is a God, pg. 188

“With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life…sources that originated in Jesus’s native tongue…and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life…Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind…The claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground.” – Bart Erhman, Huffington Post 3/20/2012

The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist….Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic, not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts and a thorough grounding in the history and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, both pagan and Jewish, knowledge of the history of the Christian church and the development of its social life and theology, and, well, lots of other things. It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure. This is not a piece of evidence, but if nothing else, it should give one pause. In the field of biology, evolution may be “just” a theory (as some politicians painfully point out), but it is the theory subscribed to, for good reason, by every real scientist in every established university in the Western world. – Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?

“I do not expect to convince anyone in that boat. What I do hope is to convince genuine seekers who really want to know how we know that Jesus did exist, as virtually every scholar of antiquity, of biblical studies, of classics, and of Christian origins in this country and, in fact, in the Western world agrees. Many of these scholars have no vested interest in the matter. As it turns out, I myself do not either. I am not a Christian, and I have no interest in promoting a Christian cause or a Christian agenda. I am an agnostic with atheist leanings, and my life and views of the world would be approximately the same whether or not Jesus existed. My beliefs would vary little. The answer to the question of Jesus’s historical existence will not make me more or less happy, content, hopeful, likable, rich, famous, or immortal….But as a historian I think evidence matters. And the past matters. And for anyone to whom both evidence and the past matter, a dispassionate consideration of the case makes it quite plain: Jesus did exist. -IBID

In short, if there is any conspiracy here, it is not on the part of the ancient Christians who made up Jesus but on the part of modern authors who make up stories about the ancient Christians and what they believed about Jesus. – IBID

The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. For some it’s simply too horrific to affirm. For others it’s an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy. But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld. -IBID, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., “Who Changed The New Testament and Why”

“While we do not have the fullness of biographical detail and the wealth of firsthand accounts that are available for recent public figures, such as Winston Churchill or Mother Teresa, we nonetheless have much more data on Jesus than we do for such ancient figures as Alexander the Great… Along with the scholarly and popular works, there is a good deal of pseudoscholarship on Jesus that finds its way into print. During the last two centuries more than a hundred books and articles have denied the historical existence of Jesus….Today innumerable websites carry the same message… Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus’ non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio.” – Michael James McClymond, Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth, 8 & 23–24)

Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories. – F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?pg. 123

The theory of Jesus’ nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.” and “The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds… Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, pg. 14 & 16

You know that you can try to minimize your biases, but you can’t eliminate them. That’s why you have to put certain checks and balances in place… Under this approach, we only consider facts that meet two criteria. First, there must be very strong historical evidence supporting them. And secondly, the evidence must be so strong that the vast majority of today’s scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept these as historical facts. You’re never going to get everyone to agree. There are always people who deny the Holocaust or question whether Jesus ever existed, but they’re on the fringe. – Micael R. Licona, as quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, pg. 112

In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen, and in which there are resounding claims that the American president is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, is it any surprise to learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization, the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political, economic, cultural and religious institution in the world — the Christian church — was built, the man worshipped, literally, by billions of people today — is it any surprise to hear that Jesus never even existed? -IBID, “Did Jesus Exist?”, Huffington Post, March 30, 2012

“I don’t know any mainstream scholar who doubts the historicity of Jesus,”….”The details have been debated for centuries, but no one who is serious doubts that he’s a historical figure.” – Archaeologist Eric Meyers, emeritus professor in Judaic studies at Duke University.

We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE”– Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics, pg. 38

“Some skeptics have maintained that the best account of the biblical and historical evidence is the theory that Jesus never existed; that is, that Jesus’ existence is a myth (Well 1999). Such a view is controversial and not widely held even by anti-Christian thinkers.” –Michael Martin, “Skeptical Perspectives on Jesus’ Resurrection”, in Delbert Burkett’s The Blackwell Companion to Jesus, pg 285

“Both Jewish historians like Josephus, and Roman ones like Tacitus and later Suetonius are perfectly clear Jesus actually existed, and Tacitus tells us he died on a cross, being executed under Pilate. Apparently, Mr. Joseph [producer of Zeitgeist] couldn’t even give this one fact straight. There is more historical evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for the historical existence of Julius Caesar for example….The only persons who doubt the existence of Jesus of Nazareth are those who either hate Christianity and so want it to disappear, or those who have not bothered to do the proper historical homework.” – Ben Witherington, The Zeitgeist of the ‘Zeitgeist Movie’

“To insist that Jesus Christ is a myth—that He never existed—as the Zeitgeist movie does, is foolish. Beside the twenty seven New Testament documents that verify He lived, there are more than thirty sources outside of the Bible, written within 150 years of Jesus life that mention Him. These sources include the Jewish Talmud, the Roman historian Tacitus, the Didache, Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, the Gnostic gospels (e.g., the gospel of Thomas), etc. These extrabiblical sources reveal to us more than 100 facts about His life, teaching, death and even resurrection. The Encyclopedia Britannica, fifteenth edition, devotes 20,000 words to the person of Jesus Christ and never once hints that He didn’t exist. Don’t be fooled by Zeitgeist, “ – Charlie Campbell, Archaeological Evidence for the Bible

Atheist Myths That Jesus was Never Crucified and the Bible Story Was Copied From Other Crucified Deities:

This myth has likewise been shown to be ficticious.

“The fact that Jesus existed, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (for whatever reason) and that he had a band of followers who continued to support his cause, seems to be part of the bedrock of historical tradition. If nothing else, the non-Christian evidence can provide us with certainty on that score.” – Dr Christopher Tuckett of Oxford University

“One of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate”. – Agnostiic Scholar Bart Erhman

“THAT HE WAS CRUCIFIED IS AS SURE AS ANYTHING HISTORICAL CAN EVER BE, SINCE BOTH JOSEPHUS AND TACITUS…AGREE WITH THE CHRISTIAN ACCOUNTS ON AT LEAST THAT BASIC FACT.” – JESUS: A REVOLUTIONARY BIOGRAPHY. HARPERONE. P. 145

“SOME JUDGMENTS ARE SO PROBABLE AS TO BE CERTAIN; FOR EXAMPLE, JESUS REALLY EXISTED, AND HE REALLY WAS CRUCIFIED, JUST AS JULIUS CAESAR REALLY EXISTED AND WAS ASSASSINATED… WE CAN IN FACT KNOW AS MUCH ABOUT JESUS AS WE CAN ABOUT ANY FIGURE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD.” – Marcus Borg – Agnostic Professor with a Ph.D. Former Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University

‘No serious historian of any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate,’ – C.A. Evans, Evans, C.A. and N.T. Wright. Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened. T.A. Miller (ed.), Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009.

Even those scholars and critics who have been moved to depart from almost everything else within the historical content of Christ’s presence on earth have found it impossible to think away the factuality of the death of Christ. – John McIntyre, “The Uses of History in Theology”, Studies in World Christianity 7.1, 2001

” [there is not the] slightest doubt about the fact of Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.”, JD Crossan, Agnostic Scholar, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, 1999 (p. 375)

“That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be” IBID, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 1994. (p. 145)

“The passion of Jesus is part of history”. – Geza Vermes, deceased Jewish New Testament scholar, The Passion: The True Story of an Event that Changed Human History, 2006(p. 9)

“Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.” – Gerd Ludemann, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry, 2004

“We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE” – Robert Miller of the Jesus Seminar

The deities claimed to have been crucified are found to have died from other deaths when examining their ancient text.

Adonis – Dies from being injured by a bull. Attis – dies from self inflicted injures from emasculating himself. Dionysus – was torn to pieces, cooked and eaten by the Titans while he was a infant. Hercules – was buried alive. Hermes – does not die nor does Horus or Mithras. Krishna – shot in the heel by an arrow and dies. Osiris – is drowned by his brother and then dismembered. Tammuz – nothing is said of a crucifixion or how he dies really. He is only said to have been taken to the underworld. Research any other pagan deity and you will find the same as the list goes on and on, but none of them were crucified.

When comparing pagan deities to Jesus:

“When you make the comparisons, you end up with a whole lot more differences than you do similarities.” – Professor Craig Keener

Ancient Sources also confirm that Jesus was Crucified:

Phlegon , a Greek historian writing around AD 137 confirms that there was a great eclipse and an earthquake around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. While this is not a direct confirmation of the crucifixion it does confirm other information, the eclipse and the earthquake as told of in the Bible:

In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad there was ‘the greatest eclipse of the sun’ and that ‘it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea – Phlegon’s citation is a fragment from Olympiades he Chronika 13, ed. Otto Keller, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores, 1 (Leipzig Teurber, 1877), p. 101.

For more please see, Extra-Biblical Evidence for the Existence of Jesus.

Atheist Myths that Other Deities Were Born from Virgins:

None of the ancient false deities were born of a virgin as claimed by Atheist. Mithras, for example, was born from a rock. Krishna had seven siblings born before him. Buddha had parents. Horus was not born of a virgin; his mother, the goddess Isis, became pregnant after the murder and dismemberment of her husband, Osiris. She resurrected her husband, created a new penis for him and became pregnant. While some may have experienced peculiar and extraordinary births, none can be said to have been born of a virgin.

Scholars on the Non-Academic Competence of Individuals Promoting Myths Related to Jesus:

“Now I am normally a cordial and collegial chap, but to be honest, I have little time or patience to invest in debunking the wild fantasies of “Jesus mythicists”, as they are known. That is because, to be frank, those of us who work in the academic profession of religion and history simply have a hard time taking them seriously.” – Michael Bird, who is on the editorial board for the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, as well is a Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity

Mythicists of this ilk should not be surprised that their views are not taken seriously by real scholars, that their books are not reviewed in scholarly journals, mentioned by experts in the field, or even read by them. The book is fill with so many factual errors and outlandish assertions that it is hard to believe that the author is serious. If she is serious, it is hard to believe that she has ever encountered anything resembling historical scholarship. – Acharya S, (D. M. Murdock), The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold.

“When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, “Do you really believe that?” Act as though you’ve just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. You could say something like, “Man, those old theories have been dead for over a hundred years! Where are you getting this stuff?” Tell them this is just sensationalist junk, not serious scholarship. If they persist, then ask them to show you the actual passages narrating the supposed parallel. They’re the ones who are swimming against the scholarly consensus, so make them work hard to save their religion. I think you’ll find that they’ve never even read the primary sources.” – William Lane Craig

A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical person Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today—in the academic world at least—gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat. – Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee,, p. 168

On the accuracy of the Bible authors:

Sir William Ramsey is was a historian and archaeologist. He wanted to prove that the author of Acts was incorrect historiacally, so he devoted his life to this task. However, after a lifetime of study, however, he concluded:

‘Further study … showed that the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement’ “ One example was his archaeological research in areas Luke wrote about.

“What is driving the mythicist’s agenda? Why do they work so hard at showing that Jesus never really lived? I do not have a definitive answer to that question, but I do have a hunch. It is no accident that virtually all mythicists (in fact, all of them, to my knowledge), are either atheists or agnostics. The ones I know anything about are quite virulently, even militantly atheist.” – Bart Ehrman

These quotes debunk common myths held by atheist and can be helpful when speaking to an Atheist online or in person.

For more on the Myths about Christianity see below:

Extra Biblical Evidence that Jesus Did Exist

Scholarship On the Claim that the Resurrection Was Copied From Paganism

Scholarship On the Claims that Jesus Never Existed

Debunking the Atheist Myth That Jesus Was Copied From Other Pagan Deities and Other Myths

Scholarship On The Crucifixion Being A Historical Fact

Scholarship Proves the New Testament is More Accurate than Any Other Historical Text

Debunking Claims about Christmas and Paganism:

Part 1: December 25th was not an Ancient Pagan Holiday
Part 2: Jesus’ Death, Christmas and the Early Church
Part 3: The Winter Birth
Part 4: Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?

On Claims about Easter, Halloween and Paganism:

Ishtar and the Easter Connection