From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[Angrboda]

Have you heard of the monomyth? It's like that: there's a basic template that many classical narratives follow, and when it comes to gods, we can find even more similarities: the concept of a god dying and then rising later isn't an uncommon one, for example. Nor is the use of wine as symbolism, among many other things.

(emphasis added)

In classical Hinduism, the drug soma plays a similar role.

Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma (Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic and greater Persian cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt 20 and Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it.

It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity.

The Rigveda calls the plant "God for Gods" seemingly giving him precedence above Indra and the other Gods (RV 9.42)

There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra, perhaps Ephedra sinica.

There's also the suggestion that Jesus' missing years were spent in India. Given the similarity between his philosophy and the tropes of religion in Persia and India at the time (Zoroastrianism in Persia, and Smriti influenced classical Hinduism and the Sramana traditions in India, respectively), the parallels make such a suggestion hard to dismiss.