Why Christianity?

[Randy Carson]

T.N.D. Mettinger — a senior Swedish scholar, professor at Lund University and member of the Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities of Stockholm admits in his book, The Riddle of Resurrection, that the consensus among modern scholars — nearly universal — is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post-dated the first century. In the end, after combing through all of these accounts and critically analyzing them, Mettinger adds that none of these serve as parallels to Jesus. None of them.

These accounts are far different from the reports of Jesus rising from the dead. They occurred in the unspecified and distant past and were usually related to the seasonal life-and-death cycle of vegetation. In contrast, Jesus’ resurrection isn’t repeated, isn’t related to changes in the seasons, and was sincerely believed to be an actual event by those who lived in the same generation of the historical Jesus. In addition, Mettinger concludes that “there is no evidence for the death of the dying and rising gods as vicarious suffering for sins.”

Mettinger caps his study with this 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.”

In short, this leading scholar’s analysis is a sharp rebuke to popular-level authors and Internet bloggers who make grand claims about the pagan origins of Jesus’ return from the dead. Ultimately, Mettinger affirmed, “the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.”

Unique—as in "one of a kind."

Mettinger, however, is not unique. Dr. Ronald H. Nash wrote:


Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, was a professor at the University of Miami (Ohio), fluent in 22 languages, attendee at the Second Mythraic Congress held in Tehran in the 1970's, and a world-renowned expert in middle-eastern pagan religions. In chapter four of Lee Strobel's book, The Case for the Real Jesus, Yamauchi explains the differences between Jesus and Mithras, Marduk, Dionysius, Tammuz (Dumuzi), Adonis, Cybele, Attis, Osiris, Zeus, Perseus, Alexander the Great, Buddha, Zoroaster and more.

Regarding the popularity of the copy-cat argument, Yamauchi notes:

Aside from your plagiarism, which is likely to get you banned, your source is of an idiot.  I guess he believes that the 24th century BCE is after the stories of Jesus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_myth

Osiris rose from the dead and then impregnated his wife, according to the story that goes back over 2000 years before the Jesus story was told.

Just a quick note: I have no problem openly admitting that I copied a portion of the the article in my post. Big whoop. I'm not here to win praise or get paid. I'm here to get information into the minds of some people who desperately need it. If you'd ever bothered to read a book by a knowledgeable scholar on the subject, you wouldn't have been yapping about Osiris in the first place.

For the record, MOST of the material I post is my own adaptation of things that others have said before me. I mean seriously...after 2,000 years, how many new ways are we going to find to answer the same tired objections that skeptics ask?

When I do post material written by others, I do provide attribution and links...MOST of the time. I think it is fair to say that I am more diligent about quoting sources than just about anyone else in the forum since most people here just blow out their own opinions with little or no supporting material from experts.

HOWEVER, occasionally, I think that revealing the source of a passage I'm quoting will actually cause people to ignore it or to discount it completely or in part. I cite two examples:

• What happens every time I quote William Lane Craig? Esquilax has a cow.
  
• What happened when I quoted Licona above? You called him an idiot. (And for the record, I also quoted Yamauchi who is anything but an idiot.)
  

See my point?

Sometimes I have to wrap my dog's medicine in bacon to get him to swallow a pill. Similarly, if I have to hide a source to get folks here to read what they need to learn, so be it. The fact that I have to resort to subterfuge says more about you atheists than it does about me.

J. Warner Wallace, a former atheist, addressed this issue when he wrote:

As a skeptic, I was slow to accept even the slightest possibility that miracles were possible. My commitment to naturalism prevented me from considering such nonsense. But after my experience with presuppositions at crime scenes, I decided that I needed to be fair with my naturalistic inclinations. I couldn't begin with my conclusion, and if the evidence pointed to the reasonable existence of God, this certainly opened up the possibility of the miraculous. If God did exist, He was the creator of everything we see in the universe. He, therefore, created matter from nonmatter, life from nonlife; He created all time and space. God's creation of the universe would certainly be nothing short of...miraculous. If there was a God who could account for the beginning of the universe, lesser miracles (say, walking of water or healing the blind) might not be all that impressive. If I was going to learn the truth about the existence of a miraculous God, I needed to at least lay down my presuppositions about the miraculous. My experience at crime scenes has helped me do just that. This doesn't mean that I now rush to supernatural explanations every time I fail to find an easy or quick natural explanation. It simply means that I am open to following the evidence wherever it leads, even if it points to the existence of a miraculous designer. (J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity, 28-29)

It's a shame that more atheists in this forum are not open to examining the evidence for Christianity in the way that Jim Wallace was finally able to do.