Is Christianity based on older myths?

[watchamadoodle]

@SteveII, maybe we could focus on a specific myth or old religion that seems to have been absorbed by Christianity? There are a few people that believe the gospels are completely mythical, but there are a lot more people who believe the gospels are partially mythical.

Also I think fictional would be a better word than mythical.

Here is a suspicious case I read about recently. Jesus catches 153 fish. Why 153? Well it turns out that 153 was a significant number in Hellenism.

The number 153 has several interesting mathematical properties. 153 is the sum of the first 17 integers (see mathematical properties of the number 153) and is also the sum of the first five positive factorials, 1! + 2! + 3! + 4! + 5!. The number 153 is associated with the geometric shape known as the Vesica Piscis or Mandorla. Archimedes, in his Measurement of a Circle, referred to this ratio (153/265), as constituting the "measure of the fish", this ratio being an imperfect representation of √3.
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In Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, a tale is mentioned in which Pythagoras, while journeying from Sybaris to Crotona, is said to have met some fishermen, who were drawing their net heavily laden to the shore, and he told them the exact number of fish they caught. In this reference, the exact number is not mentioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_catch_of_fish

There is an entire wikipedia article listing the interesting properties of 153. It seems very unlikely that this number was chosen because it was historically factual.

As a triangular number, 153 is the sum of the first 17 integers, and is also the sum of the first five positive factorials:1!+2!+3!+4!+5!.

The number 153 is also a hexagonal number, and a truncated triangle number, meaning that 1, 15, and 153 are all triangle numbers.

The distinct prime factors of 153 add up to 20, and so do the ones of 154, hence the two form a Ruth-Aaron pair.

Since 153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3, it is a 3-narcissistic number, and it is also the smallest three-digit number which can be expressed as the sum of cubes of its digits. Only five other numbers can be expressed as the sum of the cubes of their digits: 0, 1, 370, 371 and 407. It is also a Friedman number, since 153 = 3 × 51, and a Harshad number in base 10, being divisible by the sum of its own digits.

The Biggs–Smith graph is a symmetric graph with 153 edges, all equivalent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/153_(number)