And in many cases, are not
pre-Christian at all. I touched on this in, "
Reasons to disbelieve Jesus rose from the dead." Skeptics of Christian faith say that the story of Jesus is not much different from scores of pagan religious stories about savior figures.
However, experts in the field are not making this claim. Professor Norman Geisler of Loyola University explains, “No Greek or Roman myth spoke of a literal incarnation of a monotheistic God into human form by way of a literal virgin birth, followed by his death and physical resurrection.”
Furthermore, “Most of the evidence for the alleged similarities from the pagan myths date between the second to fourth centuries,” long after the New Testament had been written. If anything, most of those ancient myths are likely based on Jesus rather than the other way round.
Comes now a detailed look at the Mithra myth and its relationship (if any) to Christianity. See
Those Pre-Christian Deities Aren’t Much Like Jesus After All. Mithra, as it turns out, was likely based on Jesus rather than the other way round.
