VERITAS: - By Craig Branch

VERITAS
Are Biblical Doctrines Stolen from Pagan Myths?
By Craig Branch
November - December 2009

One of the applications in Christian apologetics is to point out and prove how numerous religions are false because they are not based on historical fact. Instead they often contain myths or are built on legends.

Paul instructed Timothy to “remain in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach other doctrine or pay attention to myths and genealogies” (1 Tim. 1:3-4), “They will turn away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Tim 4:4). These passages referred to numerous Jewish rabbinic embellishments and anecdotal folklore added to the Scriptures, as well as prophetic warnings of future myths such as those concocted by new age gurus attempting to merge Christian revelation into their framework.

The category of myths and legends are now being applied to Christianity by those who are attempting to dismiss the truth claims of the Bible. The charges that the Old and New Testaments, including the life of Jesus are merely myths borrowed from other religious legends have been occurring for some time, from numerous directions.

This issue of the Areopagus Journal focuses on some of the more popular theories and charges by skeptics and other deniers of Jesus Christ. You will see that the claims and comparisons of ancient myths as being influences on the message of Christianity are shallow, irrelevant, forced and dishonest.

We have addressed and responded to numerous attacks on the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible in our Journals. We have rendered an apologetic defense on the issues of inerrancy, dealing with Bible difficulties (“The Breath of God”), alleged scientific, historical, and doctrinal errors (“Doe the Bible Err?”) and the science of textural criticism (“Do We Have the Right Text?”). We responded to the very popular attack of The DaVinci Code, regarding canonicity (“Do We Have the Right Books?”) as well.

This journal contains two articles responding to some of the more popular charges made by Bible skeptics who claim that the teachings of the Old and New Testament were based on Ancient religious legends and myths rather that the unique revelation of God.

The article by Eugene Merrill begins by responding to those doubters of the historical facts revealed in the Old Testament, in his article, “The Bible in Light of the Ancient Near East.” Merrill begins by pointing to the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, which “spawned a spirit of human rationalism”.

Merrill adds that “Skepticism about the Bible that arose in Enlightenment times has hardly abated.” The foundational belief of the Enlightenment era was that science, reason and logic is the ultimate basis of truth. Miracles and the supernatural were superstitious nonsense. The liberal scholars began with the assumption that Moses did not write Genesis (or even the first five books), but that the writers were just repeating versions of ancient myths circulating during that period.

Merill points to the “creation stories”, pointing out that nearly every culture has creation narratives involving gods and humans. But Merill demonstrates that the Biblical account is “starkly different” from the others. Merill then proceeds to the revelations of the worldwide flood, genealogies, the Tower of Babel, patriarchal systems, and demonstrates that even though one may find some similarities, the Biblical accounts are still unique and consistent.

A third article responds to pseudo-Christian cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses and others that deny the Trinity and claim it is a deviation of pagan beliefs.

The commonalities between the different cultures and people groups are logically consistent with the revelation of Scripture. After the flood (Gen.9-10) the families began to migrate, reproduce, and develop their own languages and nations for hundreds of years. This is especially true after the dramatic judgment of God at the Tower of Babel (Gen 11) when God “confused their language” so that they could “not understand one another’s speech”, and He “scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”

Certainly vestiges of the memory of the earlier events continued to exist with these newly forming nations as well as an innate knowledge of God, though suppressed and distorted by sin (Romans 1:18-23). So, some similarities in their legends with the true event are logically understandable.

Archeology, though not an exact science, has continually substantiated the credibility of Biblical places and events. For example, many liberals and other skeptics tried to point to there being no evidence of the fall of Jericho (Joshua 6). But in the 1950’s, British archeologist Kathleen Kenyon excavated the suspected site and found the ruins of the collapsed walls of Jericho, consistent with the Biblical account. [1]

This archeological substantiation is significant when compared to say the Mormon Church’s claims that Jesus returned after His resurrection and appeared to the “lost tribes of Israel” who had allegedly relocated into the Americas. These alleged tribes were called Lamanites and Nephites who erected cities, had battles, and culminated in a great battle in upstate New York. This history was reported as fact in the Mormon Scripture, the Book of Mormon. The problem is that there is no evidence of any of these events. The only cities dating to this time were Mayan and Incan, whose DNA is certainly not Semetic or Jewish.

The second article contributed in this Journal issue is “Christianity Among the Myths,” by Mary Jo Sharp. In it she responds to the “increasingly popular arguments” which are resurfacing claiming that the early followers of Christ constructed his life story and message, borrowing from ancient pagan myths.

Mere Christianity is a well known apologetics work written by Oxford Scholar, C.S. Lewis. In it he posed the now famous challenging trilemma to the skeptic that based on the evidence Jesus must be either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. But this new attempt to generate skepticism or disbelief presents us with a fourth dilemma, a prior dilemma – that Jesus is a legend or mostly legend.

There is an earlier history of liberal theologians who arrived at a previous belief that the Bible was not infallible, but was the result of humans creating and adopting legends and myths trying to explain the meaning and purpose of life. As addressed in Eugene Merrill’s article, these skeptics were also a product of the Enlightenment.

These liberal theories, called “higher criticism”, and the “documentary hypothesis”, began in the late 19th century and were carried forward by theologians like Rudolph Billtmann in the early to mid 20th century and continues today in many liberal mainline churches.

More recent proponents of this view is the minority group, the Jesus Seminars, led by Robert Funk.

Mary Jo Sharp responds to the recent and popular claims of Robert M. Price, Joseph Campbell and others, who attempt to make an argument that the divine-human appearance, death, judgment, resurrection and salvation messages were assimilated from preexisting pagan myth theories. The bulk of Mrs. Sharp’s article focuses on the “most commonly compared myths to the story of Christ – Osiris, Horus, and Mithras, and the doctrinal parallels listed above.

She demonstrates the fallacies of the writers utilized by the skeptics and then proceeds to demonstrate the factual and analogical errors of their comparisons. After a detailed comparison of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ with the legends and myths of other mystery religions, she concludes, “Rather then showing how Christianity borrowed from the myths, comparisons between Christianity and the myths demonstrate all the more, the profound uniqueness of Christian beliefs.”

This journal’s third article co authored by ARC staff members Clete Hux and Steve Cowan take on the claim that the revelation of God as a Triune Being – The Trinity, is also influenced and borrowed from concepts of pagan religious. This claim is especially found in anti-Trinitarian groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostalism, and Islam.

Hux and Cowan demonstrate that the Trinity doctrine did not originate at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. but was a clarification and response to the heretical movement begun by Arias during that time. They also explain how the prior Egyptian and Babylonian god triads are not at all compatible with the Biblical revelation of the Triune God. And they explain how the Hindu Triad of gods – Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, not only appeared on the scene in the 4th – 7th centuries after Christ, but also bore no real semblance to the true Triune God. (If you would like a thorough Biblical expositor and apologetic on the Trinity, either via email or hard copy, contact us via email at arc@arcapologetics.org

Additional Attacks
There are additional examples of Jesus pagan myths being circulated today, but most of them are easily answered by the articles in this journal. But in case you encounter people whose innate rejection of Christ is being fed by other stories or claims not mentioned here, or they need even more evidence, let me recommend several books which we offer on our website.

These works are, Reinventing Jesus: What the DaVinci Code and other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You by Ed Komoszewski, James Sawyer, and Daniel Wallace; Lord or Legend? Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma by Gregory Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy; The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition also by Boyd and Eddy; The Gospel and the Greeks, by Ronald Nash; The Historical Jesus by Craig Keens, Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright, and Myth Conceptions: Joseph Campbell and the New Age by Tom Snyder.

For example, Reinventing Jesus has a particular response to The Laughing Jesus by Freke and Gandy who alter and even invent parallel claims of pagan myths with the Biblical claims of Christ. They claim that the parallels include a Father God and a virgin born son, a God-savior made flesh as the Son of God, a humble birth on December 25th, twelve disciples-leaders, salvation through baptism (which is not even true in the Bible), death at Easter and resurrection on the third day, and a sacrament of the Lord’s supper or communion.

For example the skeptics point to miraculous births of Greco-Roman heroes like Perseus, Hercules, Romulus, Alexander the Great and pharaohs as examples. The fallacies of many of these and other claims are provided in our Journal articles but if you would like even more, order any of these books.

In conclusion we find nothing in literature of history prior to or after the historical first century Jesus movement. Many Jews come to worship a fellow contemporary Jesus yet returned an obvious commitment to monotheism.

The bottom line is again laid out in Romans chapter one, “19 for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. “(vs. 19-23). [2]

Craig Branch is director of the Apologetics Resource Center, Birmingham, Alabama.