Many people attempt to discredit a non-pagan religion, belief, or practice by making the charge that it has been influenced by paganism. This fallacy is often committed by Fundamentalists against Catholics; by Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and others against both Protestants and Catholics; and by atheists and skeptics against both Christians and Jews.
In many ways, the nineteenth century was the heyday of the “pagan influence” fallacy. Many new archaeological discoveries and translations of ancient texts were made available to armchair commentators. The nineteenth century saw the publication of books such as The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop (the seminal English text charging the Catholic Church with paganism). It saw the creation of entire new sects (Seventh-Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses) that rejected traditional Catholicism and Protestantism for being polluted by paganism. It saw atheistic “free-thinkers” such as Robert Ingersoll attacking Christianity and Judaism as pagan.
In the twentieth century, newer archaeology and more mature scholarship diminished the influence of the pagan influence fallacy. Yet there are still many committing it. In Protestant circles, numerous works have continued to popularize the claims of Alexander Hislop, most notably the comic books of Jack Chick and the book Babylon Mystery Religion, which was published in 1966 by a young Ralph Woodrow. (Later Woodrow realized its flaws and wrote The Babylon Connection? repudiating the fallacy and refuting Hislop.) Other Christian and quasi-Christian sects have continued to charge mainstream Christianity with paganism, and many atheists have continued to repeat unquestioned the charges of paganism leveled by their forebears.
The pagan influence fallacy holds that a particular religion, belief, or practice is of pagan origin or has been influenced by paganism and is therefore tainted or altogether corrupt. In this minimal form, the pagan influence fallacy is a sub-case of the genetic fallacy, which improperly judges a thing based on its history or origins rather than on its own merits; for instance, “No one should use this medicine because its inventor was a drunkard and an adulterer.” With the rise of neo-paganism, some neo-pagans have also committed a variant on the pagan influence fallacy, trying to legitimize their newly created religions on the pretense that “You Christians just copied from us, therefore you are inferior to us.”
When the pagan influence fallacy is encountered, it should be pointed out first of all that it is a fallacy. To help make this clear to a religious person committing it, it may be helpful to illustrate with cases where the pagan influence fallacy could be committed against his own position. For instance, circumcision was practiced in the ancient world by a number of peoples, including the Egyptians, but few Jews or Christians would say that its divinely authorized use in Israel was an example of “pagan corruption.”
To a secular person, one might point to a parallel case of the genetic fallacy involving his co-religionists—e.g., “Nobody should accept a particular scientific theory because it was developed by an atheist.” You might also point out examples of the associated fallacies, such as assuming a direct connection between things when no such connection can be supported (e.g., “There are pyramids in both Egypt and Mesoamerica, so there must have been an ancient, mysterious, global civilization responsible for both”).
Whenever one encounters a proposed example of pagan influence, one should demand that its existence be properly documented, not just asserted. The amount of misinformation in this area is great enough that it is advisable never to accept a reported parallel unless it can be demonstrated from primary source documents or through scholarly secondary sources. After receiving documentation supporting the claim of a pagan parallel, one should ask a number of questions:
1) Is there a parallel?
Frequently, there is not, especially when the documentation provided is based on an old or undisclosed source. For example: “The Egyptians had a Trinity. They worshiped Osiris, Isis, and Horus thousands of years before the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were known” (R. Ingersoll, Why I Am an Agnostic). This is not true. The Egyptians had an Ennead—a pantheon of nine major gods and goddesses. Osiris, Isis, and Horus were simply three divinities in the pantheon who were closely related by marriage and blood (not surprising, since the Ennead itself was an extended family) and who figured in the same myth cycle. They did not represent the three persons of a single divine being, the Christian idea of a Trinity.
2) Is the parallel dependent or independent?
Even if there is a pagan parallel, that does not mean that there is a causal relationship involved. Two groups may develop similar beliefs and practices independently of each other. The idea that similar forms are always the result of diffusion from a common source has long been rejected by archaeology and anthropology and for good reason: Humans are similar to each other and live in similar (i.e., terrestrial) environments, leading them to have similar cultural artifacts and views.
For example, Fundamentalists have made much of the fact that Catholic art includes Madonna and Child images and that non-Christian art universally also includes mother and child images. There is nothing sinister in this. The fact is that, in every culture, there are mothers who hold their children. Such images do not need to be explained by a theory of diffusion from a common, pagan religious source, such as Hislop’s suggestion that such images stem from representations of Samiramis holding Tammuz.
3) Is the parallel antecedent or consequent?
Even if there is a pagan parallel that is causally related to a non-pagan counterpart, this does not establish which gave rise to the other. Frequently, the pagan sources we have are so late that they have been shaped in reaction to Jewish and Christian ideas. Sometimes it is possible to tell that pagans have been borrowing from non-pagans. Other times it cannot be discerned who is borrowing from whom (or, indeed, if anyone is borrowing at all).
For example, it has been fashionable in some circles to postulate that certain New Testament concepts were borrowed from Gnostics, who were hypothesized not to be a Christian heresy arising in the second and third century (as Church Fathers have stated) but as a pre-Christian religious movement. However, more recent appraisals of the evidence show that the case for the existence of pre-Christian Gnosticism rests on suppositions and sources that are demonstrably younger than the New Testament or that cannot be shown to be older (E. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidences). It appears that the Church Fathers were right: Gnosticism was a heresy splitting away (and borrowing) from Christianity. The borrowing did not go in the other direction.
4) Is the parallel treated positively, neutrally, or negatively?
Even if there is a pagan parallel to a non-pagan counterpart, that does not mean that the item or concept was enthusiastically or uncritically accepted by non-pagans. One must ask: Did they regard it as something positive, neutral, or negative?
For example, circumcision and the symbol of the cross might be termed “neutral” Jewish and Christian counterparts to pagan parallels. It is quite likely that the early Hebrews first encountered the idea of circumcision among neighboring non-Jewish peoples, but that does not mean that they regarded it as a religiously good thing for non-Jews to do. Circumcision was regarded as a religiously good thing only for Jews because for them it symbolized a special covenant with the one, true God (Gen. 17). The Hebrew scriptures are silent in a religious appraisal of non-Jewish circumcision; they seemed indifferent to the fact that some pagans circumcised.
Similarly, the early Christians who adopted the cross as a symbol did not do so because it was a pagan religious symbol. The pagan cultures that used it as a symbol—notably in East Asia and the Americas—had no influence on the early Christians. In fact, Christians despised the Roman cross as a brutal implement of execution, but they used it as a symbol because Christ sacrificed himself upon one for us.
Examples of negative parallels are often found in Genesis. For instance, Genesis 1 has similarities to a Babylonian creation account in the Enuma Elish, but to the extent Genesis reflects it, it is critical. The Enuma Elish portrays the elements of the world arising from a massive, primal conflict between pagan deities. Genesis 1 is a negative image of that, showing that creation was an orderly process by a single God. It wasn’t a conflict involving deicide and chaos monsters. Genesis thus provides a non-pagan rebuttal of pagan ideas.
5) Is the parallel divine, natural, or evil in origin?
Under questions (2) and (3) we alluded to the fact that a parallel between religions may arise by purely natural means. It is also possible, from a religious point of view, that the pagan element in the parallel might arise due to either divine or evil influence.
For example, it is demonstrable from Scripture that God chooses to bestow elements of his truth even on those in pagan religions (Ps. 19:1–4, John 1:9, Acts 17:22–29, Rom. 1:18–20). It is no surprise, then, that in the Old Testament we find non-Jewish priests and prophets of the true God, such as Melchizedek, Jethro, and Balaam (Gen. 14:18, Ex. 18:12, Num. 22:18). We find in the archaeological record that Canaanites worshiped El (J. Finnegan, Myth and Mystery) and that other peoples in the region may even have worshiped Yahweh (C. H. Gordon & G. A. Rendsburg, The Bible and the Ancient Near East), El and Yahweh being biblical names for God. Such “echoes of the truth” in pagan groups in no way stain the truth preserved in non-pagan groups.
By contrast, the forces of darkness may have generated the pagan element in a parallel. Doing so might serve their purposes in a number of ways. One might be adding an element of authentic religion to a false religious system as a way of camouflaging its true nature (on the principle “Always plant a lie next to a truth, to make it more believable”). Another way might be to woo people away from the true religion by providing an alternative that corresponds to some of the same in-built needs that the true religion fulfills. A third might be to discredit the true religion by producing a detectable counterfeit. Sometimes, a single parallel might fulfill all three goals (i.e., by attracting those who want to believe in the pagan religion but need it more intellectually or emotionally attractive, while simultaneously discrediting both the pagan and non-pagan religion for those who wish to believe in neither).
Often, it is impossible to tell how a particular parallel arose, which serves to show that one should not condemn an item because of its speculative origins. It must be judged based on its content, not its putative history.
However, judging by the content (not the history) of a parallel, it sometimes may be possible to detect the hand of evil in it. For example, there is a startling archetypal similarity between the biblical story of the Fall (Genesis 3) and the Prometheus-Pandora cycle in Greek mythology. In both cases, there is a specific thing (fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in one case, fire in the other) which God (Yahweh/Zeus) has not permitted man to have. The enemy of God (the Serpent/Prometheus) then brings this thing into man’s possession, resulting in a similarity between man and God (knowing good and evil/having the power of fire). God then punishes the enemy. In connection with all this, the perfect woman (Eve/Pandora) plays a role in unleashing evils into the world.
Both of these may well be derived from a common source, but there is one enormous archetypal difference between the two. The Genesis account portrays God (Yahweh) as a faithful and righteous God who gave man paradise but tested him to see if he would prove faithful and righteous also. By contrast, the Greek story has been shaped so that God (Zeus) is portrayed as an unjust miser who makes man’s life hard by depriving him of fire, and the enemy of God (Prometheus) is a genuine benefactor of mankind. The Greek story is religiously subversive. Genesis puts God and man on the same side, with the Serpent as their enemy; the Greek version puts man and Prometheus on the same side, with a god as their enemy. It is, one might say, the story of the Fall told from the Serpent’s point of view.
From a religious perspective, one may attribute this shaping of the Greek story to an evil spiritual influence.