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Does the Resurrection Rip Off Pagan Myths?

A popular objection to Christianity is that Jesus’ resurrection is a rip-off of dying and rising deities within pagan mythology. Should Christians be alarmed by this? Karlo Broussard gives reasons why the answer is no.

 

Transcript:

A popular objection to Jesus’ resurrection is that it’s merely a rip-off of pagan myths about resurrected deities.

Should this be a cause for alarm for the Christian? I don’t think so, and here are some reasons why.

First, the idea of resurrection as a new, embodied life after death was foreign to the pagan worldview. Recall how the Athenians scoffed at Paul’s preaching on the resurrection in Acts 17. How could the early Christians have copied from pagan myths when the Christian idea of resurrection was not even a part of the pagan mental framework?

Second, the majority of the alleged parallels are bogus, because the deities never really rise from the dead. For example, after dying, the spirit of the Greek god Attis entered into a pine tree. That’s hardly a resurrection.

The Egyptian god Osiris never rose from the dead either. He merely reigned as king of the underworld. As the Egyptologist Henri Frankfort explains in his book Kingship and the Gods, “Osiris…was not a dying god at all but a dead god. He never returned among the living.”

A third reason why this objection fails is that the sources for some of these alleged resurrections come after Christianity. For example, the resurrection account of the Greek god Adonis doesn’t show up until the second century. Claims of Krishna’s resurrection don’t emerge until the sixth or seventh century. Perhaps these accounts are ripping off of Jesus?

So, to my Christian friends, no need to fret—our belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not of pagan origin.

If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.

For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

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