The Dependency Fallacy
- Two kinds of dependency: weak and strong
- Weak: Use of accommodating language or appeals to similar beliefs (Paul’s “Mars Hill” speech in Acts 17)
- Strong: A concept originated first in pagan religion and then was brought into Christianity
- There is no evidence of any strong dependency of Christian beliefs on pagan religions
- No evidence of pagan mystery religions in first century Palestine
- While mystery religions are highly syncretic that is not the case for Judaism and Christianity – they are both highly exclusivistic.
Pagan Copycat Theory: The story of Jesus Christ as presented in the gospels is a myth incorporating various aspects of other ancient pagan religions.
–“Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysius, Adonis, Mithras, and other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem.” (Freke and Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, 9)
Common religious figures Jesus is usually compared to:
- Appolonius of Tyanna (Greek)
- Horus/Osiris (Egypt)
- Dionysus – Bacchus (GreekRoman)
- Attis (Phrygian)
- Mithra (Persian/Roman)
- Zoroaster (Persian)
- Krishna (Hindu)
General Comment: There are going to be some similarities between all religions:
- Belief in a God-like figure
- Rites and ceremonies that express that belief
- The universal human condition
- Our desire for a ground for meaning ,purpose and value
- Our struggle with our weaknesses and “sin”
- An answer to evil and suffering
- “I could not believe Christianity if I were forced to say that there were a thousand religions in the world of which 999 were pure nonsense and the thousandth (fortunately) true. My conversion, very largely, depended on Christianity as the completion, the actualization, the entelechy, of something that had never been wholly absent from the mind of man.” (C.S. Lewis, “Relgion Without Dogma”).