Isn't Jesus copied from earlier pagan gods?

The list is always the same. Born of a virgin on 25 December, twelve disciples, performed miracles, crucified, buried, raised on the third day — and it all happened centuries earlier to Horus, or Mithras, or Osiris.

It looks devastating until you check one, which almost nobody does. So here are the checks.

Mithras

The claim: born of a virgin, had twelve followers, was crucified and rose again.

What Mithraic sources actually show: Mithras is born out of a rock, fully grown. Not a virgin — a rock. There is no death of Mithras in the surviving material, which means there is nothing to be crucified, buried or raised from. When his work is finished he is taken up in a chariot, alive.

The Roman cult of Mithras also postdates Christianity in most of its developed form, so the borrowing, if any, runs the wrong way for the argument.

Horus

The claim: virgin birth, baptism, twelve disciples, crucifixion, resurrection.

Isis conceives Horus after reassembling the dismembered body of Osiris. Whatever that is, it is not a virgin birth. There are no twelve disciples in the Egyptian material, no walking on water, no crucifixion and no resurrection. In most versions Horus does not die at all; in some he merges with the sun god and is said to be reborn with each sunrise.

Osiris

Osiris is the closest of the three, and still not close. He is killed and reassembled, and then rules in the underworld. He does not return to the world of the living. A god who stays dead and governs the dead is not a parallel to a man walking out of a tomb into Jerusalem and eating fish with his friends.

What the specialists say

This is the part worth knowing, because it is not Christians defending themselves.

The whole category of “dying and rising gods” was a scholarly construction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and specialists in ancient religion have largely dismantled it since. Jonathan Z. Smith, a historian of religion and no apologist, concluded that the category rested on imaginative reconstructions and on texts that were either very late or highly ambiguous.

In other words: the parallels were assembled by people looking for them, often by describing pagan myths in deliberately Christian vocabulary — calling a rebirth a resurrection, a ritual meal a eucharist — and then presenting the vocabulary as evidence.

Why this one keeps circulating

It spreads through documentaries and infographics rather than books, and it has one great advantage: nobody in the conversation has read the Egyptian material. The claim is made confidently, the sources are in another language and mostly another millennium, and checking is work.

Which is exactly the argument for checking one of them. Take Mithras alone. Ten minutes with a reference work on Mithraism is enough, and afterwards the whole list looks different.

Objections answered

But there are obvious similarities between religions.

There are, and Christians have an explanation rather than an embarrassment: if human beings are made by God, you would expect their myths to circle the same themes — sacrifice, rescue, a death that means something. C. S. Lewis, who taught this literature, argued that the myths were rumours of a true story. That is a claim about resemblance, not about copying.

What about 25 December?

The date is not in the Bible and Christians do not claim it as the historical birthday. It was fixed centuries later, and whether it was chosen to coincide with an existing festival is genuinely debated. Either way, no doctrine turns on the calendar.

Isn't the resurrection just another myth about a god who returns?

The shape is different in the way that matters. These are stories set in a mythic past, about deities, with no witnesses named. The resurrection is reported as an event in a named year, under a named governor, with a list of people who said they saw it and who could be asked while they were alive.

How to say it

Take one and check it

“Let’s do Mithras. Where does the virgin birth come from?” Do not answer the whole list — it is designed to be too long to answer. One example checked properly discredits the method.

Name the scholarship

“Historians of religion abandoned the ‘dying and rising gods’ category decades ago.” It moves the discussion from Christians versus sceptics to what the specialists in those religions actually found.

Ask for the primary source

“Which Egyptian text says Horus was crucified?” Asked without sarcasm. There is not one, and the question is more effective than any assertion.

Shared ground, and where traditions differ

All Christians hold

All the traditions hold that the incarnation and resurrection happened in history rather than in myth, and none of them regards resemblance to older stories as a threat — several of the early fathers pointed at the similarities themselves.