Is the Easter Story Legend or Myth? Conclusion

In my last posting it was established that the Hebrew society into which Jesus was born had great antipathy toward myth and mythology.  The Jewish people neither sought out mythological inspiration from their neighbors, nor were they receptive to such imaginings that might conceivably have arisen from within their own culture.  Modern Roman historian Michael Grant summarizes their religious climate in a decisive way, “Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of deaths and rebirths of mystical gods seems so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit” (boldface mine).  [Michael Grant. Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels. (Scribner’s, 1977), p.199].
 
There is no reason for Christians to deny the existence of assorted myths in other cultures that hint to the theme of dying-and-rising-gods in the mythological context (Osiris, Ishtar, etc.).  C.S. Lewis has noted that parallels between the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and the mythologies of other cultures prior to the Christian era should be neither surprising nor embarrassing for Christians.  It is not inconsistent with the Gospel, writes Lewis, that God should have anticipated the coming of Christ into the Jewish culture in fulfillment of analogies instilled in other cultures. [“Myth Become Fact.” God in the Dock. (Eerdmans, 1970), p.67].  Yet it must be added that the alleged parallels that are described above are highly superficial, most especially in the distinction between the other-worldly setting of mythology as opposed to the Christian claim of an event that happened in flesh-and-blood history (John 1:14).  [J. Gresham Machen. The Origin of Paul’s Religion. (Eerdmans, 1925)].

Some will argue that Mithraism, which had its beginning in Persian Zoroastrianism in the late 300’s BCE, gave actual impetus to Christian belief that the blood of Jesus results in the rebirth of the believer.  Yet Mithriaism, which had migrated westward into the Roman Empire, also dramatically evolved over time in its practices.  Specifically, its Taurobolium rite involved blood from a slaughtered bull being poured over the initiate who was then “reborn forever.”  The problem with this comparison however is that there is no mention at all of such a rite of any kind before the 2^nd century CE.  Furthermore, the specific rite described just above is dated no earlier than the 3^rd century after Christ.  [David Ulansey. “Mithraic Mysteries.” Biblical Archaeological Review. (September/October, 1994), p.40f].
 
Clearly whatever borrowing that may be demonstrated had its source from historic Christianity, and not the other way around!  “Back to the Future” movie themes notwithstanding, it is not possible for Christianity to have borrowed its themes from a time that had yet to arrive by two centuries.