(More Bible Studies Available @ www.marktabata.com)
To Receive These (And Other) Free Bible Studies And Updates Via Email, Contact Mark Tabata @ 606-216-1757 (Text Message) Or hazardhomecoc@gmail.com (Email)
Ecclesiastes 9:11-I returned and saw under the sun that—The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all.
Over the last few years, a lot of people that I have been blessed to work with have had their faith in Christ shipwrecked by something called “the copycat theory” of religion. Simply stated, it is argued that Christians stole all of their major beliefs from preexisting pagan religions. As an example, it is said that the pagan gods and goddesses were said to have been born of virgins, performed miracles, were raised from the dead, etc., and that Christians just stole those beliefs and stuck them into their religion.
What about it?
First, the New Testament Scriptures have been verified continually by archaeology and shown to be historically accurate and reliable. They predate many of the religious beliefs in question.. So if anyone “copied” anything, it was the pagans copying from the Christians!
Second, many of those pagan beliefs are exaggerated by modern day opponents of Christianity to make it appear that Christians copied those beliefs. As an example, it is often argued that the god Mithras was born of a virgin, and that the early Christians stole that belief and incorporated it into their religion. But when you go back and study the writings of the followers of Mithras, you discover that their account of the origin of Mithras is a bit…. different…from a virgin birth.
“What about the Mithras legend? The birth in a cave with shepherds in attendance? The birth of Mithras was, to say the least, very different from anything that’s found in the New Testament. In the first place, Mithras was birthed from solid stone, and … well … he got stuck on the way through. (I guess you could say he got off to a rocky start.) So, some nearby folk who may have been shepherds intervened and pulled him from the stone.17 Yet some writers continue to connect his birth in a cave, assisted by some people who might have been shepherds, to the birth of Jesus in a stable with shepherds arriving soon afterward. A few critics even continue to call this birth of Mithras a “virgin birth”!18 I must admit that this vexes me even more at a biological level than at a historical level. I guess that birth from a rock is sort of a virgin birth, but how can you tell if a rock is a virgin, anyway? And how, precisely, do rocks lose their virginity? Parallels of this sort are simply too vague to support the claim that Christians borrowed their beliefs from pagans of previous generations.” (Timothy Paul Jones, Conspiracies and The Cross, 2092-2098 (Kindle Edition): Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine: A Strang Company)
Third, paganism does have elements of truth-and some of those elements predate the New Testament! This is simply because the pagans sometimes “copied” those elements from Judaism (which existed long before Jesus).
“The influence of ancient Judaism is evident throughout different cultures.85 Monotheism and the prophecies of a Savior, born of a virgin, sacrificed for sins, and resurrected can be found throughout the Old Testament documents. The first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, was recorded approximately 1446 BC (oral tradition likely preserving it for countless years prior to that date), and the entire Old Testament was translated into Greek around 250 BC, making it available in the common language of the Hellenistic empire that extended to the ends of the known world. Since the Old Testament prophesied of the virgin-born Messiah, it is not surprising that the story spread before Christ’s first advent. An Egyptian papyrus dated to 340 BC reveals, “Who is the author of Re-birth? The Son of God, the One Man, by God’s Will.”86 And from another source, dated to approximately the same time, “The Lord and maker of all . . . from himself made the second God, the Visible . . . whom he loved as his Son.” Although not in agreement with Christian doctrine as to the nature of the Son, these two writings predate Christianity and point to what can be considered a common knowledge. Old Testament history (both oral and written) provides a basis for the existence of mutual knowledge, since the cultural and religious practices of neighboring and distant nations is referenced several times by different authors. In light of these historical facts, the Savior myth can be seen as a common belief emerging from the similar nature of human beings, a diffusion of knowledge from a central base—the Middle East, and the direct result of the distortion of biblical prophecy. Common knowledge produced generally similar stories whose details were invariably different.” (Walter Martin, Jill Martin, Rische Kurt, Van Gorden, 112-113 (Kindle Edition); Nashville,, Tn; Thomas Nelson)
Last, even if there are similarities between religions, that does not mean a grand conspiracy is at work. Sometimes really strange coincidences are just that….really strange coincidences!
“Finally, the myth proponents suffer from what Dan Wallace described as “parallelomania.” Namely, they tend to argue that certain similarities between pagan sources and Christianity prove that Christians copied the pagan stories. However, the parallels invariably lack any real substance. They are either too superficial, or they come from documents that postdate Christianity by centuries. Even if the parallels were earlier and far more similar, they still would not prove copying. Many remarkable coincidental similarities exist between different religions and between different historical events. One of the most striking examples is the similarity between the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and that of John F. Kennedy. Numerous details perfectly coincide: • Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946. • Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960. • Lincoln and Kennedy each have seven letters. • Lincoln had a secretary name Kennedy; Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. • Both were married in their thirties to twenty-four-year-old, socially prominent girls who could speak fluent French. • Both presidents dealt with civil rights movements for African Americans. • Both presidents were assassinated in the back of the head, while sitting next to their wives, on a Friday before a major holiday. • Both their assassins were known by three names consisting of fifteen letters (John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald). • Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was captured in a theater; Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was captured in a warehouse. • Both assassins were shot and killed with a Colt revolver days after they assassinated the president, before they could be brought to trial. • Both presidents were succeeded by vice presidents named Johnson; both Johnsons were from the South, born in 1808 and 1908 respectively. 15 Despite this remarkable list, no one believes that one assassination was a mythical retelling of the other. For no evidence exists that copying took place, and the accounts of both assassinations rest on solid historical foundations. Similarly, not a shred of evidence exists that the early Christians were influenced by any of the stories about pagan mythical or historical figures. And the time frame between the events and the writing of the Gospels and letters was far too short for myths to have developed since eyewitnesses were still alive. “There was not enough time for legends to accrue significantly. Ever since D. F. Strauss broached his theory that the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ life and resurrection are the products of legendary and mythical development, the unanswered difficulty for this viewpoint has been that the temporal and geographical distance between the events and the accounts is insufficient to allow for such extensive development.”” (Rice Broocks, Man, Myth, Messiah: Answering History’s Greatest Question, 132-134 (Kindle Edition): Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, an imprint of Thomas Nelson)
So even if there are similarities between religions, that does not mean that there is a grand conspiracy at work. Coincidence does not demand causality. Just because there are similarities between the religions does not mean that there is a common cause to them.
Christianity is based on rock solid evidence: we can know the certainty of those things in which we have been instructed (Luke 1:1-4).
Lord, thank You for living the perfect life among us. Thank You for Your uniqueness. Help us to reach others with the proofs of Your Word so we may reach them with the Gospel. Grant us patience and wisdom. In Your Name we pray, Amen.