"It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem." - Malcolm Forbes

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On ancient Savior Gods and Christian Mythology, as well as thinking on the end-times:


A: b) The contemporaneous Mediterranean cultures have many stories about mythical and legendary figures dying and rising from the dead. (Adonis and Osiris all rose from the dead in the third day. Apollonius of Tyana ascension into heaven was announced by a heavenly choir. Romulus, the legendary co-founder of Rome, was taken up into heaven by a thick cloud. etc]

c) In second temple Judaism, we see many writings that talk about a general resurrection of the last days (i.e. an eschatological event). Jesus resurrection was interpreted within that context as the first of many resurrections that will come. Paul called Jesus resurrection as the "first fruit" (I Corinthians 15:20). The author of the first gospel was probably trying to convey the same idea when he wrote that many rose from the dead after Jesus' crucifixion (see Matthew 27:52-53).


B: Regarding... c)

The above is not sufficient to make it likely for the Jew Christians to expect Jesus to be resurrected because the common belief among them about resurrection was that the resurrection should happen only at the End Times and not at the time when evils were not yet dealt with and not at the time when "pagans" continue their lordship over the Jews, and should happen to them as a group instead of one single person ahead of others.

It was only after they perceived they encountered a resurrected Jesus then they began to modify the common Jewish belief about resurrection and start to proclaim a resurrection of a single person has taken place at a time when it should not have happened yet (i.e. not yet the END TIMES), and that the resurrection is split into two times, once for a single person, and then for all at another time.

About... b)

But all these gods dying and rising and then dying again then rising again then dying again (e.g. Adonis & Osiris) are in a different category from the Jewish idea of one-time unrepeatable bodily resurrection of human beings.

Jewish belief in resurrection was not about their god YHWH dying and rising. Neither is it about human beings dying and rising and dying and rising again and again; Jewish resurrection refers to a single, unrepeatable event.

Also, the idea of human beings dying and then ascending into heaven is also a different category from Jewish idea of bodily resurrection.

Hence there is a big difference between those ideas of dying and rising gods, and the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection of human beings returning to live in this world. There is a big difference also between the ideas of people ascending into heaven and the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection of human beings returning to live in this world.

(see N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p 80-81 on Dying and Rising Gods: "From the very early times, in Egypt and elsewere, some of the major religions centred their symbols, stories and praxis on the cycles of nature, and on the gods and goddesses who were believed to enart, or to have enarcted, these cycles in themselves. Thus there emerged, gradually and with far too many variations even to list, the well-known dying and rising gods and goddesses of the ancient near-east... Adonis, Attis, Isis and Osiris,...corn-kings and corn-mothers... At the heart of the cults was the ritual re-enactment of the death and rebirth of the god, coupled with sundry fertility rites. The productivity of the soil, and of the tribe or nation, was at stake... Did this in any way form an exception to the rule laid down in the ancient world [referring to the ancient's world's belief that human beings cannot be bodily resurrected after death]? Did any worshipper in these cults, from Egypt to Norway, at any time in antiquity, think that actual human beings, having died, actually came back to life? Of course not [i.e. bodily resurrection is not a part of such religions and their beliefs]. These multifarious and sophiscated cults enacted the god's death and resurrection as a metaphor, whose concrete referent was the cycle of seed-time and harvest, of human reproduction and fertility. Sometimes, as in Egypt, the myths and rituals include funerary practices: the aspiration fo the dead was to become united with Osiris. BUT THE NEW LIE THEY MIGHT THEREBY EXPERIENCE AS NOT A RETURN TO THE LIFE OF THE PRESENT WORLD... That which Homer and others [of the ancient world] meant by resurrection was not affirmed by the devotees of Osiris or their cousins elsewhere.... )

Jewish resurrection was not about their god YHWH dying and rising. Neither is it about human beings dying and rising and dying and rising again and again; Jewish resurrection refers to a single, unrepeatable event.

Hence the great difference between those ideas of dying and rising gods and Jewish bodily resurrection of human beings.

The idea of human beings dying and then ascending into heaven is also a different category from Jewish idea of bodily resurrection.

I attached also quoted passages on Adonis and Osiris below:

Adonis
The earliest known record of a tradition involving a revived Adonis comes from Lucian of Samosata, the author of De Dea Syria. In that work, he wrote of an annual ceremony commemorating the death, or apparent death, of Adonis and that he was killed, or apparently killed, by a boar:

"They say, at any rate, that the deed that was done to Adon by the boar occurred in their land, and in memory of that misfortune every year they beat their breasts and mourn and perform the ceremonies, making solemn lamentations throughout the country. And when the breast-beating and weeping is at end, first they make offerings to Adon as if to a dead person; and then, on the next day, they proclaim that he is alive and fetch him forth into the air, and shave their heads as the Egyptians do when Apis dies."

Regardless of whatever conclusions could be drawn from De Dea Syria, it should be noted that it was written during the second century AD, after the time of Jesus, and this poses a problem for people claiming that the tradition of a revived Adonis influenced Christianity. The problem is that New Testament was written during the previous century, meaning that Christianity could not have been influenced by De Dea Syria.

It should also be noted that the revivification of Adonis is very different than the resurrection of Jesus. Theocritus, a Greek poet during the third century AD, after the time of Jesus, indicates in his Psalm of Adonis that Adonis is revived for a single day each year and then is carried out to the sea. In contrast, the New Testament, which was written two centuries earlier, portrays Jesus as being resurrected once, and for eternity.

In Christianity, Jesus is not only "revived," he is also resurrected. He returns to life, completely and permanently. He defeats death, completely and permanently. And he promises a resurrection for anyone who has faith in him.

In contrast, the mythical revivification of Adonis is temporary. He does not defeat death. In fact, he returns to death. His "death and revivification" mirrors that of plants, not people. Plants die in the winter and are revived in the spring. But after the plants are revived, they die again - they return to death, as does the mythical Adonis.

Resurrection and revivification are not the same.

Osiris

A basic outline of the Osiris myth is provided by Plutarch, in his work entitled Osiris and Isis, that Osiris is tricked into lying in a wooden box which then is nailed shut like a coffin. The trapped Osiris is then drowned in the Nile. But his body is later recovered and dismembered, divided up into 14 or more pieces and scattered throughout the land. Isis, the wife of Osiris, collects the pieces of his body and re-assembles them, by wrapping them with linen.

There are two passages within the writing of Plutarch that might lead one to assume that the reconstruction of Osiris leads to a resurrection:

. "Later, as they relate, Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle." - Plutarch, Osiris and Isis.

. "In this way we shall undertake to deal with the numerous and tiresome people, whether they be such as take pleasure in associating theological problems with the seasonal changes in the surrounding atmosphere, or with the growth of the crops and seed-times and ploughing; and also those who say that Osiris is being buried at the time when the grain is sown and covered in the earth and that he comes to life and reappears when plants begin to sprout." - Plutarch, Osiris and Isis.

In the first passage, it is clear that Osiris returns in some form, but some scholars, including Anthony Mercantante, conclude that he returns in spirit form, not in body. In the second passage, the phrase "comes to life" is too ambiguous to conclude a bodily resurrection, because we are not being told whether he "comes to life" (or in some English translations, "returns to life") in a spirit form, or in a purely symbolic sense, or whether is coming to life as the plants themselves.

The traditions referenced above are at best too ambiguous to support claims of a bodily resurrection. And, at worst, they are too consistent with other pagan traditions, especially those that have been intertwined with the annual dying and rising of crops, to be of use as a prototype for a one-time-for-always bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It also should be noted that Plutarch, who lived during the second-half of the first century AD, is credited with writing the first coherent and detailed account of Osiris. There is no account within Plutarch's Osiris and Isis that could be construed as a virgin birth for Osiris, who is said to have been born of two other Egyptian deities, namely the god of the sky and the god of the earth.

Further complicating any claim that Osiris had a bodily resurrection is a writing from a Greek traveler named Strabo, who lived from about 63 BC to about 24 AD, and wrote of his travels throughout ancient world. In his book entitled Geography, Strabo wrote:

"A little above Sais is the asylum [tomb] of Osiris, in which the body of Osiris is said to lie; but many lay claim to this, and particularly the inhabitants of the Philae which is situated above Syene and Elephantine; for they tell the mythical story, namely, that Isis placed coffins of Osiris beneath the earth in several places (but only one of them, and that unknown to all, contained the body of Osiris), and that she did this because she wished to hide the body from Typhon, fearing that he might find it and cast it out of its tomb." - Strabo, Geography, Book XVII.

The key point here is that Strabo records a legend in which the body of Osiris is believed to be lying in a tomb, flatly contradicting the claim of Till or Graves that the Osiris legend culminates with a bodily resurrection.

The mythology of Osiris, in fact, culminates not with a bodily resurrection but with Osiris becoming some sort of a spirit who rules the underworld.


A: "The above is not sufficient to make it likely for the Jew Christians to expect Jesus to be resurrected because the common belief among them about resurrection was that the resurrection should happen only at the End Times..."

I like the "not sufficient" remark above. Notice how such a remark is never used when considering the historical reality of the resurrection?!

Anyway your remark flies against the evidence:

i) We have strong evidence that the early Christians thought they were living in the end times!

That was why Paul called Jesus' resurrections, the first fruit! In addition to that let me give you a few quotes from the NT:

Mark 9:1 (see also Mark 13:24-30 quoted above) He [Jesus] said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power.”

M (Matthew 10:23) [Jesus said] [F]or most certainly I tell you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man has come.

I Thessalonians 4:15 For this we tell you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left to the coming of the Lord, will in no way precede those who have fallen asleep.

ii) Finally we have the evidence from the Gospel itself that such a belief was present in that time, for didn’t Mark 6:14-16 tell is that Herod thought Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead? In other words the belief that someone could rise from the dead is present in Jewish culture at that time.

The above cluster of evidence shows that the probability is not zero that the apostles could have such similar "a-priori" beliefs (like Herod did) which would make them more susceptible to Jesus sighting hallucinations. This probability towers over the probability that someone could rise from the dead after three days - to this date, the probability for this is indistinguishable from zero.

B. In your quote of NT Wright's book "The Resurrection of the son of God" There main point he raised (which I presume you agree with) is that the myths of the rising and dying gods are sufficiently different as to have no impact on Christian belief in the resurrection.

In his review of Wright's book, Robert M. Price (who, like Wright) is also a professor of the New Testament has this to say:

"The most striking of these blustering evasions has to do with the dying-and-rising redeemer cults that permeated the environment of early Christianity and had for many, many centuries. Ezekiel 8:14 bemoans the ancient Jerusalemite women's lamentation for Tammuz, derived from the Dumuzi cult of ancient Mesopotamia. Ugaritic texts make it plain that Baal's death and resurrection and subsequent enthronement at the side of his Father El went back centuries before Christianity and were widespread in Israel. Pyramid texts tell us that Osiris' devotees expected to share in his resurrection. Marduk, too, rose from the dead. And then there is the Phrygian Attis, the Syrian Adonis. The harmonistic efforts of Bruce Metzger, Edwin Yamauchi, Ron Sider, Jonathan Z. Smith and others have been completely futile, utterly failing either to deconstruct the dying-and-rising god mytheme (as Smith vainly tries to do) or to claim that the Mysteries borrowed their resurrected savior myths and rituals from Christianity. If that were so, why on earth did early apologists admit that the pagan versions were earlier, invented as counterfeits before the fact by Satan? Such myths and rites were well known to Jews and Galileans, not to mention Ephesians, Corinthians, etc., for many centuries. But all this Wright merely brushes off, as if it has long been discredited. He merely refers us to other books. It is all part of his bluff: "Oh, no one takes that seriously anymore! Really, it's so passé!"" (You can access the full review on line: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_ntwrong.htm)

I (A) would like to add that to say that the early Christians DO NOT think their beliefs are similar to the pagans is one of the biggest lies told by evangelical scholars such as Wright, Craig and their Ilk. Let me quote you a passage from the mid second century Christian, Justin Martyr, who in trying to convince the pagans that Christian beliefs are "not really all that different" from theirs wrote these revealing passages:

"And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; AEsculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire." [First Apology of Justin, Chapter 21: you can see this text on line: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-firstapology.html]

So the idea that "people can rise from the dead" is an idea which permeates the cultures of the day. To say that there are "not exactly the same" as the resurrection accounts in the NT is disingenuous - nobody is claiming that! The point is that such beliefs make it more likely that the early followers would have accepted the resurrection of Jesus as more likely.

I hope you see why I feel that statements about belief in the resurrection is rational can only be made if one is, as Winston Churchill so deliciously put it, "economical with the facts."