Ancient peoples started with a more or less fixed set of ideas about what properties a God had, and they made up Gods that included those properties. Like Glycon, Apollonius, Dionysus and the rest, Jesus is full of ancient‑God properties

Before you start clicking through to each of the Gods here, looking for xerox similarities, you're going to want to read this.

Outdated

First of all, Mithras wasn't born of a virgin on December 25th, and many other Jesus-and-other-ancient-God life event similarities are also phony. Made up. Not found in the ancient sources. If you've heard them, what you heard was outdated mythicist scholarship from around the late 1800s, or modern amateur enthusiasm, or internet urban legend. My rule of thumb is, if a claim about ancient religions is not supported by ancient evidence, don't believe it.

In all of ancient literature, there is no event-by-event analogue of Jesus. Here's why ...

Amateur

POCM's challenge
Where did ancient Gods come from? Ancient people, ancient Pagans, started with a more or less fixed set of ideas about what properties a God had, and they made up Gods that included those properties. Like Glycon, Apollonius, Dionysus and the rest, Jesus is full of ancient-God properties.

What you'll discover at POCM is, Christianity did not borrow myths, it borrowed ideas about Gods. The ancient people who first worshiped Jesus knew what a God was, and they believed Jesus was one. On account of which, the stories they told about Him are full of ancient God stylings.

Here's POCM's challenge. You've got to let yourself see that Jesus' meaning—a God—came first, His "facts"—his God-property facts — came later, made up to fit the ancient meaning of "God."

Go loose, close your eyes, breath deep. Got it yet? It's not easy at first.

Jesus was a new God
Jesus was a new God. You knew that. But stop for a minute, go slow. Think about that again. See, you can't have a new God until you first know what God means. And if your new God is a God, well, then He's really not new, he's just a new version of an old idea.

The first people who believed Jesus was a God already knew what properties Gods had. And when they came to tell about Jesus' holy life, they naturally told it the way they saw it, with Jesus as a God, with the standard God properties. Jesus came from Heaven. Check. To Earth Check. Via a magical God-mortal birth. Check. In fulfillment of prophesy. Check. Heralded by magic God-sent dreams. Check. He did miracles. Check. He brought salvation. Check.

Jesus is a new version of an old idea. Jesus was a new Pagan God.

Jesus' apologist's impulse here is to see the "new God" business as a language trick. Our precious Jesus is a God of an entirely different sort than their gods were gods. Same word, different meanings. Who's right? There's a way to tell, because we know exactly what properties Pagans gave to their made up Pagan Gods. Here's how...

Glycon
In the 100s AD a flim-flam Pagan preacher named Alexander invented a new God, Glycon, and set up a prophetic oracle to Him. Alexander was a con man who made up a new God specifically to fit the religious beliefs of the faithful—so he could win their trust and take their money. Glycon gives us a picture of what a God looked like when He was specifically made up to fit the religious ideas of ancient culture.

You'll discover Glycon was not a xeroxed event by event copy of any Pagan God. Alexander invented new myths for his new God, but he kept the old God properties. Prophesies made and fulfilled. Divine birth. God-sent dreams. Heaven. Hell. Miracles: healing the sick, raising the dead. Back then, when people invented new Gods, these are the properties they gave them.

When we look at our holy Jesus, we see the same properties Alexander gave Glycon. Prophesies made and fulfilled. Divine birth. God-sent dreams. Heaven. Hell. Miracles. Healing the sick, raising the dead. We see the goodies that ancients everywhere associated with Gods. Our precious Jesus is trimmed out with exactly the same God properties as the other Pagan Gods.

	Dionysus' Father in Heaven was the great God Zeus. His mother was a mortal woman. Do you know why?

Like the ancient snake-God Glycon, the ancient God Jesus is a product of His time and place.

Seeing what Pagan Gods looked like
As you go through the Gods here under the Pagan Christs tab, remember POCM's challenge. Try not to see each God as a set of myth-events. Try to see the God-qualities that shaped the events. The events change from God to God. The God-qualities stay more or less the same.

If you can do that, you'll understand that Jesus isn't a myth-by-myth copy of any other ancient God because no ancient God is a myth-by-myth copy of any other ancient God. Ancient Gods were all the same, only different. Doh.

Jesus was new—in the same way the first Honda Accord was a new car and the first Mountain Dew was a new soda pop. But you know and I know, without, God help us, some associate professor of Cars and Sodas to tell us, that Honda didn't invent the car when they built the Accord and Mountain didn't invent soda when they made Dew.

The Accord and Dew were new arrangements of old ideas. Some new stuff, but mostly old.

So was Jesus. Jesus was the Son of God who suffered, died, and came back to life. But He wasn't the first Son of God who suffered, died, and came back to life. He brought salvation; but He wasn't the God first to do that either. His dad was a God and his mom was a mortal woman; He wasn't the first God there either. It's the same with miracles, disciples, ascending to heaven—the list goes on and on.

So as you read through this Pagan Christs section of POCM, don't look for myth by myth born-in-a-manger-in-Bethlehem, on-December-25th, of-an-unmarried-virgin-named-Mary, with-shepherds-singing-outside precursors of Jesus. Look for the religious ideas expressed in the myths.