My purpose is to discuss the doctrines I have expounded rather than to pronounce judgment upon them.
Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.95 (45 BC)

We gotta 'splain not just the narrow fact Christianity began, but the wider fact Christianity began in the middle of ancient western culture where lots of people had similar ideas.
Greg

Here's where we are. In POCM's Facts section you read ancient texts and discovered that Christianity and Paganism shared lots of ideas. Idea wise, Christianity and Paganism were similar. In this Reasons part of POCM we're thinking about possible explanations of those similarities. The different menu items here —Choices, Borrowing, Faith, etc.— look at various possible explanations of those similarities.

One possibility is that Christianity borrowed  from Paganism? Let's be clear what "borrowing" means, POCM-style.

Sir James Frazier Borrowing is NOT dying and rising God number 47 Back in the late 1800s, and into the '20s and '30s of the twentieth century, "mythicist" scholars had this theory that lots of ancient peoples had dying and rising Gods. Adonis. Attis. Osiris. Mithras. Tamuz. Dying and rising gods were supposedly a common cultural convention, and, said the mythicists, our stories about Jesus were invented to fit the patterns of the DARG convention. Eventually, enthusiasm for the dying and rising God theory fizzled out, supposedly for lack of evidence, although scholarly prejudice contributed. I myself don't morn its fizzulation. The evidence for a DARG convention is thin, and the whole thing seems too clever by half. Christianity- borrowing-from-Paganism-wise, the DARG business is unnecessary. You don't need myth-by-myth DARG parallels to see that the Jesus stories fit nicely with ancient culture's pervasive religious conception of the world. At POCM we are NOT talking about Christianity's Pagan origins as another example of a DARG cultural convention.

Up till now POCM has simply laid out the facts. You've seen the evidence, directly from the pens of the ancients themselves. Before slavery, demons, godmen, heaven, hell, miracles, prophecies, and God, sons of God, salvation, etc. became part of Christianity, they were all parts of other ancient religions.

's Reasons section is about what those facts mean, Christianity-borrowing-from-Paganism-wise. I know you don't care what I believe, so the point is not for me to type out my opinion. Instead, we'll use the work of scholars and Jesus' apologists to list the possible explanations of all those Pagan Christian similarities. Then we'll see which explanations are comprehensive and consistent.

Why "comprehensive and consistent"? Because if an explanation isn't comprehensive, it can't explain all the facts. And if it isn't consistent, then it contradicts itself. Theories that can't explain the facts, or that contradict themselves are not to be believed.

1. Comprehensive: explaining all the facts
Chances are, back when you started POCM, the only ancient religion you knew any definite facts about was Christianity. Because you had nothing to compare it to, Christianity naturally looked unique. Now you've read POCM's Facts sections and you know lots of stuff about lots of ancient religions. Now you know ancient religions, Christian and Pagan, shared ideas.

We want to explain all the facts. We want to explain more than just Christianity had a miracle working, prophecy fulfilling godman, and salvation, and heaven and hell, and initiation rituals, and dreams, and demons, etc.; we want to explain how lots of religions back then had those things. We want to explain how Christianity and Dionysus-ism, and Isis-ism, and Mithras-ism, and Adonis-ism, and Eleusis-ism had miracle working, prophecy fulfilling godmen (and goddessgals), and salvation, and heaven and hell, and initiation rituals, and dreams, and demons, etc.

Explanations that are not comprehensive can not explain all the facts. Theories that are unable to explain the facts are not to be believed.

2. Consistent: not contradicting ourselves
We're looking for an analysis that gives the same answer every time it's applied to similar sets of facts. If we reason that this fact about Jesus implies that conclusion about Jesus, then a similar fact about Osiris should imply the same conclusion about Osiris. Otherwise the difference between Jesus and Osiris is not the facts about J and M, the difference is that we rigged our analysis to make similar facts lead to different conclusions.

How this works is maybe not clear. Let me 'splain...

eg
AD Nock
BM Metzger
Ron Nash
JZ Smith

Let's see if the apologists believe their own ADPNoB rule. We'll test the rule by applying it not to Christianity and Osiris-ism, but to Christianity and Judaism. Lets list the first few facts that come to mind:

The Christian three-headed God is different from Judaism's one-headed God.

Christian salvation is different from Jewish salvation.

Christian baptism is different from Jewish baptism.

The Christian Eucharist is different from Judaism's Eucharist—does Judaism even have baptism and a Eucharist?

By the way

Apply the apologists' Any-Difference-Proves-No-Borrowing rule to these facts, and you reach this conclusion: Christianity is free from the taint of Jewish origins.

Now, people argue about how much Christianity inherited from Judaism, but no one argues it got nothing from Judaism. The ADPNoB rule has taken us to a conclusion that is wrong.

Let's recap. Our search for consistency led us to apply the ADPNoB rule to a different pair of ancient religions, and when we did that we discovered the ADPNoB rule gives an answer that is wrong. Silly. The ADPNoB rule itself does not work. The rule does not work. The conclusions suggested by the rule can not be trusted.

In the apologists' ADPNoB analysis of Jesus and Osiris, the real difference between Jesus and Osiris isn't the basic facts about the two walking, talking, miracle working godmen who died, came back to life, and now live in heaven where they judge the dead. The real difference comes from the simple fact that the ADPNoB analysis is rigged so that overwhelmingly similar sets of facts are imagined to be unrelated.

When someone gives you a "reason" that only works in the one place it has to work for their theory to be true, and that on other situations gives a completely different answer, you should not believe their analysis.

This need for an analysis to be consistent is a key feature of POCM's theory. I flat don't know of any non-magical analysis—any set of criteria for deciding what they-all-had-'em ancient religious ideas are original and which aren't—that can give an answer other than that Christianity and Paganism are the same, where-their-religious-ideas-came-from-wise. This may be the most convoluted sentence I have ever typeulated.

You'll see later that my guess is that like other ancient religions, Christianity had daemons, miracles, Gods, godmen, heaven, hell, etc., and that that means Christianity picked those ideas up from the culture around it.

I say it, but you shouldn't believe it—unless my reasoning also works in other similar situations. Unless, for example I say the other ancient religions, Dionysus-ism, Mithras-ism, Attis-ism, Osiris-ism, etc., all picked up their similar ideas from the culture around them, rather than that they all invented heaven, hell, godmen, daemons, etc., all on their own.

POCM's analysis does say each of these religions borrowed—absorbed—their ideas from the culture around them. POCM's analysis is comprehensive and consistent.     Hurray Greg! Hurray!

Your site certainly demonstrates that you are better educated than this sorry lot. (I won't speculate if they exceed you in other virtues, but it is certainly possible.) But, in the world of people with the requisite intellectual and technical skills to make sound and convincing arguments on this topic, you are an ant, and your work laughable.

Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism
by Franz Cumont

	The history of how middle eastern Gods (the Great Mother, Cybele, Ma-Bellona, Men, Judaism, Sabazius, Anahita, etc. ) came to worshiped in Rome.
	Why they came to Rome.

SEE! how religious borrowing actually happened in the Roman empire!

< YOUR brainiac opinion here! >

Can you KPA?