Season of Dying Gods
  by Dr. David Eller

This is the time of year when people around the world celebrate the death and resurrection of their god and savior. He was born over two thousand years ago by a virgin mother. His birthday was December 25 and he was the "light of the world," the divine force who could defeat evil and grant humans immortality and eternal salvation on the day of judgment when the dead would rise again and fight the final conflict in which the world as we know it would end in the triumph of light over darkness. He eventually became the favored god of the Roman Empire, and emperors from Nero on were pictured wearing his radiating crown ("halo"). This god and savior's name is, of course-Mithra.

You were expecting maybe Jesus? But Mithra predates Jesus by almost three hundred years. As we have learned more details about more ancient religions, we have discovered that the dying-and-resurrecting god motif is actually a very common one in world mythology. In his classic work The Sixteen Crucified Saviors, Kersey Graves describes many dying gods and their cults, including Krishna, Sakia, Thammuz, Wittoba, Iao, Hesus, Quexalcote, Quirinus, Prometheus,Thulis, Indra, Alcestos, Atys, Crite, Bali, and of course Mithra. He also reviews other aspects of the "god incarnate" motif, including virgin birth, prophecies, stars pointing to the birthplace, shepherds and magi announcing the birth, royal descent, temptations, and the like.

Going further in this direction, James Frazer in his comparative mythology The Golden Bough discovered that the motif of spring death and resurrection are primordial myths associated with primitive farming societies. Naturally, around early spring, people noticed the earth thawing and the plants blooming-literally, a rebirth or resurrection of life from the "death" that is winter. For eons, societies have celebrated spring as a time of new life. In fact, Easter derives its very name from a pagan festival named after Eostre or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon mother goddess. The true origins of Easter are only too clear in its pagan lunar dating system-the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

Most if not all other aspects of Christianity have their antecedents in earlier mythology. The virgin birth, the winter birthday, the annunciation, the temptations, the judgment day, and so on-all of these are common, recurring themes in religions, very often no more than human symbolization of natural processes and forces.

This kind of learning offers perspective on the Jesus story and the current dominant myth. Many people argue about the "historicity" of Jesus-whether or not he was a historical person. We now know enough to conclude that, not only was he probably not a real person, but his story is not even a "real," personal story. His "biography" is actually just a typical myth that various religious figures have claimed or been attributed as their own "life story."

Some Christians will of course respond that those other versions of the story were false, or that they "anticipated" the true version-of Jesus-somehow. Isn't it much more likely that, say, the Mithra story was true and that Jesus-believers simply borrowed the story because it was already a popular and successful one at Rome? Or better yet, that all of the stories are just that--versions of the same old myth?

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