The "Copycat Christ" Myth: Why the Parallels Don't Hold Up

You've seen the memes. You've heard the claims. Maybe someone sent you a Zeitgeist clip or a Richard Carrier video.

The argument goes like this: Christianity is just recycled paganism. Jesus is a knockoff of Mithra, Dionysus, Attis, Horus, Krishna—take your pick. Virgin birth, December 25, twelve disciples, died and rose again. It's all borrowed. Nothing original. Pack it up, Christians.

Here's the problem: it's not true. And I don't mean "it's offensive to my faith." I mean the actual historical claims fall apart when you look at the primary sources.

Let me show you.


The Claims

The copycat thesis usually includes some combination of:

Sounds damning. Until you check the sources.


Mithra

Claim: Born of a virgin on December 25.

Reality: Mithra was born from a rock. Not a woman. Not a virgin. A rock. This is well-documented in Mithraic iconography—he emerges fully grown from stone, holding a torch and a knife.

December 25? That connection comes after Christianity was already established. And the Church never claimed December 25 as a doctrinal point anyway—it's a liturgical date, not a dogma.

Claim: Had twelve disciples.

Reality: No ancient Mithraic text says this. The "twelve" comes from zodiac imagery in some Mithraic temples—which isn't disciples, it's artistic decoration.

The developed Mithraism we know about postdates the New Testament. If anyone's borrowing, the timeline points the other direction.


Horus

Claim: Born of a virgin on December 25, crucified, rose after three days.

Reality: Horus's mother Isis was not a virgin. The Egyptian texts are clear: she reassembled the body of her dead husband Osiris and conceived Horus with him. That's not a virgin birth—that's necromancy.

Crucified? Horus wasn't crucified. Crucifixion is a Roman execution method. Egypt didn't have it.

Rose after three days? You're thinking of Osiris—and he didn't rise. He stayed dead and became ruler of the underworld. That's not resurrection; that's the opposite.

December 25? No ancient Egyptian source connects Horus to this date.

Where do these claims come from? Mostly from Gerald Massey, a 19th-century amateur Egyptologist whose work has been rejected by actual Egyptologists for over a century.


Dionysus

Claim: Born of a virgin, had twelve disciples, turned water into wine, died and rose.

Reality: Dionysus's mother Semele was not a virgin. Zeus seduced her. That's the whole point of the myth—Hera gets jealous because Zeus is sleeping around. Again.

Twelve disciples? Dionysus had followers—maenads, satyrs, various companions. The number varies wildly depending on the source. "Twelve" is imposed from the outside.

Water into wine? Dionysus is the god of wine. Wine shows up in his cult. But there's no "wedding at Cana" parallel in the ancient sources. You're comparing a divine domain to a specific miracle narrative.

Died and rose? The Dionysus myths involve dismemberment (in some versions) but not bodily resurrection. The stories are mythic cycle narratives about nature and seasons—not historical claims about a man in a specific time and place.


Attis

Claim: Born of a virgin, crucified, rose on the third day.

Reality: Attis's mother Nana became pregnant when an almond (or pomegranate, depending on the version) fell into her lap. Weird? Yes. Virgin birth? Not really—it's more "spontaneous divine pregnancy" than anything parallel to the Gospel accounts.

Crucified? Attis castrated himself and bled to death under a pine tree. That's not crucifixion.

Rose on the third day? The "resurrection" of Attis appears in late sources—after Christianity spread. Earlier versions have him simply dead, or transformed into a pine tree. The resurrection-like elements show up in texts from the 2nd-4th centuries AD, which means Christianity existed first.


Krishna

Claim: Born of a virgin, crucified.

Reality: Krishna's mother Devaki had seven children before him. That's not how virgin birth works.

Crucified? Krishna was shot in the heel by a hunter's arrow and died. No cross. No execution. An arrow to the foot.

The "crucified Krishna" claim comes from a 19th-century forgery that's been thoroughly debunked.


The Deeper Problem

The copycat thesis has three fatal flaws:

1. The chronology is backwards.

Most of the detailed parallels come from sources written after the New Testament. The mystery religions evolved over time, and several absorbed Christian elements as Christianity spread through the Roman Empire. If you're going to claim borrowing, you need to check which direction the borrowing went.

2. The genre is completely different.

The mystery religions weren't making historical claims. They were mythic narratives tied to seasonal cycles—death and rebirth of nature, grain growing and dying, etc. Everyone understood them as symbolic.

The Gospels are doing something different. Luke opens by saying he "carefully investigated everything from the beginning" (Luke 1:3). Paul lists specific witnesses to the resurrection—some still alive when he wrote—and essentially says "go ask them" (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Peter explicitly denies that they're following "cleverly devised myths" (2 Peter 1:16).

You can believe them or not. But they're making historical claims, not telling nature myths.

3. You don't need pagan sources—Judaism explains everything.

The copycat thesis assumes Christianity needed to borrow from paganism. But Second Temple Judaism already had:

Christianity grows out of Judaism, not Mithraism. The parallels with pagan religions are superficial at best. The parallels with Jewish expectation are specific and detailed.


What the Scholars Actually Say

This isn't just a Christian apologetics position. Mainstream secular scholars reject the copycat thesis.

Bart Ehrman—agnostic New Testament scholar, no friend to Christian orthodoxy—has publicly called the mythicist position "bad history" and criticized the parallel claims as amateurish.

The scholarly consensus is clear: whatever you think about the resurrection, Christianity emerged from a Jewish context, made historical claims, and didn't need to borrow its core narrative from mystery cults that were either undeveloped or geographically distant at the time.


The Real Question

The copycat argument is a distraction. It lets people avoid the real question: Did Jesus rise from the dead?

If He did, everything else follows. If He didn't, the parallels don't matter anyway.

The early Christians weren't confused about the difference between nature myths and eyewitness testimony. They lived surrounded by mystery religions. They knew the competition. And they went to their deaths insisting that what they proclaimed wasn't myth but history.

That's the claim. Deal with it on its own terms.


"The Faith of Children. The Doctrine of Theologians."

TheCatholicForge.com