One of the claims that does the rounds during this time of year is that the Easter story is just a re-hashed version of some Ancient Egyptian myths, like that of Osiris or Horus. For some believers, who understandably don’t have a great working knowledge of Ancient mythology, these sort of claims can rock their faith a little. If the stories about Jesus are just borrowed from other ancient myths, what reason do we have to believe in him any more than we believe in them?
One answer to that doesn’t really require any working knowledge of ancient mythology at all. Namely, the truth claims of the resurrection do not rest in any way on whatever comparisons might be drawn between two different mythologies. The World Cup Trophy, for example, remains the true and real World Cup Trophy that actually exists in the real world irrespective of its likeness to some made up trophy somebody wrote about in a children’s story many years ago. A new planet that we discover in our universe is still a real and actual planet in the universe irrespective of how much it resembles something in Star Trek or Dr Who that somebody made up many decades earlier. The case for their existence and their being the true and proper thing they claim to be does not rest on and cannot be diminished in any way by their likeness to other made up things. The same is true of Jesus’ resurrection.
The validity and truthfulness of the biblical account does not rest on and is not diminished by its likeness to other myths. Even if the story bore uncanny and undeniable similarities to earlier myths, that in itself does nothing to prove that this particular account is true or otherwise. The TV show Lupin revolves around a career criminal, Assane Diop, who is a super-fan of a series of fictional books about another “gentleman thief” called Arsene Lupin. He consistently recreates the fictional stories from the Lupin books to carry out real crimes. If you compare the fictional books to the real life crimes, there would be an uncanny, indeed, identical image between them. But (in the TV show), one set of crimes are entirely fictional and the other actually happen in real life. The similarities, of themselves, do nothing to disprove the reality of the later crime. Comparisons drawn, then, between ancient myths and other historical accounts do not, of themselves, actually do anything to undercut whether the later account actually happened. The case for that rests on historical evidence and proper application of the historical method, not in spotting similarities in stories.
Even if you don’t find that very compelling, the truth of the matter is that the historical account of Jesus’ death and resurrection really do not bear any meaningful similarity with ancient myths like Osiris and Horus at any rate. Rather than reinvent the wheel, take a look at the link below and listen to William Lane Craig explain to a student asking exactly this question why those claims do not stack up. And when you’ve seen it, enjoy your Easter.
Christ has risen indeed!