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Not everyone agrees—the four defenses


[Professor Smith quotes A. Loisy]
"[Jesus] was a savior-god, after the manner of Osiris, and Attis, a Mithra. Like them, he belonged by his origin to the celestial world; like them, he had made his appearance on the earth; like them, he had accomplished a work of universal redemption, efficacious and typical; like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he ha died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life; like them, he had prefigured in his lot that of the human beings who should take part in his worship, and commemorate his mystic enterprise; like them, he had predetermined, prepared, and assured the salvation of those who became partners in his passion."

[Then commnts:]
From such a parataxis of 'likeness', little of value can be learned.
[Jonathan Smith, Drudgery Divine; On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, (1994), 42 - 43 ]
  Incredibly, not everyone agrees Christianity had Pagan origins!


Traditional academia
What do traditional modern scholars of religion say about the Pagan- Christian connection? The short answer is: Arthur Darby Nock's essay Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Background, (1928). It's still widely quoted as "proving" that the similarities—no one denies them—between Paganism and Christianity do not prove dependence. That's modern academic orthodoxy.

The long answer is: everyone has an agenda. A.D. Nock was a Doctor of Divinity—a believing Christian. His Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Background was printed in a book of essays about the Anglican communion—a book about Christians, by Christians, for Christians. It had an agenda.

In fact throughout academia most scholars of religion are Christian believers. That is a huge deal. It's a huge deal because believing scholars start with the idea the Christian story was new, unique, discontinuous—true. That's what makes them believers. And as believers, they can't accept a Pagan origin for Christianity without throwing over their own faith. So they don't. In believing academia, like everywhere else, faith trumps fact.

 

What do I mean faith trumps fact? Here's an example, from a famous and widely quoted essay, talking about Pagan water purification sacraments, all of which were around before Christianity.

It's a long quote, but it's worth reading: >

By the way  
The fact their faith trumps fact doesn't mean believing academics are bad people. It just means they are Christian believers. They aren't as rigorous as they imagine themselves?—let he who is without sin toss the first stone. Not me, I've got a foible or two myself. You yourself might even have one. Come on, admit it.  



 


"We know of an ablution [an ablution is a washing of the body, especially as part of a religious rite] in the ritual of Eleusis; the laurel-wreath oration of Demosthenes speaks of purificatory ablutions in the mystery of Sabazius; the cult of Attis had its taurobolium, and the mystery of Isis knew a sanctifying baptismal bath, as did the mysteries of Dionysus and of Mithras. Upon mature consideration modern scholarship has rejected the ideas that such rites exerted an influence on the baptismal doctrine of the New Testament." [Hugo Rahner, The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries, section 3, in The Mysteries; Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, edited by Joseph Campbell]

POCM quotes modern scholars
In other words, back when Christianity started, where it started, among the people who were its earliest converts, you couldn't walk down the street without tripping over a Pagan baptism; but our baptism, our Christian baptism, that's completely different and unrelated to all the other baptisms. This is the kind of stuff believing academics write down and pass around. You need to understand that as you sift through the scholarship.  

Here's how the believers' scholarly argument goes.  
Because the overarching facts aren't too complicated, the back and forth between Pagan Christers and Believing Scholars runs in pretty tight groves.  Everyone agrees the facts suggest a Pagan - Christian connection. The believing scholars have four possible defenses.  They have to say Christianity is:

different
not different, but it developed separately,