Dying and rising Gods in pagan antiquity Part-I.

Many assume that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a myth that was borrowed from the pre-Christian mythologies of the dying and rising gods from the ancient Near East like Osiris, Dumuzi (or Tammuz), Attis, Adonis and so on. But the truth is the other way round. In this series of posts I am going to explore the historicity of these dying and rising gods from the Eastern Mediterranean and find out the facts whether such tales or legends of dying and rising gods actually existed and if yes, was the resurrection story of JESUS borrowed from those mythologies. First I am going to use Bart Ehrman's writing on this subject since he is a Non-Christian and a very vocal critic of Christianity, so that my non-christian readers will lay down their guard and read through with an open mind. In the 7th chapter of his book Did Jesus Exist Bart writes quite a bit on "dying and rising gods". Bart mentions four Scholars, Two for and the other two against the topic at hand.

First one is Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) who was the one who popularised this notion of dying and rising gods. In his book The Golden Bough Frazer claimed that Osiris, Dumuzi (or Tammuz), Attis, Adonis were all dying and rising gods and that they were sort of vegetative gods, their life, death and resurrection replicates and explains the earth's fertility. And he thought that Christians borrowed their resurrection story from these gods. Second is Tryggve Mettinger in his book The Riddle of the Resurrection Mettinger claims that “the world of ancient Near Eastern religions actually knew a number of deities that may be properly described as dying and rising gods.”However he doesn't provide a shred of evidence. He also tell us that the vocabulary of resurrection (that is, of a dead person being revived to live again) is used for Melqart (or Heracles), Dumuzi and Baal. Like Frazer before him, he argues that the dying and rising of these gods have “close ties to the seasonal cycle of plant life.” After all this is said and done Mettinger himself doesn't think that the idea of pagan dying and rising gods led to the invention of Jesus. As he states "There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.” Bart Ehrman himself says that there isn't a single source of any kind that clearly indicates that people in rural Palestine, say, in the days of Peter and James,worshipped a pagan god who died and rose again. Continue to Part - II.