The grinches are at it again...

Over at the Beratta Blog, Dr. Glen Peoples, took up the issue several years ago of whether or not Christianity is a copycat religion.  In other words, Did Christianity construct a fake myth from pagan religions around it and fool everyone with it?  In a post called "Merry Mithras," Peoples writes...

The grinches are at it again. Every year at Easter and Christmas the tired old wheels start squeaking and some of the detractors of Christianity start wheeling out a few predictable canards, all connected to the idea that Christianity is just a copycat religion and that the accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth that we have in the New Testament were just borrowed from other older religions. 

Generally these attempts are now limited to personal websites and message boards on the internet, as they are so discredited that bringing them up at, say, a conference on New Testament studies, would get one laughed all the way home. But, unhappily resigned to the fact that some people only know what they know about theology or biblical studies because they read it at a website, it’s worth addressing some of these claims. 

I’ve already dealt with the claim that the virgin birth was borrowed from Buddhism and the claim that Jesus’ life is just a re-hashed version of the life of Osiris. Another common “copycat” theory that floats around online is the claim that Jesus is a mythical character copied from Mithras.

Read the rest here.

You may also be interested in these links...

• Is Jesus Christ a Mythical Entity Prefigured by Osirus-Horus Mythology? (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)
• Did Christianity Invent Stories by Borrowing from Pagan Religions? (with links to two debates with William Lane Craig on the issue)
• Jesus, the Resurrection, & Borrowed Myths
• Bart Ehrman of Emory University: "I don't think there is any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist, but I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus.... We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period. I'm not saying this as a believer. I'm not a believer, but as a historian you can't just dismiss it and say 'I don't know.' I mean you have to look at the evidence. There is hard evidence. "  Check out this interview...