Pagan Myths and Christian Copy Cat Theories Refuted

In recent decades, the complaint has been raised that Biblical accounts of miracles and events, especially those surrounding the accounts of the life of Jesus, are borrowed or inspired by pagan accounts from antiquity.  These so called “copy-cat theories” claim that books or accounts found in the Bible may have origins from the Egyptians, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mithras cult, or other pagan ANE stories. They also claim these stories pre-date the accounts found in the Bible.  In recent years several of these conspiracy theories have resurfaced and caused a bit of noise.  Most notably are Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code which contains a number of conspiracy theories, the Peter Joseph film Zeitgeist, and the Bill Maher film Religulous both of which represent pagan copy cat theories as legitimate.  Maher devotes about two thirds of the time in his film attempting to portray all Christians as ignorant hypocrites.  While a person who is uninformed could be caught off guard by what seem like compelling questions and evidences, ironically anyone with enough sense to run a Google search can discover in a cursory investigation that these claims have been debunked many times over.  At best, the theories represented in the aforementioned should be regarded as reprehensibly amateur scholarship or even worse.

Anyone sincerely interested in understanding the facts, first and foremost, should do their homework.  We encourage everyone to investigate both sides of these issues so you can discover for yourself who is representing fact and who is representing misinformation (fiction).  The positive take-away from these types of investigations is that the challeges raised do give Christians the opportunity to address a few legitimate points raised, like the fact that there are hypocrites, hucksters, and con-artists who claim to be Christians.  The fact is there are people on the fringe in the religious community just like many others, but such abuses are not consistent with the true Christian message and therefore these abuses cannot be used as legitimate representations.  As Christians we need to be able to help differentiate here and refute misinformation.

In the spirit of providing evidence to back up these points, there are a great number of excellent resources available to help you become better informed and prepared to represent the truth and refute these conspiracy theories.  The good news is it’s not difficult because the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the Bible and the Christian Worldview.

So as not to re-invent the wheel, we are simply providing our readers with a sampling of the hundreds of resources available on this topic.  We hope you find this information helpful.

Zeitgeist Movie Refuted - we would encourage you to begin by watching the Zeitgeist Movie one section at a time, and then watch the rebuttal.  Initially you may be disturbed, but hang in there.  It is VERY entertaining.  The rebuttal delivers a crushing blow and follows the order of the original film debunking the many twisted facts, false claims, and outright lies from the Zeitgeist film.  These are the same arguments parroted by many unwitting skeptics.

Refuting the "Zeitgeist" Movie - from the folks at Preventing Truth Decay 

ChristianThink Tank - on "Is Genesis merely a rip-off of other ANE lit?"

Copy Cat Hub - a general resource refuting many common copy-cat theories.

Pagan Parallels: Answers to the Copy-Cat Savior Theory - an apologetics resource refuting parallels (about half way down the page).

Ridiculous Religulous – an entertaining review of the film Religulous by Dr. Craig Hazen, director of the graduate apologetics program at Biola University.

Religulous Movie Reviews - several links to great reviews on Apologetics 315 including "Why We're Laughing at Bill Maher"

A Critique of Bill Maher's Religulous - a look at the factual, methodological, and philosophical problems with Bill Maher's arguments.

We hope you find this information helpful.  If you have questions, let us know.