"One frequently encounters scholars who first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and practices, and then marvel at the striking parallels they think they have discovered. One can go a long way toward "proving" early Christian dependence on the mysteries by describing some mystery belief or practice in Christian terminology...Exaggerations and oversimplifications abound in this kind of literature. One encounters overblown claims about alleged likenesses between baptism and the Lord's Supper and similar "sacraments" in certain mystery cults...The mere fact that Christianity has a sacred meal and a washing of the body is supposed to prove that it borrowed these ceremonies from similar meals and washings in the pagan cults. By themselves, of course, such outward similarities prove nothing. After all, religious ceremonies can assume only a limited number of forms, and they will naturally relate to important or common aspects of human life. The more important question is the meaning of the pagan practices." [http://www.summit.org/Resources/NT&PaganRel.htm]

Nash is demonstrating one of the criteria we noted above--that the details must have the same underlying idea, for it to count as a parallel. [He uses the phrase "outward" similarities, in a similar usage to how Penglase uses "superficial".] A ritual dip in water, for example, is NOT a baptism if its purpose in the dogma of a particular religion is different. According the scholarly criteria, the lack of parallel in the underlying idea or 'conceptual usage' destroys this as piece of evidence for borrowing.

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A good first example of this might be the rite of the Taurobolium (from the cult of the Worship of the Great Mother or Cybele/Attis). In it a priest stood in a pit under a plank floor containing a bull and a lamb (the two are always connected in the inscriptions). The bull was slaughtered and the blood of the animal fell upon the priest below. The priest comes up 'consecrated' to the priesthood, and is hailed as 'reborn' (renatus). In one late text (fourth century), he is said to have been 'reborn eternally'.

Predictably, some writers have used the phrase "washed in the blood of the Lamb" or "sprinkled with the blood of Jesus" to describe this ceremony, and earlier commentators have seen this as perhaps the basis for Paul's teaching in Romans 6 (union with Christ), images of 'spiritual childgrowth', the new birth, and even resurrection. Although there are perhaps those who still hold to this, this has largely been abandoned :

• "Still others suggest that Paul's conception is related to ideas of union with a dying and rising god that was popular in Hellenistic 'mystery religions.' These 'mystery religions,' a group of religions very popular in the Hellenistic world, featured secret initiations and promised their adherents 'salvation,' often by participation in a cultic act that was held to bring the initiate into union with a god. Under the impulse of the history-of-religions movement early in this century, many scholars attributed various doctrines of Paul to dependence on these religions. But direct dependence of Paul on these religions is now widely discounted. More popular is the view that Paul’s Hellenistic churches interpreted their experience of Christ in the light of these religions and that Paul’s teaching demonstrates point of contact with, and corrections of, this existing tradition…The mystical and repeated ‘dying and rising’ of a mystery religion adherent with a nature god like Osiris or Attis has little to do with Paul’s focus on the Christian's participation in the historical events of Christ's life.” [NICNT, 'Romans', p362n54]

• "Ancient Near Eastern religions had long had traditions of dying-and-rising gods, general vegetation deities renewed annually in the spring. Some ancient sources, especially early Christian interpretations of these religions, suggest that initiates into various mystery cults “died and rose with” the deity. Scholars early in the twentieth century naturally saw in this tradition the background for Paul’s language here. Although the evidence is still disputed, it is not certain that the mysteries saw a once-for-all dying-and-rising in baptism, as in Paul, until after Christianity became a widespread religious force in the Roman Empire that some other religious groups imitated. More important, the early Christian view of resurrection is certainly derived from the Jewish doctrine rather than from the seasonal revivification of Greek cults." [REF:BBC, at Rom 6]

• "On the basis of this evidence it can be firmly concluded that a direct influence from any mystery cult or from the Isis cult in particular, on Paul or on the theology of Rom 6:3–4, is most unlikely" [WBC, Romans, 6.3f]

• “The older history of religions school sought to find the derivation of the notion ‘new birth’ in the mystery religions of the Hellenistic world, where initiates passed from death into life by being brought into a mysterious intimacy with the deity. But in the light of the scarcity of early ‘new birth’ terminology such as anagennao in the mystery religions, recent scholarship has sought an origin of the concept elsewhere…A more likely origin has been found in the OT and Judaism” [NT:DictLNT, s.v. ‘new birth’]

• “Some scholars have seen the background for such terminology (e.g. childhood and growth) in the mystery religions, with their notion of spiritual progression through various cultic rituals. Though some aspects of these texts can be understood in this context, the notion of stages of faith was already present in some of the most distinctive teaching of Jesus, and ordinary family relationships provide a more plausible background here.” [NT:DictLN , s.v. ‘sonship, child, children”]

• "Some scholars have suggested that it was taken over from Greek mystery religions, in which initiation was conceived in terms of death and resurrection. From considerations of the late date of the records of these rites and differences of interpretation, particularly as to whether initiates in such cults clearly identified with a deity in death and resurrection or were offered immortality through such ritual experience, the suggestion is highly unlikely  [NT:DictPL,s.v., "dying and rising"]

• “Some have suggested that Paul was influenced by the Greek mystery religions in his concept of dying and rising with Christ. But this hypothesis is unnecessary and unlikely: Baptism is a very Jewish phenomenon, and there is little doubt that it came to Christians directly or indirectly from John the Baptist. For John baptism was very much associated with the advent of the eschatological day of the Lord, and this eschatological dimension continues in Christian baptism. But for Christians like Paul the decisive eschatological events are the death and resurrection of Jesus; it is thus intelligible that baptism as the rite of initiation into the saved eschatological community should come to be associated with Jesus’ saving death and resurrection. There is therefore no need to invoke the mystery religions to explain Paul’s baptismal teaching. It is, however, possible that the Jesus-traditions that speak of taking up the cross and sharing in the sufferings of Jesus were influential.” [PFJFC:155f]

Now, the main reason this position has generally been abandoned (as noted above) is that it is altogether unnecessary, and less 'useful' as an explanatory construct: the elements in the gospels and epistles all make more sense as having developed out of mainstream Judaism and have much more 'numerous, complex, and striking parallels' to Old Testament/Tanaach themes and passages. Apart from issues of chronology and questions of motivation for borrowing (separate problems from that of detecting  forceful parallels), the Jewish background furnishes us with a system of underlying ideas needed to make sense of the imagery.

Don Howell explains the general rationale for the diminishing of this 'borrowing' position [BibSac, V150, #599, Jul 93, p310]:

• "At the turn of the 20th century a new approach to Paul was forged by the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, “the History of Religions School.” Spawned in Germany, this approach built on the Tubingen dichotomy between Palestinian and Hellenistic Christianity, and found the origins of the more developed Pauline Christology in the mystery religions and pagan cults of the Greek world. The mystery religions of Greece (Eleusian), Egypt (Isis and Osiris), Syria (Adonis), Asia Minor (Cybele), and Rome (Mithras) were researched and mined for parallels with Pauline theology. A dying-rising redeemer god, the exalted kurios, sacramental redemption, initiation into mystic participation in the deity, gnosis, and pneumatic experience were mystery-religion concepts claimed to have conditioned Paul’s thinking.

• "Two pioneers in this field were Bousset and Reitzenstein. Bousset argued that the Jesus of the primitive Palestinian church was the eschatological Son of Man, largely derived from Daniel 7:13–14. But in the Greek-speaking Christian communities like Antioch, Jesus was transformed, under the influence of the Hellenistic mystery cults, into the acclaimed kurios. “Behind the personal piety of Paul and his theology there stands as a real power and a living reality the cultic veneration of the kurios in the community.” With consummate skill Bousset explored the Hermetic literature, Philo, Gnostic documents, and the cults of Isis, Osiris, and Orphis and discovered “parallels” with Paul’s Christ-mysticism ("in Christ"), doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Christ-Adam theology, cross and sacrament, and the dying-rising Redeemer. Reitzenstein, a philologist and authority on Eastern Gnosticism, researched the second-and third-century Hermetic literature and concluded that Gnostic terminology was the source of Paul’s Christology. Neill, in an extended survey of the History of Religions approach, credits the Harvard scholar Kirsopp Lake with popularizing in America the arguments of German scholars such as Bousset and Reitzenstein.

• "The influence of the various religionsgeschichtliche models has greatly diminished in recent decades with the discovery of the Qumran scrolls and wider research in the Jewish materials of the intertestamental (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha) and New Testament (rabbinical traditions) periods. It is no longer feasible to separate Hellenistic and Jewish influences into two hermetically sealed compartments. Paul’s Jewishness is in the process of being rediscovered. But a more fundamental issue is the entire logic of the comparative religionist methodology which presupposes the apostle to have been an inclusivistic, impressionable absorber of alien ideas rather than the proclaimer of a pure gospel of faith and repentance. As Hunter comments,

  They did not stop to consider that their knowledge of these mysteries was really very scanty, that all this amazing transmogrification of the Gospel must have taken place within twenty years, that, if Paul derived his message from his environment, he did what no other missionary has ever done--borrowed his gospel from the people among whom he worked."

And, C.E. Arnold, in his article on Syncretism in [NT:DictLNT] summarized the current state of scholarship in this way:

To illustrate this from one of the alleged examples of borrowing, "washed in the blood of the Lamb" makes perfect sense being seen against the background of OT usage:

Likewise, the same goes for "sprinkled with the blood of Jesus", which could refer back to either of two OT passages/themes [although the Numbers 19 passage does not have any blood actually in the water of purification]:

The First Covenant was inaugurated with this ceremony (cf. also Heb 9.18ff):

As the New Covenant--from the New Moses of Deut 18-- was inaugurated with Christ's blood (but not physically literal):

(By the way, these biblical events are covenant inauguration events--NOT acts of individual dedication, consecration, or ordination. The underlying ideas/structures of these events would be more 'parallel' to the sacrifices performed when Cybele was first 'adopted' by the Romans in 204 BC, than to the multiple, individual ordinations of priests and high priests. Even the passage in 1 Peter 1.2 is not individual in nature:

"In the Old Testament and Judaism, God's people were corporately 'chosen,' or 'predestined,' because God 'foreknew' them; Peter applies the same language to believers in Jesus. Obedience and the sprinkling of blood also established the first covenant (Ex 24:7–8)." [REF:BBC, at 1 Pet 1.2]

Now, unless one is going to argue that the OT passage is somehow dependent on some at-best-first-century-AD taurobolic experience (perhaps on the basis of both having the 'striking parallels' of sacrificial bulls and sprinkling of blood...sarcastic smile), it should be obvious why modern, mainstream scholarship has abandoned such notions. Any alleged parallels between the Jesus story and the Attis/Cybele/Taurobolic experiences are dwarfed by a host of 'numerous, complex, and detailed' parallels with OT/Judaism.

If one considers carefully the details of the history of the ritual (see mostlybull.html), the taurobolic ceremony (of Cybele/Attis--NOT the one by Mithra) in the Roman period was:

• A substitutionary castration, in which the priest was 'vicariously' castrated in the castration of the bull
• A regular sacrifice, which could be performed for the benefit of the Emperor and Empire
• A 'rebirth' to virtue/purity and 'good luck' for twenty years (even the 4th century phrase 'to eternity' doesn't mean the same thing as in Christianity--see the article)
• A dedication/consecration of a priest to the (existing) service/religion of the Goddess Cybele
• A (possible) re-enactment of an old hunter-goddess myth (the capture and killing of the bull by a goddess with a hunting spear)

Apart from the general, "non-striking", and ubiquitous motifs of sacrifice, consecration, (possible) rebirth, blood sprinkling, and substitution, there just aren't any 'numerous, complex, and detailed' correspondences with the NT documents. Even the closest candidate--sprinkling with blood--was too general a practice in the ancient world to be 'striking' [e.g., in several orgiastic cults the priests/priestesses would whip or cut themselves with knives, and sprinkle their blood on the idols of the god/goddess].

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And the next closest candidate--'rebirth'--is neither a technical term of the Mysteries, nor is it close enough in meaning to NT usage to consider it parallel:

• "Though Philo borrows not a little from the Mysteries, he does not use this verb ('rebirth'). On the other hand, Josephus uses it in a general sense, with no evident dependence on the Mysteries. Bell., 4, 484... Thus at the time of the NT (rebirth) was not common, but it was used generally and not merely in the Mysteries, like the Latin renasci. This is confirmed by the use of the substantive (in Philo)... Philo employs this for the Stoic doctrine of the rejuvenation of the world ... (Aet. Mund.). Elsewhere he has the term paliggenesiva for the same thing, e.g., Aet. Mund., 9...The mere mention of ('rebirth') does not prove any dependence on the Mysteries; this applies equally to 1 Pt. 1:3, 23...There is a profound gulf between the religion of the Mysteries, in which man is deified by magical rites, and this religion of faith...As the OT and Jewish elements are very much alive in this religion, so the origin of the thought of regeneration is to be sought in Judaism. It is true that the Jews did not describe themselves or others as regenerate. Yet they hoped for a new life for the world and themselves, and they did not speak of this merely as resurrection or new creation, but also thought in terms of paliggenesiva and palin genesthai when speaking Greek. [TDNT, s.v. "anagennao"]

• "Anagennan is found in the NT only here and in v 23, and not at all in the LXX (except for one doubtful variant in Sir, Prol. 28). It is the equivalent of gennan anothen in John 3:3, 7 and may have been derived from a slightly different form of that very saying of Jesus (cf., e.g., Justin Martyr, Justin, Apol. 1.61.3. “For the Christ also said, Unless you are born again, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”; cf. also Matt 18:3--"He called a little child and had him stand among them.  3 And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.")... Certainly the Gospel tradition, is a nearer and more plausible source for Peter’s terminology than, e.g., the pagan mystery religions (as proposed by R. Perdelwitz; in refutation, cf. F. Büchsel, TDNT 1:673–75, and Selwyn, 305–11). Anagennao is found in only one (fourth century A.D.) text bearing on mystery religions: Sallustius, De Deis 4 (ed. A. D. Nock [1926] 8, 24). [WBC, 1 Peter 1.3]

• “In 376, a follower declared himself ‘reborn for eternity’ and two inscriptions from Turin are consecrated viribus aeterni, that is to say to the ‘force’ (vital, sexual) of the ‘eternal’, in commemoration of a taurobolium. In fact, we know that this bloody ‘baptism’ was held to regenerate for twenty years the man or woman who descended into the pit. The Latin aeternus indeed implies durability rather than transcendental eternity in the Christian sense.” [HI:TCRE:52]

Sorry for all the detail (but there's more, obviously, in the history piece at mostlybull.html), and we will get into the Attis/resurrection thing again later, but I wanted to document the fact that, and show why the "Mystery Religions" version of the CopyCat thesis--relative to New Testament formation (not the writings of the post-apostolic church!)-- has been generally abandoned in the scholarly arena of New Testament studies. Before Qumran and before the rise in our understanding of "less-official" Judaism as found in the Pseudepigrapha, it was a little more believable, but after the last fifty years, it is difficult to maintain the position easily.

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A good second example is the commonly alleged similarity of the virgin birth. Other religious figures, especially warrior gods (and actually some heroic human figures such as Alexander the Great) over time became associated with some form of miraculous birth, occasionally connected with virginity. It is all too easy to simply accept this on face value without investigating further.

In Raymond Brown's research on the Birth Narratives of Jesus [BM:522-523], he evaluates these non-Christian "examples" of virgin births and his conclusions bear repeating here:

"Among the parallels offered for the virginal conception of Jesus have been the conceptions of figures in world religions (the Buddha, Krishna, and the son of Zoroaster), in Greco-Roman mythology (Perseus, Romulus), in Egyptian and Classical History (the Pharaohs, Alexander, Augustus), and among famous philosophers or religious thinkers (Plato, Apollonius of Tyana), to name only a few.

"Are any of these divinely engendered births really parallel to the non-sexual virginal conception of Jesus described in the NT, where Mary is not impregnated by a male deity or element, but the child is begotten through the creative power of the Holy Spirit? These "parallels" consistently involve a type of hieros gamos (note: "holy seed" or "divine semen") where a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration.

"In short, there is no clear example of virginal conception in world or pagan religions that plausibly could have given first-century Jewish Christians the idea of the virginal conception of Jesus."

"A virgin is someone who has not experienced sexual intercourse, and a virgin birth, or parthenogenesis (Gr., parthenos, "virgin"; genesis, "birth"), is one in which a virgin gives birth. According to this definition, the story of the birth of Jesus is a virgin birth story whereas the birth of the Buddha and of Orphic Dionysos are not. Technically what is at issue is the loss or the preservation of virginity during the process of conception. The Virgin Mary was simply "found with child of the Holy Ghost" before she was married and before she had "known" a man. So, too, did the preexistent Buddha enter the womb of his mother, but since she was already a married woman, there is no reason to suppose she was a virgin at the time. In the Orphic story of Dionysos, Zeus came to Persephone in the form of a serpent and impregnated her, so that the maiden's virginity was technically lost."

What these scholars are talking about is the textual data in the account. In other words, does the relevant sacred text describe or imply in any way, a means of impregnation or conception? Leemings comment that Mary was "simply 'found with child'" documents the textual data from that miraculous conception story--the text simply omits any comment, description, or implication about the method/manner of her becoming pregnant--the sexual element is simply missing altogether. If other accounts suggest or give details of this process--even if not the 'normal' type of intercourse (e.g. a snake, a piece of fruit)--then, according to these scholars, it is not a 'virgin conception' (by comparison). Ancient gods and goddess were typically very sexually 'explicit' and sexually 'active' (!), and this element is completely absent from the biblical  narratives and material, especially the story of the virginal conception of Jesus.
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This issue of agency/means is a distinguishing trait of the gospel accounts, compared with other stories of divine-engendered births:

In fact, it is quite different from the many stories of miracle births in the ancient world:

Let's take a quick look at the gospel narratives, to see this clearly...Remember the background and sequence of these events:

The "Holy Spirit coming UPON you" is not to be conceived as some kind of spiritual 'intercourse'--this is a stock, generic phrase from OT literature. It means empowerment, being set apart for a special task, and the such like. Look at some of the examples:

• The Lord therefore said to Moses, “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. 17 “Then I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you shall not bear it all alone. [Num 11.16]

• And when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them, Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. 10 And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel. [Jud 3.9]

• Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him. [Jud 6.34]

• Then Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother, and came as far as the vineyards of Timnah; and behold, a young lion came roaring toward him. 6 And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, so that he tore him as one tears a kid though he had nothing in his hand; [Jud 14.5]

• Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you mightily, and you shall prophesy with them and be changed into another man. [1 Sam 10.6]

• Then the Spirit came upon Amasai, who was the chief of the thirty, and he said, “We are yours, O David, And with you, O son of Jesse! Peace, peace to you, And peace to him who helps you; Indeed, your God helps you!” Then David received them and made them captains of the band. [1 Chr 12.18]

• Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. [Is 42.1]

• And it will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions.  29 “And even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. [Joel 2.28ff]

  [and of course, all the prophets spoke in the name of the Lord, as the "Spirit came upon them"]

One of the more interesting uses occurs is in Isaiah 32.15, which might be echoed in the Virgin conception and in the cases of 'barren conceptions'--the image of miraculous/spectacular fertility:

This is part of the reason why the NT scholars I cite here are so confident (even for 'cautious' scholars) that pagan sexual elements are NOT in the New Testament texts.

The angel had paid a visit to her home, and "gone into/unto/to her" (same Greek phrase as [A] Joseph 'going into Pilate' to ask for the body of Jesus in Mk 15.23; [B] the angel 'going into/unto' Cornelius in Acts 10.3; and [C] the accusation of Peter 'going into/unto' Gentiles and eating with them in Acts 11.3). The angel announced the good news of God's promise to Israel and Mary asks 'how'? The verse in 1.35 actually doesn't answer the question at all, but it does avoid saying some things (even 'coyly'):

Instead, the verbs express more general notions of God's providence and faithfulness to His promises:

So, one needs to be VERY careful and detailed in examining alleged parallels between figures widely separated in space and time. [And remember, we are focused only on the formation of the New Testament documents (and the content-traditions behind them)--NOT what the post-apostolic community will do with them!]

First, let's note that it is not at all certain that this theft actually occurred--the data is mixed:

• "In regard to the day of Jesus’ birth, as early as Hippolytus (A.D. 165–235) it was said to be December 25, a date also set by John Chrysostom (A.D. 345–407) whose arguments prevailed in the Eastern Church. There is nothing improbable about a mid-winter birth. Luke 2:8 tells us that the shepherds’ flocks were kept outside when Jesus was born. This detail might favor a date between March and November when such animals would normally be outside. But the Mishnah (m. sûeqal. 7.4) suggests that sheep around Bethlehem might also be outside during the winter months (Hoehner). Therefore, though there is no certainty, it appears that Jesus was born somewhere between 4–6 B.C., perhaps in mid-winter. Both the traditional Western date for Christmas (Dec. 25) and the date observed by the Armenian Church (Jan. 6) are equally possible. The biblical and extra-biblical historical evidence is simply not specific enough to point decisively to either traditional date. The celebration of the nativity is attested in Rome as early as A.D. 336 and this celebration also involved recognizing January 6 as Epiphany, the day the Magi visited Jesus." [NT:DictJG, s.v. 'birth of Jesus']

• "The exact day of Jesus birth' is unknown. The Gnostic Basilidians in Egypt (late second century) commemorated Jesus' baptism on January 6, and by the early fourth century many Christians in the East were celebrating both his nativity and baptism then....In 274 Emperor Aurelian decreed December 25 as the celebration of the 'Unconquerable Sun," the first day in which there was a noticeable increase in light after the winter solstice. The earliest mention of a Feast of the Nativity is found in a document composed in 336. Some feel Constantine (who died in 337) may have selected this day for Christmas because of a deep-seated respect for the popular pagan solstice festival. Others argue that the date was chosen as a replacement for it, that it, to honor the 'Sun of Righteousness.' Firmly established in the West within a few decades, another century passed before the Eastern church adopted December 25...The only holdout was the Armenian church, which still observes the nativity on January 6." [HI:2K:104f]

• "Aurelian celebrated the dies natalis Solis Invicti ("birthday of Sol Invictus") on December 25. Whether this festival was celebrated earlier than the third century is unknown. Nor is it certain that December 25 was the birthday of Mithras as well as of Sol Invictus. This has not prevented many scholars from assuming that Mithraic influence upon Christianity was involved in the adoption of this date for Christmas...Roger Beckwith concludes that 'a date in the depths of winter (January-February) is therefore one of the two possibilities; and it may be that Clement, and through him Hippolytus, were in possession of a genuine historical tradition to this effect, which in the course of time had been mistakenly narrowed down to a particular day.'...Clement of Alexandria (circa 200) in his Stromateis (1.146) noted that Gnostic Basilidians in Egypt celebrated Jesus' baptism either on January 10 or January 6. By the early fourth century Christians in the East were celebrating Jesus' birth on January 6..." [OT:PAB:520f]

• Later church tradition remembered it as a 'competitive strategy': "The reason, then, why the fathers of the church moved the January 6th celebration to December 25th was this, they say: it was the custom of the pagans to celebrate on this same December 25th the birthday of the Sun, and they lit lights then to exalt the day, and invited and admitted the Christians to these rites. When, therefore, the teachers of the Church saw that Christians inclined to this custom, figuring out a strategy, they set the celebration of the true Sunrise on this day, and ordered Epiphany to be celebrated on January 6th; and this usage they maintain to the present day along with the lighting of lights." (12th century bishop, cited in [HI:CP68C:155]

• "The equinoxes and solstices must have been especially sacred. This was verified for the spring equinox of 172, the day when the Mithraeum 'of the Seven Spheres', at Ostia, was opened to a new community. The vernal equinox marked the anniversary of the sacrifice that had revived the world. Perhaps at the winter solstice (25 December) they celebrated the birth of Mithras emerging from the rock..." (HI:TCRE:234, emphasis mine...and I might ask the question here as to how many solar deities did NOT celebrate the Winter Solstice as a 'rebirth'?! All the ones I know of did (e.g. HI:SSK:157-65), not sure that really counts as a 'historical birthday' in the same sense as Jesus'; so, Eliade: "The anniversary of the Deus Sol Invictus was set at December 25th, the 'birthday' of all Oriental solar deities" [WR:HRI2:411]...)

Secondly, what difference would it have made? The Roman Empire, with the "conversion" of Constantine, knew quite clearly the difference between the Jesus of the Christians and the Sun God of the Roman elite or the Mithras of the military. There would be no confusion between the two. The fierce struggles "for the minds of men" between Christian thought and pagan thought of the past two centuries kept the distinctions very, very clear...

"Converting" a holiday from Sol/Mithras to Christ would even "make sense", given the early Kingdom-theology of the Church (see below discussion)...Just as 'converting' temples would look to them a bit later, and maybe even 'converting' statues (and changing the names, obviously). And you can rest assured that Mithraists no more celebrated the birthday of Christ on that day, any more than the Christians did Mithra's. For someone to assert that this could only happen if the two 'gods' were already very similar, simply does not understand the intense Christian-versus-pagan polemic of those times, and the highly developed positions within that polemic.

The major exchanges between the second and third century Christian apologists and theologians, and the sharp and powerful attacks of Celsus and Porphyry, were only the tip of the iceberg. The Roman legislation battles and the constant watchful eye (and interventions) of the Roman government over this 'dangerous sect' ensured that the battle lines were always clear to the rulers, elites, and urban middle-class. And, we don't even have to get all the way to 'conversion'--it might have been picked for 'protest' reasons: "The purpose was that it should be celebrated in opposition to the sun-cult" [NIDNTT]

So:

• It's not clear that it was deliberately set to the same day as the birthday of Sol Invictus (it may have been December 25 anyway)
• It's not clear that it was established later than the first known celebration of Sol's birthday (Hippolytus is writing before Aurelian's law)
• It could have been deliberately set to the same day, as a 'protest' or 'opposition' movement, or as a 'conversion' initiative--without true 'borrowing' of the holiday itself (i.e., the content and conceptual meaning of the holiday would certainly be massively different, and clear to the participants, even if the 'trappings' were the same)

And, therefore, it is not at all clear that the action was a case of 'borrowing pagan ideas' and smuggling them into Christianity.

But back to the pushback:  There are two ways to look at this issue:

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Another common example offered is the Mother & Child iconographic evidence. The images of Horus-the-Child on the lap of his mother Isis was certainly used by the post-Constantine church as an exemplar for the post-NT elaboration of the Mary & Child-Jesus art [TAM:159]. We saw in the above discussion that this was done--after Constantine and therefore several centuries later than is relevant to our discussion here-- as a concession to help the new converts, and done with every effort to not 'confuse' them about their new faith. Many were destroyed, and others retained for teaching purposes [HI:CP68C:130ff].

"Objections by Christians to the use of images and pictures--icons as they were technically known--were by no means new. We have seen that pictures of Christian subjects, even of Christ himself, had been made long before the sixth century. Yet there had also been opposition to them on the ground that they smacked of paganism. In the sixth century, before his consecration a Syrian bishop denounced the veneration of the representations of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, and other saints. In that same century, moreover, a bishop of Massilia (Marseilles) was reprimanded by the Pope for ordering the destruction of the images in the churches of his diocese, for that pontiff, while agreeing that they should not be adored, held that they were a valuable means of instructing illiterate Christians in the faith." [LHC, 1:292f]

Each case would have been decided independently (and typically, with controversy among the leadership). This is interesting stuff, of course, but the late date of this phenomena means that  it is not germane to our discussion here.

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The same can be seen in the use of the motif of "the Cross". The several forms of a cross have been major symbols in world religion since humanity began, but the NT church didn't use ANY of this symbolism

Julien Ries in Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion, s.v. "Cross" documents the almost universal usage of some kind of cross symbol, and draws out the elements involved in the symbolism:

"Symbolism of non-Christian crosses. The extraordinary dissemination of the cross throughout many different parts of the world prior to Christianity and outside its influence is explained by the multivalence and density of its symbolic signification. It is a primordial symbol related to three other basic symbols: the center, the circle, and the square...By the intersection of its two straight lines, which coincides with the center, it opens this center up to the outside, it divides the circle into four parts, it engenders the square. In the symbolism of the cross, we will limit ourselves to four essential elements: the tree, the number four, weaving, and navigation...In the eyes of primordial man, the tree represents power. It evokes verticality. It achieves communication between the three levels of the cosmos: subterranean space, earth, and sky." (p.158)."

Anyone familiar with NT usage of the images of cross and crucifixion will note the obvious: there is nothing remotely similar between the symbolism of the cross in the words of Jesus (i.e., of death to self) and the words of the apostles (e.g., judgment on sin, example of resignation to God's will) and the "essential" elements of "the number four, weaving, and navigation", and there is nothing remotely similar with the NT usage of the word/image of 'tree' (e.g., place and means of execution, place of God's cursing) and "power, verticality, or communication"...

The geometry of the place of Christ's death (i.e., the shape of the cross) is never evoked, commented on, or 'exegeted' for this meaning in the NT. The parallel is simply not there, and this seems like another case of  'no parallel underlying idea' again. [Note, however, that AFTER the NT, some of the Church Fathers began to use the Cross in more "symbolic ways--cf. Ries's article, pp.163ff--but this wouldn't apply to NT usage and the words of Jesus.]

Let me make sure this last point is clear...The NT does not make the cross central--as a symbol--in its proclamation; rather, it makes Jesus who died for humanity's sin and who was raised from the dead its central proclamation. The centrality of the apostolic message was on Jesus, on his sacrificial death, and on the significance of that death for the possibility of New Life and a New Future for us. The 'cross' aspect--for them--was in its element of shame, and not an evocative symbol of religious 'power'.

And historically, the negative implication and imagery associated with the act of crucifixion at that time vastly outweighed any 'evangelistic value' any more general symbolic associations with a cross-shape might have had. The cross of Jesus was weakness, folly, madness, scandal  in that world:

• "to assert that God himself accepted death in the form of a crucified Jewish manual worker from Galilee in order to break the power of death and bring salvation to all men could only seem folly and madness to men of ancient times" [Crux:89]

• "The crucifixion of Jesus, attested by the first generation of Christians, lies at the heart of the Fathers' theology and early church teaching. However, the image of a god abandoned to a shameful punishment and nailed on a cross was not likely to arouse enthusiasm. On the contrary, such an image created serious difficulties in the eyes of the pagans, who were unable to resolve the apparent contradiction of a crucified god who in so dying became a savior." [Ries, p.161; notice, btw, that the copycat advocate has to maintain, on the contrary, that this 'contradiction' was NOT a problem for the pagans--that they in fact celebrated it in all their mystery religions and their myths...]

• "In his important survey of the treatment of crucifixion in ancient literature, Hengel queries whether, outside early Christianity, death by crucifixion was ever interpreted in a positive manner. Within the Gentile world, he finds in Stoicism the use of crucifixion as a metaphor “… for the suffering from which the wise man can free himself only by death, which delivers the soul from the body to which it is tied” (Hengel 1977, 88; cf. pp. 64–68). However, beyond this the cruelty of the cross seems to have forbidden any positive interpretation or metaphorical use of death by crucifixion...If this was true for the Gentile world, it was even more so for the Jewish. Inasmuch as the use of crucifixion by the Romans as a deterrent against Jewish nationalism was widespread, we might have anticipated that the cross would come to serve as a symbol for martyrdom. However, in addition to the humiliation and brutality associated with this form of execution, for Jews an additional, profoundly religious, obstacle existed...Already by the time of the first century A.D., the victim of crucifixion was understood in terms of Deuteronomy 21:22–23—specifically, “anyone who is hung on a tree is under the curse of God.” In its own context, this passage refers to the public display of the corpse of an executed criminal. But the NT gives evidence that this meaning was expanded considerably within the early church to include persons who had been crucified. This is seen in the verbal allusions to Deuteronomy 21:22–23 (e.g., Acts 5:30; 13:29; 1 Pet 2:24) and Paul's explicit citation of Deuteronomy 21:23 in Galatians 3:13. Apart from and prior to Christianity, evidence from the Qumran literature (4QpNah 3–4.1.7–8; 11QTemple 64:6–13) as well as from the writings of the first-century Alexandrian Jew Philo (Spec. Leg. 3.152; Post C. 61; Somn. 2.213) attests that victims of crucifixion could be understood this way within Judaism. Thus, the cross could not be interpreted positively as a symbol of the Jewish resistance." [NT:DictJG, s.v. "Death of Jesus"]

The implications should be clear: the negative associations of crucifixion would have precluded the apostolic group from trying to use the Cross as a 'symbol of superstitious significance' in their evangelism, teaching, and writings. Both to the Romans and to the Jews of that time, the image of the Cross was a significantly negative one, and one that would not in any way contribute to the winning over of pagan people to the message of Jesus. This negative imagery would have been consistent throughout the Greco-Roman world of the time--anywhere Roman crucifixion was used as a means of execution.

[BTW, this negative association with the image of the cross is one of the reasons NT scholars are convinced that Jesus' own words about the cross must be authentic--in the culture of the day, the early church would not have 'made that up' because it would have been so negatively understood by pagan and Jew alike. (The technical name for this NT principle is the "criterion of embarrassment"--the church would be unlikely to make up embarrassing sayings and put them on the lips of Jesus.)