In The Jesus Mysteries, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy argue that Jesus never existed, let alone died for the sins of the world and rose again.

Freke and Gandy argue this on the basis of the similarities between Jesus’ biography and those of many of the gods of the ancient pagan religions. Jesus’ biography, they suggest, is so similar to the myths told of these other gods that it cannot be anything but a copy of them. If Jesus’ biography is a copy of the biographies of these other gods, though, then there is no more reason to think that there existed a historical Jesus than there is to think that there existed a historical Mithra or a historical Dionysus.

Some of the parallels drawn by Freke and Gandy, however, are not between Jesus’ biography and the biographies of the pagan gods, but between Jesus’ biography and the biographies of the pagan sages. One such parallel concerns Socrates and Jesus’ third-day resurrection. (more…)