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. They write:

Socrates was fearless before his death for he had been told in a dream that three days after his death he would be reborn. Jesus, likewise, goes to his death with confidence and foretells that after three days he will be resurrected.
[The Jesus Mysteries, p57]

The endnote appended to the claim about Socrates reads:

Plato, Crito, 44b. Socrates quotes from the Iliad, 9.363, to imply that three days after his death he will return to his true home.

In the Crito, Socrates describes his dream like this:

I dreamed that a beautiful, fair woman, clothed in white raiment, came to me and called me and said, ‘Socrates, on the third day thou wouldst come to fertile Phthia’.

Socrates’ comment is indeed an allusion to a line in the Iliad where Phthia stands for home, and Socrates does indeed expect to be in the metaphorical Phthia on the third day.

In reading this as talk of a third-day resurrection, however, Freke and Gandy have imposed their own agenda on the text. As will be seen, Socrates’ interpretation of the dream is not at all that claimed by Freke and Gandy.

The relevant passage of the Crito runs as follows:

SOCRATES: … Has the ship come from Delos, at the arrival of which I am to die?
CRITO: It has not exactly come, but I think it will come today from the reports of some men who have come from Sunium and left it there. Now it is clear from what they say that it will come today, and so tomorrow, Socrates, your life must end.
SOCRATES: Well, Crito, good luck be with us! If this is the will of the gods, so be it. However, I do not think it will come today.
CRITO: What is your reason for not thinking so?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. I must die on the day after the ship comes in, must I not?
CRITO: So those say who have charge of these matters.
SOCRATES: Well, I think it will not come in today, but tomorrow. And my reason for this is a dream which I had a little while ago in the course of this night. And perhaps you let me sleep just at the right time.
CRITO: What was the dream?
SOCRATES: I dreamed that a beautiful, fair woman, clothed in white raiment, came to me and called me and said, ‘Socrates, on the third day thou wouldst come to fertile Phthia.’
CRITO: A strange dream, Socrates.
SOCRATES: No, a clear one, at any rate, I think, Crito.
[Plato, Crito, 43c-44b, Heinemann Harvard (1914), pp153-155]

Socrates’ inference from his dream, then, is that the ship from Delos will arrive not today, but tomorrow, ‘on the second day’. He draws this inference because he is due to die the day after the ship arrives, and the dream implies that he will die on the third day. Three minus one is two; the day before the third day (on which the says he’ll die) is the second day (so that’s when the ship will arrive). This is not one of Socrates’ more complicated arguments.

Freke and Gandy, however, understand Socrates’ dream as signifying that three days after his death Socrates will be resurrected. If this were correct, though, then it wouldn’t provide Socrates with any information regarding the timing of the arrival of the ship. Socrates’ inferences, then, would be incoherent ramblings, which doesn’t sound like him at all.