“Marduk’s mother is portrayed in similar fashion to the way the woman is portrayed in Revelation 12. One may also point to…Osiris, whose wife, Isis, gives birth to the sun god, Horus. Isis is portrayed with the sun on her head. The dragon Typhon is portrayed as red in color…the dragon slays Osiris to pursue Isis, who is about to give birth…Horus eventually overcomes the dragon who is destroyed through fire. …The parallels between these various myths… found in Revelation 12 are too striking to be accidental…too early to have been derived from Revelation. Rather, John has freely drawn on elements of these myths… The implication in part would be that in Christ all the primal myths and the truths that they enshrine come true.”
Any guesses about who this is from? Robert M. Price loves comparing ancient gods to Christ. Acharya S was well known for theorizing Jesus was a sun god and comparing Jesus with Osiris and Horus. Richard Carrier has likewise compared Osiris and Jesus. Then again, M. David Litwa has drawn comparisons to Horus in Iesus Deus (p.149) when he points out that Horus is resurrected by Isis, the author (Diodorus Sicilus) even using the Greek verb anastasis to describe it, just like Jesus.
All of which are good guesses. But wrong.
The correct answer: Ben Witherington III (p.741, New Testament Theology and Ethics). It’s a bit of a shocker. Witherington was interviewed by Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ. He is a well-known conservative and evangelical scholar.
Intersubjectivity is an important criterion for finding the truth: if it is only scholars of one particular viewpoint or tendency who believe something, then that something may not be objectively true. Whereas parallels to Christ with pagan deities are detected by many scholars of all different backgrounds, including those very friendly to Christianity (David C. Mitchell is another believing scholar who finds parallels with Baal and others in his magnificent Messiah Ben Joseph).
