Today’s podcast is all about Jesus and whether his story was copied from previously existing Pagan mythology. This is a pretty popular objection–at least online–and so is worth covering at least once. In fact, it was one of the objections I remember my brother raising way back when. To be fair, he put it more in the form of a question than an objection.
Either way, it’s still an interesting topic–in the sense of it’s fun to see why it fails. And fail it does. I’ve invited Mary Jo Sharp, a Christian Apologist and expert on this objection, on to the show to discuss why.
Mary Jo Sharp
Mary Jo runs an apologetics ministry called Confident Christianity. She is a former atheist from the Pacific Northwest, who thought religion was odd at best. She now holds a Masters in Christian Apologetics and is an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University. Mary Jo is an itinerant speaker throughout North America. She serves on faculty with Summit Ministries Student Conferences, and is a guest lecturer with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Mary Jo is a published author with Kregel Publications, B&H Publications, and is the author of the top-selling Bible study, “Why Do You Believe That?
” as well as Living in Truth with LifeWay Christian Resources.
I was able to snap her portraits a little while back, here are some of my favorites:
The Episode
The episode itself runs a little over an hour. The first section we discuss tips she has for female apologists. After that we move into her recommendations on how to study the alleged parallels. In the final section, we take a close look at these Pagan myths.
Links mentioned during the show:
- Internet Classics Archive
- Book of the Dead
- YouTube clip of Stephen Fry on Mithras
- William Lane Craig on Pre-Christ resurrection myths
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An interesting discussion. In this episode you were able to brush away all the lowest hanging fruit, but it seems to me that you actually avoided the actual peer reviewed scholarship on the subject. Would be interesting to see Mary have a conversation with Richard Carrier. He is a phd historian and very well educated on the subject. His argument is a bit more robust and more historically accurate than the material you covered in the podcast. In fact he would probably agree with most of what Mary said in the podcast. He would also be helpful in explaining the… Read more »