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[quote=Anonymous]Agree with PP about timeless universal themes.

One of these is the quest.  The earliest written version I know is in the Epic of Gilgamesh.  This also contains the earliest accounting of a flood story, but that is a a sideshow to the quest story.  Then we have Jason and the Golden Fleece, the quest for the Holy Grail stories, on to the classic movie "The Seekers" and countless action and adventure movies.

Was The Seekers therefore based on the Epic of Gilgamesh?  No--it is rather that both are stories reflecting the uniquely human restlessness that impels some to seek out something different that is physically or intellectually valuable.

As for the death and resurrection of Christ, there is no need to go to Egyptian mythology or a later Mithraic cult to see the theme.  It is right there in ancient Semitic religion, and the template is the death of living things on earth and their revival with the seasons.  Thus, we have the story of Inanna's descent to the netherworld to find her son Tammuz, a story reflected in Demeter's rescue of Persephone from Hades (again, there is a universality to the themes).  The church fathers themselves saw Jesus's death and resurrection foreshadowed in Jonah's sojourn in the whale.

The point is the earth's tilting on its access that gives us the seasons sets up humans to be conditioned to believe that a period of darkness and death is followed by a period of lightness and life, and this natural optimism finds it way into countless stories including the Christ story.

Does this mean the Christ story is false?  No, not necessarily, but it does connect believers to the great family of man from it's earliest times.  Christianity is a faith that subsumes and builds upon all those universal human yearnings from the dawn of consciousness and does not deny them as some religions do. That is can do so regardless of geography is seen in its adoption of more northern midwinter festivals as a feast of Christ. In my view, this is one of Christianity's greatest strengths.

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