Pagan origins of Christianity

Another of the Infidel Guy radio shows featured Greg Kane who has a website looking at the 'pagan origins' of Christ and Christianity.

The main point of his theory is that many pre-Christian religions had beliefs similar to Christian ones, indeed he claims that Christianity is basically a mish-mash of bits of older religions and was nothing new at all. More than that, he claims that Jesus never existed as a historical person and that he also was a composite of various old bits of belief.

One of his main points is that Christianity was not the first religion to feature a 'man-shaped' god who was born of a virgin, was killed and came back to life again. Apparently some Christian groups have responded to this claim by suggesting that 'the devil' knew (in advance) what Christ would do and so he invented false stories ahead of time to throw folk off the scent.

Of course, the Infidel Guy and Greg Kane had a good laugh at the expense of this theory on the show.

But I found myself thinking in this way about the whole thing:

Christians believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the crucial event in all of history - this event influences the salvation of everyone who ever lived, even those who lived before the event. This suggests to me that the influence of the event could be felt hundreds, if not thousands, of years earlier. Perhaps some spiritually attuned individuals picked up on the future echoes of the resurrection and formed their own belief systems around them?

Scientists are happy to think of time as merely being another dimension. Just because we appear to be in freefall in one direction in time, doesn't mean that everything is. I believe that important events cause ripples in both directions through time. But that's enough philosophising for one day, I think.