Series: The Problem of God – Chapter 4 Response
Post #5
🔍 Clark’s Claim
Mark Clark argues that skeptics overreach when drawing parallels between Jesus and Attis. He claims that:
- Attis was not born of a virgin.
- Attis was not crucified to redeem the earth.
- Attis’s death involved genital mutilation under a tree, not crucifixion.
- There was no resurrection, only the magical growth of hair and a moving pinky.
- The entire comparison is a stretch used to “fit a preconceived narrative.”
Clark ends with the line: “Call me crazy, but I think it’s safe to say that this is not a parallel with the resurrection of Jesus.”
🧠 A Critical Analysis Using The God Question’s Core Philosophy
1. The Strawman of Literal Equivalence
Clark once again leans heavily on hyper-literal readings of pagan myths to dismiss any parallels. But scholars drawing comparisons aren’t typically claiming identical narratives — they’re tracing thematic and mythological patterns:
- Attis is a dying and “resurrecting” god, tied to seasonal cycles, particularly vegetation gods who “die” in winter and “rise” in spring.
- These motifs are symbolic. No one claims Attis literally rose from a grave in 30 CE Judea. That’s not the point.
- The real question: Why do so many ancient myths include death and return motifs? And why does Christianity mirror those?
Clark refuses to engage with these thematic layers. Instead, he debunks a cartoon version of the myth — a clear misrepresentation of the scholarly argument.
2. Ignoring the Evolution of Religious Stories
Religions borrow. Stories evolve. Attis, like many figures in ancient religions, existed long before Jesus, and his worship included:
- A March festival with ritual mourning and celebration of return.
- Sacred pine trees.
- Bloodletting rites and themes of regeneration.
By the 1st century BCE, Roman cults to Attis included language of rebirth and immortality. That Christianity appeared in the same cultural soup, with similar motifs, is not mere coincidence. It’s cultural osmosis.
To ignore that is to ignore the entire field of comparative mythology.
3. A Question of Selective Skepticism
Clark is skeptical of Attis’s connections to Jesus, yet entirely uncritical of Christianity’s own borrowing. Consider:
- Jesus dies on a “tree” (cross), just like Attis under the pine.
- Jesus’s resurrection is not historically verifiable — like Attis’s.
- Both myths feature blood, sacrifice, symbolic rebirth, and religious ritual.
If we’re to demand literal virginity, exact crucifixion, or precise bodily resurrection as standards for a “valid” parallel, then all mythological comparison collapses — including parallels Christians make with Old Testament “types” and prophecies.
Why accept typology in one direction and reject it in another?
💬 Final Thoughts
Attis is not identical to Jesus — no myth is. But that’s not the point.
The point is that Jesus doesn’t stand alone in history as a dying and rising god. Attis is one of many figures who predate Christianity and feature death-rebirth motifs deeply symbolic in human storytelling.
To argue that Christianity arose in a vacuum — completely uninfluenced by the surrounding mythological environment — is intellectually dishonest.
The story of Jesus, as told by the gospels, fits into a pattern of ancient religious archetypes, not because it’s false because of that, but because it reflects the same human longings, anxieties, and symbolic systems as the rest.
That’s not myth-busting. That’s myth-understanding.
God or Delusion? 