3.Ancient mystery religions

The third major problem with Wells’ approach concerns his usage of the ancient mystery religions to explain the early Christian worship of Jesus. Such a reliance on the development of legends was a popular thesis late last century, but has been dismissed today by the majority of researchers, and for good reasons.

The basis for two serious problems with the legend theory has already been mentioned above. Paul’s use of the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3ff. reveals that the proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection was both early and dependent on the reports of eyewitnesstestimony. Thus an adequate account must be made of the report of reliable witnesses that they actually saw Jesus alive after his death. Pannenberg concludes: Under such circumstances it is an idle venture to make parallels in the history of religions responsible for the emergenceof the primitive Christian message about Jesus’ resurrection.^14 In other words, that it was Paul and the other apostles who had these actual experiences rules out legend as the cause for the resurrection, since the original teaching concerning Jesus’ appearances is based on real eyewitness experiences of something that was seen and not on later legends. These experiences require an adequate explanation.

Even Otto Pfleiderer, an advocate of the mythical thesis almost one hundred years ago, agrees here. He points out that myths cannot provide the direct cause for the resurrection appearances to the disciples, for these occurrences were real experiences linked to historical facts and not legendary parallels.^15

Other problems also abound with this legendary thesis, examples of which can only be briefly mentioned here. It is common for the similarities with the mystery religions to be reported without also noting the great differences between them and the origins of Christianity. Again, Pfleiderer acknowledges the validity of this concern.^16 For example, Wells notes the pagan mythical deities who were said to