I have heard that most of the critical points of Christianity (Jesus as Messiah) are pre-existing in other myths such as Mithris, Dionysos, Osiris, Attis, and Hercules. Suposedly many have virgin births,death on a cross or tree, resurrections,sacrements, same miracles, salvation for mankind, etc.
I'd love to know more, can anyone recommend books that are not speculation but historical, accurate, and scholarly? Thanks, big d

I suggest that you try researching these subjects on the Internet -- use your favorite search engine and try to get as close to primary sources as possible, such as sacred books and ancient histories.

Thus, if you wanted to find out about the Romulus and Remus story, you would call up your friendly neighborhood search engine and search for the words "Romulus" and "Remus" together.

And you'll find that the stories are *not* all alike. In particular, though the Romulus-and-Remus story has some similarities with the stories of Moses and Jesus Christ, there are also lots of differences. Instead of a king killing lots of baby boys in the hope of killing R and R, we find a king who tried to keep them from coming into existence by making their mother a sort of nun. Also, Remus got killed in a quarrel with Romulus, and Romulus himself did not die a nasty death -- he was lifted up into Heaven.

big d, I agree with Ipetrich, you can find a lot of good info on the web. I'll have to see if I can drum up some good book names later, if possible.

Most of the parallels, IMHO, are as tenuous as those in MacDonald's new book comparing the Homeric epics to the gospel of Mark.

The "parallels" are often translated using "church words" to emphasize their "similarity".

An example would be the "virgin birth" of Mithras as I've heard it called. Upon closer examination, Mithras was "born" or at least came out of a rock... Many "parallels" are drawn with the mystery cult of Mithras even though there are no extant texts describing their rituals. A lot of these "parallels" have been drawn from scholar's ideas of what their rites were like. Anyway, I've seen a good site about the cult of Mithras. I'll pass it along if I find it again.

Ish