The image of Jesus Christ has been influenced by pagan religions (classical and middle east)

My thanks to Pro for his prompt reply. Be sure to read the footnotes, as in this round I make extensive use of them.Do Parallels Indicate Dependence? Pro argues that the presence of parallels [1] indicate a sort of "cultural diffusion" between Christianity and various pagan religions in which cultural patterns are spread from one religion to another. However, this relies on several dubious assumptions.1. It assumes a similarity between Christian and pagan themes.2. It assumes that first century Judaism and Christianity were open to pagan influence.3. It assumes a dependence relation instead of a independent development.4. Merely mentioning pagan religions indicates an influence by themLet's look at each of these assumptions in detail.1. Were Christianity and Paganism Similar?Christianity and paganism were fundamentally different. The pagan conception of dying and rising gods centered around "the ritual re-enactment of the death and rebirth of the god, coupled with sundry fertility rites." [2] These celebrations were centered around crop cycles, with the hope that these religious rituals would ensure a bountiful harvest. Indeed, as Wright indicates "these multifarious and sophisticated cults eneacted the god's death and resurrection as a metaphor, whose concrete referent was the cycle of seed-time and harvest.... Nobody actually expected the mummies to get up, walk about and resume normal living; nobody in that world would have wanted such a thing, either." [3] As Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace point out, pagan mystery religions shared many traits [3]:1. Each religion was centered around an annual vegetation cycle which repeats every year. From these vegetation cycles, pagans drew symbolic significance from natural processes such as growth, death, and rebirth.2. Each mystery religion employed the use of secret ceremonies and initiation rites as a means of "union" with a certain deity and attaining knowledge. Such a trait is decidedly gnostic, as these elements of knowledge were not avaliable to those outside the immediate religion.3. Doctrine and correct belief took hindsight in these religions. What mattered was the emotions of the devotees, not whether or not their doctrine was correct. By contrast, first century Christianity was radically different. As KSW point out:"What set Christianity apart was (1) its insistence on historical credibility, which the mysteries didn't even pretend to have, versus the "going nowhere" of the vegetation cycle; (2) Christian proclamation of the gospel as accessible to all people; (3) its insistence on right belief instead of emotional frenzy; and (4) the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming resurrection of believers." [4]As Robin Lane Fox points out:The mysteries "offered a myth of their god, Jews and Christians offered history; the pagan mysteries conveyed a secret experience, whereas Jews and Christians offered a 'revelation' based on texts." [5] Scholar Ronald Nash thus concludes:"We find that there was no pre-Christians doctrine of rebirth for the Christians to borrow... The claim that pre-Christian mysteries regarded their initiation rites as a kind of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence contemporary with such alleged practices. Instead, a view found in much later texts is read back into earlier texts, which are then interpreted quite speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate's 'new birth'. The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used rebirth as a technical term is unsupported by even one single text." [6]2. Jewish Resistance to HellenizationContrary to what Pro may have us think, the first century Judaism from which Christianity emerged was very resistant to pagan influence. In fact, as Boyd and Eddy note, "the influence of Hellenism actually seems to have strengthened the traditions and beliefs" of Judaism! [7] Additionally, they list seven points which indicate that first century Judaism resisted Hellenistic influence. I will list five [8]:1. Josephus indicates faithful Jewish adherence to traditional principles2. Pagan influences are completely absent from Jewish archaeological sites3. Ceramic wares found in Galilee met Jewish ritual purity requirements4. Unlike pagan sites, Galilean archaeological sites reveal a lack of pork bones, suggesting adherence to Jewish dietary laws.5. Large numbers of alluent Galilean homes contained a miqwaoth, indicating that Jews at the time still engaged in ritualistic bathing.3. Why A Dependence Relation?Pro simply asserts that there was a dependence without engaging my arguments against this thesis. Let me therefore repeat them. As KSW point out, simply because there may have been pagan parallels at the time of Christianity (Assuming for the sake of argument that there were!) does not mean that Christianity was influenced by them. They cite scholar Bruce Metzger, who writes: "The uniformity of human nature sometimes produces strikingly similar results in similar situations where there can be no suspicion of any historical bridge by which the tradition could have been mediated from one culture the other." [9]Adding to Metzger's comments, KSW writes: "We might add that all religions, if they are to gain any converts, must appeal to universal human needs and desires. Should we be surprised, then, to discover parallels between Christianity and any other religion... No, but in such case, it can hardly be maintained that parallels indicate dependence." [10]4. Does Mentioning Pagan Religions Indicate Influence?As multiple scholars have noted, the writers of the New Testament wrote with an awareness of pagan religions, but a mere awareness of these religions is certainly not enough to indicate an influence by them. If anything, the New Testament authors were diametrically opposed to pagan teaching (Given my above arguments), so it's very unlikely that they were influenced by them. The mere fact that the New Testament writers may have mentioned pagan religions does not by any mean imply an influence.So the key point to be drawn here is that an awareness doesn't imply an influence.But Were There Parallels?But more to the point: Pro has not responded to my arguments which advance the claim that any such "parallels" are in fact just the result of reading Biblical language into a religion to invent a parallel. Indeed, this view is dominant in the history of religion. Most scholars take the view that any alleged "parallels" are simply non-existent.I now turn it over to my opponent for his counterarguments.________Footnotes1. That, of course, assumes that genuine parallels do exist. However, as pointed out in my OP, most alleged "parallels" are non-existent. Rather, they are the result of what Sandmel called "Parallelomania," which is one reads biblical language into a pagan religion to create a parallel that simply isn't there.2. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress: 2003) 803. Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 235-236 4. Ibid, 237 5. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 94 6. Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 167 7. Boyd and Eddy, Lord or Legend? 35 ; One might wonder why I am discussing Judaism here as opposed to Christianity. The reasoning is simple: Christianity arose from first century Judaism. Because Judaism served as its foundation, we should expect to see signs of pagan influence had there been any. 8. Ibid, 35. See Boyd and Eddy, The Jesus Legend, for a more substantial treatment.9. Bruce Metzger, "Methodology in the Study of the Mysterty Religions and Early Christianity" as cited in KSW, Reinventing Jesus (Kregel 2006)10. KSW, Reinventing Jesus, 228