Jesus And Inanna

One of the most fallacious claims of either Jesus mythicists or those who deny the evidence for the resurrection of the historical Jesus is the assertion that early Christians plagiarized the stories of pagan deities.  Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of war and sexuality, is even said to have been crucified before being resurrected.  If one examines the stories without any assumptions, it becomes clear that this claim misinterprets the text and fallaciously interprets the resurrection story of Jesus found in the Bible.  Yes, this topic is far more mainstream and generic than the subjects I prefer to tackle (it is also one of few areas that renowned Christian apologists would often handle correctly), but it is still important nonetheless.

In the story of Inanna's descent, the titular goddess ventures to the underworld to visit her sister Erishkegal, and she is told to remove one article of clothing in order to pass through each gate along the way.  By the time that Inanna finds her sister, she is naked.  She is soon turned into a corpse and subsequently hung on a hook, though she is ultimately resurrected after her personal messenger alerts her father.  Now, there are definite similarities between the resurrection stories of Inanna and Jesus, but there are also key distinctions.

For instance, Jesus is plainly described as dying in the same external world inhabited by living humans, not in an underworld of any sort.  Jesus' death did not occur within a realm beyond that occupied by ordinary people.  Then there is the false claim that Inanna, like Jesus, was crucified.  However, the atrocity of Roman crucifixion entailed the nailing of a live man or woman to a cross, not the hanging of a corpse upon a mere hook.  Victims of Roman crucifixion were also stripped naked against their will prior to being attached to their crosses, whereas Inanna voluntarily surrendered her garments as she made her way to Erishkegal.

Though some superficial similarities between the story of Jesus (at least the Biblical story of Jesus) and that of Inana do exist--for instance, both figures are denuded and killed before resurrecting--the differences are obvious and major.  The two are far from sharing the same details.  Indeed, the only way to overlook this is to assume that one narrative copies the other.

There is a more significant truth, however: even if the story of Jesus matched the story of Inanna or another deity perfectly, it would not follow from them sharing identical features that Jesus was not a historical figure or that he did not actually resurrect.  The veracity of the Biblical story of Jesus does not stand or fall on whether other resurrection stories have similar or even identical details.  When this fact is accepted, the idea that Jesus' death and resurrection resemble those of pagan deities can be recognized as the red herring that it is.