I would like to learn more about pre-Christian mythology that may have contributed to the story of Jesus but am having trouble finding scholarly and objective sources. They tend to be either non-Christians who tend to exaggerate these similarities to the point of being simply untrue (Zeitgeist comes to mind) or they tend to be Christian scholars who downplay or entirely dismiss such similarities. Where would you recommend I look for a more unbiased assessment of this issue? Thanks, and as a recent deconvert from Pentecostalism I appreciate what you folks do.

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeistsourcebook.pdf

If you are only looking at the zeitgeist movie the information presented is vague and sounds unreliable; but if you want to, I suggest taking a look at the source book for the actual explanations behind the listings presented in the movie. I feel many people are probably dismissing the religion part of zeitgeist too quickly (the rest of zeitgeist is definitely nonsense) without seriously checking the facts themselves.

Don't bother with the Zeitgeist crap - and if you want to know what we think of Zeitgeist, it's sourcebook, etc, head over to the Atheist Experience blog on Freethought Blogs and look it up. Zeitgeist offers some of the worst reasons ever to be a atheist.

If you want a scholarly treatment of early influences on Christianity, read something by Richard Carrier. He's written books (I recommend "Not the Impossible Faith"), but a lot of his stuff is on www.infidels.org. He's also on Freethought Blogs, where he recently thrashed Bart Erhman for some of Erhman's misrepresentations of the mythicist position.

In short, there are some very good reasons to believe Jesus was a mythical (vs. historical) figure, but you won't find them in any of the Zeitgeist garbage.

The virgin Queen of Egypt, supposedly gave birth to Pharaoh Amenkept III through a god holding a cross to her mouth Jesus was not the first god to be born of a virgin. Ra, the Egyptian sun god, was said to be born of a virgin. So was Mithras, Krishna, Horus, Melanippe, Auge and Antiope.The claims of Jesus' birth are no different from any other virgin birth myth. So,why does anyone believe it if they don't believe the other myths?

Josh, where is your proof? Saying these things doesn't make them true. I've been attempting to find unbiased research on this as well. But what you posted here is just here-say.

I was hoping to use the similarities between Jesus and these other gods as ammunition when discussing this with Christians. But honestly, everything I've found on the subject backs the Christians because they're the only ones showing the evidence....e.g. no where in the texts about Horus does it say he was born of a virgin...same with Krishna & Mithras.

Either the Christians aren't reading the right texts or the Atheists are making this stuff up. I too would like to see unbiased research on this before ignorantly using it against someone. It makes us sound as scientific as the Christians...believing without proof.