In the 20th century, an extremely large number of works were published in various languages with attempts to give a mythological interpretation of Christianity, in 1904 the Italian Emilio Bossi, under the pseudonym Milesbo, published the book "Jesus Never Existed", in which he proved that Christ is a solar, mythical deity, analogous to Krishna, Buddha, Adonis. In 1906, the American (mathematician by profession) William Bengramin Smith came out with the works: "Pre-Christian Jesus" and "Ecce Deus". In Holland, Professor of Philosophy Bolland, in a series of works, deduces Christianity from Alexandria, from the merging of Greek philosophy and Jewish Hellenism into one whole. At the same time, the works of the so-called "pan-Babylonists" – Assyriologists – were published: Fritr. Delitzsch, Jensen, Gunkel, Jeremias, Winkler and others, who set out to find traces of Babylonian myths in the biblical religion and, in particular, in Christianity.

A major event in the history of the mythological school is the speech of Arthur Drews, a professor of philosophy in Karlsruhe, with the first volume of his book "The Myth of Christ", which appeared around Easter 1909. Drews's book caused great excitement in Protestant circles in Germany, although in essence Drews said nothing new, "except perhaps mistakes." Drews owes his fame to the German "Union of Monists", which took Drews's ideas under its wing, made them the subject of passionate agitation and threw them into the crowd as the "last word" of historical science.

From January 31 to February 1, 1910, a debate took place in Berlin over Drews's book, with the participation of the author and the most prominent representatives of German theological and historical science. Both in the debate and in the vast literature that appeared around the Myth of Christ, Drews was completely destroyed scientifically, and German public opinion never returned to his ideas. Nevertheless, Drews continued his writing activity on the history of the emergence of Christianity. In 1911, he published the second part of his "Myth... ", in which he tried to refute the objections of his opponents. In 1921, Drews published a new book entitled: "The Gospel of Mark, as a Testimony Against the Historicity of Jesus." In 1923, the book "The Starry Sky in the Poetry and Religion of Ancient Peoples and Christianity" was published, where Drews used the astral method to explain the emergence of Christianity, in addition to the mythological method, i.e. he asserted that the Gospel legends presented a description of the "movement of the sun" (Christ is the "solar hero") and "its position at different times in relation to the fixed stars". In 1924, Drews's new work "The Emergence of Christianity from Gnosticism" was published. In addition to these major works, Drews wrote popular works: "The Legend of Peter", "The Myth of the Virgin Mary", "Did Christ Live", "Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in the Past and Present". Drews wrote his last two works by special order of our society "Atheist". In all his works, Drews stands on a decidedly mythological point of view.

The ideas of Dupuy, Robertson and Drews had a strong influence on the Polish writer and novelist Andrei Nemojewski (? 1919). In his book "God Jesus", Nemoevsky, following the example of his teachers, denies the historical existence of Christ, and about the Gospel narratives he asserts that they are partly borrowed from pagan myths, and partly read from the celestial globe. At the same time, the astral method in Nemoevsky is predominant to the point that it caused condemnation from Drews himself.

In our anti-religious literature, the ideas of a mythological explanation of Christianity gained wide popularity in their time. Soviet mythologists, following the Western ones, consider Christ to be a legendary, mythical person, and the Gospels to be collections of myths.

Later, in order to explain the origin of "myths", some people use not only the myths of pagan religions, using the astral method, but in addition to this, they also pay attention to the social environment in which our religion arose, to the socio-economic conditions of life in society contemporary with the emergence of Christianity, i.e., in other words, they try to combine the mythological method with the dialectical-materialistic method.

Is the basic thesis of the mythological school about the syncretic nature of Christianity true, however? Is our religion really a product of the natural religious-historical development of mankind? Are there scientific grounds to talk about a causal genetic dependence or connection between Christianity and pagan religions?

1. The question of the origin of Christianity

1.1. Attempts at Natural-Scientific Explanation

The Origin of Christianity

The question of the origin of Christianity is fully resolved by the historical testimonies of the sacred writers of the New Testament, the Apostolic Fathers, the apologists, as well as the opponents of Christianity, and the secular historians of the first and third centuries, not to mention the writers of later periods. A mass of other testimonies: temples, catacombs, Christian images, icons, coins, etc., speak more than enough about the time of the emergence of Christianity – the first half of the first century – and about the nature of its emergence – sudden, unexpected, supernatural. On the other hand, an analysis of the historical situation at the time of the emergence of Christianity testifies to the fact that the birth of this new religion in this epoch was not only not conditioned by any objective historical and social reasons, but, on the contrary, was, as it were, unnatural, because Christianity was initially met with extreme hostility by all strata of the population.

Of course, atheism cannot accept such a conclusion, and therefore tries to find the natural causes of the emergence of Christianity. Contemporary and past attempts to explain the natural origin of Christianity can be summarized in the following main theses: