One of the standard lines that the Christians use when maintaining Jesus' historicity is that people would not have suddenly started mourning the death of Jesus and celebrating his resurrection if there was no such person. Theologians usually refer to this death and resurrection of Jesus as the "Easter event". What they imply by this is that there was a specific event, which took place in a specific year that was the origin of our Easter rituals.

It is all well and good for theologians to sit in the 21st Century and refer to an "Easter event" around two thousand years ago. But the problem is that the early Christian apostle Paul, and all the other Christian writers of the first Century, never give us any indication as to which year it was that Christ was crucified - which is precisely what we should expect them to do if indeed a perception that a real Jesus whom they had known had risen from the dead was the origin of Christianity. Most people in the western world born before about 1950 remember what they were doing when they first heard that John Kennedy had been assassinated. Nearly everyone remembers what he or she was doing when man landed on the moon. Astounding, as these events seemed at the time, they did not lead us to radically change our belief systems or ways of living. Yet the "Easter event", which theologians point to endearingly, was never remarked upon by any of the early Christian propagandists or writers.

Paul is not alone in his vagueness about when Jesus Christ was actually crucified, the other authors of all the authentic 1st Century New Testament epistles are not only vague about when Christ might have died, some, like the author of the epistle of James, don't even mention that he died at all - in five chapters of preaching! He misses a marvelous opportunity to praise Jesus for dying selflessly when he wants to give an example of patience when suffering affliction - he tells his readers to remember "the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord" (James 5:10). What about the dreadful crucifixion that poor old Jesus had recently been through? What about the Agony in the Garden where Jesus sweated blood and asked God to take away his dreadful cup of suffering (Luke 22:42-4)? Around the end of the 1st Century the author of the lengthy epistle of "Clement" makes numerous references to how (we) are saved through the "blood of Christ" but he doesn't tell us when the great event took place - in fact he never even tells us that Christ was crucified! As far as the "Easter event" is concerned, when Clement wants to assure the Corinthians that resurrection is a sure thing (1 Clem 25 Loeb) he tells them that there is a great bird down in Arabia called the Phoenix that God raises from the dead every 500 years! Forget about Lazarus! That Clement had the letter of Paul to the Corinthians open in front of him when he was writing (1 Clem 47) raises the unsettling possibility that Paul's reference to 500 witnesses to Christ's resurrection (1 Cor.15) might be a later interpolation.

The author of the epistle of Barnabas, written probably in the early 2nd Century, has much to say about the reasons for the "Passion of Christ" - and these reasons are all theological rather than political or historical - but he also leaves us in the dark as to when this great event took place. He explicitly tells us that he got all this information about Christ from Isaiah, and then he thanks God for revealing the past to us ([them]. See Barnabas ch. 5 Loeb). God would hardly have to be thanked for this revelation if it were already common knowledge!

Students of first Century Christianity get used to nothing in the life of Jesus being mentioned in the surviving correspondence, but they don't seem to have noticed that no details of his death are mentioned either. The venue of Jesus' death is never mentioned, nor the circumstances, nor the characters who were allegedly involved. No "if only's", no recriminations, no reminiscences. Surely a man like Joseph of Arimathea should have been frequently mentioned in view of the fact that he allegedly donated the tomb from which (as Christians believe) Jesus erupted to eternal glory, thereby saving mankind from the clutches of Satan. We should expect the early Christian correspondence to contain reminiscences about what they were doing when Jesus died. Why did we have to wait nearly two thousand years for Paul Robeson to sing "Where were you when they crucified my Lord"? Let me bluntly assert that there is absolutely no evidence of the early church being aware of a soul-shaking "Easter event," they never use the term. And the best explanation is that such an "event" never took place.

But this is not to say that they didn't celebrate Easter - they surely did. In reference to an approaching Passover season, Paul admonishes the Corinthians to ensure that they do not dine with sinners (and thereby displays his ignorance that the gospel Jesus was supposed to have frequently done just that!) saying, "For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor 5:7). This is a very peculiar way to refer to what has to have been (in the terms of the historicist case) a very recent event. This would seem to indicate that the early church (at least in the Levant) commemorated the death of Christ on the Passover. If Jesus had been executed on any other day of the year in recent memory, it would have been difficult to transfer the commemoration of his death to the Passover in the short time between his alleged existence and the time of Paul's writing. And what are the chances that Jesus would have been so conveniently executed on the Passover?

It is far more likely that Christ's death was commemorated on the Passover because he had been identified with the Passover lamb. The "Suffering Servant" of Isaiah 53 is portrayed as a lamb who dies for his people, and the earliest thumbnails of Christ's life are either quotes or paraphrases of the Isaiahan passage ( e.g. Rom 10:16; 1 Pet 2:21-25; 1 Clem 26; Barnabas 5. The book of Revelation refers to [Christ] as "... the Lamb, slain since the foundation of the world." In all, there are 26 references in that particular work to "the Lamb" - most of these indicating his violent disposition). The Jewish calendars of the 1st Century were quite imprecise, but the Passover is reckoned by the appearance of the first full moon after the (northern) spring equinox. Jesus Christ currently dies on the last Friday before the first Sunday after the first full moon to appear after the (northern) spring equinox as reckoned at Alexandria. Consequently the Jewish Passover often overlaps Easter. Thus Jesus' death and rebirth is commemorated according to astrological considerations rather then historical ones.

Both the Passover and Easter really have their origins in the ancient peoples' rejoicing in the knowledge that the death of winter is over and the crops are going to rise again. This is clearly indicated in the practices of the pre-Christian Easter of late antiquity, which was the festival of Attis and Cybele. The calendar was

• March 15 - Canna Intrat -procession of the reed-blowers
• March 22 - Arbor Intrat (equinox) - burial of Attis in effigy
• March 24 - Sanguis - day of mourning, sacrifice, and blood-letting
• March 25 - Hilaria - day of Attis' resurrection
• March 27 - Lavatio - day of ablution

Note the significant three-day period between the burial and resurrection of the god. Cybele had been officially introduced to Rome in 204 BC in accordance with a prophecy construed by the priests to mean that Rome would thereby defeat Hannibal. The gods of "the East," which is far more likely to be the real reason why the priests imported her, had long fascinated the Romans. The above calendar was incorporated into the state religion of Rome in the time of Claudius in the fifth decade of our era. Claudius only would have given the festival the state imprimatur in order to take control of what was must have been a growing religious practice. Previously the priests of the cult, the Galli, had been Phrygian eunuchs. The priests were supposed to have castrated themselves in emulation of Attis to appease the goddess Cybele, who doubles as Attis' mother and lover (there are some who are eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake?). Claudius made a number of reforms to the festival, decreeing, for example, that the priests of the cult would in the future have to be non-castrated Romans.

The festival began on the15th of March, already the hallowed Day of Parricide, with performances by a special class of reed-blowers to lament the hapless Attis. This was presumably taken to be the time of his self-mutilation in remorse for not being able to return Cybele's attentions. The dying Attis was represented as reclining under a pine tree with his life's blood oozing out. He presumably is dead by the 22nd of March when another class of tree-bearers cut a pine tree from the forest and decorated it with violets, which were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Attis' self-mutilation. The tree represented the dead Attis and was interred with great ceremony.

The most bizarre day of the program had to be Sanguis, the "day of blood" on the 24th of March. This was the day dedicated to appeasing Cybele, and apparently she wanted blood. The priests of the cult would slash their arms and flail their blood around with abandon. Some enthusiasts would even go so far as to slice off their penises and cast them at the statue of the great mother Cybele. It appears that she took this as a compliment, for three days from the burial of Attis, and after long supplications to major gods such as Zeus (it's interesting that the Romans subordinated Cybele to the earlier father-god Zeus rather than to Jupiter), she raised Attis from the dead. This was celebrated as the Hilaria, - a day of rejoicing and bonhomie - represented on vases from as early as the 4th Century BC as Attis dancing for joy. This appears to have been a day of license and lunacy. The next day was preserved for quiet meditation and repose, a time to consider the marvelous events that had just occurred. Finally, after all the excitement, the image of the goddess was washed, with due ceremony, in the waters of the Almo river. All the penises were removed, and the mother goddess could return to her virginal state, having brought forth life symbolically by raising Attis from his grave. Attis, for his part, will thrive throughout the summer until the end of harvest season, when, once again overcome by remorse for his unfaithfulness (after all, the leaves are falling from the trees) will duly emasculate himself again.

The most debatable aspect of this ancient festival in relation to the question of Christian origins is to what extent the Hilaria - the resurrection of Attis - was celebrated in the 1st Century. Atheists tend to blithely state that it was and the Christians quite naturally say that it was not. It is true that the original festival introduced to Rome in 204BC was far more focused on Cybele as the mother of the gods than it was on Attis, and that Attis increases in prominence in the cultic practices -especially after the middle of the second Century - ultimately becoming a fully-fledged Sun-god. (Jesus too is represented as a Sun-god in primitive depictions).

In the earlier traditions of Attis it appears that what the gods granted Cybele was an assurance that the body of Attis would not corrupt. The origin of this seems reasonably clear; as he represents the crops this is a promise from the higher gods of good harvests. The Christian historicists point out that Attis is only clearly regarded as a resurrected god from the second half of the second Century of our era, as this is when we find the first unambiguous references to his resurrection appearing (of course, one could point out to them that just because earlier authors didn't mention it doesn't mean that they didn't know about it). Their point is that the tradition that Attis was fully resurrected on the 25th of March was copied from Jesus' resurrection, a resurrection which must have been true, because people wouldn't have believed it if there hadn't been a historical "event" behind it.

But why would the Cybele and Attis cultists suddenly believe that Attis sprouted from the dead if there had been no "Easter event" for him? Surely they could not have been so naïve that someone told them that Attis had risen from the dead and they simple believed it rather than looking into it and finding out that he was really only an incorruptible vegetable! My point is that if one is going to argue that there needed to be an "Easter event" for people to believe that "Christ is risen", then it follows that there needed to be some such similar event for people to believe that Attis had risen.

When Christians say that the 1st Century evidence for the resurrection of Attis can't be compared to the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ I would agree with them. But stories of a bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ only appear in the 2nd Century, all the earliest references to "the resurrection of Christ" are couched in vague theological terms. It is reasonable to presume that Attis would have gone through a stage wherein his resurrection was also referred to in vague terms.

It is not normal for people to re-enact funerals for real people. They may have a memorial day or an anniversary or a day of meditation. Attis' body was buried annually at Easter on the 22nd of March, and in view of the fact that Attis is represented pictorially as dancing from as far back as the 4th Century BC, it is not unreasonable to assume that he must have been regarded as returning to life. With the great mixing of cultures that the Roman Empire made possible, people from different cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs would tend to put their own interpretation on the rituals they saw going on around them. In late pre-Christians times it is quite feasible that Hellenised Jews or Judaised Hellenes (the "nebotoi") could have interpreted the mourning for Attis as being some kind of mistake. They may have regarded such mourning, as more befitting someone they could identify with culturally, and the "Suffering Servant" would have been an obvious contender - particularly if the day of Attis' interment fell on the Passover. As the Lamb of God was slain "since the foundation of the world" it is quite possible that a belief that "Christ" had died and risen again in the indeterminate past could quickly evolve. This would explain why the early Christian writers never give any historical context for the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But there is another good reason to believe that Christ and Attis may have branched out from the same stem. Although Paul never specifies the venue of the crucifixion of "Christ", he writes to the Galatians " O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" (Gal 3:1). What does this cryptic text mean? Perhaps we will never know, but it sounds like Christ may have been believed to have been crucified in Galatia (modern Turkey). Maybe Paul was referring to some kind of Passion play that was staged in Galatia. This should be disturbing to Christians because Phrygia, the original home of Attis, was part of Galatia.

One thing is certain - the deity "Jesus Christ" has a doppelganger that has dogged his heels since the beginning of his celestial reign and will continue to do so. The more that his partisans seek to downgrade and trivialize the resurrection of Attis, the more they will have to convince us that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was any more authentic.