sfs,
Well this from the same paper I quoted earlier.
And his born of woman is not only something that was said of certain mythical savior gods, like Dionysos (and various other products of Zeus’ mythical dallyings), it is a detail he could well have based not on history, but on the source he uses for all he says about the Son: the Jewish scriptures. The famous passage in Isaiah 7:14,
A young woman is with child, and she will bear a son and will call him Immanuel. . .
was taken by Jew and early Christian alike to refer to the Messiah. Paul links this idea with Jesus being subject to the law. The latter was a paradigmatic feature which Christ had to possess, so that he could stand in parallel with those whom Paul is addressing, those who had themselves been subject to the lawuntil Christ abrogated it...
Not much detail. Somewhere, and it may not have been Doherty I recall reading a little about the Mithras cult and a few other solar saviours who are born of woman and sacrificed themselves to save their followers. I had thought at one time that the virgin mother was the earth and that the dying and reborn son was the crops that were renewed each year, but that has been so long ago I'm not sure where I got that notion, from Greek mythologies I suppose.
Certainly Christians assigned Christ the same birthday as Mithras and that is on or around the winter solstice or the rebirth of the sun. Twelve disciples does smack of the zodiac which was apparently and logical part of the solar hero cycle. If Christ was not a solar deity subsequent Christians borrowed some practices and conventions from pagan sources.
lfen
™ Version 4.2