The three hours of an eclipse, which is said to have taken place on the death of one of our Christian gods, is a very modest imitation of the Pagan original, from which it has every appearance of being taken. We say modest, because on the death of the godling Phæton, his father Phoebus withheld his light from the earth a whole day.
All the Jewish and Christian fictions about resurrections and ascensions into what is called heaven, are also clumsily taken copies of originals in the ancient polytheism. The Egyptian Osiris died, returned again to life, and afterwards obtained divine honors; he was designated "_the holy word_" The god Atys was called the "_God our Savior_." Bacchus died, was buried, descended into, and slept three nights in Tartarus* (the only hell they had in those times), from whence he brought up his mother, with whom he ascended into heaven, and made her a goddess. His return to life was annually celebrated by the virgins and matrons of Delphi.
* All the tales about Tophet, Gehenna, Tartarus, or Hell, had no foundation whatever "but the practice of burning mankind, either on the funeral pile, or as a sacrifice to the gods. The Greek word, Ades, or Hades, occurs eleven times in the New Testament, and is _falsely_ translated _Hell_ in all except one, where it is rightly translated 'the grave,' signifying the _invisible state_."
Ouranos, coelus, or heaven, merely signified the earth's atmosphere in the summer months.
Thus the compilers of the Jew books had exemplars in, and drew their fables from, Paganism; and were themselves imitated in turn by the fabricators of the new Testament: the stories of the manna, and the twenty loaves of Elisha, very naturally suggested the wonderful growth of Jesus' loaves and fishes; and the manner in which that prophet turned brackish into pure water, would clearly point out how that element might be turned into wine, at the feast of Cana. The above are only a few of the numerous instances which might be quoted, wherein the ignorance of the Jewish scribes, disfigured the elegant and lively fables of Paganism; and it cannot escape observation that the rude recoinage in their barbarous mint has turned that which was pretty and amusing into the deformed and hideous, in a manner quite characteristic of their own semi-savage condition.