The Sacrificed Son-of-God
The Sacrificed Son-of-God was a common figure in these times and places, his story being found under several different names: Dionysus, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis - and Iasius of course, for this is the Type of his story. The essential characteristics of the story are a Son-of-God, born of a virgin, tragically killed, but rising again, with his 'death' bringing fruitfulness to mankind.
Each different variant has some different local characteristics, consider one variant: that of Attis, the consort of the Phrygian Cybele. Attis was the Good Shepherd, in some versions the son of a Virgin Nana. The festival of his death and resurrection took place from March 22nd to 25th when a pine tree was felled and an effigy of Attis hung it - i.e. Attis is slain and hung on a tree (c.f. Acts V 30), after three days he rises again to much celebration, the initiates having their sins washed in blood and being thus "born again" [Weigall, Paganism in our Christianity]
The common or central symbols to this sacrificed son of god story included:
Wedding, Great Mother, Wine, Grain, Holy Child, Descent into Hell
http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Chri...ity/iasion.html
The Gospel Jesus and his story is equally missing from the non-Christian record of the time. Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish historian Justus of Tiberias, Pliny the Elder as collector of reputed natural phenomena, early Roman satirists and philosophers: all are silent. Pliny the Younger, in his letter to Trajan from Bithynia c.112, does not speak of Christ in historical terms. Josephus’ famous passage in Antiquities 18 is acknowledged to be, as it stands, a Christian interpolation, and arguments that an original reference to Jesus either stood there or can be distilled from the present one, founder on the universal silence about such a reference on the part of Christian commentators until the 4th century.2 As for the reference in Antiquities 20 to James as "brother of Jesus, the one called (the) Christ", this passage also bears the marks of Christian interference.3 The phrase originally used by Josephus may have been the same designation which Paul gives to James (Galatians 1:19), namely "brother of the Lord," which would have referred not to a sibling relationship with Jesus, but to James’ position in the Jerusalem brotherhood, something which was probably widely known. A Christian copyist could later have altered the phrase (under the influence of Matthew 1:16) to render it more "historical" after Jesus of Nazareth was developed.
http://www.jesuspuzzle.org/