Many atheists criticize Christianity as or accuse it of simply being a retelling of ancient myths. Christians in response try to convince the atheists that the story of Christianity is unique.

While I would never deny the uniqueness of Christianity, my observations and experience have shown that going this route usually isn't all that effective, and I think that might be because it doesn't really do anything to address the atheists real argument.

What the atheist really thinks is that these similarities somehow negate or undermine Christianity's individuality and authenticity—regardless of any unique differences Christians can and do indeed point to.

That's the argument we need to address, and here's how I think we can do that.

So first of all, we know that ancient peoples tried to understand both the world and the eternity that God set in their hearts, and surely we'd have to admit that they were able to arrive at glimpses/fragments of the truth over time (bracketing for now how they arrived at such fragments).

These truths were then communicated in myths, and for that reason, myths shouldn't be thought of as false fables or lies, but rather imaginative and truthful / truth-adjacent expressions of a culture’s values and beliefs about reality.

Standing on the shoulders of giants such as Lewis & Tolkien then, we can then say that God not only could have but would have used pagan myths to [prepare our hearts to receive] / [prime our minds to apprehend] / [setup the scaffolding for us to understand] the capital-T (aka God's) Truth.

And then, the Biblical writers via divine inspiration, took elements, themes, and familiar symbols from pagan myths and stories, repurposing and reshaping them, imbuing them with fresh significance, to convey new messages consistent with God's Truth.

The question then becomes: why?

Well, from a psychological perspective alone, given what we know about human psychology and human nature, God doing this would make a whole lot of sense, especially if you consider the absurdity of the alternative: that of revealing the raw and unfiltered awesome entirety of the truth all at once to humanity without any preparation.

That's an absurd alternative because it would mean God would be choosing to work in a way that is fundamentally opposed to human psychology and how human nature were designed to work.

To be clear, we as humans aren't capable of receiving truth about anything really without preparation.

Think about it.

Preparation serves as a prerequisite for accepting, learning, or understanding truth by laying the groundwork, addressing misconceptions, and fostering the necessary mindset for comprehension and acceptance. Consider the following examples:

—Someone struggling with addiction may need to undergo extensive preparation, such as therapy, self-reflection, and support group participation, before acknowledging and accepting the truth: their need for change.

—Before learning advanced mathematics, students must first build a foundation by mastering basic arithmetic operations. Without this groundwork, understanding higher-level mathematical principles and truths becomes significantly more challenging, if not impossible.

—Before people could accept, understand, and embrace the theory of evolution, extensive preparation through observations, fossil records, and comparative anatomy was essential.

(N.B. that is not a statement on the truth of evolution but rather on modern day society's unquestioning acceptance of it as truth.)

We can look at it this way too. By providing information gradually over time, individuals can better absorb, process, and integrate otherwise difficult or challenging truths into their worldview, thus promoting emotional well-being, deeper understanding, and societal progress. (<--Dark spiritual forces use this principle too when it comes to spiritual warfare.)

To wit, imagine the opposite.

Imagine for example trying to comprehend the entirety of a complex scientific theory, such as quantum mechanics or string theory, without any prior knowledge or preparation. The sheer volume of information and the abstract nature of these concepts would likely overwhelm most, if not all, individuals.

Without the necessary background understanding and incremental learning, grasping the nuances and implications of such theories would be nearly impossible.

Presenting the truth in its entirety without any preparation exceeds human cognitive and emotional capacities, undermining comprehension and hindering meaningful engagement with the subject matter. Incremental learning, contextualization, and emotional readiness are essential for facilitating deeper understanding and integration of complex truths.

Interestingly enough, this is even how the Bible itself is actually structured.

The Old Testament stories, spanning thousands of years, contained seeds of truth expressed in types and motifs, the fullness of which culminated / was instantiated in Christ. You can look at all the religions up to that point in the same way.

For example, considering that they had as part of them some sort of longing to be saved from mortality / rescued, Christianity can then be understood as the revealing of the ultimate solution, and not only has meaning in and of itself as a solution, but has even more meaning when contrasted with the failures, shortcomings, and inconsistencies of the prior religions.

In other words, other religions having failed in actually providing the rescue people longed for makes the fulfillment of that rescue in/through Christ so much more meaningful. And the truth has a higher chance of being accepted when its meaningful. (<--God allowing for this failure was not only wise but merciful if you really think about it.)

Now to engage the atheists' real argument directly.

First, we need to point out that there isn't any logical reason that would necessarily require Israel’s mythopoeia to be wholly other or completely alien to its surroundings in order to secure individuality.

Furthermore, not only is it inevitable for at least some similarities to arise due to what John Walton calls a “common cognitive environment” of people in a shared space, time, or culture, but there may be and oftentimes was uniqueness in how what is parallel/similar (ie a law or proverb) was understood, or how it was nuanced by the literary context in which it was incorporated.

In a similar vein, there is also logically no need for a text to secure divine authorship to necessarily have appeared on the scene instantly (as opposed to developing and being written over time in history) while having absolutely no references to the surrounding cultures. Not to mention that it would make perfect sense for the Biblical writers via divine inspiration (which is different than divine dictation) to avail themselves of what was revealed to / discovered by other cultures up to that point.

This also makes sense from the polemical theology perspective, which asserts that biblical writers used the thought forms and stories that were common in ancient Near Eastern culture in order to fill them with radically new meaning, and to emphatically and graphically demonstrate the essential distinctions between the worldview of the Hebrews and the beliefs and practices of the rest of the ancient Near East.

To be sure, many of the parallels between ancient Near Eastern literature and the Old Testament may be properly and fully understood only through the right use of polemical theology.

It's important to note though that this polemical theology wasn't just an attempt to be different for the sake of being different; the new meanings that could be found in the differences were also more consistent with the deepest and realest truths God wished to reveal to us.

In the end, I think we could therefore say that in paganism, God expressed Himself in an unfocused way through the images human imaginations deployed in order to tell stories about the world.

The story of Christ then is, as C.S. Lewis said, “God’s myth”, the story in which God directly expressed Himself through a real, historical life of a particular man, in a particular time, in a particular place: Jesus of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate outside Jerusalem, circa AD 33.