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Man’s failure to understand that these truths are figurative, and his rigid insistence upon their literal interpretation, have led to the weakening and discrediting of religion. To maintain that the resurrection of Christ was unique and solely a miracle of Christ, leads to grave problems, for we shall see that the symbol of the bodily resurrection is not limited to Jesus and to Christianity. Although Alexander Cruden, in his unabridged Concordance of the Bible, stated that, "The resurrection is a doctrine unknown to the wisest heathens, and peculiar to the gospel," we find that similar24 phenomena have been attributed to many gods in the Mediterranean area. Some of these resurrection stories date back to nearly 3,000 years before Christ. These tales of the death and resurrection of the gods were commonly known, until they were suppressed by force in the fourth century of the Christian era.
(107:2)
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