“The dying-and-rising son (sometimes daughter) of god 'mytheme' originated in the ancient Near East over a thousand years before Christianity, and was spread across the Mediterranean... the earliest documented examples are the cult of lanna and Dumuzi, the cult of Baal and Anat, and the cult of Marduk, all of whose resurrection stories are told in Sumerian, Ugaritic and Assyrian tablets long predating the advent of Christianity.“
-- Richard Carrier