Deities are a perpetual presence in human life. They have been since the dawn of mankind. Humans have turned to higher powers with their problems for thousands of years, and there seem to be as many gods and goddesses scattered throughout history as there are stars in the sky. Jesus Christ is one of the most notable and most recent of these figures, arising in the last 2000 years. In this essay, I have compared the life of Jesus according to the Gospels with the lives of other sons of God. I have focused on two other characters: the god of wine Bacchus and the Roman mystery god Mithras. In this examination of the two divine characters, I have, needless to say, excluded many details from their lives that have no correspondence in the Gospel stories. Obviously, each son of God needed his own unique expression to suit the needs of the different peoples. There are several themes repeated in stories of religious figures throughout history. For instance, virgin births. In most of the pre-Christian religions, there are stories told of a god impregnating a mortal woman, often a virgin, who then bears him a son. According to the Gospels, Mary was still a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. She  conceived Jesus through the action of the Holy Spirit,  who according to the Christian doctrine is part of the deity. Thereby Jesus came to be seen as a "Son of God." The celebrated times of several religious figures' births and deaths are another similarity seen throughout the ages. It was a widely spread conception that the gods were born at the winter solstice (at Christmas) and died in spring in connection with the vernal equinox (Easter). The people experienced a short period of grief, whereupon, on the third day or after three days, they rejoiced and celebrated the resurrected god. Which brings us to another common theme “resurrection stories." The model for a deity dying and rising on the third day existed as early as in the Egyptian cult of the god Osiris. Before Christianity entered the religious scene, the people of Egypt regarded Osiris as a god who suffered and died for humanity only to rise on the third day. I am not necessarily saying that other cultures or mythologies influenced Christianity. That might of course be the case in some instances of several different religions, but hardly always. A better explanation is that they all draw from a common heritage. Christianity's central figure is, of course Jesus (also called Christ or the Messiah) who was born in Israel 2000 years ago. He lived as a traditional carpenter for the first thirty years of his life before beginning his public ministry and displays of recorded miracles, yet still never travelled more than 200 miles from his birthplace. Over a three year period, in spite of his efforts to keep a low profile, his reputation spread nationwide so that the Roman governors and rulers of Israel's provinces and religious counsels took note of him. His key messages included God's unconditional love, the immense value of each person, the good news of the kingdom of God coming to Earth, the reality of judgment to Heaven or Hell, and forgiveness. Jesus's most controversial act was that he repeatedly claimed to be God, which was a direct violation of Jewish law. Because of this the religious leaders implored the Roman government to execute him. Although Jesus was tried several times and never found guilty of breaking any Roman law, Pilate, a Roman governor of the Southern province of Israel, was persuaded to authorize Jesus's execution under the argument of political disfavor. Jesus was brutally tortured and crucified, which killed him in three hours. Over five hundred witnesses reported Jesus returning from the dead three days after his crucifixion, and over the next 40 days journeyed in both the southern and northern provinces of Israel. To many, this was conclusive proof that Jesus's claims of being God were real. Jesus returned to Jerusalem and, according to witnesses, he left the earth alive by rising up into the sky. Today, Christianity is the world's biggest religion, with over 2.1 billion people adhering to the teachings of Jesus Christ. First, I would like to compare the life of Jesus and his religion to that of Mithraism. In ancient India, in the Old Persian Empire, and later in the vast Roman Empire, there were three cults, all worshipping a god with a similar name. In the Indian Vedas,  he is called Mitra and in the PersianAvesta,  he goes by the name of Mithra. In both these cases, the god is a personification of the sun, and in all likelihood it is the same god. The oldest written source mentioning Mitra is from approximately 1400 BCE, but the cult of this god is probably much older. By the time of Jesus, he was the most widely venerated god in the Roman Empire. By all accounts, the Roman cult of Mithras was a rival of the early Christian Church. Thus the Mithras cult shared the fate of the Gnostic movement. When in the fourth century, the