The opening section from Nicolas Boulanger's 1761 chapter “The Christian Mythology”, therein defining the a proto-outline of Christian mythology. [3]

“How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us and our predecessors.”

“He is guilty of indulging the inaccurate Custom of calling the Evil Spirits by the Names of Pluto, Alefto, and of mingling often often Pagan Ideas with Christian Mythology. 'Tis strange that none of the modern Poets are free from that Fault. I: seems that our Devils and our Christian Hell, have something in them low and mean, and must be rais'd by the Hell of the Pagans, which owes its Dignity to its Antiquity. Certain it is, that the Hell of the Gospel is not so fitted for Poetry as that of Homer and Virgil. The Name of Tisiphone sounds better than that of Beelzebub; but with all that, it is as preposterous in a Poet to bring Michael and Aleclo together, as in some Italian and Flemish Painters to have represented the Virgin Mary with a Chapelet of Beads hangigg at her Girdle, to have plac'd some Swiss Guards at the Door of the Apartment of Pharaoh, and to have mix'd Cannons and Carabines with the ancient Arrows in the Battle of Jojbuah.”

“God, by an inconceivable act of his omnipotence, created the universe out of nothing [N1]. He made the earth for the residence of man, whom he created in his own image. Scarcely had this man, the prime object of the labours of the almighty, seen the light, when his creator set a snare for him, into which god undoubtedly knew that he must fall. A serpent which speaks, seduces a woman, who is no way surprised at this phenomenon. Being persuaded by the serpent, she solicits her husband to eat of a fruit forbidden by god himself. Adam, the father of the human race, by this light fault draws upon himself and his innocent posterity innumerable evils, which are followed but not terminated by death. By the offense of only one man the whole human race incurs the wrath of god; and they are at length punished for involuntary faults with an universal deluge. God repents haying peopled the earth, and he finds it easier to drown and destroy the human race, than to change their hearts.”

“It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church, sprung out of the tail of the Heathen mythology. A-direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the formal plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes, changed into the canonization of saints. The mythologists had gods for every thing; the Christian mythologists had saints for every thing. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.”

“Christian mythology has five deities: there is god the father, god the son, god the holy ghost, god the providence, and the goddess nature.”

“What is known as the "immaculate oath "—that is, the confirmation of faith by an oath taken on the immaculate conception of Mary—is still regarded by millions of Christians as a sacred obligation. Many believers take the dogma in a twofold application; they think that the mother of Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost as well as Mary herself. Comparative and critical theology has recently shown that this myth has no greater claim to originality than most of the other stories in the Christian mythology; it has been borrowed from older religions, especially Buddhism. Similar myths were widely circulated in India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece several centuries before the birth of Christ.”

“During the Middle Ages—especially during the domination of the papacy—scientific work in this direction entirely ceased. The torture and the stake of the Inquisition insured that an unconditional belief in the Hebrew mythology should be the final answer to all the questions of creation.”

— Ernst Haeckel (1899), The Riddle of the Universe (pg. 238)

“The Hebrew [mythology] redactors used Egyptian myths to make the biblical stories; which, from time to time, had Babylonian myths grafted onto earlier texts or replaced portions of the original stories.”

— Gary Greenberg (2000), 101 Myths of the Bible (pg. 7)