There are far more convincing cases for a pagan belief in a physical resurrection. Take Castor and Pollux (or Polydeuces). These two brothers, called the Dioscuri, won a special deal from the gods: though both had died, only one of them had to actually sit in Hades, while the other got to live again on earth, and they exchanged places either every six months or every other day. Massively popular as savior deities and protectors, often “seen” physically appearing and acting in battles and other crises, there is no way anyone, especially anyone who spoke much less wrote Greek, would not have heard of these gods and their myth. This is an indisputable case of an idea of physical resurrection on Earth, and one that was ubiquitous in the time of Christ. This is all the more important a parallel since there are signs that Mark deliberately employed the Dioscuri typology in his Gospel (Dennis McDonald devotes a whole chapter to this in his book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, 2000). Yes, differences remain, but its the similarities that matter.

In another respect there is the story of Inanna, which included not only a clearly genuine belief in her return to earth after death (and subsequent rule over Sumeria), but her manner of death was identical to that of Jesus: she was crucified. This myth cycle, though very ancient, was the direct ancestor to several forms of goddess worship extant in the time of Jesus. In still another respect there is the story of Zalmoxis in Herodotus, another clear case of belief in physical resurrection (the Greek euhemerization of the Thracian religion he describes would not make any plausible sense otherwise). And there are many more parallels, showing a wide diversity of views about resurrection arising in the very century that Christianity began. This cannot be mere coincidence. It is clear that ancient peoples were experimenting with many different concepts of resurrection, and the idea was becoming popular, at the very time that one of these experiments, Christianity, arose.

This does not entail that Jesus’ resurrection was false. But it does support any argument to that effect. There is as far as I have seen nothing significant about Christianity that was novel: everything of importance had precedents in other religions, pagan or Jewish, and can easily be explained as a syncretic combining of numerous different ideas into one. The combination was certainly novel and unique, as every religion is, but not inexplicable. It may still be genuine divine truth despite all this (and Christian apologists of the 2nd century and later blamed pagan parallels like these on the Devil), but such a case is still weakened when there are plausible human causes like this. This at least deserves acknowledging, no matter what you conclude in the end.