this story was reported 400 years before Jesus..

[wvit1001]

Herodotus asserts that Zalmoxis was a slave who, after being liberated went back to his homeland in Thrace. He built a banquet hall, and received the chiefs and his fellow countrymen at a banquet. He taught that neither his guests nor their descendants would ever die, but instead would go to a place where they would live forever in a complete happiness. When it was finished, he disappeared from Thrace, living for three years in his underground residence. The Thracians missed him and wept fearing him dead. The fourth year, he came back among them and thus they believed what Zalmoxis had told them.