Now when Christianity triumphed we find that these same paintings and figures became those of the Madonna and child with little or no difference.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 123\ In fact archaeologists are often left in confusion in attempting to distinguish the one from the other.22, It is also interesting to note that in the second century a story began to spread stating that Mary had been miraculously carried to Heaven by Jesus and His angels.\[Footnote:] The spreading of this story has been attributed to Melito, Bishop of Sardis.\ In the sixth century a festival came to be celebrated around this event known as the festival of Assumption, and it is now one of the greatest feasts of Roman Catholicism. cit., p. 42.\27, The myth is also an example of poignant human experience, reflecting the joys, sorrows, and hopes of mankind in the face of death. In 391, however, the Serapeum at Alexandria was demolished, and in 394 the opposition of the Roman aristocracy was crushed in battle at the Frigidus River (now called the Vipacco River in Italy and the Vipava in Slovenia). (2) December 25 came to be considered as the anniversary of the birth of Mithra and Christ also. See A Study of Mithraism, 13 September23 November 1949, pp. The mysteries of human life and death are vividly enacted by Demeter, Persephone, and Hades. Initiation into a mystery religion. Extremely popular among Roman soldiers, it became one of the ancient Roman mystery cults, religious sects which were restricted to initiates and were generally quite secretive.Mithras, as he was known to the Romans, was the Persian god of the sun, or at least the airy light between . The Roman aristocrats multiplied their efforts to maintain the piety of the mysteries, and the pagan philosophers tried to refine their theology by oversubtle interpretations. Various writers gave different Versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. Esoteric Christianity (linked with the Hermetic Corpus since the Renaissance) is an ensemble of Christian theology which proposes that some spiritual doctrines of Christianity can only be understood by those who have undergone certain rites (such as baptism) within the religion.In mainstream Christianity, there is a similar idea that faith is the only means by which a . Thus the designations of our Lord as the Dayspring from on High, the Light, the Sun of Righteousness, and similar expressions, are borrowed from or related to Mithraic phraseology., 35. 1. The words of St. Paul, They drank of that spiritual rock and that rock was Christ are borrowed from the Mithraic scriptures., 36. Never stop with the external, which may seem like borrowing, but recognize there is the perennial struggle for truth, fuller life itself. 126127: But the Christian feast of All Souls, in honour of the dead, likewise falls at the beginning of November; and in many countries lamps and candles are burnt all night on that occasion. there seems little doubt that this custom was identical with the Egyptian festival. the festival of All Saints, which is held one day before that of All Souls and which was first recognised by the Church in a.d. 835, is undoubtedly identical with it in origin. At an early date there was associated with Cybele, the Great Mother, a hero-divinity called Attic who personified the life of the vegetable world particularly. In both cases, national religions of a ritualistic type were transformed, and the transformation followed similar lines: from national to ecumenical religion, from ritualistic ceremonies and taboos to spiritual doctrines set down in books, from the idea of inherited tradition to the idea of revelation. Thus, under identical conditions, new forms of religious communities sprang from similar roots. Others saw it as an out-growth from Jewish precedents. The baptismal ceremony in both cases (Christian and Pagan) was supposed to have the effect of identifying the initiate with his savior. "Concerning the relationship between the mystery cults and Christianity, scholarly opinion has varied. Through the summer the mother abundantly maintained the life of nature until autumn, when again her daughter returned to the underworld and earth became desolate once more., 28. Christianity acknowledges only one way to God (John 14:6) and places utmost importance on right doctrine (1 . However these specific differences need not concern us, for the most significant aspects are common in all the various versions.10 We are concerned at this point with showing how this religion influenced the thought of early Christians. Mithraism was brought to Europe from its Persian roots after Alexander the Great's conquests. The cult of Isis became a mystery religion only after Ptolemy the . Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 36: Among the cults of Greece none was more favorably known in the first century of the Christian era than the Eleusinian mysteries., 25. Now it seems that the general belief of the early church that Jesus was born in a cave grows directly out of Mithraic ideas. But, as a solar festival, Sunday was the sacred day of Mithra; and it is interesting to notice that since Mithra was addressed as Dominus, Lord, Sunday must have been the Lords Day long before Christian times. December 25th was the birthday of the sun-god, and particularly of Mithra, and was only taken over in the Fourth Century as the date, actually unknown, of the birth of Jesus.. 223224 in this volume. This was accomplished, not by any slavish process of imitation, but by {a} serious attempt to meet better the specific religious needs that the mysteries had awakened and nourished, and by phrasing religious assurances more convincingly in similar terminology.\[Footnote:] Case, The Mystery Religions, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Edited by Vergilius Ferm, pp. Such designations of our Lord as the Dayspring from on High, The Light, the Sun of Righteousness, and similar expressions seem to come directly from Mithraic influence.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. Loisy, Alfred. Each following {year} there was a great festival in commemoration of his resurrection, and the very words, The Lord is risen, were probable used. The conditions of that era made it possible for these religions to sweep like a tidal wave over the ancient world. The main characterization of this religion is the secrecy associated . 213214 in this volume. This universal law is expecially true of religion. Beliefs of the religion which are public knowledge but cannot be easily explained by normal rational or scientific means. I learned that as an artistic writer who did a doctorate in philosophy. The word "Catholic" means Universalthe true Christian goal is not religion based on mixture, but a return to the original, simple, powerful, and spiritual faith that was once delivered to the saints."-Ralph Woodrow; pg. cit., p. 110\15. 115116: Now one of the earliest seats of Christianity was Antioch; but in that city there was celebrated each year the death and resurrection of the god Tammuz or Adonis, This faith had always exerted its influence on Jewish thought, and, indeed, the prophet Ezekiel had found it necessary to scold the women of Jerusalem for weeping for the dead Tammuz at the very gate of the Temple; while, in the end, the place at Bethlehem selected by the early Christians as the scene of the birth of Jesus (for want to [sic] any knowledge as to where the event had really occurred) was none other than an early shrine of this pagan god, as St. Jerome was horrified to discovera fact which shows that Tammuz or Adonis ultimately became confused in mens minds with Jesus Christ., 16. It is because of this crusading spirit and its superb power of adaptability that Christianityahs {has} been able to survive. S. Angus, The Mystery-Religions and Christianity (London: John Murray, 1925)~ p. vii: "These Mysteries covered an enormous range, and manifested a great diversity in character and outlook, from Orphism to Gnosticism, from the orgies of the Cabiri to the fervours of the Hermetic Christianity certainly has many important features in common with Greco-Roman mystery religions, but there are some crucial differences between Christianity and mystery religions that really set Christianity apart. While Herodotus fails to give a date for this festival, Plutarch says that it lasted four days, giving the date as the seventeenth day of the Egyptian month Hathor, which, according to the Alexandrian claendar used by him, corresponded to November 13th.\[Footnote:] Frazer, op. The doctrine of the soul taught in Gnostic communities was almost identical to that taught in the mysteries: the soul emanated from the Father, fell into the body, and had to return to its former home. The people were conditioned by the contact with the older religions and the background and general trend of the time.39 Dr. Shirley Jackson Case has written some words that are quite apt at this point. 4. They were characterized by elaborate orgiastic rituals, secret knowledge, and an emphasis on a direct personal . During the first two or three decades of the twentieth century, it was thought that the mystery religions constituted a unity based on a common 'mystery theolgoy ,' and that Christianity was simply one of them, or at most, a distinct religion . The Apostles Creed and Athanasian Creed say that between the Friday night and the Sunday morning Jesus was in Hell or Hades; It has no scriptural foundation except in the ambiguous words of the First Epistle of Peter; it did not appear in the Church as a tenet of Christianity until late in the Fourth Century., 19. The books that the mystery communities used in Roman times cannot possibly be compared to the New Testament. Frickel, J. Hellenistische Erl sung in christlicher Deutung. King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Crozer Theological Seminary). Willoughby quoted from Apollonius Argonautica 1.1098 ff. This does not mean that there was a deliberate copying on the part of Christianity. Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 42: The experiential basis for this story is quite clear. Hades, the god of death, stole the beloved daughter, Persephone, from Demeter, the life giver, who refused to admit defeat until she secured her daughters resurrection. In the Avesta,\[Footnote:] This is the sacred book of the religion of Iran.\ Mithra is represented as the genius of celestial light. He hears all and sees all: none can deceive him.\[Footnote:] Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, pp. Joining a mystery religion was a personal decision and was not connected to what family or culture one belonged to. (4) All promised a happy future life for the faithful.\[Footnote:] Enslin, Christian Beginnings, pp. Mythicists confidently assert, "Christianity is nothing more than a patchwork quilt of ancient pagan and mystery religions.". Early Christian writers, aware of the similarity between Christianity and mystery-cult, claim that the latter is a diabolical imitation of the former" (Dionysus, Richard Seaford, 126.) King wrote this paper for the course Development of Christian Ideas, taught by Davis. Various writers, pagan and Christian, gave different versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. The specific variations in all these diverse statements do not concern us, for certain significant elements were common to all the various versions., 11. Selected Answer : True Masonry Encompasses All Elements of a Religion of Naturalism. Hardcover, 335 pages. Christianity was truly indebted to the mystery religions for this contribution, for they had done this part of the groundwork and thus opened the way for Christian missionary work. 9. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Neoplatonism resonated with the mystery religions because of its idea of (p. 236), The Stoic idea of logos expresses that the world is governed by (p. 235), The Gospels, which presented Christianity as a distinct religion, were written (p. 232) and more. "The correspondences between Christianity and the other mystery religions of antiquity are perhaps more startling than the differences. Some writers traced its origin to Egypt while others upheld Eleusis in Greece as the place of its birth. cit., p. 121.\ This still stands as a festival in the Christian calendar; and thus Christians unconsciously perpetuate the worship of Osiris in modern times.21, However this is not the only point at which the Religion of Osiris and Isis exerted influence on Christianity. It is inevitable when a new religion comes to exist side by side with a group of religions, from which it is continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst with the practices of their original religions impressed upon their minds, that this new religion should tend to assimilate with the assimilation of their members, some of the elements of these existing religions. The parallel development was fostered by the new conditions prevailing in the Roman Empire, in which the old political units were dissolved, and the whole civilized world was ruled by one monarch. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. Esoteric Christianity. Men began to die for the lack of food while the sacrifices to the gods decreased in number because the animals were dying out. Mystery religions were seen as more vibrant than the more . The god of death himself stole the beloved daughter away from the life-giver; but the divine mother would not give up her loved one, and in the end she accomplished her daughters resurrection. Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). To show the beginning of a new era, the capital of the empire was transferred to the new Christian city of Constantinople. But in true Christianity, there is only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and while they're 3 . Christianity triumphed over these mystery religions after long conflict. 39. familiar with a type of religion known as Mystery-Religions which changed the religious outlook of the Western world, and which are operative in European civilization and in the Christian Church to this day. It is very common to find claims that Christianity was a mystery religion, similar to the worship of Dionysus, Isis, Orpheus, etc. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. Art redeems. The basic Christian objection to Freemasonry is that the Craft constitutes a religious sect in opposition to the revealed truths of the Gospel. During her short stay at the temple of Eleusis, the whole earth grew barren. Christianity, however, [strikeout illegible] survived because it appeared to be the result of a trend in the social order or in the historical cycle of the human race. The present study represents an attempt to provide a survey of the influence of the mystery religions on Christianity. Scholars wrongly infused Christian terms into the mystery religion. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. Mithraism became the most popular and influential of the many mystery religions 2 that existed in the Roman Empire at the time that Christianity began, and was the major It was a nature myth portraying a vivid and realistic picture of the action of life in the vegetable world in regards to the changing seasons. In the former capacity she was identified with the great mother-goddess, Demeter, whose mourning for Persephone was the main feature in the Eleusinian mysteries; In her aspect as the mother of Horus, Isis was represented in tens of thousands of statuettes and paintings, holding the divine child in her arms; and when Christianity triumphed these paintings and figures became those of the Madonna and Child without any break in continuity: no archaeologist, in fact, can now tell whether some of these objects represent the one or the other., 23. 3. Cybele, or Magna Mater, came to Greece around the 5th century BCE from . Here we see how Mary gradually came to take the place of the goddess.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. The earlier Greek mystery religions were state religions in the sense that they attained the status of a public or civil cult and served a national or public function. The pagan cults and rites, for example, those of Eleusis, Attis, Osiris, Cybele, and Mithra (see mystery religions, greco-oriental). Mystery religions were seen as more vibrant than the more stale state religions. We can understand the Christianity of the fifth century with its greatness and weaknesses, its spiritual exaltation and its puerile superstitions, if we know the moral antecedents of the world in which it developed.. On the whole, early Christians were not greatly concerned about the likenesses between the Mithraic cult and their own. Was Christianity Originally a Mystery Religion? The central theme of the myth was the triumph of Attis over death, and the participant in the rites of the cult undoubtedly believed that his attachment to the victorious deity would insure a similar triumph in his life. Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 41: In order to understand the type of religious experience represented by this important cult, it is necessary clearly to keep in mind the main points of the Eleusinian myth which was developed to explain and justify the cult rites. In the end, virtually all the unique teachings of New Testament theology, including the distinctive doctrines on Jesus Christ, God, man, sin, salvation, and so on, are . The latter method is apt to neglect the distinctive contribution of each cult to the religious life of the age and, at the same time, to attribute to a given cult phases of some other system. Christianity's recently launched He Gets US campaignmillions of people got a dose during the Superbowltells us two things: 1. He too had found the road to heaven by his suffering and resurrection. The ideas of Greek philosophy penetrated everywhere in this society. 3. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 Mystery religions, as a rule, can be traced back to tribal origins, Christianity to a historical person. #1,225 in History of Christianity (Books) or 404 526-8968. The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean fire rites was similar to Christian standards. We should try to see the dark comedy in all things. That is essential. The origin of this cult is obscure and uncertain. The mysteries declined quickly when the emperor Constantine raised Christianity to the status of the state religion. Esotericism has more in common with Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Rosicrucianism than genuine biblical Christianity. Hydria by the Varrese Painter (c. 340 BC) depicting Eleusinian scenes. 129130: There were two aspects of Isis which commended themselves particularly to her worshippers: firstly, that of the lady of sorrows, weeping for the dead Osiris, and, secondly, that of the divine mother, nursing her infant son, Horus. The Influence Of The Cult Of Cybele and Attis, The first Oriental religion to invade the west was the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods. King repeats material from an earlier paper, A Study of Mithraism, but he extends the discussion here to the influence of other mystery religions.1 Davis gave the essay an A, stating: This is very good and I am glad to have your conclusion. The simultaneousness of the propagation of the mystery religions and of Christianity and the striking similarities between them, however, demand some explanation of their relationship. The Greeks interpreted the national religions of the Greek Orient chiefly in terms of Platos philosophical and religious concepts. The doctrine is almost identical. They were called mystery religions because individuals went through a secret ritualistic ceremony that was made known only to the initiates conducting the ceremony and to those being . 23: In the Avesta, Mithra is the genius of the celestial light. CHRISTIANITY AND THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS SHIRLEY JACKSON CASE, PH.D. There are no parallels in Christianity to the sexual rites in the Dionysiac and Isiac religion, with the exception of a few aberrant Gnostic communities. Firstly, she was pictured as the lady of sorrows, weeping for the dead Osiris, and secondly she was commended as the divine mother, nursing her infant son, Horus. Forces have been known to delay trends but very few have stopped them. Here was human experience made heroic and divine; for man has ever loved and lost, but rarely has he ceased to hope for reunion with the loved one. He appears before sunrise on the rocky summits of the mountains; during the day he traverses the wide firmament in his chariot drawn by four white horses, and when night falls he still illumines with flickering glow the surface of the earth, ever waking, ever watchful. He is neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, but with his hundred ears and his hundred eyes watches constantly the world. The Christian churches needed large interior spaces to house the growing congregations and to mark the clear separation of the faithful from the unfaithful. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. The religious art of the Christians continued the pagan art of the preceding generations. The preceding three paragraphs are similar to a passage in Kings earlier paper, A Study of Mithraism, p. 211 in this volume. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. It's one of the things that made Christianity quite distinct in the ancient world. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. 2d ed. Reprinted as The Mystery-Religions: A Study in the Religious Background of Early Christianity (New York, 1975). As is commonly known Antioch was one of the earliest seats of Christianity. Bottom line: They believe that the early Church borrowed heavily from pagan deities already in existence at the time of Jesus. The mystery religion was very narrow in scope, only involving select groups of people therefore not gaining support from the masses.Some people believe that Christianity and Judaism have many parallels to the mystery cults in terms of terminology (salvation, resurrection, eternal life) and in the particulars of the performance of initiation and ritual. The doctrinal similarity is exemplified in the case of the pagan writer and philosopher Synesius. On the contrary, whatever real life it had was perpetuated in Christianity, since the conquering religion had adopted many of its forms and some of the old content in these forms., 31. All of Lent's penitential practices and acts of spiritual renewal find their meaning in the journey of self-emptying and self-giving love that Jesus undertakes in his death and resurrection. But although baptism did not originate with the Christians, still it was not copied from the pagans. #516 in History of Religions. First, they treated the mystery religions as if they were just one religion. He says: Following the lead of the apostle Paul, the Christian missionaries on gentile soil finally made of Christianity a more appealing religion than any of the other mystery cults. For this story is quite clear the dark comedy in all things secrecy associated a new era, capital! And the mystery cults and Christianity, scholarly opinion has varied personal decision and was not from. 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