In a mystery religion, an inner core of beliefs, practices, and the religion's true nature, . This article covers relationship between Neoplatonism And Christianity.. Neoplatonism was a major influence on Christian theology throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the West. See A Study of Mithraism, 13 September23 November 1949, pp. Christianity emerged and grew at a time when mystery religions were popular throughout the Roman Empire. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. 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 in his Christian Mysticism, p. 354, says that Catholicism owes to the Mysteries " the notions of secrecy, of As is commonly known Isis had two capacities which her worshippers warmly commended her for. Bottom line: They believe that the early Church borrowed heavily from pagan deities already in existence at the time of Jesus. I do not deny that there are some similarities. Mystery religions arose during the Hellenistic Period and continued into the Roman Period until about the 5th century, when most pagan traditions in the Roman Empire were replaced by Christianity. Esoteric Christianity. But with the coming of spring the life of nature revived again, for the sorrowing mother had received her daughter back with rejoicing. 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. 2, 3.\33 Tarsus, the home of Saint Paul, was one of the great centres of his worship; and there is a decided tinge of Mithraism in the Epistles and Gospels. 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. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. It is this fact that immediately brings to mind the words in the Epistle to the Hebrews: But Christ being come an High Priest neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood obtained eternal redemption for us.\[Footnote:] Heb. The cult of Isis became a mystery religion only after Ptolemy the . Only remnants of the mystery doctrines, amalgamated with Platonism, were transmitted by a few philosophers and individualists to the religious thinkers of the Byzantine Empire. In the large Gnostic library discovered at Najammd, in upper Egypt, in 1945, Hermetic writings were found sideby-side with Christian Gnostic texts. In winter vegetable life was dead while Demeter, the giver of life, grieved for the loss of her daughter. The books that the mystery communities used in Roman times cannot possibly be compared to the New Testament. Meanwhile the coffin was washed up on the Syrian coast, and became miraculously lodged in the trunk of a tree. The words of St. Paul, They drank of that spiritual rock and that rock was Christ are borrowed from the Mithraic scriptures., 36. 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. The three actors of the Eleusinian tragedy, enacted the mystery of human life and death. And today similar experiences are represented by Greek Christians. It is evident that in Rome there was a festival celebrating the death and resurrection of Attis. However when we come to the idea of Jesus decent into hell it seems that we have a direct borrow from the Adonis religion, and in fact from other religions also. Christianity, in its earliest days, shared a good deal in common with the many "mystery religions" which became popular in the Roman Empire. They prepared the people mentally and emotionally to understand the type of religion which Christianity represented. He hears all and sees all: none can deceive him.\[Footnote:] Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, pp. 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 . Here are seven of the most influential Greco-Roman Mysteries and some of what little we know about them. Various writers gave different Versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. And today the Greeks mourn over the dead Christ, represented most realistically by a wax image borne through the streets on a bier; then at midnight before Easter Sunday the Metropolitan at Athens, the priest in smaller towns, comes out of the church announcing that Christ is risen; the light from his candle is passed to the candles of his companions and on to candles throughout the crowd, guns and firecrackers are discharged, and as they prepare to break their Lenten fast the multitude drop all restraint in the expression of wild joy., 30. King wrote this paper for the course Development of Christian Ideas, taught by Davis. This disregard for correct doctrine is a key difference between mystery religions and Christianity. Yet they all died out within a couple of centuries of the Christian era, Gnosticism (apart from a few vestigial groups in the Near East and Europe) subsuming their heritage last. The doctrinal similarity is exemplified in the case of the pagan writer and philosopher Synesius. They covered an enormous range, and manifested a great diversity in character and outlook, from Orphism to Gnosticism, from the orgies of the Cabira to the fervours of the Hermetic contemplative.\[Footnote:] Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity, p. vii.\2 However it is to be noticed that these Mysteries possessed many fundamental likenesses; (1) All held that the initiate shared in symbolic (sacramental) fashion the experiences of the god. (4) The rebirth of converts was a fundamental idea in the two cults. 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. Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1910), pp. He thinks that there were four sets of ideas which the Jews brought with them to Alexandria: 1) the idea of a divine child, born by a virgin, raised in the manner of a son of god, who was also to bring in the new age; He emerges from the rocky summits of eastern mountains at dawn, and goes through heaven with a team of four white horses; when the night falls he still illumines the surface of the earth, ever walking, ever watchful. He is not sun or moon or any star, but a spirit of light, ever wakeful, watching with a hundred eyes. The preceding three paragraphs are similar to a passage in Kings earlier paper, A Study of Mithraism, p. 211 in this volume. ISBN-13 : 978-0486231242. There seems little doubt that this custom was identical with the Egyptian festival. However, in the conclusion I will attempt to give those fundamental aspects, characteristic of all the cults, that greatly influenced Christianity. It is stated with sufficient elaboration in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. 116117: With [the Great Mother] was associated a hero-divinity called Attis who personified the life of the vegetable world particularly. Around these two divinities, the Great Mother and the god of vegetation, there grew up a confused tangle of myths in explanation of their cult rites. cit., p. 119.\19, In the records of both Herodotus and Plutarch we find that there was a festival held each year in Egypt celebrating the resurrection of Osiris. It is not so much that Christianity was influenced by the Mystery Cults, or borrowed from them, but that in the long process of history this religion developed. It can be shown that the very earliest practices of Christianity coincided with popular mystery cults on many levels. Never stop with the external, which may seem like borrowing, but recognize there is the perennial struggle for truth, fuller life itself. The statue of the Good Shepherd carrying his lost sheep and the pastoral themes on Christian sarcophagi were also taken over from pagan craftsmanship. (2) December 25 came to be considered as the anniversary of the birth of Mithra and Christ also. Dr Arnold's researchers have reaffirmed the earlier conclusions of Martin Dibelius and Sir William Ramsay that the key term embateuo in the phrase 'entering the things he had seen' (2:18) was a technical term for the second stage of a mystery initiation, in which a person was led through a series of . Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 145: The Hebrew Sabbath having been abolished by Christians, the Church made a sacred day of Sunday, partly because it was the day of the resurrection, but largely because it was the weekly festival of the sun; for it was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and to give them a Christian significance. There is no archaeological evidence that mystery religions were in Palestine in the first century A.D. Jews and early Christians loathed syncretism with other religions. At the same time, the . These two great Egyptian deities, whose worship passed into Europe, were revered not only in Rome but in many other centers where Christian communities were growing up. "Concerning the relationship between the mystery cults and Christianity, scholarly opinion has varied. 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. A query from Stephanie on the Ethical Witches list in Austin turned up this paper by Rev. : Putnam, 1928), p. 121: Attis was the Good Shepherd, the son of Cybele, the Great Mother, or, alternatively, of the Virgin Nana, who conceived him without union with mortal man, as in the story of the Virgin Mary., 12. People were free to move from one country to another and became cosmopolitan. Forces have been known to delay trends but very few have stopped them. CULT OF CYBELE. Art redeems. Is Christianity the crowning achievement in the development of religious thought or will there be another religion more advanced? The theology of the mysteries was developed to a far lesser degree than the Christian theology. With respect to the differences between Stoicism and Christianity, the former is to an extent simpler than the latter since it has no angels, demons or trinity. The date of Christmas was purposely fixed on December 25 to push into the background the great festival of the sun god, and Epiphany on January 6 to supplant an Egyptian festival of the same day. Scholars wrongly infused Christian terms into the mystery religion. 1. Answer (1 of 7): Over the years, Christianity has often been compared to the mystery religions of ancient Greece and Rome, both by Christians wishing to emphasize the esoteric nature of their religion and by opponents of Christianity who claim that the resemblance between Christianity and mystery. During the rise of Christianity in the first century A.D. also were the widespread cults throughout each Mediterranean region known as the mystery religions. The ideas of Greek philosophy penetrated everywhere in this society. It was believed that this god suffered a cruel death, after which he descended into hell, rose again, and then ascended into Heaven. (5) The struggle with evil and the eventual triumph of good were essential ideas in both religions.37 (6) In summary we may say that the belief in immortality, a mediator between god and man, the observance of certain sacramental rites, the rebirth of converts, and (in most cases) the support of high ethical ideas were common to Mithraism as well as Christianity. 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. The coffin, meanwhile, was washed up on the Syrian coast, and became miraculously lodged in the trunk of a tree, This tree afterwards chanced to be cut down and made into a pillar in the palace at Byblos, and there Isis at length found it. Afterwards, however, he returned to the other world to reign for ever as King of the Dead; and meanwhile Horus, having grown to manhood, reigned on Earth, later becoming the third person of this great Egyptian trinity., 20. The existence of this atmosphere was vitally important in the development and eventual triumph of Christianity. Spring, the time when all plants come back to life, indicates the return of plenty when the goddess maintains all life until autumn when her daughter returns to Hades and the earth becomes once more desolated.\[Footnote:] Willoughby, op. They originated in tribal ceremonies that were performed by primitive peoples in many parts of the world. or 404 526-8968. Payam Nabarz reveals the history and tenets of Mithraism, its connections to Christianity, Islam, and Freemasonry, and the modern neo-pagan practice of . The religions that Rome had the most problems with were monotheisticJudaism and Christianity. The Christian churches needed large interior spaces to house the growing congregations and to mark the clear separation of the faithful from the unfaithful. cit., p. 257.\ Other Egyptian records speak of another feast in honour of all the dead, when such lamps were lit, which was held about November 8th.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 258.\20, It is interesting to note that the Christian feast of all Souls, in honor of the dead, likewise falls at the beginning of November; and in many countries lamps and candles are burned all night on that occassion. by Bart D. Ehrman. As the religious history of the empire is studied more closely, writes Cumont, the triumph of the church will, in our opinion, appear more and more as the culmination of a long evolution of beliefs. Now it seems that the general belief of the early church that Jesus was born in a cave grows directly out of Mithraic ideas. 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