211225 in this volume. 23: In the Avesta, Mithra is the genius of the celestial light. In the Christian congregations of the first two centuries, the variety of rites and creeds was almost as great as in the mystery communities; few of the early Christian congregations could have been called orthodox according to later standards. Each year nature passed through the cycle of apparent death and resurrection. The hypothesis of a mutual dependence has been proposed by scholarsespecially a dependence of Christianity upon the mysteriesbut such theories have been discarded. The present study represents an attempt to provide a survey of the influence of the mystery religions on Christianity. Esoteric Christianity. This celebration was held annually from March 22nd to 25th.\[Footnote:] Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 166.\ The influence of this religion on Christianity is shown by the fact that in Phrygia, Gaul, Italy, and other countries where Attis-worship was powerful, the Christians adapted the actual date, March 25th, as the anniversary of our Lords passion.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 199\12, Again we may notice that at this same Attis festival on March 22nd, an effigy of the god was fastened to the trunk of a pine tree, Attis thus being slain and hanged on a tree. This effigy was later buried in a tomb. 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.. The doctrine is almost identical. In fact, the comparison became so evident that many believed the Christian movement itself became a mystery cult. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. First published in the 1920s, this work is still the standard on the various mystery religions so popular in Greece and Rome before the establishment of Christianity. 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. As is commonly known Antioch was one of the earliest seats of Christianity. This makes it sound as if they were unified, sharing common beliefs that . The essay examines how Christianity developed as a distinct religion with a set of central tenets and how it was influenced by those pagan religions it assimilated. The preceding two sentences are similar to a passage in A Study of Mithraism, p. 211 in this volume. Although the mystery religions did move towards advancing a solar god above all the others, this change began after 100 A.D., too late to impact the theology of the New Testament. Harold R. Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929), p. 114: Of these Oriental mystery religions the first to invade the west was the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods, The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature., 8. The answer is "yes" - and also "no". 6. On the contrary it was generally a natural and unconscious process rather than a deliberate plan of action. 118119: But there is one feature of the Gospel story which seems really to have been borrowed from the Adonis religion, and, in fact, from other pagan religions also, namely, the descent into Hell. 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 first Christian communities resembled the mystery communities in big cities and seaports by providing social security and the feeling of brotherhood. Greco-Roman mysteries. 136137: Tarsus, the home of St. Paul, was one of the great centres of his worship, being the chief city of the Cilicians; and, as will presently appear, there is a decided tinge of Mithraism in the Epistles and Gospels. A query from Stephanie on the Ethical Witches list turned up this paper by Rev. 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. 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. 1. Some writers traced its origin to Egypt while others upheld Eleusis in Greece as the place of its birth. This triumph may be attributed in part to the fact that Christianity took from its opponents their own weapons, and used them: the better elements of the mystery religions were transferred to the new religion. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. Mystery religions were seen as more vibrant than the more . Paperback : 384 pages. cit., p. 129.\34, Again tradition has it that Mithra was born from a rock, the god out of the rock. It must also be noticed that his worship was always conducted in a cave. That is, with this study you have made, we see the philosophy both of Religion and History. The New Testament gives evidence of at least four styles of Christian worship: temple worship (Acts 2:46), synagogue worship (Acts 16:13, 16), a fellowship meal concluded by the Lord's Supper (1 . It is not at all surprising in view of the wide and growing influence of these religions that when the disciples in Antioch and elsewhere preached a crucified and risen Jesus they should be regarded as the heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus himself should be taken for the divine Lord of the cult through whose death and resurrection salvation was to be had.3 That there were striking similarities between the developing church and these religions cannot be denied. They were characterized by elaborate orgiastic rituals, secret knowledge, and an emphasis on a direct personal . 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. We should try to see the dark comedy in all things. Hardcover, 335 pages. It lies in the fact that the mystery religions paved the way for the presentation of . 2d ed. The centres of pagan resistance were Rome, where the old aristocracy clung to the mysteries, and Alexandria, where the pagan Neoplatonist philosophers expounded the mystery doctrines. 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 . It was a nature myth, a vivid depiction of the action of life in the vegetable world with the changing of the seasons. On March 24th, known as the Day of Blood, the High Priest, impersonating Attic, drew blood from him arm and offered it up in place of the blood of a human sacrifice, thus, as it were, sacrificing himself. 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. (2) All had secret rites for the initiated. A mystery religion is any religion with an arcanum, or body of secret wisdom. Art redeems. 7. It had to do with the nature of the Christian religion . 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. The pagan cults and rites, for example, those of Eleusis, Attis, Osiris, Cybele, and Mithra (see mystery religions, greco-oriental). In the Avesta,\[Footnote:] This is the sacred book of the religion of Iran.\ Mithra is represented as the genius of celestial light. heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus 2. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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. The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean fire rites was similar to Christian standards. After telling a fictitious tale of her escape from pirates, she won the sympathy of the girls who took her home and at her own request was given a job to nurse their infant brother, Demophon. 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. 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 Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 42: The experiential basis for this story is quite clear. These are stated with sufficient elaboration in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, According to the story, Persephone, was stolen by Pluto and carried off to the underworld to be his bride. The mother, frenzied with grief, rushed about the earth for nine days., 26. 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 . 39. Hydria by the Varrese Painter (c. 340 BC) depicting Eleusinian scenes. Greek life was characterized by such things as democratic institutions, seafaring, gymnasium and athletic games, theatre, and philosophy. Jesus was the divine Lord. . Even Christian apologist had to admit that fact. These many religions, known as Mystery-Religions, were not alike in every respect: to draw this conclusion would lead to a gratuitous and erroneous supposition. 187, 188.\. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 How do we determine conjectured information? 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. 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 contemplative.. 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.. First published June 1, 1975. The words of St. Paul, They drank of that spiritual rock and that rock was Christ are borrowed from the Mithraic scriptures., 36. 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. It should also be noted that early Christianity was an exclusivistic religion while the mystery cults were not. Cybele, or Magna Mater, came to Greece around the 5th century BCE from . 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. Initiation into a mystery religion. ISBN-10 : 0486231240. 124125: The popular and widespread religion of Osiris and Isis exercised considerable influence upon early Christianity, for these two great Egyptian deities, whose worship had passed into Europe, were revered in Rome and in several other centres where Christian communities were growing up. The Eleusinian myth told of these fundamental human experiences as well as of the life of nature., 29. Various writers gave different Versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 123: There can be no doubt that these ceremonies and beliefs deeply coloured the interpretation placed by the first Christians upon the historic facts of the Crucifixion, burial, and coming again to life of Jesus., 15. The religions that Rome had the most problems with were monotheisticJudaism and Christianity. There seems little doubt that this custom was identical with the Egyptian festival. The holy stories of the mysteries were myths; the Gospels of the New Testament, however, relate historical events. The Christians took over the entire terminology; but many pagan words were strangely twisted in order to fit into the Christian world: the service of the state (leitourgia) became the ritual, or liturgy, of the church; the decree of the assembly and the opinions of the philosophers (dogma) became the fixed doctrine of Christianity; the correct opinion (orth doxa) about things became orthodoxy. For an instance, the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist have been mentioned as rites, which were preactice {practiced} by both Christians and pagans. In fact the idea did not appear in the church as a tenet of Christianity until late in the Fourth Century.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. Meanwhile the coffin was washed up on the Syrian coast, and became miraculously lodged in the trunk of a tree. Fairbanks, Greek Religion, p. 293: This religion was not blotted out by Christianity. The similarity of the religious vocabulary is also great. Mithraism was brought to Europe from its Persian roots after Alexander the Great's conquests. Therefore it is necessary to study the historical and social factors that contributed to the growth of Christianity. It can be shown that the very earliest practices of Christianity coincided with popular mystery cults on many levels. 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. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. 5. 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 . Mystery Religion-Basic Traits. Forces have been known to delay trends but very few have stopped them. 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. People were free to move from one country to another and became cosmopolitan. It, Christianity, is the expression of the longing of people for light, truth, salvation, security. 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 . In the first century of the Christian era the Eleusinian mystery cult was more favorable known than any of the cults of Greece.24 Its fame and popularity was largely due to the connexion of Eleusis with Athens. The Greco-Roman world in which the early church developed was one of diverse religions. So we might say that Eleusinianism was not blotted out by Christianity. Thus, the religions had a common conceptual framework. On the whole, early Christians were not greatly concerned about the likenesses between the Mithraic cult and their own. MLKP, MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass. 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 article discusses mystery religions and how they influenced the New Testament and early Christianity. In order to understand the type of religious experience represented by this important cult, we must turn to the myth of the rape of Demeters daughter by Pluto. The mystery religions were syncretistic, which means followers could incorporate beliefs from other religions into their own set of views. 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. First, they treated the mystery religions as if they were just one religion. After recovering Osiris dismembered body, Isis restored him to life and installed him as King in the nether world; meanwhile Horus, having grown to manhood, reigned on earth, later becoming the third person of this great Egyptian trinity.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. Osiris and Isis, so runs the legend, were brother and sister and also husband and wife; but Osiris was murdered, his coffined body being thrown into the Nile, and shortly afterwards the widowed and exiled Isis gave birth to a son, Horus. Around these two divinities there grew up a confused tangle of myths in explanation of their cult rites. It is because of this crusading spirit and its superb power of adaptability that Christianityahs {has} been able to survive. In speaking of the indispensability of knowledge of these cults as requisite for any serious study of Christianity, Dr. Angus says: As an important background to early Christianity and as the chief medium of sacramentarianism to the West they cannot be neglected; for to fail to recognize the moral and spiritual values of Hellenistic-Oriental paganism is to misunderstand the early Christian centuries and to do injustice to the victory of Christianity. In the latter capacity Isis was represented in tens of thousands of statuettes and paintings, holding the divine child in her arms. 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. March 24th was the Day of Blood, whereon the High Priest, who himself impersonated Attis, drew blood from his arm and offered it up in place of the blood of a human sacrifice, thus, as it were, sacrificing himself, a fact which recalls to mind the words in the Epistle to the Hebrews: Christ being come an High Priest neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood obtained eternal redemption for us. That night the priests went to the tomb and found it illuminated from within, and it was then discovered to be empty, the god having risen on the third day from the dead; and on the 25th the resurrection was celebrated with great rejoicings, a sacramental meal of some kind being taken, and initiates being baptised with blood, whereby their sins were washed away and they were said to be born again., 14. Such things as democratic institutions, seafaring, gymnasium and athletic games theatre! 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