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Paganized Christianity?: The "Mystery" Was Already Solved
Springing up all over the internet today are numerous posts, articles, and video criticisms of Christianity falsely asserting that early Christianity and the New Testament borrowed important beliefs and practices from a number of pagan mystery religions.
What is troubling is the way these fringe groups string together false assertions as factual with no regard for the wealth of historical evidence refuting their claims nor the multitude of scholarly debates held on this subject that led to a modern mainstream consensus that these assertions are, in fact, patently false.
In their reckless presentations, we see fringe groups putting forth a systematic assortment of false assertions in a very unscholarly attempt to weaken the message of Christianity in an attempt to further their own agendas and preferred worldviews.
Starting in the first half of the twentieth century, fringe scholars began trying to allege parallels uncritically describing pagan beliefs and practices in Christian language and then marveling at the striking parallels they thought they had discovered.
Let's revisit the discussion. Ronald Nash in his article 'Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan religions' states:
"Other than Judaism and Christianity, the mystery religions were the most influential religions in the early centuries after Christ. The reason these cults were called "mystery religions" is that they involved secret ceremonies known only to those initiated into the cult. The major benefit of these practices was thought to be some kind of salvation.
The mystery religions were not, of course, the only manifestations of the religious spirit in the eastern Roman Empire. One could also find public cults not requiring an initiation ceremony into secret beliefs and practices. The Greek Olympian religion and its Roman counterpart are examples of this type of religion.
Each Mediterranean region produced its own mystery religion. Out of Greece came the cults of Demeter and Dionysus, as well as the Eleusinian and Orphic mystery religions, which developed later. Asia Minor gave birth to the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, and her beloved, a shepherd named Attis. The cult of Isis and Osiris (later changed to Serapis) originated in Egypt, while Syria and Palestine saw the rise of the cult of Adonis. Finally, Persia (Iran) was a leading early locale for the cult of Mithras, which -- due to its frequent use of the imagery of war -- held a special appeal to Roman soldiers. 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 later non-Greek mysteries were personal, private, and individualistic."
Nash notes that one must avoid any suggestion that there was one common mystery religion and though there was a tendency toward synthesis after A.D. 300, each of the mystery cults was a separate and distinct religion during the century that saw the birth of the Christian church assuming different forms in different cultural settings with significant changes. Nevertheless, Nash notes the mystery religions exhibited five common traits:
(1) Central to each mystery was its use of an annual vegetation cycle in which life is renewed each spring and dies each fall. Followers of the mystery cults found deep symbolic significance in the natural processes of growth, death, decay, and rebirth.
(2) As noted above, each cult made important use of secret ceremonies or mysteries, often in connection with an initiation rite. Each mystery religion also passed on a "secret" to the initiate that included information about the life of the cult's god or goddess and how humans might achieve unity with that deity. This "knowledge" was always a secret or esoteric knowledge, unattainable by any outside the circle of the cult.
(3) Each mystery also centered around a myth in which the deity either returned to life after death or else triumphed over his enemies. Implicit in the myth was the theme of redemption from everything earthly and temporal. The secret meaning of the cult and its accompanying myth was expressed in a "sacramental drama" that appealed largely to the feelings and emotions of the initiates. This religious ecstasy was supposed to lead them to think they were experiencing the beginning of a new life.
(4) The mysteries had little or no use for doctrine and correct belief. They were primarily concerned with the emotional life of their followers. The cults used many different means to affect the emotions and imaginations of initiates and hence bring about "union with the god": processions, fasting, a play, acts of purification, blazing lights, and esoteric liturgies. This lack of any emphasis on correct belief marked an important difference between the mysteries and Christianity. The Christian faith was exclusivistic in the sense that it recognized only one legitimate path to God and salvation, Jesus Christ. The mysteries were inclusivistic in the sense that nothing prevented a believer in one cult from following other mysteries.
(5) The immediate goal of the initiates was a mystical experience that led them to feel they had achieved union with their god. Beyond this quest for mystical union were two more ultimate goals: some kind of redemption or salvation, and immortality.
One mistake fringes scholars make is they use late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstructions of the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults. This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship. As Nash states:
"Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century."
Take the myth of Isis concerning Osiris, for example. In the most common version, Osiris is murdered by his brother and sank in a coffin in the Nile. Isis discovers the body and returns it to Egypt but her brother-in-law dismembers the body into fourteen pieces and scatters it abroad. Isis recovers each part.
Fringe types often simply are satisifed to say that Osiris came back to life even though this assertion claims far more than the myth allows. Some writers go even further and refer to the alleged "resurrection" of Osiris comparing it to Christ's resurrection. Seriously, the scholarship is that bad. Nash points out that:
"This biased and sloppy use of language suggests three misleading analogies between Osiris and Christ:
(1) A savior god dies
(2) Then experiences a resurrection accompanied by
(3) Water baptism."
He notes that the "alleged similarities, as well as the language used to describe them, turn out to be fabrications of the modern scholar and are not part of the original myth." Nash continues noting that:
"During its later mystery stage, the male deity of the Isis cult is no longer the dying Osiris but Serapis. Serapis is often portrayed as a sun god, and it is clear that he was not a dying god. Obviously then, neither could he be a rising god. Thus, it is worth remembering that the post-Ptolemaic mystery version of the Isis cult that was in circulation from about 300 B.C. through the early centuries of the Christian era had absolutely nothing that could resemble a dying and rising savior-god."
Poor scholarship, careless use of language, and fanciful fabrications are typical of pagan claims regarding Christianity whether it is Isis and Orisis, Cybele and Attis, the Taurobolium, Mithraism, etc...
Another trend in their writing is an attempt to first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and practices, and then marvel at the striking parallels they think they have discovered. As Nash observes:
"One can go a long way toward "proving" early Christian dependence on the mysteries by describing some mystery belief or practice in Christian terminology. J. Godwin does this in his book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, which describes the criobolium as a "blood baptism" in which the initiate is "washed in the blood of the lamb." While uninformed readers might be stunned by this remarkable similarity to Christianity (see Rev. 7:14), knowledgeable readers will see such a claim as the reflection of a strong, negative bias against Christianity.
Exaggerations and oversimplifications abound in this kind of literature. One encounters overblown claims about alleged likenesses between baptism and the Lord's Supper and similar "sacraments" in certain mystery cults. Attempts to find analogies between the resurrection of Christ and the alleged "resurrections" of the mystery deities involve massive amounts of oversimplification and inattention to detail."
Nash concludes by noting seven points that undermine liberal efforts to show that first-century Christianity borrowed essential beliefs and practices from the pagan mystery religions:
(1) Arguments offered to "prove" a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.
(2) Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of a "Last Supper" in Mithraism or a "baptism" in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word "savior" with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense.
(3) The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first century.
(4) Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions. All of our information about him makes it highly unlikely that he was in any sense influenced by pagan sources. He placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form of Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very sort of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have attributed to him, namely, letting their minds be captured by alien speculations (Col. 2:8).
(5) Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. Machen explains, the mystery cults were nonexclusive. "A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ....Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone." This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and its pagan competitors. Any hint of syncretism in the New Testament would have caused immediate controversy.
(6) Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually happened in history. The mysticism of the mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical. Their myths were dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real historical events, as Paul regarded Christ's death and resurrection to be. The Christian affirmation that the death and resurrection of Christ happened to a historical person at a particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in any pagan mystery religion.
(7) What few parallels may still remain may reflect a Christian influence on the pagan systems. As Bruce Metzger has argued, "It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction." It should not be surprising that leaders of cults that were being successfully challenged by Christianity should do something to counter the challenge. What better way to do this than by offering a pagan substitute? Pagan attempts to counter the growing influence of Christianity by imitating it are clearly apparent in measures instituted by Julian the Apostate, who was the Roman emperor from A.D. 361 to 363.
Liberal efforts to undermine the uniqueness of the Christian revelation via claims of a pagan religious influence collapse quickly once a full account of the information is available. It is clear that the liberal arguments exhibit astoundingly bad scholarship.
Nash notes that, this conclusion may be too generous, and according to one writer simply represent "prejudiced irresponsibility."
Though mainstream scholars have discounted this "prejudiced irresponsibility," a small but growing body of unscholarly fringe groups continue trying to re-ignite the debate because attacking Christianity, even falsely, furthers their own anti-Christian worldviews.
Nash's full 1994 article can be viewed online but it is recommended that you read The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? (2003) by Ronald H. Nash and then familiarize yourself with the 'For Further Reading' section.
The Paleo Conservatist
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
References:
Nash, R. H. (2003). The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?
New York: P & R Publishing
Nash, R. H. (1994). Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions. Christian Research Journal, 8.
What is troubling is the way these fringe groups string together false assertions as factual with no regard for the wealth of historical evidence refuting their claims nor the multitude of scholarly debates held on this subject that led to a modern mainstream consensus that these assertions are, in fact, patently false.
In their reckless presentations, we see fringe groups putting forth a systematic assortment of false assertions in a very unscholarly attempt to weaken the message of Christianity in an attempt to further their own agendas and preferred worldviews.
Starting in the first half of the twentieth century, fringe scholars began trying to allege parallels uncritically describing pagan beliefs and practices in Christian language and then marveling at the striking parallels they thought they had discovered.
Let's revisit the discussion. Ronald Nash in his article 'Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan religions' states:
"Other than Judaism and Christianity, the mystery religions were the most influential religions in the early centuries after Christ. The reason these cults were called "mystery religions" is that they involved secret ceremonies known only to those initiated into the cult. The major benefit of these practices was thought to be some kind of salvation.
The mystery religions were not, of course, the only manifestations of the religious spirit in the eastern Roman Empire. One could also find public cults not requiring an initiation ceremony into secret beliefs and practices. The Greek Olympian religion and its Roman counterpart are examples of this type of religion.
Each Mediterranean region produced its own mystery religion. Out of Greece came the cults of Demeter and Dionysus, as well as the Eleusinian and Orphic mystery religions, which developed later. Asia Minor gave birth to the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, and her beloved, a shepherd named Attis. The cult of Isis and Osiris (later changed to Serapis) originated in Egypt, while Syria and Palestine saw the rise of the cult of Adonis. Finally, Persia (Iran) was a leading early locale for the cult of Mithras, which -- due to its frequent use of the imagery of war -- held a special appeal to Roman soldiers. 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 later non-Greek mysteries were personal, private, and individualistic."
Nash notes that one must avoid any suggestion that there was one common mystery religion and though there was a tendency toward synthesis after A.D. 300, each of the mystery cults was a separate and distinct religion during the century that saw the birth of the Christian church assuming different forms in different cultural settings with significant changes. Nevertheless, Nash notes the mystery religions exhibited five common traits:
(1) Central to each mystery was its use of an annual vegetation cycle in which life is renewed each spring and dies each fall. Followers of the mystery cults found deep symbolic significance in the natural processes of growth, death, decay, and rebirth.
(2) As noted above, each cult made important use of secret ceremonies or mysteries, often in connection with an initiation rite. Each mystery religion also passed on a "secret" to the initiate that included information about the life of the cult's god or goddess and how humans might achieve unity with that deity. This "knowledge" was always a secret or esoteric knowledge, unattainable by any outside the circle of the cult.
(3) Each mystery also centered around a myth in which the deity either returned to life after death or else triumphed over his enemies. Implicit in the myth was the theme of redemption from everything earthly and temporal. The secret meaning of the cult and its accompanying myth was expressed in a "sacramental drama" that appealed largely to the feelings and emotions of the initiates. This religious ecstasy was supposed to lead them to think they were experiencing the beginning of a new life.
(4) The mysteries had little or no use for doctrine and correct belief. They were primarily concerned with the emotional life of their followers. The cults used many different means to affect the emotions and imaginations of initiates and hence bring about "union with the god": processions, fasting, a play, acts of purification, blazing lights, and esoteric liturgies. This lack of any emphasis on correct belief marked an important difference between the mysteries and Christianity. The Christian faith was exclusivistic in the sense that it recognized only one legitimate path to God and salvation, Jesus Christ. The mysteries were inclusivistic in the sense that nothing prevented a believer in one cult from following other mysteries.
(5) The immediate goal of the initiates was a mystical experience that led them to feel they had achieved union with their god. Beyond this quest for mystical union were two more ultimate goals: some kind of redemption or salvation, and immortality.
One mistake fringes scholars make is they use late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstructions of the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults. This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship. As Nash states:
"Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century."
Take the myth of Isis concerning Osiris, for example. In the most common version, Osiris is murdered by his brother and sank in a coffin in the Nile. Isis discovers the body and returns it to Egypt but her brother-in-law dismembers the body into fourteen pieces and scatters it abroad. Isis recovers each part.
Fringe types often simply are satisifed to say that Osiris came back to life even though this assertion claims far more than the myth allows. Some writers go even further and refer to the alleged "resurrection" of Osiris comparing it to Christ's resurrection. Seriously, the scholarship is that bad. Nash points out that:
"This biased and sloppy use of language suggests three misleading analogies between Osiris and Christ:
(1) A savior god dies
(2) Then experiences a resurrection accompanied by
(3) Water baptism."
He notes that the "alleged similarities, as well as the language used to describe them, turn out to be fabrications of the modern scholar and are not part of the original myth." Nash continues noting that:
"During its later mystery stage, the male deity of the Isis cult is no longer the dying Osiris but Serapis. Serapis is often portrayed as a sun god, and it is clear that he was not a dying god. Obviously then, neither could he be a rising god. Thus, it is worth remembering that the post-Ptolemaic mystery version of the Isis cult that was in circulation from about 300 B.C. through the early centuries of the Christian era had absolutely nothing that could resemble a dying and rising savior-god."
Poor scholarship, careless use of language, and fanciful fabrications are typical of pagan claims regarding Christianity whether it is Isis and Orisis, Cybele and Attis, the Taurobolium, Mithraism, etc...
Another trend in their writing is an attempt to first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and practices, and then marvel at the striking parallels they think they have discovered. As Nash observes:
"One can go a long way toward "proving" early Christian dependence on the mysteries by describing some mystery belief or practice in Christian terminology. J. Godwin does this in his book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, which describes the criobolium as a "blood baptism" in which the initiate is "washed in the blood of the lamb." While uninformed readers might be stunned by this remarkable similarity to Christianity (see Rev. 7:14), knowledgeable readers will see such a claim as the reflection of a strong, negative bias against Christianity.
Exaggerations and oversimplifications abound in this kind of literature. One encounters overblown claims about alleged likenesses between baptism and the Lord's Supper and similar "sacraments" in certain mystery cults. Attempts to find analogies between the resurrection of Christ and the alleged "resurrections" of the mystery deities involve massive amounts of oversimplification and inattention to detail."
Nash concludes by noting seven points that undermine liberal efforts to show that first-century Christianity borrowed essential beliefs and practices from the pagan mystery religions:
(1) Arguments offered to "prove" a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.
(2) Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of a "Last Supper" in Mithraism or a "baptism" in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word "savior" with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense.
(3) The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first century.
(4) Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions. All of our information about him makes it highly unlikely that he was in any sense influenced by pagan sources. He placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form of Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very sort of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have attributed to him, namely, letting their minds be captured by alien speculations (Col. 2:8).
(5) Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. Machen explains, the mystery cults were nonexclusive. "A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ....Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone." This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and its pagan competitors. Any hint of syncretism in the New Testament would have caused immediate controversy.
(6) Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually happened in history. The mysticism of the mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical. Their myths were dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real historical events, as Paul regarded Christ's death and resurrection to be. The Christian affirmation that the death and resurrection of Christ happened to a historical person at a particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in any pagan mystery religion.
(7) What few parallels may still remain may reflect a Christian influence on the pagan systems. As Bruce Metzger has argued, "It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction." It should not be surprising that leaders of cults that were being successfully challenged by Christianity should do something to counter the challenge. What better way to do this than by offering a pagan substitute? Pagan attempts to counter the growing influence of Christianity by imitating it are clearly apparent in measures instituted by Julian the Apostate, who was the Roman emperor from A.D. 361 to 363.
Liberal efforts to undermine the uniqueness of the Christian revelation via claims of a pagan religious influence collapse quickly once a full account of the information is available. It is clear that the liberal arguments exhibit astoundingly bad scholarship.
Nash notes that, this conclusion may be too generous, and according to one writer simply represent "prejudiced irresponsibility."
Though mainstream scholars have discounted this "prejudiced irresponsibility," a small but growing body of unscholarly fringe groups continue trying to re-ignite the debate because attacking Christianity, even falsely, furthers their own anti-Christian worldviews.
Nash's full 1994 article can be viewed online but it is recommended that you read The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? (2003) by Ronald H. Nash and then familiarize yourself with the 'For Further Reading' section.
The Paleo Conservatist
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
References:
Nash, R. H. (2003). The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?
Nash, R. H. (1994). Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions. Christian Research Journal, 8.
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< www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58130 >
