> [...] about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus, the god who dies and is reborn and who promises the same destiny to his followers.
Sounds an awful lot like Christianity.
I remember growing up, pastors lecturing me that "no other religion is like Christianity".
It would appear there are a lot of similarities to contemporary cults.
> the frieze can be dated to the 40s-30s BC
> In antiquity, there were a series of cults, including the cult of Dionysus, that were only accessible to those who performed an initiation ritual, as illustrated in the Pompeian frieze. They were known as “mystery cults” because their secrets could only be known by initiates. The cults were often linked to the promise of a new blissful life, both in this world and in the afterlife.
How related are the ideas of Christianity to these mystery cults?
It sounds like a lot of religions. It's a pretty common idea.
Christianity certainly had mystery cults, but so did all of the other Mediterranean religions, including its immediate ancestor Judaism.
It's hard to tell how much Christianity cribbed from other religions and how much is just the same idea recurring over and over because it's a common human theme.
Your pastors were wrong to say that Christianity is totally unprecedented. But neither is it just a cynical pastiche of existing ideas. It arose out of the time and place that surrounded its creation. Like all human ideas it's a blend of old and new thoughts.
What distinguishes Christianity from contemporary pagan cults and Judaism are the concepts of sin, repentance, salvation, and atonement. In Christian theology God sacrificed Jesus to offer people the option of "paying off their sin debts" which they otherwise wouldn't have been able to pay. This is in stark contrast to the mystery cults for which enlightenment came through secret knowledge. Romans in general didn't really think in terms of sin.
That said, we don't know exactly what rituals the earliest Christians practiced and to outsiders they may have looked similar to the rituals of the mystery cults. Especially since Christians at times were persecuted all over the Roman empire and therefore may have had to keep a low profile.
What makes Christianity unique is its attempt at universalism. Prior to it there weren't really belief systems that tried to make a claim to being both exclusively true and universal across all people. e.g. Judaism was/is explicitly for the Jewish people, the Romans freely borrowed from other pantheons and had no concern about other peoples worshiping whatever gods they wanted, etc. etc.
Christians are the first major belief system we know of that declares not only that it is universal for all humans, but that if you don't believe/practice its specific faith you are damned, and that it is the duty of every Christian to convert others to the faith. This is one of the reasons why many in pre-Constantine Rome found it so objectionable and disruptive.
Islam obviously followed in the same tradition.
Various strands of Christianity go even further, making your practices almost entirely irrelevant and the inside of your thoughts being the key determinant on whether you are eternally damned or not. Ancient belief systems were very concerned about rituals and practices and sacrifices etc, vs e.g. strains of modern evangelical Protestantism that is obsessed with your feelings/thoughts/internal mental state.
Offering a human sacrifice to an angry god to redeem us of our sins is not that uncommon and certainly not unique to Christianity. Perhaps what makes Christianity unique is the ritualistic cannibalism in many major sects, but there is much less archaeological remains of such practices in other religions and lack of evidence is not proof.
Sin is orthogonal to sacrifice. Pagans had sacrifice, but not sin. Jews had sacrifice and sin. Christians had sin but not sacrifice. That was the whole point of the religion, you did not have to "pay up" because God had already paid for you. At the time it was a novel (even revolutionary) idea and most certainly contributed to Christianity spreading so quickly because poor people generally had very little to sacrifice.
Check out The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, it has a few theories on through lines. The book is about these mystery cults, and specifically how they may have been using and early form of LSD. Part of the theory is the classically reported ego death experience might be what is referenced by the rebirth/resurrection claims. As for overlaps with Christianity, there are lots of fun theories including that John the Baptist was an initiate and may have actually initiated Jesus. This is a little difficult to square with the fact that the greek mystery cults claim to have exclusively initiated women, but hey they don't call them mystery cults because they are fully understood.
You can read Brian Muraresku's The Immortality Key for a detailed exploration of this topic.
It certainly isn't beyond criticism, but it's points are substantive and well referenced, giving the reader enough scope to tackle the controversial points themselves, not just take the authors presentation on face value.
For me the starkest contrast is that Christianity introduced the idea of thoughtcrime, though they didn't call it that. In Christianity it is important that you believe the correct things, whereas the pagan religions only cared if you performed the rituals.
I'm not sure why you're being down voted. You're not the first person to make that observation. There's an actually an ancient author who wrote a whole epic about Dionysius and also wrote his own version of the Gospel of John. Ideas have always been moving around and mixing.
I mean, there's a bunch of religions that have figures that die and are reborn in some way. There's also dharmic religions that believe in various degrees of escaping the cycle of death and rebirth.
Christianity was somewhat unique to the middle east in believing that there would be a final resurrection and earthly paradise, versus simply being reborn as a god, having a more comfortable underworld existence, etc...
As for Dionysus, he was more of an Osiris-figure... Resurrected from pieces in the underworld and his death-rebirth was associated with the seasons especially the growing and harvest of wine. The practices of the cult was to enter an ecstatic frenzy while drinking wine (probably laced with psychedelics). If he did influence Christianity it would be to the same degree as Osiris, Horus, Inanna or other similar deities. But IMO Christianity probably derived from dharmic religions (the Buddha was known to early Christians...). But that's another topic.
> Christianity was somewhat unique to the middle east in believing that there would be a final resurrection and earthly paradise, versus simply being reborn as a god, having a more comfortable underworld existence, etc...
I think the final resurrection concept mostly comes from Judaism, where the Messiah will come and resurrect the people of Israel.
>> to the same degree as Osiris, Horus, Inanna or other similar deities.
The NT arose in a Hellenistic context, but the OT was inherently anti-Egypt and that's where you'll see more direct references (Book of Exodus, ten plagues, etc.)
By the Apostolic Age/early Church, Egyptian deities were syncretized and interpreted by the Greeks, and Egypt was a safer place to hang out during the Massacre of the Innocents. But Jesus returned home with all the Moses we'd ever need.
> I remember growing up, pastors lecturing me that "no other religion is like Christianity".
These pastors should go back to school; they should have gotten education about other religions in their training so that they fully understand the origins, similarities and differences between them. They should know the origins of their own religion, like how the date of Christmas was established in the 4th century based on the date of the winter solstice in the Roman Empire.
These pastors are reciting dogma instead of learning.
Interesting read. I'm not convinced. It predicates it's assertion on the idea that profits die on the same day they were conceived or born. That is a very unconvincing start.
Even if Jesus was born on Christmas, it is undeniable that having a similar dated holiday to co-opt is a marketing win. Other overlaps exist with stories thousands of years older, including virgin births, death and resurrection, and dying for humanity.
It's easier to understand the evidence when you appreciate that most early Christians for the first few centuries were semitic peoples (Jews, Syrians), Greeks, Copts and Berbers in the Levant and North Africa. Even the church in Rome used Greek, not Latin, for its liturgy until the 3rd century. There are multiple historical sources mentioning a March annunciation (i.e. conception) and December/January nativity[1] in the 2nd century, well over a century, if not two centuries, before Christianity was adopted by a significant number of Romans proper.
Alexandria and Antioch were far more influential centers of Christian theology and scholarship, where Jewish (and related?) and Coptic calendars were the point of reference. Moreover, during this time Christian theologians were adamant about not mixing pagan Greek and Roman practices with Christian practices. And let's not forget the persecutions. The Roman calendar and the dates of its festivals were largely irrelevant to them in terms of establishing mythological dates or community festivals. And the nativity just wasn't a very important date--and never important enough to be an origin for other dates--to Christians until much later, long after a rough consensus on dates had been established. Theologically the annunciation (conception of Christ) was vastly more important, second only to easter.
There's significant substantive evidence for these dates being established independent of the Roman festival, based on transparent and consistent rationales. The only real evidence for the date being chosen because of the Roman festival is basically a curious coincidence that stands out as significant from a Western European cultural perspective, rooted in a Roman centric historical narrative, by those living many centuries later. The coincidence feels particularly strong and intuitive in modern times, where Christmas is seemingly synonymous with Christianity. Plus, much of the modern narrative regarding the origins of Christmas arises from attempts by Protestantism to delegitimize Roman Catholicism, without appreciating that during this time the church in Rome wasn't nearly as preeminent as they would become [long] after Constantine. The conception of Catholicism as a religion dictated by clergy in Rome who could successfully scheme to set a date for Christmas comes largely from the Middle Ages, after the Great Schism with Constantinople, when Rome no longer had to justify itself to any of the other early Christian churches. This image was later reinforced and refined by Protestantism literally attempting to paint the Catholic church as a malevolently scheming institution.
Now, the spring dates for the annunciation and death of Christ... you could easily trace it back to pagan origins, but rooted in semitic culture, not Roman or even Greek. The sources spell this out for you; no need to connect the dots.
[1] In some instances the dates were mentioned alongside alternative opinions that were significantly different (some web articles seem to mention only these non-concordant alternatives), but that's beside the point. The point is that the relevant dates were rooted at a time when most Christians couldn't care less about the Roman festival, except in so far as they wanted to avoid any conflation.
> These pastors are reciting dogma instead of learning.
But isn't that more or less the point? I was raised in that tradition (evangelical) and the more you dig, the more you find the "simple stuff" isn't quite so 100% true or reliable, has a pretty convoluted history, etc.. Which makes you wonder and doubt and question, and for me, after seeing what N.A. evangelicalism is promoting these days, de-convert. And I know I'm not the only one who followed that path - many who wanted "a deeper understanding of it all" ended up deconverting because the "truths" they were taught weren't quite so true after all.
By NOT teaching the historical details and just telling pastors the "high school summary" at seminary (in the same way that high school students aren't taught full quantum mechanics, but still study the basic theories of atoms, electrons, orbitals, ...), they can 100% believe and probably be more effective. If they 100% believe you're going to hell, they will work very hard to save you. If they're "well, the Bible borrowed this from these 3 other religions and integrated it over time and the current theories are different from what they were 30 years ago", they might not be as fervent and also be less convincing if they admit their doubts to you. Which might also cause you to question, study more, deconvert, etc. And there is a huge percentage of people who WANT concrete yes/no hard-line answers to difficult questions so they can stop thinking about it.
Appear? One of the only ways to get people to convert was to actually take some of their beliefs and traditions and assimilate them into Christianity.
Just google how the Christmas tree came to be or better yet Christmas itself... the Bible is also just an anthology, a politically (!) hand-picked collection of texts, from various streams which fit the interests of the dominant sect at the time (400+ years after Jesus!).
Also... "Christianity began as an outgrowth of Second Temple Judaism,..." [1]
Isn't that a tautology? LDS, JWs, Messianic Jews, Oneness Pentecostals, Iglesia ni Cristo: are they Christianity or another religion? How different can a religion be until it isn't "like Christianity"? Soundbite doing some heavy lifting out of context.
The NT writers used Koine Greek to evangelize a Hellenistic world. Anybody from a pagan tradition reading those books could've found aspects of Dionysus in Jesus, and because Greek Paganism wasn't untrue but simply incomplete, bound to a territory and lacking in universality.
Pagans personify and explain nature and the supernatural through deities, while for Christians, the Holy Trinity is the lens through which we see all truth, beauty and goodness.
The Trinity is a recent addition to Christian doctrine, relatively speaking, and certainly not universal if one considers the entire history of the religion.
It is delightfully weird, though, in a "we have polytheism at home" kind of way.
Many, perhaps most, mainstream Christian churches define Christianity as Trinitarian, and that dogma is the “bright line” between Us & Them. It's absolutely not “recent”.
You're confusing “additions/accretions to doctrine” with the way the Church worked in reality. Doctrines and dogmas were believed but not defined or formulated until heresies and controversies arose.
The definition of a doctrine is a final way to settle a controversy in favor of orthodox belief. The definition of the Holy Trinity was simply when the reality was put into human words.
Lest we forget that the Church produced Scripture, because it seems like folly for this to be turned upside down, but for 500 years, Scripture has begotten churches.
Christianity has an entire pantheon, and always has. It's replete with angels and demons, even a Zoroastrian-like evil deity not to be worshipped. Multitudes of saints in most traditions.
For that matter, they can't even all agree on the name of their primary deity, and I think one might be forgiven if they were to confuse the many names as not "many names of a single deity", but "many names for many deities".
A lot of this is the result of forcing syncretism with pagan religions to more easily convert their adherents. Gods become saints or demons and their mythologies retconned as needed. Saints Olaf[0] and Brigid[1] being two possible examples from Norse and Irish mythology, respectively. And from an outside perspective there's very little daylight between venerating and praying to the saints for intercession, and praying to household gods, possibly by design.
Also (more interestingly) there's still evidence in the OT of the time when the religious precursor of Judaism was polytheist[2][3] ("let us create Man in our image", "God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.")
Yes, it's a matter of perspective. Looking over history and geopolitics, you'll see paganism absorbed and syncretized (Christians call it "baptizing" cultures)
From within mainstream Christianity, ancestor worship [communion of saints] and worship of the Mother of God [Marian devotion] and adoration of God himself are three categories, and the former two are different not in degree, but in character and quality entirely.
Internal squabbles among Christian sects often come down to semantics, definitions, and what language is used to formulate them, because when you change the language, you shift cultures and meanings shift inexorably.
So while it was once called "worship of Mary", for example, we don't use that word anymore, because even the same English word has connotations for people that would be misunderstood.
One interesting paradigm shift to consider is the extension of familial relations beyond the genetic. Christian succession is not by birth but by transmission, anointing, and laying on of hands. Every religious order is a family unto themselves. And so, out of blood and water, the faith has forged familial bonds that are thicker than both. I don't know about neopaganism, but classical paganism was tribal, territorial, and ethnocentric.
Another is the naturalistic cycles of the pagan calendars vs. the humanist and person-centered cycles for Christians. We celebrate saints, actual human beings, personal accomplishments and sanctity, and while they're undeniably still linked to the land, the heavens, seasons and agrarianism, Christianity elevates the human person above nature (and "a little less than the angels"), and places humans front-and-center in everything we dream of in our philosophy, for better or for worse.
Sounds an awful lot like Christianity.
I remember growing up, pastors lecturing me that "no other religion is like Christianity".
It would appear there are a lot of similarities to contemporary cults.
> the frieze can be dated to the 40s-30s BC
> In antiquity, there were a series of cults, including the cult of Dionysus, that were only accessible to those who performed an initiation ritual, as illustrated in the Pompeian frieze. They were known as “mystery cults” because their secrets could only be known by initiates. The cults were often linked to the promise of a new blissful life, both in this world and in the afterlife.
How related are the ideas of Christianity to these mystery cults?