Mystery cults continue to vex scholars because the surviving evidence is problematic, comprising a few written sources, mostly late in date, and often with questionable aims and biases. Underneath all expression, whether words, creeds, cults, ceremonies is the spiritual orderthe ever living search of men for higher lifea fuller life, more abundant, satisfying life. 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. 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 . The mystery religions exerted some influence on the thinkers of the Middle Ages and the philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. During her short stay at the temple of Eleusis, the whole earth grew barren. In fact, it's hard not to place Christianity among the mystery religions (even though Christian apologists refuse to do this). Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. 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. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. 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. In order to give a comprehensive picture of this subject, I will discuss Four {Five} of the most popular of these religions separately, rather than to view them en masse as a single great religious system. One must avoid any suggestion that there was one common mystery religion. 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. Cybele, or Magna Mater, came to Greece around the 5th century BCE from . Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. 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. Around these two divinities there grew up a confused tangle of myths in explanation of their cult rites. Church leaders talked about "initiations, passwords, and mysteries" using exactly the same . They maintained that it was the work of the devil who helped to confuse men by creating a pagan imitation of the true religion.38, There can hardly be any gainsaying of the fact that Christianity was greatly influenced by the Mystery religions, both from a ritual and a doctrinal angle. . In the large Gnostic library discovered at Najammd, in upper Egypt, in 1945, Hermetic writings were found sideby-side with Christian Gnostic texts. Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1910), pp. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. (3) All offered mystical cleansing from sin. I do not deny that there are some similarities. 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 . Whereas in these tribal communities almost every member of the clan or the village was initiated, initiation in Greece . 39. The cult of rulers in the manner of the imperial mysteries was impossible in Jewish and Christian worship. Forces have been known to delay trends but very few have stopped them. The Mystery-Religions and Christianity. Conservative Evangelical Christians care about their brand . Dimensions : 5.37 x 0.73 x 8.4 inches. 187, 188.\. Because these religions believed there was just one god, they prohibited worshiping other gods. 9. Supporters of the theory incorrectly assume that Christianity borrowed many of its ideas from the mystery religions, but the evidence reveals it was actually the other way around. 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. 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. Paperback : 384 pages. 6. The people of Cyrene selected him as the most able man of the city to be their bishop, and he was able to accept the election without sacrificing his intellectual honesty. Christianity, in its earliest days, shared a good deal in common with the many "mystery religions" which became popular in the Roman Empire. See A Study of Mithraism, 13 September23 November 1949, pp. Christianity was subject to the same influences from the environment as were the other cults, and it sometimes produced the same reaction. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. 4243: It was also a reflection of poignant human experiences, mirroring the joys, sorrows, and hopes of mankind in face of inevitable death. Loisy, Alfred. cit., p. 125.\23, The Influence Of The Greater Mysteries At Eleusis. We should try to see the dark comedy in all things. In this legend, human beings, who are always loved and lost, are depicted as never or seldom loosing hope for reunion with their God. The greatest influence of the mystery religions on Christianity lies in a different direction from that of doctrine and ritual. (2) December 25 came to be considered as the anniversary of the birth of Mithra and Christ also. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. He had left behind the secret whereby men could achieve the goal with him.\[Footnote:] Enslin, op. 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. It is at this point that we are able to see why knowledge of the Mystery religions is important for any serious study of the history of Christianity. It was believed that this god suffered a cruel death, after which he descended into hell, rose again, and then ascended into Heaven. 511513\, The greatest influence of the mystery religions on Christianity lies in a different direction from that of doctrine and ritual. The statue of the Good Shepherd carrying his lost sheep and the pastoral themes on Christian sarcophagi were also taken over from pagan craftsmanship. It was a nature myth, a vivid depiction of the action of life in the vegetable world with the changing of the seasons. 5. Initiation into a mystery religion. (4) The rebirth of converts was a fundamental idea in the two cults. During this great celebration a sacramental meal of some kind was taken, and initiates were baptised with blood, whereby their sins were washed away and they were said to be born again.\[Footnote:] Weigall, The Paganism In Our Christianity, pp. 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. There can hardly be any doubt that the myths of Isis had a direct bearing on the elevation of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, to the lofty position that she holds in Roman Catholic theology. 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. Each year nature passed through the cycle of apparent death and resurrection. 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.) The origin of this cult is obscure and uncertain. Christianity emerged and grew at a time when mystery religions were popular throughout the Roman Empire. The answer is "yes" - and also "no". During the centuries leading up to the birth of Christianity, the Pagan Mystery religion, often known simply as the 'Mysteries', had spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean.Many of the greatest figures of the Pagan world were initiated into these Mysteries, and regarded them as the very source of civilisation. 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. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. Moreover, much from the Mysteries has persisted in various modern phases of thought and practice.\[Footnote:] Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity, p. viii.\, This is not to say that the early Christians sat down and copied these views verbatim. The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean fire rites was similar to Christian standards. Masonry Encompasses All Elements of a Religion of Naturalism. After making herself known, she commanded the people of Eleusis to build her a temple. 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. (3) Baptism and a communion meal were important parts of the ritual of both groups. heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus 2. Osiris and Isis, so the legend runs, were at one and the same time, brother and sister, 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. Mystery religions were seen as more vibrant than the more . 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 hypothesis of a mutual dependence has been proposed by scholarsespecially a dependence of Christianity upon the mysteriesbut such theories have been discarded. Question 10 1 out of 1 points It is likely that Christianity borrowed from the mystery religions, but when Christianity did this was hundreds of years after it began, and thus has nothing to do with the core of Christian proclamation. 2d ed. 131132: At about this time a story, attributed to Melito, Bishop of Sardis in the Second Century, but probably of much later origin, began to spread that Mary had been miraculously carried to Heaven by Jesus and His angels; and in the Sixth Century the festival of the Assumption, which celebrates this event, was acknowledged by the Church, and is now one of the great feasts of Roman Catholicism, It is celebrated on August 13th; but that was the date of the great festival of Diana or Artemis, with whom Isis was identified, and one can see, thus, how Mary had gradually taken the place of the goddess., 24. In winter, all plants die, this represents the period of Demeters grief over her daughter. The festival ended with the celebration of his ascention in the sight of his worshippers.16 Needless to say that this story of the death and resurrection of Adonis is quite similar to the Christian story of the death and resurrection of Christ. This disregard for correct doctrine is a key difference between mystery religions and Christianity. 116, 117.\13, There can hardly be any doubt of the fact that these ceremonies and beliefs strongly coloured the interpretation placed by the first Christians upon the life and death of the historic Jesus.14 Moreover, the merging of the worship of Attis into that of Jesus was effected without interruption, for these pagan ceremonies were enacted in a sanctuary on the Vatican Hill, which was afterwards taken over by the Christians, and the mother church of St. Peter now stands upon the very spot.\[Footnote:] Ibid, p. 117.\, Another popular religion which influenced the thought of early Christians was the worship of Adonis. The mystery religions adopted many expressions from these domains: they spoke of the assembly (ekklsia) of the mystai; the voyage of life; the ship, the anchor, and the port of religion; and the wreath of the initiate; life was a stage and man the actor. Perhaps the most notable difference between Christianity and the mystery religions is Christianity's attitude towards proselytism. 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. A mystery religion is any religion with an arcanum, or body of secret wisdom. 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. The Christian representations of the Madonna and child are clearly the continuation of the representations of Isis and her son suckling her breast. CULT OF CYBELE. When Julian the Apostate, Roman emperor from ad 361 to 363, tried to reestablish pagan worship, he found allies at Rome and Alexandria. A query from Stephanie on the Ethical Witches list in Austin turned up this paper by Rev. 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. The words of St. Paul, They drank of that spiritual rock and that rock was Christ also seem to be {a} direct borrow from the Mithraic scriptures.35, The Hebrew Sabbath having been abolished by Christians, the Church made a sacred day of Sunday, partly because it was the day of resurrection. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 135: It was suppressed by the Christians in a.d. 376 and 377; but its collapse seems to have been due rather to the fact that by that time many of its doctrines and ceremonies had been adopted by the Church, so that it was practically absorbed by its rival., 32. Attis was the Good Shepard, the son of Cybele, the Great Mother, who gave birth to him without union with mortal man, as in the story of the virgin Mary.11 According to the myth, Attis died, either slain by another or by his own hand. 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. 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. Mystery. 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 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. Eastern Roman Empire is considered among the most influential empires of the . Knowledge condemns. Show more. The preceding three paragraphs are similar to a passage in Kings earlier paper, A Study of Mithraism, p. 211 in this volume. Furthermore, in Stoicism, the Logos is an unknowable force while, in Christianity, the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us. 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.. I learned that as an artistic writer who did a doctorate in philosophy. Scholars wrongly infused Christian terms into the mystery religion. It is also significant to know that Roman tolerance had favoured this great syncretism of religious ideas. 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 seems instead to have been carried over from Jewish background and modified by the new ideas and beliefs of the Christians. It is a library research and is descriptive in nature. Mithra hears all, sees all, knows all: none can deceive him., 34. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. titled " The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity. However, in the conclusion I will attempt to give those fundamental aspects, characteristic of all the cults, that greatly influenced Christianity. 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. 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 . King wrote this paper for the course Development of Christian Ideas, taught by Davis. Mithraism was brought to Europe from its Persian roots after Alexander the Great's conquests. And today similar experiences are represented by Greek Christians. cit., p. 110\15. Arthur E. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity (n.p. At the death of Attis, Cybele mourned vehemently until he arose to life again in the springtime. xixii: Christianity triumphed after long conflict It took from its opponents their own weapons, and used them; the better elements of paganism were transferred to the new religion. These scholars made two errors here. 211225 in this volume. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 116: This god was believed to have suffered a cruel death, to have descended into Hell or Hades, to have risen again, and to have ascended into Heaven; and at his festival, as held in various lands, his death was bewailed, an effigy of his dead body was prepared for burial by being washed with water and anointed, and, on the next day, his resurrection was commemorated with great rejoicing, the very words The Lord is risen probably being used. It is very common to find claims that Christianity was a mystery religion, similar to the worship of Dionysus, Isis, Orpheus, etc. Christianity emerged and grew at a time when mystery religions were popular throughout the Roman Empire. 1. #516 in History of Religions. This effigy was later buried in a tomb. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. (Pagan Regeneration, p. 115). The present study represents an attempt to provide a survey of the influence of the mystery religions on Christianity. To discuss Christianity without mentioning other religions would be like discussing the greatness of the Atlantic Ocean without the slightest mention of the many tributaries that keep it flowing.40. Bottom line: They believe that the early Church borrowed heavily from pagan deities already in existence at the time of Jesus. They were not self-sufficient sects . First published June 1, 1975. For the Stoics, a relationship with the Logos is . These fundamental human experiences and the life of nature are the main substances of the Eleusinian Mysteries.28 To the searchers of salvation, the Eleusinian cult offered not only the promise of a happy future, but also a definite assurance of it.\[Footnote:] Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion, p. 54.\, Now when we observe the modern Greek Easter festival it seems certain that it preserves the spirit if not the form of the old Eleusinian worship. 9:11, 12.\ Now to get back to the festival. The similarities must rather be explained by parallel developments from similar origins. 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. 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