It is a fallacy that the early Christians weaved the tale of a dying and rising God-man on the loom of mystery religions.
The idea of the dying-rising god as a parallel to the Christian concept of the death and resurrection of Christ was popularized by James Frazer in ‘The Golden Bough’, first published in 1906. Scholar Edwin Yamauchi (1974; “Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?”) has observed that, although Frazer marshaled many parallels, the foundation was very fragile and has been discredited by a host of scholars since Frazer’s ideas were at the height of their popularity in the 1960’s.
To take just one example, on the Osiris myth, Bruce Metzger (1968; “Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish and Christian") observes, “Whether this can rightly be called a resurrection is questionable, especially since, according to Plutarch, it was the pious desire of devotees to be buried in the same ground where, according to local tradition, the body of Osiris was still lying.”
Yamauchi agrees: “It is a cardinal misconception to equate the Egyptian view of the afterlife with the “resurrection” of Hebrew-Christian traditions. In order to achieve immortality the Egyptian had to fulfill three conditions: (1) His body had to be preserved, hence mummification. (2) Nourishment had to be provided either by the actual offering of daily bread and beer, or by the magical depiction of food on the walls of the tomb. (3) Magical spells had to be interred with the dead – Pyramid Texts in the Old Kingdom, Coffin Texts in the Middle Kingdom, and the Book of the Dead in the New Kingdom. Moreover, the Egyptian did not rise from the dead; separate entities of his personality such as his Ba and his Ka continued to hover about his body.”
A little research will likewise prove that any alleged parallels between Jesus resurrection and Tammuz (Adonis), and Cybele and Attis, are tenuous and weak.
In fact, that the mystery religions prior to Christianity even had the tale of a dying and rising god-man is it itself a myth. Ronald Nash (2003; ‘The Gospel and the Greeks’) sums up the evidence about all these gods of the mystery religions and their alleged resurrections”
“ Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of Attis. Attempts to link the worship of Adonis to a resurrection are equally weak. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger. After Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris’s dismembered body, he became “Lord of the Underworld.” As Metzger comments, “Whether this can be rightly called a resurrection is questionable, especially since according to Plutarch, it was the pious desire of devotees to be buried in the same ground where, according to local tradition, the body of Osiris was still lying.” One can speak, then, of a “resurrection” in the stories of Osiris, Attis, and Adnonis only in the most extended of senses. And of course no claim can be made that Mithras was a dying and rising god. French scholar Andrew Boulanger concludes: “The conception that the god dies and is resurrection in order to lead his faithful to eternal life is represented in no Hellenistic mystery religion.”
<br><br>Nash’s study on the mystery religions shows the contrast between them and Christianity. He notes six points of contrast between the death and resurrection of the savior-gods of the mysteries and the resurrection of Christ:
1 “None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. The notion of the Son of God dying in place of His creatures is unique to Christianity.”
2 “Only Jesus died for sin. As Wagner observed, to none of the pagan gods ‘has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort of death that they died is quite different (hunting accident, self-emasculation, etc.)’ “
3 “Jesus died once and for all (Heb 7:27; 9:25-28). In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities who repeated death and resuscitation depict the annual cycle of nature.”
4 “Jesus’ death was an actual event in history. The death of the god described in the pagan cults is a mythical drama with no historical ties; its continued rehearsal celebrates the recurring death and rebirth of nature. The incontestable fact that the early church believed that its proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection was grounded upon what actually happened in history makes absurd any attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, nonhistorical stories of the pagan cults.”
5 “Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like the voluntary death of Jesus can be found in the mystery cults.”
6 And finally, Jesus’ death was not a defeat but a triumph. Christianity stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries in that its report of Jesus’ death is a message of triumph. Even as Jesus was experiencing the pain and humiliation of the cross, He was the victor. The New Testament’s mood of exultation contrasts sharply with that of the mystery religions, whose followers wept and mourned for the terrible fate that overtook their gods.”
Walter Kunneth (1965; "The Theology of the Resurrection") sums it up: “It is superficial and unfounded to say that the study of the history of religion has shown the dependence of the resurrection of Jesus on mythology. On the contrary, it is precisely the comparison with the history that gives rise to the strongest objections to any kind of mythifying of the resurrection of Jesus.”
Christianity did NOT borrow from pagan "Dying-Rising" God motifs
by yaddayadda 93 Replies latest watchtower bible
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yaddayadda
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lovelylil
yadda,
Thanks so much for posting this information. It just goes to show you that there are always TWO sides to every story. I've had many people over the past decade try to convince me with thier evidence that the Christian Jews borrowed from the pagans to create their image of dying/rurrecting God and created Jesus. And in some cases I actually agreed to look at their evidences. By looking at what they gave me as proof, I found more differences in the stories than similarities.
Also, one thing we need to keep in mind. The ancient Jews did not have a system of writing things down at first but rather passed along thier teachings orally. No one really knows how old much of the OT really is, as they can only date it from its writing, not from its true beginning, when it began to be passed on orally. Since the OT was being passed orally hundreds of years prior to its being put into written form, we must then consider that it was the ancient Egyptians and other ancients peoples who borrowed some of the Messiah prophecies from the Jews and used them to base their myths on. And that is why we see some similarities. The similarities often pointed out are; born of God and a virgin, died unwarented death, raised a few days later to life with God. All these things were fortold of the Messiah in the OT.
One more thing; the Jews inter-married with pagans against God's orders, even Abraham had an Egyptian slave that he had a son with, Ismael. So the Egyptians would be familiar with the Jewish oral traditions. Peace, Lilly
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Narkissos
An excellent case of missing the forest for the trees imo.
Of course Christianity didn't simply borrow a particular myth from "paganism". And that is certainly worth pointing out against all types of popular oversimplifications. Every myth is unique, including the Christian one(s).
But once the differences pointed, the analogies remain. Gods, demigods or heroes dying and restored to "life" -- whether as a reflection / etiology of natural cycles (Tammuz, Baal) or opening the way for bliss in the afterlife (Osiris). Of course they die and "rise" in many different ways. However the overall similitude is striking (striking enough to have been noted and "explained" by the Church Fathers). All the more so because this kind of mytheme and the accompanying rituals were present in ancient Israelite religion too (Hosea 6:1-3; Ezekiel 8:14) but were suppressed in later "official" Judaism. Hence we can see as much of a resurgence as of a "borrowing".
The biggest fallacy, imo, consists in artificially blending the multiple NT interpretations of Jesus' death-and-resurrection into a consistent global picture -- which doesn't reflect any single NT text -- and then opposing it to the variety of possible parallels (as in Nash's list of 6 items). If we are to point out the differences let's point them also within "early Christianity". Then we have a more complex network of partial parallels to consider.
The all-too-obvious "forest" which many modern Christian apologists miss is the following: the different versions of the Christian myth were, unsurprisingly, in tune with the religious Zeitgeist of late Antiquity, including the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora. The use of OT and other Jewish material in the NT texts must be compared to the modification of ancient Eastern mythological material in Hellenistic mystery cults, with a distinctive stress on individual salvation for the initiates. The intercultural "borrowing" which occurred in the fringe of this process is only the tip of the iceberg.
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Elsewhere
"When we say that Jesus Christ was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whome you call the sons of Jupiter." -- Justin Martyr, church father
Some attributes of previous saviours:
- Born of a virgin on Dec. 25
- Stars appeared at their births
- Visited by Magi from the East
- Healed the Sick
- Cast out demons
- Performed miracles
- Transfigured before followers
- Rode donkeys into the city
- Betrayed fro 30 pieces of silver
- Celebrated communal meal with bread and wine, which represented the savior's flesh and blood
- Killed on a cross or tree
- Descended into hell
- Resurrected on third day
- Ascended into heaven to forever sit beside father god and become divine judge
The early church fathers knew this was a problem because they were getting objections from pagans... "what you are saying about Jesus, we have already been saying about Hercules and Dionysus"...
Justin Martyr responded with: "For when they say that Dionysus arose again and ascended into heaven, is it not evident the devil has imitated the prophecy?"
Simply put, the church founders did not even try to deny that these Jesus-like deities existed before Jesus. Instead they tried to play it off by saying that the devil counterfeited Jesus in advance in the form of false gods.
If anyone is wondering... yes... this does remain the church's explanation of the Jesus-like deities who came before Jesus. Of course you can only get the church to admit this AFTER you get them to stop lying about and denying the other deities ever existed or had such Jesus-like characteristics.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/justin.html
A good place to start reading is: CHAPTER XX -- HEATHEN ANALOGIES TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
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lovelylil
There are similarites but again the OT prophecies about the coming of Christ were passed down by oral tradition probably for centuries prior to Christ arriving. And part of Abrahams progency are the Egyptian and Arab peoples. So of course you will see similaritites in the beliefs of these peoples. The pagan mystery religions took part of the prophecies of the coming Messiah and added their own beliefs to it. If you read all the myths of the mystery religions, you see many more differences than similarities. And unlike the pagan Gods, whether you want to accept it or not, Jesus was a historical person. But that is another topic entirely.
Justin Martyr, did not try to hide the fact that there were similarities. His point in readily admitting to this fact was to appeal to the pagan peoples by stating to them that since they believed what was taught about their Gods, and their Gods had similar characteristics of Jesus, then they should not be quick to deny what was being proclaimed to them about the Christ being the son of God. He was not admitting a defeat in any way but using the beliefs of the pagans for the benefit of proclaiming the truth of Christ to them.
This is similar to how the Apostle Paul used the spiritual beliefs and superstitions of the men of Athens in a way to proclaim to them the truth about God. Peace, Lilly
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tetrapod.sapien
of course the xian *myths* were not photocopies of of pagan myths. if you all recall, all myths (ideas, religions etc) *evolve*.
for example, JW myths are not the same as early xian myths, but they have the same roots.
- JW myths borrowed for protestant myths.
- protestant myths borrowed for orthodox myths.
- orthodox myths borrowed from early xian myths.
- early xian myths borrowed from pagan myths.
- pagan myths borrowed from neolithic and hunter gatherer myths.
- ad infinitum!
until, of course, we come to the first myth. all mythology has anthropological roots.
people who fight this view, have an ulterior motive that they may not always own up to, or even be aware of: God.
tetra
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Elsewhere
So you are saying that over thousands of years, all of these characteristics of Jesus were predicted by the OT and passed on to and adopted by many other cultures around the world...
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-firstapology.html
CHAPTER XX -- HEATHEN ANALOGIES TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
And the Sibyl and Hystaspes said that there should be a dissolution by God of things corruptible. And the philosophers called Stoics teach that even God Himself shall be resolved into fire, and they say that the world is to be formed anew by this revolution; but we understand that God, the Creator of all things, is superior to the things that are to be changed. If, therefore, on some points we teach the same things as the poets and philosophers whom you honour, and on other points are fuller and more divine in our teaching, and if we alone afford proof of what we assert, why are we unjustly hated more than all others?
For while we say that all things have been produced and arranged into a world by God, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of Plato;
and while we say that there will be a burning up of all, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of the Stoics:
and while we affirm that the souls of the wicked, being endowed with sensation even after death, are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from punishment spend a blessed existence, we shall seem to say the same things as the poets and philosophers;
and while we maintain that men ought not to worship the works of their hands, we say the very things which have been said by the comic poet Menander, and other similar writers, for they have declared that the workman is greater than the work.
CHAPTER XXI -- ANALOGIES TO THE HISTORY OF CHRIST.
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.
For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter:
Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all;
AEsculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven;
and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils;
and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus.
For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars?
And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification,
and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre?
And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.
Jesus was a historical person. But that is another topic entirely.
Real smooth... try to bring up a debate and win it through dismissal... that's a clever old trick.
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Inquisitor
dear yadda2
The differences between the mythologies and the life of Christ are NOT what require an explanation. It is the similarities, the homologies that started the inquiry.
Nash's six "points of contrast" are spouted off in complete ignorance of the fact that mythologies are rarely plagiarised in its raw, original, untouched form. Of course there will be differences. Nash should try telling us something we don't know!! Tales are passed on with a different cultural twist. Ever played Chinese whispers? Again, explain the similarities, not the differences. The same protest could be applied to what Metzger and Yamauchi had to say about the comparison.
Personally, I find the correlation striking but have yet to be convinced of a causal link between the Christ myth and the older myths. To deny that there is any parallel at all seems abit foolish and stubborn.
INQ
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yaddayadda
Narkissos, your response is a classic case of someone who embraces the old “history of religions” school of biblical criticism. To you the gospels merely represent some kind of complicated, fictional patchwork embodying all manner of literary redactions, plagiarisms and syncretism over a long period of time. The slightest similarity between the NT and other literature is taken to mean the latter borrowed if from the former.
Even the premier liberal German historian of early Christianity during the first three decades of the twentieth century, Adolf von Harnack (1911), admitted:
“We must reject the comparative mythology which finds a causal between everything and everything else…By such methods one can turn Christ into a sun god in the twinkling of an eye, or one can bring up the legends attending the birth of every conceivable god, or one can catch all sorts of mythological doves to keep company with the baptismal dove…the wand of “comparative religion” triumphantly eliminate(s) every spontaneous trait in religion.”
All religions must appeal to universal human needs and desires. It’s no surprise that Christianity and other religions have some similarities of language and codes of conduct. But it can hardly be maintained that parallels indicate dependence. Walter Kunneth (1965) argues it this way: “The fact that the theme of the dying and returning deity is a general one in the history of religion, and that a transference of this them is possible, must not be made the occasion for speaking at once of dependence, of influence, or indeed of identify of content. Rather, the scientific task is not to overlook the essential differences in form, content and ultimate tendency, and even in cases of apparent formal analogy to work out the decisive difference of content.”
Those who see parallels every which way between the NT and other religions fall into the ‘terminological fallacy’. Nash puts it this way: “one frequently encounters scholars who first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and practices and then marvel at the awesome parallels they think they have discovered.”
Metzger summarizes any claimed parallels as follows: “It goes without saying that alleged parallels which are discovered by pursuing such methodology evaporate when they are confronted with the original texts. In a word, one must beware of what have been called, ‘parallels made plausible by selective description’ .”
According to Komoszewski, Sawyer and Wallace (2005), “Oxford University historian Robin Lane Fox asserts that nearly all the supposed parallels between pagan practices and Christianity are spurious. Fox challenges the thesis that Christianity was “not so very novel in the pagan world.” His research led him to conclude that there is, in Leon McKenzie’s words, only “a marginal and weak connection between paganism and Christianity.” “
Thus there is no “overall similitude” as Narkissos claims.
Furthermore, there is no evidence of syncretism in apostolic Christianity. The first century Jewish mind-set loathed syncretism and refused to blend their religion with other religions. Judaism was strictly monotheistic, as was Christianity.
There is no archaelogical evidence today of mystery religions in Palestine in the early part of the first century. Norman Anderson (1984): “If borrowing there was by one religion from another, it seems clear which way it went. There is no evidence whatever, that I know of, that the mystery religions had any influence in Palestine in the early decades of the first century”.
Nash (2003) states: “The uncompromising monotheism and the exclusiveness that the early church preached and practiced make the possibility of any pagan inroads…unlikely, if not impossible.”
Metzger (1968) makes the same point: “Another methodological consideration, often overlooked by scholars who are better acquainted with Hellenistic culture than with Jewish, is involved in the circumstance that the early Palestinian Church was composed of Christians from a Jewish background, whose generally strict monotheism and traditional intolerance of syncretism must have militated against wholesale borrowing from pagan cults.
If there is any dependant relationship between the mysteries and Christianity, as some liberal scholars contend, it is for the most part a REVERSED dependency. The mystery religions from their very beginning displayed syncretistic tendencies. So it was Christianity, beginning in the first century, that influenced the mysteries, not the other way round. The mysteries that became more eclectic, softening their approach, and adapted to compete with Christianity. But any evidence that these same cults had all these features prior to the rise of the Christian faith is nonexistent. On this Nash states:
“Far too many writers on this subject use the available sources to form the plausible 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. We have plenty of information about the mystery religions of the third century. But important differences exist between these religions and earlier expressions of the mystery experience (for which adequate information is extremely slim.).”
The sources skeptics typically cite as evidence that pagan religions influenced early Christian beliefs postdate the writings of the New Testament. It was only in later centuries that Christianity borrowed from the mystery religions. -
yaddayadda
“ One has to take into account the accommodating language of the early Christians. This seems to take at least two forms, language articulated by "a missionary motive" and language motivated by a desire to be accepted by the culture at large. The apostle Paul fits the first model; the second century-writer Justin Martyr, the second.
Paul told the Corinthians, "I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I may save some" (1 Cor. 9:22) Paul knew how to speak the language that would best communicate to his particular audience. He did this when he addressed the philosophers in Athens (Acts 17) and the recently converted Christians in Thessalonica. The real question is, "Does the fact that some New Testament writer knew of a pagan belief or term prove that wheat he knew had a formative or genetic influence onhis own essential beliefs?" The language Paul used is meant to be a point of departure - to show that Christianity is not in any of its essentials like the pagan religions.
Justin Martyr (c.100-165) was motivated by impulses that find their antecedents in Philo of Alexandria (c.20 B.C.-A.D. 50), the Jewish writer who packaged Judaism in Greek philosophical terms. Does this mean that Judaism was indebted to Greek philosophy? Hardly. But it does show the lengths to which an ancient writer might go to make his religion winsome, understandable, and palatable to outsiders.
Similarly, Justin Martyr came from a pagan home and was weaned on Greek philosophy. “Justin was forced by his conversion to Christianity to seek connection between his pagan, philosophical past and his Christian, theological present. This biographical quest would come to expression as he sought to mediate between the worlds of Greek and Christian thought.” For example, Justin defends the virgin birth as follows “And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus.” Obviously, there is a sense in which Justin wants to find commonality with other religions – in part, to lessen the attacks on Christianity (since it was an illegal religion at this time) and, in part, to present the gospel in a winsome manner, to show that it is not really unreasonable to embrace it.
It is true that Justin claimed that Satan had inspired the pagan religions to imitate some aspects of Christianity, but even this is a far cry from claiming that he saw the essential Christian proclamation duplicated in any other religion. As J.Gresham Machen argued, “We should never forget that the appeal of Justin Martyr and Origen to the pagan stories of divine begetting is an argumentum ad hominem, ‘YOU hold,’ Justic and Origen say in effect to their pagan opponents, ‘that the virgin birth of Christ is unbelievable; well, is it any more unbelievable than the stories that you yourselves believe?’ “
Whether this kind of accommodation was the best approach in spreading the gospel is a matter of debate. Tertullian (c.160-c.225), the North African defender of orthodoxy, felt that it was inappropriate. “Justin’s view that philosophy is continuous with Christianity was emphatically not shared by “ Tertullian, who “regarded philosophy as folly and the source of heresy.”.
At the same time, a careful reading of Justin shows that at every turn he sees the gospels as ultimately unique and thus superior to pagan religions. “
Komoszewski, James Sawyer, Wallace (2005; ‘Reinventing Jesus – what The Da Vinci Code and other novel speculations don’t tell you’)