Paris, 1930 . The present study represents an attempt to provide a survey of the influence of the mystery religions on Christianity. 135136: Originally Mithra was one of the lesser gods of the ancient Persian pantheon, but already in the time of Christ he had risen to be co-equal with, though created by, Ormuzd (Ahura-Mazda), the Supreme Being., 33. The festival of all Saints, which is held one day before that of all Souls is also probably identical with it in origin.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. 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. In his pagan period he wrote hymns that closely follow the fire theology of the Chaldean Oracles; later he wrote hymns to Christ. After making herself known, she commanded the people of Eleusis to build her a temple. 6. : Putnam, 1928), p. 121: Attis was the Good Shepherd, the son of Cybele, the Great Mother, or, alternatively, of the Virgin Nana, who conceived him without union with mortal man, as in the story of the Virgin Mary., 12. King wrote this paper for the course Development of Christian Ideas, taught by Davis. As the religious history of the empire is studied more closely, writes Cumont, the triumph of the church will, in our opinion, appear more and more as the culmination of a long evolution of beliefs. It is not at all surprising in view of the wide and growing influence of these religions that when the disciples in Antioch and elsewhere preached a crucified and risen Jesus they should be regarded as the heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus himself should be taken for the divine Lord of the cult through whose death and resurrection salvation was to be had.3 That there were striking similarities between the developing church and these religions cannot be denied. The books that the mystery communities used in Roman times cannot possibly be compared to the New Testament. Esoteric Christianity teaches that Christianity is a mystery religion and that only a small minority of people ever achieve the enlightenment necessary to crack the arcane teachings of the Bible and truly know God. 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. That night the priests went back to the tomb and found it empty, the god having risen on the third day from the dead; and on the 25th the resurrection was celebrated with great rejoicing. MLKP, MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass. Loisy, Alfred. The mystery religions exerted some influence on the thinkers of the Middle Ages and the philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. 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 latter method is apt to neglect the distinctive contribution of each cult to the religious life of the age and, at the same time, to attribute to a given cult phases of some other system. The answer is "yes" - and also "no". Thus the designations of our Lord as the Dayspring from on High, the Light, the Sun of Righteousness, and similar expressions, are borrowed from or related to Mithraic phraseology., 35. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. cit., p. 129.\34, Again tradition has it that Mithra was born from a rock, the god out of the rock. It must also be noticed that his worship was always conducted in a cave. 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. Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, pp. 10. It is an interpretation of human history that breeds Christianity triumphed over these mystery religions after long conflict. In a mystery religion, an inner core of beliefs, practices, and the religion's true nature, . Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 41: In order to understand the type of religious experience represented by this important cult, it is necessary clearly to keep in mind the main points of the Eleusinian myth which was developed to explain and justify the cult rites. S. Angus, The Mystery-Religions and Christianity (London: John Murray, 1925), p. vii: These Mysteries covered an enormous range, and manifested a great diversity in character and outlook, from Orphism to Gnosticism, from the orgies of the Cabiri to the fervours of the Hermetic contemplative.. After mourning over the dead Christ, represented most conspicuously by a wax image carried through the streets, there comes an announcement by the priest, on the midnight before Easter Sunday, that Christ is risen. 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. 115116: Now one of the earliest seats of Christianity was Antioch; but in that city there was celebrated each year the death and resurrection of the god Tammuz or Adonis, This faith had always exerted its influence on Jewish thought, and, indeed, the prophet Ezekiel had found it necessary to scold the women of Jerusalem for weeping for the dead Tammuz at the very gate of the Temple; while, in the end, the place at Bethlehem selected by the early Christians as the scene of the birth of Jesus (for want to [sic] any knowledge as to where the event had really occurred) was none other than an early shrine of this pagan god, as St. Jerome was horrified to discovera fact which shows that Tammuz or Adonis ultimately became confused in mens minds with Jesus Christ., 16. Their members refused to make offerings to Roman gods or take part in Roman religious festivals, which Rome considered a matter of showing loyalty. 126127: But the Christian feast of All Souls, in honour of the dead, likewise falls at the beginning of November; and in many countries lamps and candles are burnt all night on that occasion. there seems little doubt that this custom was identical with the Egyptian festival. the festival of All Saints, which is held one day before that of All Souls and which was first recognised by the Church in a.d. 835, is undoubtedly identical with it in origin. And today similar experiences are represented by Greek Christians. Mithraism was brought to Europe from its Persian roots after Alexander the Great's conquests. In the large Gnostic library discovered at Najammd, in upper Egypt, in 1945, Hermetic writings were found sideby-side with Christian Gnostic texts. Various writers gave different Versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. 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. See A Study of Mithraism, 13 September23 November 1949, pp. The Christian churches needed large interior spaces to house the growing congregations and to mark the clear separation of the faithful from the unfaithful. (4) All promised a happy future life for the faithful.\[Footnote:] Enslin, Christian Beginnings, pp. Reprinted as The Mystery-Religions: A Study in the Religious Background of Early Christianity (New York, 1975). To show the beginning of a new era, the capital of the empire was transferred to the new Christian city of Constantinople. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Neoplatonism resonated with the mystery religions because of its idea of (p. 236), The Stoic idea of logos expresses that the world is governed by (p. 235), The Gospels, which presented Christianity as a distinct religion, were written (p. 232) and more. The Greeks interpreted the national religions of the Greek Orient chiefly in terms of Platos philosophical and religious concepts. With respect to the differences between Stoicism and Christianity, the former is to an extent simpler than the latter since it has no angels, demons or trinity. The New Testament gives evidence of at least four styles of Christian worship: temple worship (Acts 2:46), synagogue worship (Acts 16:13, 16), a fellowship meal concluded by the Lord's Supper (1 . The preceding two sentences are similar to a passage in A Study of Mithraism, p. 224 in this volume. Various writers, pagan and Christian, gave different versions of the Cybele-Attis myth. The specific variations in all these diverse statements do not concern us, for certain significant elements were common to all the various versions., 11. Now this idea has no scriptural foundation except in those difficult passages in the First Epistle of Peter\[Footnote:] I Peter 3:194:6.\ which many scholars have designated as the most ambiguous passages of the New Testament. 1. the hellenistic mystery religion decisively in Alexandria and contributed to its development. It was believed that this god suffered a cruel death, after which he descended into hell, rose again, and then ascended into Heaven. The divine personage in whom this cult centered was the Magna Mater Deum who was conceived as the source of all life as well as the personification of all the powers of nature.\[Footnote:] Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, p. 114.\7 She was the Great Mother not only of all the gods, but of all men as well.8 The winds, the sea, the earth, and the snowy seat of Olympus are hers, and when from her mountains she ascends into the great heavens, the son of Cronus himself gives way before her, and in like manner do also the other immortal blest honor the dread goddess.\[Footnote:] Quoted in Willoughbys, Pagan Regeneration, p. 115.9\. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. This effigy was later buried in a tomb. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. It is well-nigh impossible to . 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. The preceding four sentences are similar to a passage in A Study of Mithraism, p. 224 in this volume. Sacred mysteries are the areas of supernatural phenomena associated with a divinity or a religious belief and praxis.Sacred mysteries may be either: Religious beliefs, rituals or practices which are kept secret from the uninitiated. heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus 2. From the early days of Babylon and the legends surrounding Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz, certain rites and rituals are traced in their various developments, thus providing clues whereby the "mystery . Meanwhile the coffin was washed up on the Syrian coast, and became miraculously lodged in the trunk of a tree. 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. The people of that age were eager and zealous in their search for religious experience. Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, pp. The mother, frenzied with grief, rushed about the earth for nine days in search for her lost daughter,25 As a result of her wandering, she came to Eleusis where she was seen, although not recognized, by the four daughters of Kekeas sitting near a public well called the Fountain of Maidenhood. This does not mean that there was a deliberate copying on the part of Christianity. We should try to see the dark comedy in all things. Therefore it is necessary to study the historical and social factors that contributed to the growth of Christianity. The pagan cults and rites, for example, those of Eleusis, Attis, Osiris, Cybele, and Mithra (see mystery religions, greco-oriental). In fact, the comparison became so evident that many believed the Christian movement itself became a mystery cult. 161 Babylon Mystery Religion; 1966 First published in the 1920s, this work is still the standard on the various mystery religions so popular in Greece and Rome before the establishment of Christianity. King also proposes that the mystery religions had an even greater influence by preparing the people to understand Christianity. In its older Egyptian version, which was not a mystery religion, Isis was regarded as the goddess of heaven, earth, the sea, and the unseen world below. 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. Art redeems. (2) All had secret rites for the initiated. Christianity, however, [strikeout illegible] survived because it appeared to be the result of a trend in the social order or in the historical cycle of the human race. All of Lent's penitential practices and acts of spiritual renewal find their meaning in the journey of self-emptying and self-giving love that Jesus undertakes in his death and resurrection. Eastern Roman Empire is considered among the most influential empires of the . CULT OF CYBELE. 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