Mystery Religions

Much has been written about the widespread popularity and influence of Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental mystery religions on the first Christian century - the cults of Eleusis, Mithra, Isis, Dionysus, Cybele, and many local cults. These promised purification and immortality of the soul and often centered on myths of a goddess whose lover or child was taken from her, usually by death, and later restored. The mysteries also featured secret initiatory and other rites involving ceremeonial washing, blood-springkling, sacramental meals, intoxication, emotional frenzy, and impressive pageantry by which devotees were supposed to gain union with the deity. Social equality within the mysteries helped make them attrative to the lower classes.

On the other hand, not until the second, third, and fourth centuries of the Christian era do we get detailed information concering the beliefs held by devotees of the mysteries. Therefore, though nobody doubts the pre-Christian existence of mystery religions, their pre-Christian beliefs remain largely unknown. Where their later beliefs look slightly similar to Christian beliefs, the direction of borrowing may have gone from Christianity to the mystery religions rather than vice versa, especially since pagans were notoriously assimilative (see "Syncretism") and early Christians exclusivistic. Besides, similarities are often more apparent than real, and even where real they do no necessarily imply borrowing in either direction.

For example, the myths of dying and rising gods do not really correspond to the New Testament of accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection. In the first place, the deaths of the gods were not thought to purchase redemption for human beings. Furthermore, the story of Jesus' death and resurrection had to do with recent historical figure; the myths usually had to do with personifications of vegetaional process (the annual dying and renewal of plant life) and thus did not move on the plane of history at all, much less recent history. Finally, the mythological gods did not rise in full bodily resurrection, but revived only in part or merely in the world of the dead. When the fourteen parts of Osiris's body were reassembled, for example, he became king of the dead in the underworld. All that Cybele could obtain for the corpse of Attis was that it should not decay, that its hair should continue to grow, and that its little finger should move - yet the story Cybele and Attis, who purportedly died by self-castration, is sometimes cited as asignificant parallel to the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. As a matter of fact, the very thoughts of death by crucifixion and physical resurrection were abhorrent to ancient pagans, who associated curcifixion with criminals and often thought of the body as a prison for the soul and as the seat of evil. If Christians had borrowed their beliefs from popular mystery religions, one wonders why the pagans widely regarded the Christian gospel as foolish, incredible, and deserving of persecution.