(From the Christian Research Journal, Winter
1994, page 8. The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research
Journal is Elliot Miller).
Summary
Many Christian college students have encountered criticisms of
Christianity based on claims that early Christianity and the New
Testament borrowed important beliefs and practices from a number
of pagan mystery religions. Since these claims undermine such
central Christian doctrines as Christ's death and resurrection,
the charges are serious. But the evidence for such claims, when
it even exists, often lies in sources several centuries older
than the New Testament. Moreover, the alleged parallels often
result from liberal scholars uncritically describing pagan
beliefs and practices in Christian language and then marveling at
the striking parallels they think they've discovered.
During the first half of the twentieth century, a number of
liberal authors and professors claimed that the New Testament
teaching about Jesus' death and resurrection, the New Birth, and
the Christian practices of baptism and the Lord's Supper were
derived from the pagan mystery religions. Of major concern in all
this is the charge that the New Testament doctrine of salvation
parallels themes commonly found in the mystery religions: a
savior-god dies violently for those he will eventually deliver,
after which that god is restored to life.
Was the New Testament influenced by the pagan religions of the
first century A.D.? Even though I surveyed this matter in a 1992
book,[1] the issues are so important -- especially for Christian
college students who often do not know where to look for answers
-- that there is considerable merit in addressing this question
in a popular, nontechnical format.
WHAT WERE THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS?
Other than Judaism and Christianity, the mystery religions were
the most influential religions in the early centuries after
Christ. The reason these cults were called "mystery religions" is
that they involved secret ceremonies known only to those
initiated into the cult. The major benefit of these practices was
thought to be some kind of salvation.
The mystery religions were not, of course, the only
manifestations of the religious spirit in the eastern Roman
Empire. One could also find public cults not requiring an
initiation ceremony into secret beliefs and practices. The Greek
Olympian religion and its Roman counterpart are examples of this
type of religion.
Each Mediterranean region produced its own mystery religion. Out
of Greece came the cults of Demeter and Dionysus, as well as the
Eleusinian and Orphic mystery religions, which developed
later.[2] Asia Minor gave birth to the cult of Cybele, the Great
Mother, and her beloved, a shepherd named Attis. The cult of Isis
and Osiris (later changed to Serapis) originated in Egypt, while
Syria and Palestine saw the rise of the cult of Adonis. Finally,
Persia (Iran) was a leading early locale for the cult of Mithras,
which -- due to its frequent use of the imagery of war -- held a
special appeal to Roman soldiers. 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. The later non-Greek mysteries were personal,
private, and individualistic.
Basic Traits
One must avoid any suggestion that there was one common mystery
religion. While a tendency toward eclecticism or synthesis
developed after A.D. 300, each of the mystery cults was a
separate and distinct religion during the century that saw the
birth of the Christian church. Moreover, each mystery cult
assumed different forms in different cultural settings and
underwent significant changes, especially after A.D. 100.
Nevertheless, the mystery religions exhibited five common
traits.
(1) Central to each mystery was its use of an annual vegetation
cycle in which life is renewed each spring and dies each fall.
Followers of the mystery cults found deep symbolic significance
in the natural processes of growth, death, decay, and
rebirth.
(2) As noted above, each cult made important use of secret
ceremonies or mysteries, often in connection with an initiation
rite. Each mystery religion also passed on a "secret" to the
initiate that included information about the life of the cult's
god or goddess and how humans might achieve unity with that
deity. This "knowledge" was always a secret or esoteric
knowledge, unattainable by any outside the circle of the
cult.
(3) Each mystery also centered around a myth in which the deity
either returned to life after death or else triumphed over his
enemies. Implicit in the myth was the theme of redemption from
everything earthly and temporal. The secret meaning of the cult
and its accompanying myth was expressed in a "sacramental drama"
that appealed largely to the feelings and emotions of the
initiates. This religious ecstasy was supposed to lead them to
think they were experiencing the beginning of a new life.
(4) The mysteries had little or no use for doctrine and correct
belief. They were primarily concerned with the emotional life of
their followers. The cults used many different means to affect
the emotions and imaginations of initiates and hence bring about
"union with the god": processions, fasting, a play, acts of
purification, blazing lights, and esoteric liturgies. This lack
of any emphasis on correct belief marked an important difference
between the mysteries and Christianity. The Christian faith was
exclusivistic in the sense that it recognized only one legitimate
path to God and salvation, Jesus Christ. The mysteries were
inclusivistic in the sense that nothing prevented a believer in
one cult from following other mysteries.
(5) The immediate goal of the initiates was a mystical experience
that led them to feel they had achieved union with their god.
Beyond this quest for mystical union were two more ultimate
goals: some kind of redemption or salvation, and
immortality.
Evolution
Before A.D. 100, the mystery religions were still largely
confined to specific localities and were still a relatively novel
phenomenon. After A.D. 100, they gradually began to attain a
widespread popular influence throughout the Roman Empire. But
they also underwent significant changes that often resulted from
the various cults absorbing elements from each other. As devotees
of the mysteries became increasingly eclectic in their beliefs
and practices, new and odd combinations of the older mysteries
began to emerge. And as the cults continued to tone down the more
objectionable features of their older practices, they began to
attract greater numbers of followers.
RECONSTRUCTING THE MYSTERIES
It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find
sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery
religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively
complete reconstruction of their content. Far too many writers
use this late source material (after A.D. 200) to form
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. This practice is exceptionally bad
scholarship and should not be allowed to stand without challenge.
Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after
the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into
what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first
century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence
the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D.
400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the
New Testament in the first century.
The Cult of Isis and Osiris
The cult of Isis originated in Egypt and went through two major
stages. 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. In this earlier stage, Isis had
a husband named Osiris. The cult of Isis became a mystery
religion only after Ptolemy the First introduced major changes,
sometime after 300 B.C. In the later stage, a new god named
Serapis became Isis's consort. Ptolemy introduced these changes
in order to synthesize Egyptian and Greek concerns in his
kingdom, thus hastening the Hellenization of Egypt.
From Egypt, the cult of Isis gradually made its way to Rome.
While Rome was at first repelled by the cult, the religion
finally entered the city during the reign of Caligula (A.D.
37-41). Its influence spread gradually during the next two
centuries, and in some locales it became a major rival of
Christianity. The cult's success in the Roman Empire seems to
have resulted from its impressive ritual and the hope of
immortality offered to its followers.
The basic myth of the Isis cult concerned Osiris, her husband
during the earlier Egyptian and nonmystery stage of the religion.
According to the most common version of the myth, Osiris was
murdered by his brother who then sank the coffin containing
Osiris's body into the Nile river. Isis discovered the body and
returned it to Egypt. But her brother-in-law once again gained
access to the body, this time dismembering it into fourteen
pieces which he scattered widely. Following a long search, Isis
recovered each part of the body. It is at this point that the
language used to describe what followed is crucial. Sometimes
those telling the story are satisfied to say that Osiris came
back to life, even though such language claims far more than the
myth allows. Some writers go even further and refer to the
alleged "resurrection" of Osiris. One liberal scholar illustrates
how biased some writers are when they describe the pagan myth in
Christian language: "The dead body of Osiris floated in the Nile
and he returned to life, this being accomplished by a baptism in
the waters of the Nile."[3]
This biased and sloppy use of language suggests three misleading
analogies between Osiris and Christ: (1) a savior god dies and
(2) then experiences a resurrection accompanied by (3) water
baptism. But the alleged similarities, as well as the language
used to describe them, turn out to be fabrications of the modern
scholar and are not part of the original myth. Comparisons
between the resurrection of Jesus and the resuscitation of Osiris
are greatly exaggerated.[4] Not every version of the myth has
Osiris returning to life; in some he simply becomes king of the
underworld. Equally far-fetched are attempts to find an analogue
of Christian baptism in the Osiris myth.[5] The fate of Osiris's
coffin in the Nile is as relevant to baptism as the sinking of
Atlantis.
As previously noted, during its later mystery stage, the male
deity of the Isis cult is no longer the dying Osiris but Serapis.
Serapis is often portrayed as a sun god, and it is clear that he
was not a dying god. Obviously then, neither could he be a rising
god. Thus, it is worth remembering that the post-Ptolemaic
mystery version of the Isis cult that was in circulation from
about 300 B.C. through the early centuries of the Christian era
had absolutely nothing that could resemble a dying and rising
savior-god.
The Cult of Cybele and Attis
Cybele, also known as the Great Mother, was worshiped through
much of the Hellenistic world. She undoubtedly began as a goddess
of nature. Her early worship included orgiastic ceremonies in
which her frenzied male worshipers were led to castrate
themselves, following which they became "Galli" or eunuch-priests
of the goddess. Cybele eventually came to be viewed as the Mother
of all gods and the mistress of all life.
Most of our information about the cult describes its practices
during its later Roman period. But the details are slim and
almost all the source material is relatively late, certainly
datable long after the close of the New Testament canon.
According to myth, Cybele loved a shepherd named Attis. Because
Attis was unfaithful, she drove him insane. Overcome by madness,
Attis castrated himself and died. This drove Cybele into great
mourning, and it introduced death into the natural world. But
then Cybele restored Attis to life, an event that also brought
the world of nature back to life.
The presuppositions of the interpreter tend to determine the
language used to describe what followed Attis's death. Many
writers refer carelessly to the "resurrection of Attis." But
surely this is an exaggeration. There is no mention of anything
resembling a resurrection in the myth, which suggests that Cybele
could only preserve Attis's dead body. Beyond this, there is
mention of the body's hair continuing to grow, along with some
movement of his little finger. In some versions of the myth,
Attis's return to life took the form of his being changed into an
evergreen tree. Since the basic idea underlying the myth was the
annual vegetation cycle, any resemblance to the bodily
resurrection of Christ is greatly exaggerated.
Eventually a public rehearsal of the Attis myth became an annual
event in which worshipers shared in Attis's "immortality." Each
spring the followers of Cybele would mourn for the dead Attis in
acts of fasting and flagellation.
It was only during the later Roman celebrations (after A.D. 300)
of the spring festival that anything remotely connected with a
"resurrection" appears. The pine tree symbolizing Attis was cut
down and then carried corpse-like into the sanctuary. Later in
the prolonged festival, the tree was buried while the initiates
worked themselves into a frenzy that included gashing themselves
with knives. The next night, the "grave" of the tree was opened
and the "resurrection of Attis" was celebrated. But the language
of these late sources is highly ambiguous. In truth, no
clear-cut, unambiguous reference to the supposed "resurrection"
of Attis appears, even in the very late literature from the
fourth century after Christ.
The Taurobolium
The best-known rite of the cult of the Great Mother was the
taurobolium. It is important to note, however, that this ritual
was not part of the cult in its earlier stages. It entered the
religion sometime after the middle of the second century
A.D.
During the ceremony, initiates stood or reclined in a pit as a
bull was slaughtered on a platform above them.[6] The initiate
would then be bathed in the warm blood of the dying animal. It
has been alleged that the taurobolium was a source for Christian
language about being washed in the blood of the lamb (Rev. 7:14)
or sprinkled with the blood of Jesus (1 Pet. 1:2). It has also
been cited as the source for Paul's teaching in Romans 6:1-4,
where he relates Christian baptism to the Christian's
identification with Christ's death and resurrection.
No notion of death and resurrection was ever part of the
taurobolium, however. The best available evidence requires us to
date the ritual about one hundred years after Paul wrote Romans
6:1-4. Not one existing text supports the claim that the
taurobolium memorialized the death and "resurrection" of Attis.
The pagan rite could not possibly have been the source for Paul's
teaching in Romans 6. Only near the end of the fourth century
A.D. did the ritual add the notion of rebirth. Several important
scholars see a Christian influence at work in this later
development.[7] It is clear, then, that the chronological
development of the rite makes it impossible for it to have
influenced first-century Christianity. The New Testament teaching
about the shedding of blood should be viewed in the context of
its Old Testament background -- the Passover and the temple
sacrifice.
Mithraism
Attempts to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of Mithraism
face enormous challenges because of the scanty information that
has survived. Proponents of the cult explained the world in terms
of two ultimate and opposing principles, one good (depicted as
light) and the other evil (darkness). Human beings must choose
which side they will fight for; they are trapped in the conflict
between light and darkness. Mithra came to be regarded as the
most powerful mediator who could help humans ward off attacks
from demonic forces.[8]
The major reason why no Mithraic influence on first-century
Christianity is possible is the timing: it's all wrong! The
flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the New
Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything
that appears in the New Testament.[9] Moreover, no monuments for
the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100, and even this
dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions.
Chronological difficulties, then, make the possibility of a
Mithraic influence on early Christianity extremely improbable.
Certainly, there remains no credible evidence for such an
influence.
STRIKING PARALLELS?
Enough has been said thus far to permit comment on one of the
major faults of the above-mentioned liberal scholars. I refer to
the frequency with which their writings evidence a careless, even
sloppy use of language. One frequently encounters scholars who
first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and
practices, and then marvel at the striking parallels they think
they have discovered. One can go a long way toward "proving"
early Christian dependence on the mysteries by describing some
mystery belief or practice in Christian terminology. J. Godwin
does this in his book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World,
which describes the criobolium (see footnote 6) as a "blood
baptism" in which the initiate is "washed in the blood of the
lamb."[10] While uninformed readers might be stunned by this
remarkable similarity to Christianity (see Rev. 7:14),
knowledgeable readers will see such a claim as the reflection of
a strong, negative bias against Christianity.
Exaggerations and oversimplifications abound in this kind of
literature. One encounters overblown claims about alleged
likenesses between baptism and the Lord's Supper and similar
"sacraments" in certain mystery cults. Attempts to find analogies
between the resurrection of Christ and the alleged
"resurrections" of the mystery deities involve massive amounts of
oversimplification and inattention to detail.
Pagan Rituals and the Christian Sacraments
The mere fact that Christianity has a sacred meal and a washing
of the body is supposed to prove that it borrowed these
ceremonies from similar meals and washings in the pagan cults. By
themselves, of course, such outward similarities prove nothing.
After all, religious ceremonies can assume only a limited number
of forms, and they will naturally relate to important or common
aspects of human life. The more important question is the meaning
of the pagan practices. Ceremonial washings that antedate the New
Testament have a different meaning from New Testament baptism,
while pagan washings after A.D. 100 come too late to influence
the New Testament and, indeed, might themselves have been
influenced by Christianity.[11] Sacred meals in the pre-Christian
Greek mysteries fail to prove anything since the chronology is
all wrong. The Greek ceremonies that are supposed to have
influenced first-century Christians had long since disappeared by
the time we get to Jesus and Paul. Sacred meals in such
post-Christian mysteries as Mithraism come too late.
Unlike the initiation rites of the mystery cults, Christian
baptism looks back to what a real, historical person -- Jesus
Christ -- did in history. Advocates of the mystery cults believed
their "sacraments" had the power to give the individual the
benefits of immortality in a mechanical or magical way, without
his or her undergoing any moral or spiritual transformation. This
certainly was not Paul's view, either of salvation or of the
operation of the Christian sacraments. In contrast with pagan
initiation ceremonies, Christian baptism is not a mechanical or
magical ceremony. It is clear that the sources of Christian
baptism are not to be found either in the taurobolium (which is
post first-century anyway) or in the washings of the pagan
mysteries. Its sources lie rather in the washings of purification
found in the Old Testament and in the Jewish practice of
baptizing proselytes, the latter being the most likely source for
the baptistic practices of John the Baptist.
Of all the mystery cults, only Mithraism had anything that
resembled the Lord's Supper. A piece of bread and a cup of water
were placed before initiates while the priest of Mithra spoke
some ceremonial words. But the late introduction of this ritual
precludes its having any influence upon first-century
Christianity.
Claims that the Lord's Supper was derived from pagan sacred meals
are grounded in exaggerations and oversimplifications. The
supposed parallels and analogies break down completely.[12] Any
quest for the historical antecedents of the Lord's Supper is more
likely to succeed if it stays closer to the Jewish foundations of
the Christian faith than if it wanders off into the practices of
the pagan cults. The Lord's Supper looked back to a real,
historical person and to something He did in history. The
occasion for Jesus' introduction of the Christian Lord's Supper
was the Jewish Passover feast. Attempts to find pagan sources for
baptism and the Lord's Supper must be judged to fail.
The Death of the Mystery Gods and the Death of Jesus
The best way to evaluate the alleged dependence of early
Christian beliefs about Christ's death and resurrection on the
pagan myths of a dying and rising savior-god is to examine
carefully the supposed parallels. The death of Jesus differs from
the deaths of the pagan gods in at least six ways:
(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.[13]
(2) Only Jesus died for sin. As Gunter Wagner observes, 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.)."[14]
(3) Jesus died once and for all (Heb. 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14).
In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose
repeated deaths and resuscitations depict the annual cycle of
nature.
(4) Jesus' death was an actual event in history. The death of the
mystery god appears in 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 in an actual historical event makes absurd any
attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, nonhistorical
stories of the pagan cults.[15]
(5) Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like
this appears even implicitly in the mysteries.
(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.[16]
The Risen Christ and the "Rising Savior-Gods"
Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the
dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of
Attis. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger.
One can speak of a "resurrection" in the stories of Osiris,
Attis, and Adonis only in the most extended of senses.[17] For
example, after Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris's
dismembered body, Osiris became "Lord of the Underworld." This is
a poor substitute for a resurrection like that of Jesus Christ.
And, no claim can be made that Mithras was a dying and rising
god. The tide of scholarly opinion has turned dramatically
against attempts to make early Christianity dependent on the
so-called dying and rising gods of Hellenistic paganism.[18] Any
unbiased examination of the evidence shows that such claims must
be rejected.
Christian Rebirth and Cultic Initiation Rites
Liberal writings on the subject are full of sweeping
generalizations to the effect that early Christianity borrowed
its notion of rebirth from the pagan mysteries.[19] But the
evidence makes it clear that there was no pre-Christian doctrine
of rebirth for the Christians to borrow. There are actually very
few references to the notion of rebirth in the evidence that has
survived, and even these are either very late or very ambiguous.
They provide no help in settling the question of the source of
the New Testament use of the concept. The claim that
pre-Christian mysteries regarded their initiation rites as a kind
of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence contemporary with such
alleged practices. Instead, a view found in much later texts is
read back into earlier rites, which are then interpreted quite
speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate's "new
birth." The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used "rebirth" as
a technical term lacks support from even one single text.
,br> Most contemporary scholars maintain that the mystery use
of the concept of rebirth (testified to only in evidence dated
after A.D. 300) differs so significantly from its New Testament
usage that any possibility of a close link is ruled out. The most
that such scholars are willing to concede is the possibility that
some Christians borrowed the metaphor or imagery from the common
speech of the time and recast it to fit their distinctive
theological beliefs. So even if the metaphor of rebirth was
Hellenistic, its content within Christianity was
unique.[20]
SEVEN ARGUMENTS AGAINST CHRISTIAN DEPENDENCE ON THE
MYSTERIES
I conclude by noting seven points that undermine liberal efforts
to show that first-century Christianity borrowed essential
beliefs and practices from the pagan mystery religions.
(1) Arguments offered to "prove" a Christian dependence on the
mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This
fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because
two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the
other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove
causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.
(2) Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the
mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars
often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from
Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to
speak of a "Last Supper" in Mithraism or a "baptism" in the cult
of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word "savior"
with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris
or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar
sense.
(3) The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of
information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced
early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find
writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul
in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We
must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain
belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ,
it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first
century.
(4) Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan
religions. All of our information about him makes it highly
unlikely that he was in any sense influenced by pagan sources. He
placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form of
Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very
sort of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have
attributed to him, namely, letting their minds be captured by
alien speculations (Col. 2:8).
(5) Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. Machen
explains, the mystery cults were nonexclusive. "A man could
become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at
all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received
into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must
forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ....Amid the
prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of
Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone."[21]
This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all
reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and
its pagan competitors. Any hint of syncretism in the New
Testament would have caused immediate controversy.
(6) Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on
events that actually happened in history. The mysticism of the
mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical. Their myths were
dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real
historical events, as Paul regarded Christ's death and
resurrection to be. The Christian affirmation that the death and
resurrection of Christ happened to a historical person at a
particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in any pagan
mystery religion.
(7) What few parallels may still remain may reflect a Christian
influence on the pagan systems. As Bruce Metzger has argued, "It
must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always
influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable
that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite
direction."[22] It should not be surprising that leaders of cults
that were being successfully challenged by Christianity should do
something to counter the challenge. What better way to do this
than by offering a pagan substitute? Pagan attempts to counter
the growing influence of Christianity by imitating it are clearly
apparent in measures instituted by Julian the Apostate, who was
the Roman emperor from A.D. 361 to 363.
A FINAL WORD
Liberal efforts to undermine the uniqueness of the Christian
revelation via claims of a pagan religious influence collapse
quickly once a full account of the information is available. It
is clear that the liberal arguments exhibit astoundingly bad
scholarship. Indeed, this conclusion may be too generous.
According to one writer, a more accurate account of these bad
arguments would describe them as "prejudiced
irresponsibility."[23] But in order to become completely informed
on these matters, wise readers will work through material cited
in the brief bibliography.
NOTES
1 See Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Richardson, TX:
Probe Books, 1992). The book was originally published in 1984
under the title, Christianity and the Hellenist World.
2 I must pass over these Greek versions of the mystery cults. See
Nash, 131-36.
3 Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Macmillan,
1943), 104.
4 See Edwin Yamauchi, "Easter -- Myth, Hallucination, or
History?" Christianity Today, 29 March 1974, 660-63.
5 See Gunter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries
(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967), 260ff.
6 When the ceremony used a lamb, it was the criobolium. Since
lambs cost far less than bulls, this modification was rather
common.
7 See Nash, chapter 9.
8 For more detail, see Nash, 143-48.
9 See Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court,
1903), 87ff.
10 Joscelyn Godwin, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World (New
York: Harper and Row, 1981), 111.
11 See Nash, chapter 9.
12 See Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 24.
13 See Martin Hengel, The Son of God (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1976), 26.
14 Wagner, 284.
15 See W. K. C. Guthrie, Ortheus and Greek Religion, 2d ed.
(London: Methuen, 1952), 268.
16 See A. D. Nock, "Early Gentile Christianity and Its
Hellenistic Background," in Essays on the Trinity and the
Incarnation, ed. A. E. J. Rawlinson (London: Longmans, Green,
1928), 106.
17 See J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul's Religion (New
York: Macmillan, 1925), 234-35.
18 See Nash, 161-99.
19 See Nash, 173-78.
20 See W. F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism
(London: SPCK, 1948), 76-81.
21 Machen, 9.
22 Bruce M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan,
Jewish, and Christian (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11. The
possible parallels in view here would naturally be dated late,
after A.D. 200 for the most part.
23 Gordon H. Clark, Thales to Dewey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1957), 195.
Suggested Reading
- Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul's Gospel (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1982).
- J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul's Religion (New York:
Macmillan, 1925).
- Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Richardson, TX: Probe
Books, 1992).
- Gunter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries
(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967).
End of document, CRJ0169A.TXT (original CRI file name),
"Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"
release A, August 31, 1994
R. Poll, CRI
(A special note of thanks to Bob and Pat Hunter
for their help in the preparation of this ASCII file for BBS
circulation.)
Copyright 1994 by the Christian Research Institute.
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