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. Perhaps the most notable difference between Christianity and the mystery religions is Christianity's attitude towards proselytism. The more crusading a religion is, the more it absorbs. Certainly Christianity has been a crusading religion from the beginning. 2. Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration, pp. The Christian representations of the Madonna and child are clearly the continuation of the representations of Isis and her son suckling her breast. 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. This triumph may be attributed in part to the fact that Christianity took from its opponents their own weapons, and used them: the better elements of the mystery religions were transferred to the new religion. In a mystery religion, an inner core of beliefs, practices, and the religion's true nature, . It is an interpretation of human history that breeds Each year nature passed through the cycle of apparent death and resurrection. The answer is "yes" - and also "no". 2d ed. People were free to move from one country to another and became cosmopolitan. In the former capacity she was identified with the great mother-goddess, Demeter, whose mourning for Persephone was the main feature in the Eleusinian mysteries. 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. King repeats material from an earlier paper, A Study of Mithraism, but he extends the discussion here to the influence of other mystery religions.1 Davis gave the essay an A, stating: This is very good and I am glad to have your conclusion. There seems little doubt that this custom was identical with the Egyptian festival. Weigall, Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 137: Mithra was born from a rock, as shown in Mithraic sculptures, being sometimes termed the god out of the rock, and his worship was always conducted in a cave; and the general belief in the early Church that Jesus was born in a cave is a direct instance of the taking over of Mithraic ideas. Paris, 1930 . In fact the idea did not appear in the church as a tenet of Christianity until late in the Fourth Century.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. 10. Best Sellers Rank: #329,817 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books) #317 in General History of Religion. In the spring, those who had shared Demeters grief for the loss of her daughter welcomed the return of Persephone with all the joy that the returning life of vegetation might kindle. Here we see how Mary gradually came to take the place of the goddess.\[Footnote:] Weigall, op. 38. It is a library research and is descriptive in nature. Dean Inge, e.g. 9.1K Followers. King wrote this paper for the course Development of Christian Ideas, taught by Davis. Both the Apostles Creed and the Athanasian {Creed} say that between the Friday night and Sunday morning Jesus was in Hades. The only one they could offer was quite naive, but it was in keeping with the trends of thought in that age. That is essential. 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." 3. The previous five sentences are similar to a passage in Kings earlier paper, A Study of Mithraism, pp. 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. Joining a mystery religion was a personal decision and was not connected to what family or culture one belonged to. It was suppressed by the Christians sometime in the latter part of the fourth century a.d.; but its collapse seems to have been due to the fact that by that time many of its doctrines and practices had been adopted by the church, so that it was practically absorbed by its rival.31, Originally Mithra was one of the lesser gods of the ancient Persian pantheon, but at the time of Christ he had come to be co-equal with Ahura Mazda, the Supreme Being.32 He possessed many attributes, the most important being his office of defender of truth and all good things. 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 . At an early date there was associated with Cybele, the Great Mother, a hero-divinity called Attic who personified the life of the vegetable world particularly. After telling a fictitious tale of her escape from pirates, she won the sympathy of the girls who took her home and at her own request was given a job to nurse their infant brother, Demophon. 5. On the whole, early Christians were not greatly concerned about the likenesses between the Mithraic cult and their own. Mythicists confidently assert, "Christianity is nothing more than a patchwork quilt of ancient pagan and mystery religions.". Here are seven of the most influential Greco-Roman Mysteries and some of what little we know about them. In the former capacity she was identified with the great mother-goddess, Demeter, whose mourning for Persephone was the main feature in the Eleusinian mysteries; In her aspect as the mother of Horus, Isis was represented in tens of thousands of statuettes and paintings, holding the divine child in her arms; and when Christianity triumphed these paintings and figures became those of the Madonna and Child without any break in continuity: no archaeologist, in fact, can now tell whether some of these objects represent the one or the other., 23. But when we observe a little further we find that as a solar festival, Sunday was the sacred day of Mithra; it is also interesting to notice that since Mithra was addressed as Lord, Sunday must have been the Lords Day long before Christian use.\[Footnote:] Ibid., p. 137.\ It is also to be noticed that our Christmas, December 25th, was the birthday of Mithra, and was only taken over in the Fourth Century as the date, actually unknown, of the birth of Jesus.36, To make the picture a little more clear, we may list a few of the similarities between these two religions: (1) Both regard Sunday as a holy day. As is commonly known Isis had two capacities which her worshippers warmly commended her for. In the spring, those who had shared Demeters grief for the loss of her daugher welcomed the return of Persephone with all the joy that the returning life of vegetation might kindle. The first Christian communities resembled the mystery communities in big cities and seaports by providing social security and the feeling of brotherhood. 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. 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 . But although baptism did not originate with the Christians, still it was not copied from the pagans. Regardless, one consequence of interpreting Christianity as an embellished mystery religion is the conclusion that Christian faith per se is the invention of men, not a revelation from God. This makes it sound as if they were unified, sharing common beliefs that . 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. the calling of the Gentiles into the Christian Church, so designated ( Ephesians 1:9 Ephesians 1:10; 3:8-11; Colossians 1:25-27); a truth undiscoverable except by revelation, long hid, now made manifest.The resurrection of the dead ( 1 Corinthians 15:51), and other doctrines which need to be explained but which cannot be fully understood by finite intelligence ( Matthew 13:11; Romans . This sacramental use of the term did not become established until the fourth century, when the mystery religions were no longer serious competitors of Christianity. [also note from page3]: This Dover edition, first published in 1975, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the second (1928) edition of the work originally published by John Murray, in London, in 1925 under the title The Mystery-Religions and Christianity. It is improbable, however, that either of these were introduced into Christian practices by association with the mystery cults. The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean fire rites was similar to Christian standards. 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. It seems instead to have been carried over from Jewish background and modified by the new ideas and beliefs of the Christians. 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