Greco-Roman Foundations For ...
(Top Posts - History - 011001)

... the origins of Christianity:

Disbelievers/doubters, seekers, and christians should be
enlightened regarding the nature of the dependence on
religion and worship, the similarities to later-developed
christian ideas, and the fertile foundations present within
the Greco-Roman cultures, as evidenced via mystery
religions prior to and coexistent with the spread of the
christian religions.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=115606

Excerpts:

... Mysteries were always secret cults into which a person
had to be "initiated" (taken in). The initiate was called mystes,
the introducing person mystagogos (leader of the mystes).
The leaders of the cults included the hierophantes ("revealer
of holy things") and the dadouchos ("torchbearer"). The
constitutive features of a mystery society were common
meals, dances, and ceremonies, especially initiation rites.
These common experiences strengthened the bonds of
each cult. ...

Hellenic roots

Dionysiac

In every Greek city the god Dionysus was worshipped by
fraternities and sororities and also by mixed communities.
Dionysus was a god of fruitfulness and vegetation but
especially of wine. ...

Eleusinian

The most important sanctuary of Demeter (Ceres), the
goddess of grain, and her daughter Kore (Persephone) was
in the city of Eleusis in Attica, between Athens and Megara.
Famous religious agricultural festivals--known as the Greater
and the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries--celebrating the sowing,
sprouting, and reaping of the grain, were reenacted in this
city. ...

Just as grain came up out of the ground and was reaped to
yield man's bread and to be used as seed, so was a girl taken
from her parents and her virginity "killed" to bring forth new
offspring. And when a man died, he was buried in the earth
to partake mystically in the cyclic renewal of life. This was
the message of Eleusis: out of every grave new life grows--
for the initiates there are "good hopes" for a glorious
immortality in the afterlife. ...

Although there were festivals of Demeter throughout Greece,
the true Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis only.
At first, the cult of Demeter was local and initiation was tribal
rather than personal. By participating in the mysteries, a man
became a full member of the civic body.

This was changed when Eleusis was annexed to the Athenian
territory about 600 BC. Initiation lost its importance as a
means of conferring civic status; it became a purely religious
ceremony.

Every Athenian was admitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and
soon the mysteries were open to every Greek, so that the
ceremonies received an "international" character. Whoever
wished to be initiated, however, had to go to Eleusis. It was
a day's journey from Athens, a longer distance from most of
the other Greek cities.

The mystery rite became no longer a tribal ceremony. Each
person had to decide for himself whether or not he wanted
to be initiated. This development was possible only because
Athens had become a large city with a differentiated culture
that gave the individual ample choice of a way of life, including
religion. ...

Orphic

Besides community initiations, there were ceremonies for indi-
vidual persons of deeper religious longing. Such persons were
called Orphics after Orpheus, the Greek hero with superhuman
musical skills who was supposedly the author of sacred writings;
these writings were called the Orphic rhapsodies and they dealt
with such subjects as purification and the afterlife. ...

Many Orphics seem to have had a strong feeling of sin and guilt.
They believed that there was a divine part in man--his soul--but
it was wrapped up in the body, and man's task was to liberate
the soul from the body. This could be achieved by living an
Orphic life, which included abstinence from meat, wine, and
sexual intercourse.

After death the soul would be judged. If a man had lived a
righteous life, his soul would be sent to the meadows of the
blessed in Elysium; but, if he had committed misdeeds, his
soul would be punished in various ways and perhaps sent
to hell. Following a period of reward or punishment, the soul
would be incarnated in a new body. Only a soul that had lived
a pious life three times could be liberated from the cycle. ...

Pythagoreans

The Orphic creeds were the basis of the Pythagorean brother-
hood, which flourished in southern Italy beginning in the 6th
century BC. The Pythagoreans were aristocratic fraternities
that sometimes had a political scope.

Their main achievements, however, lay in the fields of music,
geometry, and astronomy. They discovered that these
subjects could be explained by numbers and ratios.

Combining Orphic eschatology (the study of the last things,
especially death and afterlife) with their discoveries, they
invested music, geometry, and astronomy with religious
values.

According to their doctrine, the original home of the soul
was in the stars. From there it fell down to earth and asso-
ciated with the body. Thus, man was a stranger on the earth,
and he had to strive to liberate himself from the ties of the
flesh and return to the soul's celestial home.

Platonists

The philosophy of Plato (c. 428-348 or 347 BC) by no
means resulted from connections with a mystery cult. Yet
Plato did take up many ideas from earlier Greek religion,
especially from the Pythagorean brotherhood and from
the Eleusinian communities, and often described his
philosophy in terms derived from the mysteries.

For example, the notion of searching and finding, so
important in Eleusis, became an important notion in Plato's
philosophy: the philosopher should never cease or relax
in his quest for truth. A value was thus attached to the
very act of searching. Later mystery religions, in their
turn, borrowed freely from the rich imagery of Plato's
dialogues and are thus deeply tinged with Platonism.

In the Timaeus, which is an exposition of his theory of
the universe, Plato also developed his theory of the soul. ...

Many other traditional religious images were taken over
by Plato, including the music of the spheres, the migration
of the soul, the soul's remembrance of its celestial origin,
and the idea of rewards for the righteous and punishment
for the wicked. Later mystery associations adopted these
concepts, which Plato had expressed so beautifully, and
were deeply influenced by Plato's explanations.

The Hellenistic period

When Alexander the Great conquered the Asiatic kingdoms
as far east as the Indus River, the Greek world was extended
immensely. The religious ideas in Greece itself and the
western part of the Alexandrian Empire, however, changed
very slowly, because the Greeks, now masters of the world,
felt no need for change. ...

Ancient Near Eastern kingship was originally sacral. The
Syrian and Egyptian inhabitants of the newly created Greek
kingdoms inevitably regarded the Greco-Macedonian kings
as semidivine beings. ...

Mystery rituals, called royal mysteries, were developed espe-
cially in Egypt. According to traditional Egyptian religion,
the ruling pharaoh was an incarnation of Horus (the sun-god),
his mother or wife an incarnation of Isis (the heavenly queen),
and his deceased father an incarnation of Osiris (the god of
fertility).

In Hellenistic times, Osiris was commonly known by the name
Sarapis. These gods became equated with Greek gods: Isis
with Demeter and Aphrodite; Horus with Apollo and Helios;
Sarapis with Zeus, Dionysus, and Hades (Pluto). Both Greek
and Egyptian myths were adopted for these divinities.

One of the suburbs of Alexandria, the newly constructed
Greek capital of Egypt, was called Eleusis after the city of
Demeter in Greece, and the Eleusinian Mysteries were insti-
tuted in a Greco-Egyptian adaptation. Dionysiac Mysteries
were introduced on an even greater scale, so that the royal
court was temporarily thrown into turmoil by the number
of Bacchic ceremonies in which the king was considered
to be a reincarnation of Dionysus. The Pythagorean concept
of the migration of the soul was also taken over and was
blended with the Egyptian belief in the reincarnation of the
sun-god Horus in the reigning king. ...

Roman imperial times

The great period of the mystery religions began when the
Romans imposed peace upon the Mediterranean world.
The Dionysiac, or Bacchic, societies flourished in the whole
empire--in Greece proper, on the Greek islands, in Asia
Minor, along the Danube River, and especially in Italy and
at Rome. Hundreds of inscriptions attest to Bacchic
Mysteries. ...

The most popular of the Oriental mysteries was the cult of
Isis. It was already in vogue at Rome in the time of the
emperor Augustus, at the beginning of the Christian era.

The Emperor, who wanted to restore the genuine Roman
religious traditions, disliked the Oriental influences. But men
of reputation, such as Messalla, a general and patron of
writers, were strongly inclined toward the Isis Mysteries.

Isis, the goddess of love, was the patroness of many of
the elegant Roman courtesans. The religion of Isis became
widespread in Italy during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
To a certain extent, the expansion of Judaism and Christianity
over the Roman world coincided with the expansion of the
Egyptian cults.

Far less important was the influence of cults from Asia Minor.
By 200 BC the Great Mother of the Gods (Magna Mater) and
her consort Attis were introduced into the Roman pantheon
and were considered as Roman gods. Their cult seems to
have been encouraged especially under Emperor Claudius
about AD 50.

The Great Mother was characterized by her universal mother-
hood, especially over wild nature. The mysteries symbolized,
through her relationship to Attis, the relations of Mother Earth
to her children and were intended to impress upon the mystes
the subjective certainty of having been united in a special way
with the goddess. There was a strong element of hope for an
afterlife in this cult.

The Persian god Mithra (Mithras), the god of light, was intro-
duced much later, probably not before the 2nd century. The
cult of Mithra was concerned with the origin of life from a
sacred bull that was caught and then sacrificed by Mithra.
According to Persian sources, the bull by its death gave birth
to the sky, the planets, the earth, the animals, and the plants;
thus Mithra became the creator of life.

From Syria came the worship of several deities, of which
Jupiter Heliopolitanus (the local god of Heliopolis; modern
Ba'labakk, Lebanon) and Jupiter Dolichenus (the local god
of Doliche in Commagene; modern Dülük, Turkey) were
the most important.

Adonis (a god of vegetation) of Byblos (in modern Lebanon)
had long been familiar to the Greeks and was often considered
to be closely related to Osiris; the myths and rituals of the
two gods were similar. Adonis' female partner was Atargatis
(Astarte), whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. At the
time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the latter half of the 2nd
century AD, a pseudo-prophet named Alexander the Paphla-
gonian devised a great mystery spectacle centred around a
holy snake called Glycon and had great success during his
lifetime.

The height of Syrian influence was in the 3rd century AD
when Sol, the Syrian sun god, was on the verge of becoming
the chief god of the Roman Empire. He was introduced into
Rome by the emperor Elagabalus (Heliogabalus) in about
AD 220, and by about AD 240 Pythian Games (i.e., festivals
of the sun god Apollo Helios) were instituted in many cities
of the empire.

The emperor Aurelian (270-275) elevated Sol to the highest
rank among the gods. Sanctuaries of Sol and the gods of
other planets (septizonium) were constructed. Even the
emperor Constantine the Great, some 50 years later, wavered
between Sol and Christ. For some time his religious policy
was devised so as to allow the coexistence of both religions.
Finally, Christianity was accepted as the official religion.

The different mystery religions were not exclusive of one
another, but they appealed to different sociological groups.
The middle class of the Greek and Roman cities preferred
the Dionysiac societies, the festivals of which were a cult
of beauty and merriment. Isis was worshipped by lower
middle class people in the seaports and trading towns.

The followers of the Great Mother in Italy were principally
craftsmen. Mithra was the god of soldiers and of imperial
officials and freedmen. There were no special societies
for slaves; but they were usually admitted to the societies,
and, during the time of the festival, all men were considered
equal.

Common features in Roman imperial times

For the first three centuries of the Christian Era, the different
mystery religions existed side-by-side in the Roman Empire.
They had all developed out of local and national cults and
later became cosmopolitan and international. The mystery
religions would never have developed and expanded as they
did, however, without the new social conditions brought
about by the unification of the Mediterranean world by the
Romans. ...

The individual who felt that his initiative was frustrated by
the preponderance of the imperial structure might well turn
to a community that offered him the hope of a better future.
The mystery societies, thus, commonly satisfied both a taste
for individualism and a longing for brotherhood. At least in
principle, the members of the communities were considered
equal: one man was the other man's brother, irrespective of
his origin, social rank, or nationality.

Because membership in each of the mystery communities
was a matter of personal choice, propaganda and missionary
work were inevitable. In the religions of Isis and Mithra,
missionary zeal was particularly obvious. The followers of
Isis and Mithra considered Rome to be the centre of their
worship, and the city was called sacrosancta civitas ("sacred
city") in an Isis romance written in the 2nd century AD by
the Latin author Apuleius.

Priesthood

The organization of the mystery religions was rather loose.
The priests of Dionysus were wealthy laymen, as the priests
in Greece always were. The Roman community of the Great
Mother had a large group of priests (the galli), headed by a
chief priest (the Archigallus). ...

Rites and festivals

A period of preparation preceded the initiation in each of
the mysteries. In the Isis religion, for example, a period of
11 days of fasting, including abstinence from meat, wine,
and sexual activity, was required before the ceremony.
The candidates were segregated from the common folk
in special apartments in the holy precinct of the community
centre; they were called "the chastely living ones" (hagneu-
ontes).

In all the mystery religions the candidates swore an oath
of secrecy; the oath of the Isis Mysteries is preserved
on papyrus. Before initiation, a confession of sins was
expected. The candidate sometimes told at length the
story of the faults of his life up to the point of his baptism,
which was commonly a part of the initiation ceremony,
and the community of devotees listened to the confession.

It was believed that the rite of baptism would wash away
all the candidate's sins, and, from that point on, his life
would be changed for the better, because he had enrolled
himself in the service of the saviour god.

In the Mithraic ceremonies, there were seven degrees of
initiations: Corax (Raven), Nymphus (Bridegroom), Miles
(Soldier), Leo (Lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus
(Courier of the Sun), and Pater (Father). Those in the
lowest ranks, certainly the Corax, were the servants of
the community during the sacred meal of bread and
water that formed part of the rite.

The initiation ceremonies usually mimed death and resur-
rection. This was done in the most extravagant manner. ...

The ceremonies always contained a prayer for the welfare
of the emperor and for the good fortune of the whole
Roman Empire. In fact, the amalgamation of religion and
politics was sometimes so close that the designation
"imperial mysteries" is used. ...

Seasonal festivals

The religions of Dionysus and Demeter and of Isis and
the Great Mother had something of an ecclesiastical year.
The seasonal festivals were inherited from old tribal
ceremonies that had been closely associated with the
sowing and reaping of corn and with the production of
wine. ...

The festivals of the Isis religion were connected with the
three Egyptian seasons caused by the cycle of the Nile
River (inundation, sowing, and reaping). ... In Roman
times, important Isis festivals were held on December 25,
January 6, and March 5. ...

In the religion of Sol, the festivals were determined by
astronomy. The greatest festival was held on December
24-25, at the time of the winter solstice. Because from
this date the length of the day began to increase, it was
regarded as the day of the rebirth of the god and of the
renovation of life.

Literature

The mystery communities had religious hymns, but almost
nothing of them has been preserved. ... Narratives of the
miracles wrought by the gods were preserved in many
temple libraries; examples of these narratives, on papyrus
and on stone, have been found. ...

Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek name for the Egyptian
god Thoth, was the reputed author of treatises that have
been preserved. Thoth was the scribe of the gods, the
inventor of writing, and the patron of all the arts dependent
upon writing; he was sometimes thought of as an attendant
of Isis and sometimes as the repository of all wisdom.

These treatises are not exactly mystery texts, but they are
works of revelation on occult subjects and on theology.
Because the pagan mysteries had no official creed, each
congregation of initiates was free to construct a theology
of its own and to change it again. ...

There are some contemporary texts that shed light on the
mystery communities. Plutarch, the Greek biographer,
wrote the philosophical treatise "About Isis and Osiris,"
which gives an interpretation of the Isis Mysteries.

Arnobius, a 3rd-century Christian apologist, described an
interesting semiphilosophical, semireligious mystery com-
munity known as the viri novi ("the new men"). Arnobius
seems to have lived among them in North Africa for a time
before his conversion to Christianity. They had a religious
doctrine of the soul, with marked affinities to the teachings
of the Neoplatonic thinkers Plotinus and Porphyry.

Only fragments are preserved of the Chaldean Oracles,
a theosophical text in verse that was composed by Julianus
the Theurgist and his son late in the 2nd century AD and
had great influence on the Neoplatonists. The work com-
bined Platonic elements with Persian or Babylonian creeds
and was regarded by the later Neoplatonists as their basic
religious book, something of a heathen bible.

The doctrine of the Chaldean Oracles was associated with
esoteric fire rituals. Julianus and his followers were called
theurgists--i.e., men who could perform divine operations.
Their religion was partly one of meditation about the hidden
and wondrous magical processes within the cosmos.

Theology

The creeds of the mystery religions were never worked out
to the same extent that the Christian creeds were. Neverthe-
less, the doctrines of the mysteries may be called a theology.

One of the central subjects in mystery writings was cosmo-
gony--the theory of the origin or creation of the world. In
the Hermetic treatises, in the Chaldean Oracles, and in the
little known writings of Mithraism, the cosmogony was
modelled after Plato's Timaeus, and it always dealt with
the creation of the soul and with the soul's subsequent fate.

The theological doctrine of the soul and the myth about its
celestial home, its fall, and its redemption were inseparable.
The sequence is beautifully told in the "Hymn of the Soul,"
preserved in the Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal account
of the journeys and death of the apostle.

The hero of the hymn, who represents the soul of man, is
born in the Eastern (the yonder) Kingdom; immediately after
his birth, he is sent by his parents on a pilgrimage into the
world with instructions to take a pearl from the mouth of
a dragon in the sea. Instead of wearing his heavenly garment,
he dresses in earthly clothes, eats earthly food, and forgets
his task. Then his parents send a letter to rouse him. As
soon as he has read the letter, he awakes and remembers
his task, takes the pearl, and begins the homeward journey.

On the way, his brother (the Redeemer) comes to accom-
pany him and leads him back home to his father's palace
in the east. This myth is a figurative representation of the
theological doctrine of the soul's fall and its return to
heaven.

Many of the questions that were the subject of later Christian
theological discussions were already eagerly debated in the
mystery religions. In a Hermetic treatise, for example, the
existence of God was proved from the evident order of
the world.

This argument, which had first been formulated by Zoroaster,
a 7th-century Iranian prophet, was expressed in the form of
questions: Who could have created the heavens and the stars,
the sun and the moon, except God? Who could have made
wind, water, fire, and earth (the elements), the seasons of
the year, the crops, the animals, and man, except God?

... The theology of the mystery religions admitted that the
stars ruled the world and especially that the planets had evil
influences. But the highest god of the religion (for example,
Sarapis in the Isis Mysteries) stood far above the stars and
was their master.

A man who decided to become a servant of this god stepped
out of the circle of determination and entered into the sphere
of liberty. The god could suspend determination, because
he ruled over the stars; he could unravel the threads of the
Moirai (the three spinners of fate); he could save his servant
from illness and prolong his life, even against the will of fate.
In the Isis Mysteries there was a theology of grace fore-
shadowing Christian doctrine.

In many of the mystery cults, there was a marked tendency
toward henotheism--the worship of one god without denying
the existence of other gods. Thus, Isis was the essence of
all pagan goddesses; Sarapis was the name uniting the gods
Zeus, Pluto, Dionysus, Asclepius, Helios, and even the Jewish
god YHWH (Yahweh). In the religion of Sol, an elaborate
syncretistic theology was developed to show that all known
gods of all nations were nothing but provisional names for
the sun god.

Religious art and iconography

Much of Greco-Roman art was executed for use in the mystery
communities. The Dionysiac monuments are by far superior
to all others in artistic quality. This is to be expected, because
the worship of Dionysus often took the form of a worship of
beauty. Nevertheless, the other communities also produced a
great number of art objects.

Architecture

The mystery religions developed different types of edifices
for their purposes. Every Greek city had temples and precincts
of Dionysus. The Isis Mysteries adopted the Greek temples,
frequently adding a cupola. ...

Many Isis temples were modest in size, but the temple at
Pergamum (modern Bergama, Turkey) was a great basilica
with a vaulted roof and strong towers, in the fashion of the
best Roman architecture.

The Isis temple that the emperor Domitian erected on the
Campus Martius (the Field of Mars) in Rome at the end
of the 1st century AD was a stately building, and the Temple
of Sarapis (the Sarapeum) at Alexandria was a huge con-
struction.

The subterranean basilica near Porta Maggiore in Rome
(used by an Orphic or Pythagorean society) was a strong
and magnificent structure hidden in a large garden. The
Mithraic sanctuaries were artificial caves illuminated from
above by light shafts. They were built for communities of
50 to 100 persons.

The buildings were designed to be functional for the
religious ceremonies. The Mithraeum under the church
of S. Clemente at Rome contained a system of under-
ground galleries for initiation ceremonies. ...

Because the use of water was such an important element in
most of the mystery rites, the location of the temples was
often determined by the availability of water ...

The Dionysiac temple at Corinth had an underground system
of tubes and barrels that could be operated by buttons from
the outside. The priest showed the worshippers of the god
a barrel filled with water. They left the temple together, and
the door was sealed from without. By pressing the buttons,
the water was let out of the barrel, and wine was poured in.
The following day, when the seal was removed, the spectator
witnessed the Dionysiac miracle of water turned into wine.

On the ground floor of the Mithraic sanctuaries at Ostia,
mosaic pavements showed the seven grades of the initiation
and their symbols together with the ladder of the seven steps
that led to religious salvation. In initiation ceremonies the
mosaic was perhaps used to indicate the place where the
different participants were to take their places.

Statuary

A great many statues were exhibited in the temples and shrines
of the mystery gods. ...

An interesting statuette found at Cyrene (modern Shahhat, Libya)
shows a female initiate of Isis. The woman is wrapped from feet
to waist like a mummy; but the upper part of her body is free,
and she is wearing the crown of Isis on her head.

The statue thus showed how an initiate would first die and
subsequently resurrect in triumph during the ceremony. Many
terra-cotta statues of Isis and her son Horus have survived from
Roman Egypt; they are similar to the later statues of the Christian
Madonna and Child. ...

Reliefs

The Dionysiac reliefs are numerous. They show symbols of the
religion, such as the shepherd's staff, the winnow (an ancient
device for separating chaff from grain), and the phallus; they
depict the gay life of satyrs and maenads, shepherds and
shepherdesses; and they represent the "golden age" of the
gods with tame and wild animals enjoying a peace that the
god had instituted. ...

In Mithraic caverns there was always a relief depicting the
god sacrificing the bull. Representations of the sacramental
meal were also frequent; a relief recently discovered in Konjic,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, shows a banquet at which the ini-
tiates are wearing masks, among them a lion, a raven, a soldier,
and a Persian. Two reliefs--at Rome (now at Modena, Italy)
and at Housesteads, England (the best preserved fort along
Hadrian's Wall)--depict the creation of the world out of an
initial egg; in this case, Orphic and Mithraic ideas were amal-
gamated. Other episodes of Mithraic mythology that were
commonly displayed include the birth of Mithra from a rock
with the shepherds who welcome him and his dealings with
the sun god. ...

Painting

There are few paintings from the temples of the mystery
religions that have been preserved; nevertheless, some of
these deserve comment. The superb Dionysiac frescoes
of the Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri) at Pompeii
show the initiation of a girl into the Bacchic Mysteries: in
one fresco she is lifting the cover of a sacred casket; in a
second scene three followers of Dionysus are practicing
lecanomancy (divination by the inspection of a bowl filled
with water); in a third scene the girl is unveiling an erect
phallus and because of this she is being flagellated; finally,
she is seen dancing in happy bliss. ...

The initiation ceremonies are shown in the Mithraic sanc-
tuary at Capua (in western Italy): the candidate, accom-
panied by the mystagogos, is blindfolded, kneels down,
and lies prostrate. At Rome, in the tomb of Vincentius
and Vibia, who worshipped the god Sabazius (a Thracian
form of Dionysus), frescoes show how Vibia was carried
away by Death, as Kore had been carried away by Hades,
how she was judged and acquitted, and how she was
introduced by a "good angel" to the sacred meal of the
blessed.

Mosaics

A mosaic at Antioch represents the Phoenix--the solar bird
who died and resurrected from its own ashes and who was
its own father and son at the same time--with sunrays
encircling its head. ...

Mystery religions and Christianity

Christianity originated during the time of the Roman Empire,
which was also the time at which the mysteries reached their
height of popularity. This was by no means an accident.

The Christian theologian Origen wrote in the 3rd century that
it was part of the divine plan that Christ was born under the
emperor Augustus: the whole Mediterranean world was united
by the Romans, and the conditions for missionary work were
more favourable than ever before. The simultaneousness of
the propagation of the mystery religions and of Christianity
and the striking similarities between them, however, demand
some explanation of their relationship.

The hypothesis of a mutual dependence has been proposed
by scholars--especially a dependence of Christianity upon
the mysteries--but such theories have been discarded.

[editorial note - not sure what his theory of mutual
dependence being discarded is conveying -- perhaps,
based on context, he's saying that mystery religions
depending on christianity and vice versa has been
discarded]

The similarities must rather be explained by parallel develop-
ments from similar origins. 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.

The parallel development was fostered by the new conditions
prevailing in the Roman Empire, in which the old political units
were dissolved, and the whole civilized world was ruled by
one monarch. People were free to move from one country to
another and became cosmopolitan. The ideas of Greek phil-
osophy penetrated everywhere in this society.

Thus, under identical conditions, new forms of religious com-
munities sprang from similar roots. The mystery religions and
Christianity had many similar features--e.g., a time of prepar-
ation before initiation and periods of fasting; baptism and
banquets; vigils and early-morning ceremonies; pilgrimages
and new names for the initiates.

The purity demanded in the worship of Sol and in the Chaldean
fire rites was similar to Christian standards. The first Christian
communities resembled the mystery communities in big cities
and seaports by providing social security and the feeling of
brotherhood.

In the Christian congregations of the first two centuries, the
variety of rites and creeds was almost as great as in the mystery
communities; few of the early Christian congregations could
have been called orthodox according to later standards. The
date of Christmas was purposely fixed on December 25 to
push into the background the great festival of the sun god,
and Epiphany on January 6 to supplant an Egyptian festival
of the same day.

The Easter ceremonies rivalled the pagan spring festivals. The
religious art of the Christians continued the pagan art of the
preceding generations. The Christian representations of the
Madonna and child are clearly the continuation of the repre-
sentations of Isis and her son suckling her breast. The statue
of the Good Shepherd carrying his lost sheep and the pastoral
themes on Christian sarcophagi were also taken over from
pagan craftsmanship.

In theology the differences between early Christians, Gnostics
(members--often Christian--of dualistic sects of the 2nd century
AD), and pagan Hermetists were slight. In the large Gnostic
library discovered at Naj'Hammadi, in upper Egypt, in 1945,
Hermetic writings were found side-by-side with Christian
Gnostic texts. The doctrine of the soul taught in Gnostic
communities was almost identical to that taught in the mys-
teries: the soul emanated from the Father, fell into the body,
and had to return to its former home.

The Greeks interpreted the national religions of the Greek
Orient chiefly in terms of Plato's philosophical and religious
concepts. Interpretation in Platonic concepts was also the
means by which the Judeo-Christian set of creeds was thor-
oughly assimilated to Greek ideas by the early Christian
thinkers Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Thus, the
religions had a common conceptual framework.

The doctrinal similarity is exemplified in the case of the
pagan writer and philosopher Synesius. 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. In his pagan
period he wrote hymns that closely follow the fire theology
of the Chaldean Oracles; later he wrote hymns to Christ.
The doctrine is almost identical.

The similarity of the religious vocabulary is also great.
Greek life was characterized by such things as democratic
institutions, seafaring, gymnasium and athletic games,
theatre, and philosophy. The mystery religions adopted
many expressions from these domains: they spoke of
the assembly (ekklesia) of the mystai; the voyage of life;
the ship, the anchor, and the port of religion; and the
wreath of the initiate; life was a stage and man the actor.

The Christians took over the entire terminology; but many
pagan words were strangely twisted in order to fit into
the Christian world: the service of the state (leitourgia)
became the ritual, or liturgy, of the church; the decree
of the assembly and the opinions of the philosophers
(dogma) became the fixed doctrine of Christianity; the
correct opinion (orthe doxa) about things became
orthodoxy.

There are also great differences between Christianity and
the mysteries. Mystery religions, as a rule, can be traced
back to tribal origins, Christianity to a historical person.
The holy stories of the mysteries were myths; the Gospels
of the New Testament, however, relate historical events.

[editorial note - perhaps, the writer here is trying to
convey that the gospels are, aside from the mythical/
miracle elements, claiming that a live man did things
on earth, not that the claims are true, just that the
claims are claims regarding a live being doing mir-
aculous things, apart, of course, from the Pauline
epistles which are supportive of a heavenly christ
theology] ...

The mysteries declined quickly when the emperor Constan-
tine raised Christianity to the status of the state religion.

After a short period of toleration, the pagan religions were
prohibited. The property of the pagan gods was confiscated,
and the temples were destroyed. The precious metal used
to coin Constantine's gold pieces was taken from heathen
temple treasuries.

To show the beginning of a new era, the capital of the empire
was transferred to the new Christian city of Constantinople.
The centres of pagan resistance were Rome, where the old
aristocracy clung to the mysteries, and Alexandria, where the
pagan Neoplatonist philosophers expounded the mystery
doctrines.

When Julian the Apostate, Roman emperor from AD 361 to
363, tried to reestablish pagan worship, he found allies at
Rome and Alexandria. After his death, the pagan opposition
to Christianity continued for one more generation. The Roman
aristocrats multiplied their efforts to maintain the piety of the
mysteries, and the pagan philosophers tried to refine their
theology by oversubtle interpretations.

In 391, however, the Sarapeum at Alexandria was demolished,

[editorial note - destroyed by Christians, a profound
and devastating loss of information, information which
may have been 'the key' to countering the christian
claims as well as invaluable in understanding the origins
of human civilization/religion/science]

and in 394 the opposition of the Roman aristocracy was
crushed in battle at the Frigidus River (now called the
Vipacco River in Italy and the Vipava in Slovenia).

Only remnants of the mystery doctrines, amalgamated with
Platonism, were transmitted by a few philosophers and
individualists to the religious thinkers of the Byzantine
Empire. The mystery religions exerted some influence on
the thinkers of the Middle Ages and the philosophers of
the Italian Renaissance.