andrewcriddle

At Ted's suggestion I have been reading Earl Doherty's recent articles on Mystery Religions and Christianity.

I may attempt a fuller response later.

However there is one specific point about whether or not Osiris is a dying and rising God that I would like to raise here.

Doherty argues that those who say that Osiris is not really resurrected because he ends up in the realm of the dead are using too narrow a definition of resurrection. To some extent Doherty has a case. Osiris does go from being drowned dead and dismembered, to some form of continuing bodily life and this can meaningfully be referred to as resurrection in some sense.

However his new life is very different from his old one. Wagner in Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries, one of the works critiqued by Doherty states p 119 I would question some details of what Wagner says here, particularly the use of 'only', but the broad outlines seem accurate, and would be mostly accepted by those writers about Ancient Egyptian religion who have no hesitation in referring to the resurrection of Osiris.

If one accepts Wagner's statement as broadly accurate but still wishes to refer to Osiris as a dying and rising God then the differences with those who avoid this type of terminology seem to be a matter of definition not of substance.

If however one rejects Wagner's statement, as part of claiming that Osiris was genuinely a dying and rising God, then there is clearly an issue of substance involved but one where the primary sources tend IMO to support Wagner.

Andrew Criddle