vid

Don't you happen to know some more exhaustive list of pagan deities / rituals / ideas that got fused into christianity? I mean things like Jesus birthday on Sol Invictus feast, pagan deities converted to christian saints, christmas tree, etc.

I am more interested in catholic church, not eastern christianity (but list for eastern christianity would be interesting too, of course).

If you can remember just few cases, that is welcomed too, maybe we'll compile such list here.

Thank you.

Malachi151

Well, these things require more time than I'm willing to put in in order to actually document these things.

Some solid influences are:

> Christian imagery: All Christian artwork basically originated from the Roman pagan traditions. I have some good examples at the bottom of this article: http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

> Many of the Saints: Some of the saints are direct conversions of pagan gods into saints. In other cases, however, the saints may have been real people, but they still had pagan legends associated with them after their death, Saint Nicholas and Saint Valentine are good examples of this.

> The date of both Christmas and Easter are related to pagan festivals. Easter of course is originally related to Passover, but the Romans changed it from the Passover date to a different date in order to stop its association with Judaism.

> Christian theology as a whole: Actually, its not so much related to "pagan" religion as it is to Greek philosophy. The core of Christian theology is based on Neo-Platonic philosophy. This includes the belief that God is all knowing, all powerful, and all loving. This was a Neo-Platonic or Stoic claim that the Christians integrated into their theology.

> Heaven and Hell: It's pretty clear that the Christian concepts of afterlife are pagan/ Neo-Platonic. The idea that "Hell" (written as Hades in the New Testament works) was a fiery place under ground is certainly pagan/Neo-Platonic. The idea that heaven was a place up in the clouds above the earth where angels wear white gowns and play harps and fly around with wings is certainly pagan/Neo-Platonic.

I'm not actually sure about Christmas trees. I haven't seen any compelling evidence that there is a direct link there between the pagan tradition and the later Christian tradition, but its certainly not out of the question.

vid

Your collection of images is very helpful, thanks. I'd prefer if there was some verifiable source for who is on image (people can challenge date / description of image, and there is nothing to back it up), but still.

Is it okay to reuse those pictures in my article?

Malachi151

Sure

vid

Thanks

Clivedurdle

The term pagan - country bumpkin - is of course xian propaganda to separate xianity from the obvious soil it grew in, in complete contradiction to the commandment about honouring your father and mother!

dystopian

i'm fairly certain that some, if not many/most biblical concepts of the OT, and thus judaist concepts/etc were adapted in some form other cultures, who themselves had taken it from Sumerian concepts. Particularly Sumerian epics regarding Enki. The flood story and the tower of babel stories are very similar to stories about Enki (one of the more popular Sumerian gods). Ofcourse, some christians would actually point at this and proves that the stories must be true.

A lot of the 'demons' depicted also seem to have at some point been actual gods; but were demoted to the position of demon (or angel in some cases?) by the hebrews.

Clivedurdle

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/tsg/tsg05.htm

djrafikie

Nearly all the decent bits of xtianity are from paganism, including, but not exhaustively, most of the holidays, some holidays that really don't seem xtian on not very close scruitny (harvest festival), symbolism related to blood (life) and foodstuffs (becoming/or literally being the body), statments that there are "gods" (in genesis) which actually definatively makes the bible pantheistic (very pagan).

It was pretty much utterly manipulated in order to make it more palatable to the locals in most areas (who held a wide variety of earth based faiths which we would say were "paganism".

vid

yeah, but i am interested in lsit of particular sources and christian equivalents. Can you name a few and their source, from list you mentioned? Thanks.