MetalStoner

I heard one argument that the pagans actually copied christianity because the sources date after the gospels.

Is there any reason to believe that pagans believed similar things that christianity did before the rise of christianity?

Pheadrus

Do you mean In the Mid-east or all over the world Because chrstianity is a fairly varied thing Its been adopted to local beliefs all over the world.

SLD

It's a common argument made but it's a strawman argument. Many of our sources for ancient manuscripts do indeed post-date Christianity. But we also know that many of the religions described were in place before Christianity. While I doubt if we have any original signed copies of Cicero's work, he does describe the Eucharist in his works - fifty years before Christ. Euripides in his play in 400 BC likewise describes a god who turned water into wine at a wedding, who was born of a god-human (virgin, IIRC) connection, was persecuted and rose up against his persecutor and told him that it hurts when he kicks against the goads, using virtually identical language that Jesus uses to Paul on the road to Damascus.

Many other ancient cults had their savior gods born of a god-human intervention, virgin births, dying and rising of the god was very common and undoubtedly predated Christianity. Even the early Christians recognized that these religions predated Christianity. What was their excuse? That Satan knew what Jesus was going to do and thus pre-planted these religions before Christ came along so that it would only appear that Christianity stole these elements. Whatever.

What differs is the details. One of the most commonly cited mystery cult religions from which Christianity borrowed from, is Mithraism. Mithraism clearly predates Christianity by over a thousand years, but it went through several changes over the centuries, and finally came to Rome in the mid to late First Century (after interestingly enough being adopted in the First Century BC in Asia Minor where Paul would have been familiar with it. And here the story gets murky because I don't believe we have many good documents on Mithraic beliefs during the period of time immediately preceding the beginnings of Christianity. It is clear that the two faiths shared much in common - a eucharist, a dying and rising god, a virgin birth in a cave (earlier versions have Mithras coming straight out of the ground), shepherds witnessing the event, a star, being washed in the blood of a slaughtered animal (a bull for Mithras), and of course a dying and rising savior. So who borrowed what from whom? We don't really know for sure because we don't have much in the way of first century texts of either Christian or Mithraic sources. But we do know that Christianity did borrow at least some from Mithraism. In particular, Mithras was born on December 25th. Thus it is likely that the two religions borrowed from each other to some extent.

The picture though is even more confusing than that. Freke and Gandy, on the cover of their book show an amulet with a crucified savior. It is an obvious Christian motif, only it is not of Jesus - it is of Dionysus, the God Euripides wrote about. IIRC, in Euripides play, Dionysus is not crucified on a tree, but is dispatched some other way. However, other versions of the myth do have him crucified, but this particular amulet does date, IIRC, after the Christian period, so it is possible that the motif was borrowed.

All in all it is a very complicated jumbled picture which scholars are still trying to piece together, but I think it is pretty clear, especially from Justin Martyr's admission, Cicero's comments, and The Euripides, that many elements of Christianity predated the religion.

Good luck finding out this stuff - if you do figure it out, let us know.

SLD

Magdlyn

Don't forget Osiris, dating from 3500 BCE, probably earlier.

Here is a fun website! Pictures, humor and facts:


http://home.earthlink.net/~pgwhacker/ChristianOrigins/

JoyJuice

Well, if you read some of the early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, he is in heated discussions trying to defend that Christianity is not rooted from Pagan sources.

In fact I think he blames the devil for first establishing Pagan traditions similar to Christianity as a guise to throw everyone off.

Magdlyn

From pagan origins of the Christ myth website I linked to:

CX

I would recommend doing considerably more research on the matter. These old canards are repeated so often that one grows tired of responding to them. I think if you look at the literature on Mithraism you will find that most of the preceeding is not accurate. The link between Roman Mithraism and Zoroastrianism is extremely tenuous at best. Mitra was not venerated independently by any Syro-Persian cult we know of. He was a relatively minor player in the the pantheon of Ahura-Mazda. With respect to Roman Mithraism many scholars think the only connection between it and the Persian religion of Zoroaster is the name Mithras. Evidence seems to indicate that Mithraism at least in it's Roman form developed roughly contemporaneously with Xianity. It is also closely associated with but not equivalent to the cult of Sol Invicti. There are no Roman Mithraic texts of any kind in our possession. Rather, all that is known of the cult comes from material artifacts found in the Mithraeum discovered throughout the Roman empire. Notably the Tauroctony which shows Mithras slaying a bull. According to the mythology it is the blood and semen of the slain bull that provides the "seed" for all living things on earth. There is none of the atonement imagery of Xianity in the Bull story. Further the claims about virgin births, shepherds and the rest are spurious. Additionally Mithras did not die. He ascended directly to heaven after his victory and a celebratory meal. The connection of this meal to the Xian eucharist is trivial. That Judaism was influenced by the stark dualism of Zoroastrianism is obvious. That Xianity incorporates distinctly Hellenic themes into its story is also obvious. That Xianity borrowed directly from Roman Mithraism or vice verse is totally unsupportable nonsense that has been propagated largely by repetition on the internet.