"Jesus Mysteries"

[Lúthien Séregon]

I stumbled across this yesterday, I don't know whether most of it is true or not, but it brings up some interesting points.

http://www.courses.drew.edu/sp2000/BIBST189.001/Jesusmys.html

It explores the similarities between the story of Jesus, and the story of Osiris-Dionysus:

- Jesus is the saviour of mankind, God made man, the Son of God equal with the Father; so is Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is born of a mortal virgin who after her death ascends to heaven and is honoured as a divine being; so is Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is born in a cave on 25 December or 6 January, as is Osiris-Dionysus.

- The birth of Jesus is prophesied by a star; so is the birth of Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is born in Bethlehem, which was shaded by a grove sacred to Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is visited by the Magi, who are followers of Osiris-Dionysus.

- The Magi bring Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, which a sixth-century BCE Pagan tells us is the way to worship God.

- Jesus is baptized, a ritual practised for centuries in the Mysteries.

- The holy man who baptizes Jesus with water has the same name as a Pagan god of water and is born on the summer solstice celebrated as a Pagan water festival.

- Jesus offers his followers elemental baptisms of water, air and fire, as did the Pagan Mysteries.

- Jesus is portrayed as a quiet man with long hair and a beard; so is Osiris-Bionysus.

- Jesus turns water into wine at a marriage on the same day that Osiris-Dionysus was previously believed to have turned water into wine at a marriage.

- Jesus heals the sick, exorcises demons, provides miraculous meals, helps fishermen make miraculous catches of fish and calms the water for his disciples; all of these marvels had previously been performed by Pagan sages.

- Like the sages of the Mysteries, Jesus is a wandering wonder-worker who is not honoured in his home town.

- Jesus is accused of licentious behaviour, as were the followers of Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is not at first recognized as a divinity by his disciples, but then is transfigured before them in att his gIory; the same is true of Osiris-Dionysus.


- Jesus is surrounded by 12 disciples; so is Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while crowds wave branches, as does Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is a just man unjustly accused of heresy and bringing a new religion, as is Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus attacks hypocrites, stands up to tyranny and willingly goes to his death predicting he will rise again in three days, as do Pagan sages.

- Jesus is betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, a motif found in the story of Socrates.

- Jesus is equated with bread and wine, as is Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus' disciples symbolically eat bread and drink wine to commune with him, as do the followers of Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus is hung on a tree or crucified, as is Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus dies as a sacrifice to redeem the sins of the world; so does Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus' corpse is wrapped in linen and anointed with myrrh, as is the corpse of Osiris-Dionysus.

- After his death Jesus descends to hell, then on the third day resurrects before his disciples and ascends into heaven, where he is enthroned by God and waits to reappear at the end of time as a divine judge, as does Osiris-Dionysus.

- Jesus was said to have died and resurrected on exactly the same dates that the death and resurrection of Osiris-Dionysus were celebrated.

- Jesus' empty tomb is visited by three women followers; Osiris-Dionysus also has three women followers who visit an empty cave.

- Through sharing in his passion Jesus offers his disciples the chance to be born again, as does Osiris-Dionysus.

[jallan]

Parallels between Jesus and various dying gods are very old hat, which doesn't make them any less valid.

It is an arguable position that much Christian theology about Jesus and what he means was borrowed from floating religious beliefs about dying gods and vegetitation spirits and saviors and ancient sages and applied to a Jewish teacher Jesus.

It has long been so argued. A normal Christian counterargument is that pagans had inklings of the Truth.

Also many Christians do accept that the Bible is partly legend and myth and even religious propaganda.

Fraser in his massive work The Golden Bough threw in a mass of parallels. His term for a dying and resurrected deity connected with vegetation was the Corn King (using the British English meaning of corn which is 'grain').

Unfortunately only the abridged Golden Bough is currently available on the web at The Golden Bough (http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/etext-project/history/fraser/golden/leftframe.html) and elsewhere.

Fraser's main thesis (which was not related to parallels with Jesus) is no longer accepted: things are more complicated than he believed. But his collection of data is unsurpassed.

I recommend reading his work.

Fraser did a far better job of such comparisons than Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy do. Fraser was an amazing scholar.

Freke and Gandy pretend to have just discovered what people interested in the history of religion or anthropology have long known.

They make a horrible hash of their findings. Either they don't know how to evaluate their material or they just don't care. After all sensationalism sells.

I don't believe, for example, that any text describes Dionysos being born in a cave or describes his birth being prophecied by a star. (But Zeus was born in a cave. The authors are equating every god they can with Osiris/Dionysos also and throwing in late legends about Jesus into the mix. They ignore that the day of celebration of the birth of Jesus is well known to be a somewhat abritrary taking over of the feast of the birth of the Sun.)

Magi is the name for Perisan priests of Ahura Mazda, the One God of Zoroastrian montheism. They would not in any way be worshippers of Dionysos (unless they were Magi involved in some very odd Zoroastrian heresy of which we know nothing). But Freke and Gandy are also throwing Mithras into the mix though the Roman Mithras seems to be rather different than the avenging angel Mithras of Zoroastrianism.

But Mithras is hardly Dionysos.

The statement that John the Baptist has the same name as a pagan god of water is almost certainly someone's silly notice that the Greek form Ioannes 'John' (found in the Gospels) is similar to Oannes the name of a fish man in Berossus who first taught humans to be civilized.

I could continue.

Since almost every god or hero of mythology and legend shares some feature with some other god or hero of mtyhology and legend it isn't particularly hard for Freke and Gandy to identify any god or hero they wish with their composite Osiris/Dionysos.

They see this Osiris/Dionysos everywhere, as though this composite deity that they invent is the only god worshipped.

Anyone with some reasonable knowledge of creative mythology can look at this web page and see how many of the comparisons here are forced or overstated or trivial or just plain wrong or stupid.

Freke and Gandy throw out their statements with no concern about how or why they may fit and whether they do actually fit is apalling.

They are concerned mostly with how they can phrase a weak comparison in such a way so it seems to be strong and how many comparisons they can create in this fashion.

The one about Jesus having a beard and Dionysos/Osiris having a beard is an indication of how silly they can be.

It would be even sillier if they had been accurate and pointed out that in early iconography Jesus is sometimes bearded and sometimes not while Dionysos is usually not bearded but Osiris is. So Jesus is sometimes bearded and sometimes not beareded and Osiris/Dionysos is sometimes bearded and sometimes not bearded. Can that be coincidence? :rolleyes:

Then we have the comparison that Jesus was wrapped in a linen shroud with myrrh. How amazing that Jesus wasn't buried naked and that embalming spices were used! :rolleyes:

That's only true of gods or sages? :rolleyes:

And if Jesus' corpse had been cast aside to be devoured by beasts, Dionysos was eaten by the Titans according to one story. If his corpse had been burned then Jesus would have been compared to Heracles whose immortal self ascended to heaven when his mortal body burned away.

Yes, not all the comparison here are so silly.

If you want to see comparisons between Jesus and pagan gods and between Christianity and and pagan theology done reasonably by a scholar who knows something and who makes the case without rampaging and inaccurate and sensationalistic silliness then try Jospeh Campbell whose books are easily available.

[HLGStrider]

Good post, Jallan. I'm not sure I agree with you on all points, but it is very scholarly. . .

[Lúthien Séregon]

Although some of the parallels may not be indicative of much ( the beard, for example ), can the similarities between their births ( 25th December, born of a mortal virgin ), their deaths ( crucified ), the miracles they performed ( turning water into wine, at marriage ceremonies ), their standing in the scheme of the world ( both the only son of God :rolleyes:. ) be explained? If these parallels cannot be refuted in any way, how are people then to know if anything the Bible claims about Jesus is actually true, or entirely myth based on a Pagan god?

[HLGStrider]

Christmas (december 25th) is never mentioned in the Bible, LS. Never. No date is given for Christ's birth, and I have heard scholars state that from the way there were shepherds in the field it probably wasn't in December, so the December 25th issue is simply one of Christians wanting to have their own holiday during the festival times of another religon. ..basically to compete.

[Niniel]

There are many parallels between Christianity and other mono- or henotheistic religions, not all of them necessarily mystery religions. Especially the coincidences between Christianity and the Roman cult of the Sun are striking, but also the cults of Mithras, Isis/Osiris and several others have similarities with Christianity.
Of course there being similarities between two cults does not always mean that they have influenced each other; it is also possible that the similarities were caused by the fact that the two religions were set in the same social, political and 'spiritual' environment, like the example of Jesus being buried in a linen shroud with myrrh. It was a normal practice in the ancient world to do so, so no surprise that two religions have this feature.
But there are certainly many cases in which influence has been proved, both from Christianity to other religions and from other religions to Christianity. Christmas on Dec. 25 is the most cited example, though it has not been proven for sure that the CHristians took this from a pagan feast (the first record of a pagan feast on Dec. 25 occured 20 years AFTER the first Christian record).

[Eriol]

December 25th or a similar date (winter's solstice) is an obvious date for a feast; even elves and hobbits celebrated that :). It is full of symbolism, especially in the temperate regions with the dying year/new year cycle.

The parallels between Christ and other dying Gods were explained by Christians, as jallan said, as inklings of the Truth seen by pagans before the Incarnation. Explained, or explained away, according to the taste of the commentator :D.

There are two features in the story of Jesus that put it in a completely different level than the mythical accounts of dying gods, though:

1) It happened among the Jews, a people who was adamantly and absolutely opposed to mystery religions of that sort. Judaism is (or at least was, at that moment in time) very clear and easily understood by the ordinary man; not mysterious at all. The Law was proclaimed and everybody was supposed to know it by heart, to the point that Jesus' followers are rebuked by gathering corn on the Sabbath.

(By the way, this is the only instance in which something like "licentious behavior" is seen in Jesus' followers; I can't remember anything like that in Jesus himself. I didn't understand the point that "Jesus was accused of licentious behavior, as the followers of Osiris-Dionysus").

Any mystery cult would have been seen as very wrong by Jews of that period, therefore; and Christianity never claimed to be a mystery religion, being open to all, Greek and Jew, man and woman, master and slave, etc.

2) It happened. The mythical accounts are, well, mythical :). They take place in an unknown period, with no witness, stories being told by mouth, no records... Jesus' tale happened in the historical period; we have corroboration from outside (non-Christian) sources regarding the essentials of it (except, of course, the Resurrection -- only a Christian could record that as truth). The gospels are written from an eye-witness perspective; the people who wrote them died for it; they changed the world.

In a sense you may say that Jesus and Dionysus are exactly alike, except that they are completely different :). One happened, and had a tremendous impact in the world's History; the other is a scholarly subject; and no one really thinks he was a man, or even based on a man. That's in the nature of myth.

As Tolkien said, Christianity is the true myth; the myth that happened in real life. The difference between Christ and Dionysus is not so much in the story itself, but in the "surroundings" -- Christ's tale is astonishingly well documented, and it had unimaginable consequences. It argues, powerfully, for its historical veracity.

To brand Christ as a myth would mean to disbelieve History altogether; I've seen it stated (though I don't really know the grounds for that) that we have more documental and historical evidence for Christ than for Caesar. Imagine Cyrus, Alexander, etc. etc...

[jallan]

Lúthien Séregon posted:If these parallels cannot be refuted in any way, how are people then to know if anything the Bible claims about Jesus is actually true, or entirely myth based on a Pagan god?Why do all such parallels have to be refuted? Similar things in fact happen to different people and different people may do the same things.

For example, there probably isn’t a single way in which a person could die that you couldn't find a parallel with some god or hero venerated in a cult.

There probably isn’t a single teaching ascribed to Christ or to any sage that isn’t paralleled somewhere else ... and the same is true for any other text of moral teaching you can find.

Freke and Gandy are comparing similarities between the Gospel accounts (and later legends of Jesus) with everything they can find in any other cult of Hellenstic or Roman times no matter how different these cults and legends are from each other.

Of course there are parallels in such a large amount of data.

For example, baptism is just immersion. People have been taking baths since there were people. Of course ritual baths and ritual cleansings occurred before Jesus. No-one ever said they didn’t. If Jesus had advocated ritual shaving of the skull, that also can be found before Jesus and before Christian monks. If Jesus had adovcated vegtarianism, that also predates Jesus and was practised by some Christian monks.

There’s really not much original in Jesus’ teaching. Why should there be, unless God was purposely withholding all true morality from humans until Jesus came?

Also it is quite possible to doubt stories told about Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed, George Washington, Arthur of Britain, Davy Crockett and so forth without believing that any of those people are based on a pagan god or are entirely imaginary.

Fantastic birth stories in particular are ascribed to genuine historical characters. That Alexander the Great was the son of Zeus according to legends doesn’t mean that Alexander the Great is altogether based on a pagan god.

To go the other way, compare the lives of Galileo and Jesus: Galileo a martyr to the truth at the hands of a corrupt priesthood. Does this indicate Galileo must be based on Jesus, must be an imaginary figure who did not exist?

The only real answer for you is to do your own research on questions that matter to you. If Freke and Gandy’s reasoning seems bad in many cases where you have some knowledge of what they are talking about then you might reasonably assume they are probably either not careful or not honest scholars or unable to think clearly or two of these or all three of them.

If you have almost no knowledge of what they are talking about then you should follow up on their claims and see if they are valid or not or seek advice from people you trust to know about that kind of thing who can evaluate what they say.

And even the worst or most misleading purported scholars are often not wrong in everything they say. It is the mixture of truth and confusion that may make them seem convincing.

I think I know something about the matter and I find (outside of their parallels to Jesus) their treatment of pagan gods to be inaccurate and careless, as if (to take an example that most people coming to this site should understand) they were claiming that Bilbo and Túrin and Beren and Frodo and Tuor and Eärendil were really just repetitions of the same person and that their tales were fundamentally identical and that we should speak about the single protagonist Beren/Frodo.

Eriol posted:(By the way, this is the only instance in which something like "licentious behavior" is seen in Jesus' followers; I can't remember anything like that in Jesus himself. I didn't understand the point that "Jesus was accused of licentious behavior, as the followers of Osiris-Dionysus").I think they are referring to the recorded saying of Jesus that the Pharisees blamed John the Baptist for his apparently inhuman aestheticism and blamed Jesus for being a glutton and drunkard.

Another one of their weak parallels.... we have corroboration from outside (non-Christian) sources regarding the essentials of it (except, of course, the Resurrection -- only a Christian could record that as truth). The gospels are written from an eye-witness perspective; the people who wrote them died for it; they changed the world.You exagerate here. There is no outside corroboration whatsoever of a single fact about Jesus' life outside of Christian literature (unless you accept a single passage in Josephus which most do not.) Also, the gospels do not claim to be written by eye-witnesses. Even the Gospel of John makes no such claim, only referring to an unnamed Beloved Disciple as the source (written? spoken?) for what it relates.I've seen it stated (though I don't really know the grounds for that) that we have more documental and historical evidence for Christ than for Caesar.For which Caesar? Obviously not true for most of them as we have inscriptions written in their lifetimes that mention them and coins on which their faces and names appear and their lives are related in written histories that are not written specifically to support particular religious beliefs.

But Freke and Gandy’s belief that the Gospels are based on a wongheaded literalist interpretation of an allegorical novelistic invention of an imaginary Jewish religious teacher doesn’t make sense.

One can quite legitimately claim that Plato’s Socrates and Aristophanes’ Socrates and Xenophon’s Socrates are all imaginary in part, and that Plato especially makes of Socrates a puppet for his own ideas. Most so believe. But claiming that what we know about Socrates is in part imaginary is far different than claiming Socrates never existed and that Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon never intended that this fictional person Socrates should be believed to have existed.

That’s what Freke and Gandi claim of the earliest Christians, that they invented Jesus as a Jewish version of Osiris/Dionysos and they knew they invented him but later stupid literalists believed the tale, something like a sect of literalist Tolkienites thinking that Frodo really existed.

The difficulty is one then should explain who these people were who invented Jesus and his teaching. Obviously they got the teaching from somewhere. In which case we end up postulating an unknown person or group who invented the teachings and then ascribed them to an imaginary Jesus. By Occam’s razor an historical Jesus is more probable.

It’s one thing to forge writings and teachings ascribed to any ancient revered figure of the past. It’s another to forge such writings and attribute them to an imaginary figure located almost in one’s own time.

[HLGStrider]

There is no outside corroboration whatsoever of a single fact about Jesus' life outside of Christian literature

Jallan, I think you're wrong. There were at least two historians who mentioned Jesus. One was Josephus. . .I'm looking up the second one now. . .looking up. . .looking up. . .looking up. . .doo bee doo bee doo. . .

I hate looking things up. . .takes forever. . .Tacitus. And I've read of scholars who do not dismiss Josephus as you do. My grandma owns his works, but I've never read them. I ought to.

That Alexander the Great was the son of Zeus according to legends doesn’t mean that Alexander the Great is altogether based on a pagan god.

I hadn't heard that one. I had heard that he'd been sired by a snake (his mother used to keep a few in the bed chamber to get on Phillip's nerves).

I think they are referring to the recorded saying of Jesus that the Pharisees blamed John the Baptist for his apparently inhuman aestheticism and blamed Jesus for being a glutton and drunkard.

I assumed it was the eating with tax collectors bit.