Ancient Traditions of Dying
Gods
Precursors and Competitors,
Influences and Reasons for
Christian Success
Background
Interpreting the Bible as Literature
entails examining literary influence,
beliefs and forces outside a document
that shaped it.
One question raised has been the
influence of Greek ideas on the
concepts and writing of the New
Testament.
Christianity and the “Greeks”
One reason A. D. Nock believed Christianity was
“founded” by Paul and was highly successful in
the Mediterranean basin was Christianity’s
relation to the previous belief of Helenistic and
Romanized people.
Paul lived in the time of Pax Romana, the “peace
of Rome,” and could travel freely to people who
spoke the same language and were familiar with
Greek, Roman, and Egyptian traditions and gods.
Paul translated the gospel for the “Greeks”
(Gentiles) and emphasized elements of the
gospel they could relate to.
Pax Romana
Jews, Greeks, and
The Gospels
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν
πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεός ἦν ὁ Λόγος
The synoptic gospels Mark and Matthew relate
Jesus to the Jewish concept of the messiah.
Many discussions involve Jewish issues—the law,
the covenant, etc.
Luke and John slant more to the Gentile
audience. Luke, being one writing with Acts,
foreshadows the efforts of Peter and Paul to
reach the Gentiles and it emphasizes the Antioch
church.
John appears in a time where Christians have
been expelled from the synagogues, and the book
places the life of Jesus in a Greek context (the
sacred “word” of God, Savior of the World)
The Jewish Afterlife
The scriptural view of death was the dark
place “sheol.” The belief in resurrection
later combined with the belief in the coming
messianic age.
“The Hebrew word Olam Ha-Ba ("the world
to come") is used for both the messianic
age (see below) and the afterlife.
A Mishnah passage says, "This world is like a lobby before the
Olam Ha-Ba. Prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter
the banquet hall."
Jewish Belief in Resurrection
Tehiyat Hameitim: Resurrection of the Dead
More developed concepts of the resurrection of
the dead and afterlife seem to have entered
Judaism under Hellenistic influence after the
Torah was completed.
It became one of the fundamental beliefs in
rabbinic Judaism, the intellectual successors of
the Pharisees. The Sadduccees, familiar to New
Testament readers as those who denied the
resurrection, were an exception. …
the resurrection of the dead is one of Maimonides' "13 Articles of Belief," and the
frequently-recited Shemoneh Esrei prayer contains several references to the
resurrection.
From Religion Facts: Jewish Beliefs on the Afterlife
http://www.religionfacts.com/judaism/beliefs/afterlife.htm
“Pagan” Traditions
The word “pagan” is from the Latin “pagani”
(“foreigner,” i.e. non-Roman)
In the ancient world, most “Gentiles” would
have been familiar with the ideas of death
and resurrection. There were even “blood
baptisms” and rebirths in the cultic rituals
(for the Greek gods Cybele and Attis) that
involved rebirth through the bathing of the
blood of bulls.
Ceremonies surrounding the eating of
“food offered to idols” was very similar to
the rites of the “Last Supper.” see I Corinthians 7 & 8
Dying Gods
The most important connection ancients
would have had to the gospels was with
the concept of the sacrificial or dying god,
one who takes on the sins of his/her
followers and saves them.
Traditional Jews would scoff at the idea of
God becoming a man, let alone dying for
man’s sins.
Greek Christians were more open to the
ideas because they were they had
precedents in Greek culture.
The Mystery Cults
"The philosophers of the ancient world were
the spiritual masters of the Inner Mysteries...
At the heart of the Mysteries were myths
concerning a dying and resurrecting godman,
who was known by many different names. In
Egypt he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in
Asia Minor Attis, In Syria Adonis, in Italy
Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all
these godmen are the same mythical being."
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries - Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?, 1999, p.4
Attis
Like Adonis, he appears to have been a god of vegetation,
and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and
rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of
the two gods were so much alike that the ancients
themselves sometimes identified them.
Attis was said to have been a fair young shepherd or
herdsman beloved by Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, a
great Asiatic goddess of fertility, who had her chief home in
Phrygia. Some held that Attis was her son.
His birth, on December 25th, like that of many other heroes,
is said to have been miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a
virgin, who conceived by putting a ripe almond or a
pomegranate in her bosom.
Easter comes from the Germanic Oestra, a mother goddess figure. Romans
celebrated “Hilaria” in honor of the mother goddess on March 25th.
See http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/attis.html for various explanations of
the “godmen”
Osiris
"The central figure of the ancient Egyptian
Religion was Osiris, and the chief
fundamentals of his cult were the belief in his
divinity, death, resurrection, and absolute
control of the destinies of the bodies and souls
of men.
The central point of each Osirian's Religion
was his hope of resurrection in a transformed
body and of immortality, which could only be
realized by him through the death and
resurrection of Osiris."
E. A. Wallace Budge, Osiris & the Egyptian Resurrection, 1973 (1911), Preface
Osiris
The Osiris myth is the most elaborate and influential
story in ancient Egyptian mythology. It concerns the
murder of the god Osiris, a primeval king of Egypt, and
its consequences. Osiris' murderer, his brother Set,
usurps his throne. Meanwhile, Osiris' wife Isis restores
her husband's body, allowing him to posthumously
conceive a son with her.
The remainder of the story focuses on Horus, the
product of Isis and Osiris' union, who is first a
vulnerable child protected by his mother and then
becomes Set's rival for the throne. Their often violent
conflict ends with Horus' triumph, which restores order
to Egypt after Set's unrighteous reign and completes
the process of Osiris’ resurrection.
From Wiki “Osiris”
Mithras
The Mithraic Mysteries were a mystery religion
practised in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to 4th
centuries AD. The name of the Persian god Mithra,
adapted into Greek as Mithras, was linked to a new
and distinctive imagery.
Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven
grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Initiates called
themselves syndexioi, those "united by the
handshake".[6] They met in underground temples (called
mithraea), which survive in large numbers. The cult
appears to have had its centre in Rome.[7]
"the Mithraic Mysteries had no public ceremonies of its
own. The festival of natalis Invicti [Birth of the
Unconquerable (Sun)], held on 25 December, was a
general festival of the Sun, and by no means specific to
the Mysteries of Mithras.
From Wiki “Mithras”
Frazier’s Golden Bough
Prior to the birth of Christianity the ancient
world was full of mythology, rituals,
ceremonies, and religious beliefs that
conformed on many levels with what later
became the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity.
This fact may be unknown to most
practicing Christians today, or at least
ignored, but it has been a common
understanding in the secular intellectual
world since at least 1890. That was the
year in which Sir James G. Frazer's book
The Golden Bough was first published.
Frazier’s Golden Bough
In this volume, now universally recognized
as a classic, Frazer became the first
mainstream scholar to highlight the
common themes found throughout the
myths and legends of many different
cultures, themes that predated Christianity
but which were still very similar—the most
important of these being the story of a
dying and rising god.
The Saviors of the Ancient World by Peter Goodname, Part Three of The Giza Discovery
http://www.redmoonrising.com/Giza/DyingandRising3.htm
J.Z. Smith’s Challenge
According to J.Z. Smith, the entire category of
"Dying and Rising" gods was a fabrication, and all
of the deities placed in this category, upon close
inspection, proved to be either gods who
disappeared and then returned, but did not die, or
deities who died and then never rose.
For Smith it was either one or the other, but never
both, as Frazer had claimed for a multitude of
pagan deities and which happened in the case of
Jesus Christ.
Smith even stated that in some cases it appeared
that Frazer was "strongly influenced by the wish to
demonstrate that Christianity was not an
innovation, but that all its essential features are to
be found in earlier religions."
Mettinger’s Response
“In his book,” The Riddle of Resurrection, [Tryggve]
Mettinger makes a meticulous examination of the
Near Eastern gods that have been placed at one time
or another under the heading of "Dying and Rising"
gods. These include Ugaritic Baal, Melqart-Heracles,
Adonis, Eshmun-Asclepius, Dumuzi-Tammuz, and
Osiris.
For Mettinger the question is simple: is there any
evidence—literary or inscriptional, ritual or
mythological—that any of these gods were ever
understood by the people that worshiped them as
having actually died and then returned to life again? It
is a simple question but Mettinger does not believe
that the scholars who have reacted against Frazer's
thesis have been completely honest.
Slides 6-12 from The Saviors of the Ancient World by Peter Goodname, Part Three of The Giza
Discovery
http://www.redmoonrising.com/Giza/DyingandRising3.htm
Goodname’s Summary
Near the end of his book Mettinger concedes that a strange
connection does exist between Christianity and the "Dying
and Rising" gods of paganism. However, he does not believe
that the existence of this pre-Christian phenomenon must
necessarily mean the non-existence of the Jesus Christ of
New Testament Christianity. Here is what he writes,
"There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that
the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological
construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and
rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit
against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the
faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique
character in the history of religions. The riddle remains."
For more specifics, review Goodname’s excellent overview of Mettinger’s findings:
The Saviors of the Ancient World by Peter Goodname, Part Three of The Giza Discovery
http://www.redmoonrising.com/Giza/DyingandRising3.htm
C.K. Chesterton
“In answer to the historical query of
why it was accepted, and is accepted,
I answer for millions of others in my
reply: because it fits the lock; because
it is like life. It is one among many
stories; only it happens to be a true
story. It is one among many
philosophies; only it happens to be
the truth.”
C.S. Lewis
“here and here only in all time the
myth must become fact; the Word,
flesh; God, Man.”
J. R.R. Tolkien
“this story is supreme; and it is true.
Art has been verified. Legend and
history have met and fused”
Slides 15 through 17 from Montgomery, John Warwick, Chesterton the Apologist. Patrick Henry
College. Web http://phc.edu/gj_montchesterton.php
A Secular Source
Wilson is a master of
delivering the most
information in the
fewest words. His
style is fascinating
and clearly credible. I
simply had to read
this book in two
settings. I came away
with an excellent
understanding of the
short version of
remarkably complex
research material.
Amazon Reviewer