Christianity As A Mystery Religion Options

[Romanstudent19]

I heard that early Christianity was a mystery religion in Rome, is this true and does anyone know any of the characteristics of mystery religions (i know that they were a secret but did anything come out about it), was it a popular one, like were there many Romans who joined it, also did Mystery religions have supernatural events that happened, as i read that in some mystery religions, people would enter the spirit world or supernatural realm.

Anyway, i hope that made sense, and thanks for any help.

[Pantagathus]

I can't really give you insight as to the first part of you post but in regards to some of the other Mystery Cults; it appears that many of the rights dealt with the concept of death and resurrection. So in a sense yes they did enter a spiritual realm during the rights, albeit symbolically.

However, I have read interesting interpretations of what the Eleusinian Mysteries were all about and that they may have used psychotropic substances in the rights to make that entering the spirit realm all the more realistic…

[Pertinax]

Perhaps the method of worship was more akin to what we would now consider to be "in the manner of a mystery" due to the need for secrecy-may I suggest rifling through Jung's collected works to lead you toward sources on Gnostic Christianity, Mithras and other "cults" , Joseph Campbell (as suggested elsewhere-a pupil of Jung ) is always worth looking at for signposts to religious experience in historical context. I think Vol; ( "Aion" of Jungs works might spark some trails to other sources.

[Andrew Dalby]

Perhaps the method of worship was more akin to what we would now consider to be "in the manner of a mystery" due to the need for secrecy-may I suggest rifling through Jung's collected works to lead you toward sources on Gnostic Christianity, Mithras and other "cults" , Joseph Campbell (as suggested elsewhere-a pupil of Jung ) is always worth looking at for signposts to religious experience in historical context. I think Vol; ( "Aion" of Jungs works might spark some trails to other sources.

My suggestion (I say this as a non-expert in the field) is that the Eucharist / Communion counts as a mystery, from the point of view of ancient religious observers, because the bread and wine are said to be the body and blood of Christ. After all, they don't appear to be: you must have faith / be initiated into the religion before you'll accept it.

This is one thing the Cathars wouldn't accept, incidentally. They said the bread and wine were just bread and wine. On the other hand, according to the Cathars, the 'daily bread' prayed for in the Lord's Prayer was not bread at all, but the True Gospel. But the Cathars, I fear, are off topic.

[Pertinax]

The Roman objection to Christianity was a horror at the concept of the consumption of the "body and blood" of Christ-and some of course thought this was literal -and if not literal seriously weird!

[roman wargamer]

Rome 16:16 Bible , "greet each other of a holy kiss, all Church of Christ greet you."

the first century chruch was secret just because they are persecuted, no more no less .

how could you convert Romanus to a very foreign and persecuted religion...

if they offer no salvation from eternal condamnation in the lake of fire for our sin.

...and offer forgiveness and everlasting life for the true Church of Christ members only...

and ressurection to life...on the day of judgement of the Lord God... in the end of the world.

[Favonius Corneli...]

Also it might very well be possible that the Romans knew more about the beliefs of this cult of the Christ than what little we have in the histories that survive today. Surely a Roman would have a problem with the concept of some god annihilating the entire world with a great flood simply because he was displeased. Or the concept of perverse self-mutilation (circumcision).

[FLavius Valerius...]

Or the concept of perverse self-mutilation (circumcision).

Point already taken, but that part I can't really apply to the mystery because most of the Christians were Gentile which meant they weren't circumcised. Anyways, Paul preached to uncircumcised people. The circumcision issue only applied to Judea and surrounding nearby areas where the Jewish converts demanded Gentiles be circumcised, but Rome is different I suppose.

This post has been edited by FLavius Valerius Constantinus: Mar 12 2006, 03:08 AM

[Favonius Corneli...]

Well you know how rumors go. If it's true for some, or even remotely so, it will eventually be seen as true of them all.

[Guest_Hippolytus_*]

I heard that early Christianity was a mystery religion in Rome, is this true and does anyone know any of the characteristics of mystery religions (i know that they were a secret but did anything come out about it), was it a popular one, like were there many Romans who joined it, also did Mystery religions have supernatural events that happened, as i read that in some mystery religions, people would enter the spirit world or supernatural realm.

Anyway, i hope that made sense, and thanks for any help.

Although spirituality was undoubtedly an aspect of ancient Roman mystery religions, the surviving evidence points primarily to ritual actions with symbolic meaning as comprising the core of the ritual activity of these religions, especially the more popular, better known ones. For example, towards the end of a lengthy and elaborate service, some secret object or action would be revealed with deep symbolic meaning to those trained in the belief system of the religion. This the initiates were sworn to keep secret, and in most cases did, as we are still ignorant of most of the core mysteries today.

When scholars speak of Christianity as a mystery religion, this points to the striking similarity between Christian rituals as they developed in the Greek and Roman worlds (such as the Roman Catholic eucharist or mass) and what we know of the mystery religions. In fact, the closest thing today to the celebration of the ancient mysteries, or even of the liturgies of the Roman public or state religion, is a traditional Roman Catholic mass with its processions and candles and incense.

All of this was quite different than the appearance that these Christian rituals had in their initially Jewish setting. The eucharist or mass as celebrated by Jews who believed in Jesus was simply the ordinary blessings said at the beginning of a communal meal, though elaborated to reflect their beliefs in the importance of Jesus' death and resurrection.

Among the non-Jewish Christians in Rome and elsewhere, all this was soon changed. The blessings were removed from a meal setting and placed in a morning worship service that had more in common with pagan Roman rites than with the Jewish original. As in the mystery religions, special ritual objects (the cup and bread) were revealed at the end of a long ritual only to those properly initiated. And it came to be believed that something mysterious and magical happened at the exact moment when the priest said certain words over them: that the wine and bread actually became, physically, the body and blood of Christ.

Needless to say, this was not the original idea, even in Rome, but the result of a development over centuries that took into account local ideas about religion, including that of the mystery religions. The original Jewish commemoration was more an act of corporate memory, as in the Passover meal with which it was first associated, in which past events were brought into living memory. In the Roman context, this communal family-style event was transformed over time into a more philosophically understood spiritual action that focused more and more on the actions of a priest and less and less on the familial life of a community. This was the result, in part, of the influence of the mystery religions.

Trances and ecstatic states were associated more with the barbarian religions at the edges of the Roman empire, though many of these did penetrate into Rome to one degree or another over the centuries. Some of the Greek rites in their early years were also a little on the wild side. But as these religions became more popular in Rome, they became more domesticated and more tame. The same thing happened to Christianity, which in its early days was well known for its personal and corporate spiritual experiences with miracles and miraculous healings of many kinds. But under Roman influence, this calmed down quite a bit, though never went completely extinct.

[Aphrodite]

The following article may be of some help to your quest for knowledge

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mysteries For much of the 20th cent. the term ‘mystery religions’ has been current, denoting a special form of personal religion linking the fate of a god of Frazer's ‘dying-rising’ type with the individual believer. The two scholars whose authority made soteriology the central issue were Fr. Cumont (1904) and R. Reitzenstein (1910). The concealed agendum was the question of the uniqueness, and by implication, validity, of Christianity; at the same time, it was the model of that religion which provided the agreed terms of discussion. In this perspective, the earliest and most influential Greek mystery cult, of Demeter and Kore (see Persephone) at Eleusis, appeared a crude forerunner of more developed mystery religions from the near east, which in the Hellenistic period filled a spiritual vacuum left by the etiolation of Archaic and Classical civic cult. ‘Mystery’ was taken to be the essence of oriental religiosity.

This entire scenario, and with it the coherence of the notion ‘mystery’, has now been seriously eroded. U. von Wilamowitz and C. Schneider showed in the 1930s that mysteries in the Greek (Eleusinian) sense were unknown in the homelands of the oriental cults, and were only attached to them on their entry into the Graeco-Roman world. M. P. Nilsson later made a similar point about Dionysiac mysteries (see Dionysus); and it is now agreed that all the ‘oriental’ divinities were thoroughly Hellenized in the process of being assimilated. The validity of Frazer's typology of the dying-rising god ( Osiris, Attis, Adonis) was undermined in the 1950s by H. Frankfort and others. The nature of the soteriology of mystery cults has been critically reviewed by the ‘School of Rome’ since the 1960s, especially by U. Bianchi (see bibliog. below) and his pupils, and redefined as ‘the mass of benefits and guarantees which the worshipper expected from the celebration of the cult’ (Sfameni Gasparro). In the light of this revisionism, the uniqueness of the claims of Pauline Christianity (see Paul, St.) against the background of Judaic Messianism (see religion, Jewish) has been re-emphasized, and the issue of the Christianization of the Roman empire opened to fresh debate. The category ‘mysteries’ is looking decidedly limp. For it is clear that they cannot be considered independent movements, let alone religions, but as merely an ingrained modality of (Greek, later Graeco-Roman) polytheism—they have been compared with a pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela in the Christian context. And they are only a specialized, often highly local, form of the cult of ill-assorted divinities. Their prominence in modern scholarship is quite disproportionate to their ancient profile.

The most useful recent typology of Graeco-Roman mysteries as forms of personal religious choice is that of Bianchi and others. Three modes are distinguished: ‘mystery’ proper, an entire initiatory structure of some duration and complexity, of which the type (and in many cases the actual model, e.g. Celeia near Phlius (Pausanias 2. 14. 1–4) or the mysteries of Alexander (13) of Abonuteichos (Lucian, Alexander 38f.)) is Eleusis; ‘mystic’ cult, involving not initiation but rather a relation of intense communion, typically ecstatic or enthusiastic, with the divinity (e.g. Bacchic frenzy (see Dionysus), or the o of Cybele); and ‘mysteriosophic’ cult, offering an anthropology, an eschatology, and a practical means of individual reunion with divinity—the primitive or original form is Orphism, consistently represented as a ‘mystery’ (e.g. Pausanias 9. 30. 4f., 10. 7. 2), the most typical, Hermeticism and Gnosis (see Gnosticism), though these are late Egyptian and Judaeo-Christian forms of religiosity. Bianchi himself has sought to provide an element of thematic unity by adapting Frazer's ‘dying-rising god’ typology: these cults are all focused upon a ‘god subject to some vicissitude’. This tack has rightly been criticized, but the scheme has heuristic value without it.

Of their very nature, ideal types simplify to offer insight. The real world is always much more confused. The word (see telet), which often denotes initiatory rituals of the Eleusinian type, could also be applied to any kind of unusual rite in some way analogous. One of the costs of conceptual clarity is the exclusion from consideration of numerous minor cults of Greece and Asia Minor, such as the telet of Hera at Nauplia, where she bathed annually to ‘become a virgin’ (Pausanias 2. 38. 2). ‘Mystery’ shifts uneasily between indigenous term and analytical concept. Further complications are the intermingling of the three types in practice and the clear evidence of changes over time: early Orphic lore cannot be neatly distinguished from Bacchic ‘mystic’ experience; Orphic texts are intimately connected with the formation of Eleusinian myth; the cult of Cybele and Attis is marked by ‘mystic’ ecstasy but also, in the Hellenistic period and after, by mysteries of uncertain content analogous to those of Eleusis, and, from the 2nd cent. AD, by a fusion of sacrifice, substitute-castration, and personal baptism—the taurobolium (‘bull-sacrifice’); the cult of Mithras may have taken on a ‘mysteriosophic’ tone.

The variety of mystery cults makes them exceptionally difficult to summarize both briefly and accurately. The aim of the ‘mystic’ form is best contrasted with that of the collective, integrative, political value of sacrificial civic religion: the individual seeks through possession/‘madness’ to transcend the constraints of the everyday and become a member of a privileged but temporary community of bliss (Euripides Bacchae 64–169; Strabo 10. 3. 7). Religious imagery and style offer a complex counterpoint to those of civic cult. A brusquer world-rejection inspired the ‘mysteriosophic’ form, based upon a myth accounting for the separation between god and man, flesh and spirit (Kern, Orphica Fragmenta 232), evident in the gold plaques from Pelinna in Thessaly (late 4th cent. BC; see Orphism). The ‘mystery’ type is much more integrated into dominant social values. The modal form, the Eleusinian mysteries, was a full and regular part of Athenian civic cult from the late 6th cent. BC, institutionalizing many aspects of religious aspiration otherwise excluded from public ceremonial: collective purification, the dramatic representation of mythical narrative, the opportunity for awe, fear, wonder, scurrility, and humour (the [mu]o (ritual abuse) at the bridge over the Cephissus), explicit exegesis by the mystaggoi, the privilege bestowed by an open secret ‘that may not be divulged’, and public reaffirmation of a theodicy of moral desert linked to good fortune. In this perspective, the offer of a blessed existence in the Elysian fields after death (e.g. Hymnus Homericus ad Cererem 480–9, comm. N. J. Richardson (1974); see Elysium) received no special emphasis, being a projection of complacency into the world beyond, not a compensation for the sorrows of this one. The point probably holds good for all mystery cults, indigenous or ‘oriental’ (cf. Diodorus Siculus 5. 49. 5f.), until the 3rd cent. AD. See Cabiri.

Richard L. Gordon "mysteries" The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth. Oxford University Press 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Barbara Nomikos. 12 March 2006 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t111.e4318>

This post has been edited by Aphrodite: Mar 12 2006, 06:02 PM

[Northern Neil]

I believe it was only a matter of time as to when one or other of the mystery cults was to become crystalised into a state religion, complete with authoritarian doctrine. Christianity in its final, abridged form as adopted by the Roman world post 325 AD is undoubtedly an amalgamation of many of the mystery cults that preceded it. An exerpt from the Lord's Prayer was included in an earlier post on this topic; I have at hand a copy of the Lord's Prayer - not the version which was translated from the Aramaic, then the Greek, then the Latin, then the English which has become the standard, but a direct translation from the Aramaic. Although it is undoubtedly the same prayer, what it says is significantly different to that which has been passed down from all the multiple translations. It is also a prayer which was current many years (at least 400 years ) before the gospels were written. It runs thus:

'O cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration. Soften the ground of our being and carve out a space within us where your Presence can abide.

Fill us with your creativity so that we may be empowered to bear the fruit of your mission.

Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire.

Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share what each being needs to grow and flourish.

Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us, as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes.

Do not let us be seduced by that which would divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate the opportunities of the present moment.

For you are the ground and the fruitful vision, the birth, power and fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again.'

I suggest that the 'Give us this day our daily bread', quoted earlier, actually ran: Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire, as stated above.

I may have shot off at a tangent here, but returning to topic, I think that this original version of the Lord's Prayer at least suggests that the original Christianity, whatever form it may have taken, is, or was, seriously at odds with the authoritarian religion founded by Constantine and regarded, today, as the 'true' Christianity.

[roman wargamer]

let's consider the following question?

the first era christian needs to explained what they believe to all other peolpe,
and indoctrinate them to their fundamental Biblical beliefs,

before any one, must less a, Romanus (privelege peolple of that time in the world)

to be converted to a foreign faith , who originated from a conquered and vanished country,
the lowly Judea and lowly people....even under pain of persecution and death.

you must believe that even if you will be put to death, you will loss nothing but earn more.

so you need to exposed and explained your christianity to be able to convert other people.

how could you maintained secrecy, if you will go out and wanted to convert other people.

everything is written and recorded in lowly Greek Dialect "Bible." ( The New Testament )

even the church persecution was long been propesied, after the apostle will be gone and all dead.

[idahojeri]

[quote name='Hippolytus' date='Mar 12 2006, 06:33 AM' post='28973']



. As in the mystery religions, special ritual objects (the cup and bread) were revealed at the end of a long ritual only to those properly initiated. And it came to be believed that something mysterious and magical happened at the exact moment when the priest said certain words over them: that the wine and bread actually became, physically, the body and blood of Christ.

Needless to say, this was not the original idea, even in Rome, but the result of a development over centuries


Thought you might be interested in these quotes:

Letter from Ignatius, about 105-110) "I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life--which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the son of God."

Also from the letters of Ignatius: "They (the pagans) abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not believe the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ...Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death".

And from Irenaeus (about 180) "For the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist--consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly."

Also from Irenaeus: "The wine and bread having recieved the Word of God, become the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ".

Then there is Paul: "He who eats and drinks (the Eucharist) in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body" 1 Cor. 11:29,

There are other quotations, including ones from the Didache, Justin Martyr, and Clement that indicate that from the beginning the Eucharist was regarded as the body of Jesus.




[/i][i]

[phil25]

I think many of the points I would make in answer to the question posed by this thread have already been made.

Whatever Jesus' original message, I believe it was perceived in the west and in the Greek world, as a mystery religeon. Indeed, I'd go further, and argue that Paul deliberately cast his preaching in a style that inclined to the mysteries, and thus would appeal to Gentile (initially Greek) minds.

Many of the so-called gnostic gospels found in Egypt also posssess this "secret knowledge"/revelation to the initiated student, character.

I see the Eleusinian-type mysteries as being often about paradox - the need to die to be reborn (the simile of the wheat which has to die in order to germinate); the need to surrender self to find the true self etc.

So that the mystery of the crucifixion and resurrection (with emphasis on the former); jesus meeting with Nicodemus by night, in which he stated the need to be reborn of water and the spirit; are to me examples of this.

Mithraism seems to have had a burial rite of initiation, from which the cultist rose reborn. early excisions from Mark's gospel, which make sense of the young man running naked from Gethsemene and perhaps a different interpretation to the raising of Lazarus might suggest something that goes back to Jesus himself; or was interpolated to cater for mystic tastes.

The nativity story (only in two gospels and different); the visit of the Magi; the star etc may well also be additions to make the early writings fit better with mystery models.

Early Christianity was also quick to seize on pagan festivals and make them Christian - Christmas (25 dec) relates not to the gospels but to the traditional birthdate of Sol Invictus/Mithras.

Just some thoughts, not all of which I agree with, but which have been argued.

Phil