the guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess, and the initiation ceremony itself a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace." [Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 21]

Was Christianity new?  Was Christianity unique? If there's anything new and unique about Christianity, it's that Jesus saves, right?  Amazingly, that's wrong.  By the time of Jesus the tradition of Gods who save was at least six or seven hundred years old.  Wow!

Orpheus/ Dionysus When Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey maybe around 800 BC, the archaic Greek Olympic Gods were not saviors -- they didn't help people survive death, or have a better life after death. Salvation wasn't something Gods did.

Orpheus changed that.  In the sixth, maybe the seventh century BC he worked on the myth of the imported-to-Greece Thracian* God Dionysus, and turned it into a religion of morality and salvation.  As far as we know Orpheus was the first guy in the west to do this.

How do we know about Orpheus? Well, fragments of the Orphic Gospel, called the "Orphic Hymns," are quoted by ancient writers, and Orphism lasted into late antiquity and comes up a lot in ancient texts.

Anyway, by the fourth century Plato (yes, that Plato) was writing about Orpheus and his theology of salvation -- and not just of eternal life, but of eternal life made better for Orphic believers.

The Orphic God plates
In Italy, in the third or fourth century BC, texts written on gold plates and buried with the dead, describe the souls of Dionysus followers in the afterlife, drinking not from one particular spring in Hades, but from another cool pool -- and that will give them divinity and eternal life.

Sabazius A fresco in Rome shows one of the God's faithful, now dead, banqueting among the immortal blessed.

Jesus saves -- Pagan Gods saved first

Osiris' followers found salvation in his rebirth. The exact ritual steps of the initiation into the Mysteries of Osiris, we don't know -- they were kept secret on pain of death. That the initiation meant salvation could be written -- and was:

"The keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess, and the initiation ceremony itself a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace."  [Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 21]

And, "Be of good cheer, O initiates, for the god is saved, and we shall have salvation for our woes."  [Firmicus Maternus, The Error of Pagan Religions, 22.1]

Quoting the Goddess Isis:

" I have come with solace and aid. Away then with tears. Cease to moan. Send sorrow fleeing. Soon through my providence shall the sun of your salvation rise."  [Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.5]

Mithras Inscriptions in a Mithraeum (temple of Mithras) in Rome read:

Enough said.

"reborn and created for delights," and "you have saved us by the shedding of eternal blood."

Cybele and Attis: The Festival of Joy -- the celebration of Attis' death and rebirth. On March 22 a pine tree was brought to the sanctuary of Cybele, on it hung the effigy of Attis. The God was dead. Two days of mourning followed, but when night fell on the eve of the third day, March 25th, the worshippers turned to joy,

because >

"... suddenly a light shone in the darkness; the tomb was opened; the God had risen from the dead...[and the priest] softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the God was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave." [for more see Frazer, Attis, chapter 1]

"I, who always lived in a pious body, inhabit, thanks to divine law, the sweet Elysian Fields."

And:

Beautiful indeed is the Mystery given us by the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing.  [Inscription found at Eleusis]

It was the common belief in Athens that whoever had been taught the Mysteries [at Eleusis] would, when he died, be deemed worthy of divine glory. Hence all were eager for initiation. [Scholiast on Aristophanes The Frogs, 158]

"Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these [Eleusinian] mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom." [Hymn to Demeter, 480-2] 0691014795

And

 It looks as if those also who established rites of initiation [into the mysteries] for us were no fools, but that there is a hidden meaning in their teaching when it says that whoever arrives uninitiated in Hades will lie in mud, but the purified and initiated when he arrives there will dwell with gods.  [Plato, 'Phaedo, 69 c]

Mithras Inscriptions in a Mithraeum (temple of Mithras) in Rome read:

Enough said.

"reborn and created for delights," and "you have saved us by the shedding of eternal blood."