POCM > Historical Jesus Scholarship

Not everyone agrees -- the four defenses

[Professor Smith quotes A. Loisy]
"[Jesus] was a savior-god, after the manner of Osiris, and Attis, a Mithra. Like them, he belonged by his origin to the celestial world; like them, he had made his appearance on the earth; like them, he had accomplished a work of universal redemption, efficacious and typical; like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he ha died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life; like them, he had prefigured in his lot that of the human beings who should take part in his worship, and commemorate his mystic enterprise; like them, he had predetermined, prepared, and assured the salvation of those who became partners in his passion."

[Then commnts:]
From such a parataxis of 'likeness', little of value can be learned.
[Jonathan Smith, Drudgery Divine; On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, (1994), 42 - 43 ]


	Incredibly, not everyone agrees Christianity had Pagan origins!

Traditional academia
What do traditional modern scholars of religion say about the Pagan- Christian connection? The short answer is: Arthur Darby Nock's essay Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Background, (1928). It's still widely quoted as "proving" that the similarities -- no one denies them -- between Paganism and Christianity do not prove dependence. That's modern academic orthodoxy.

The long answer is: everyone has an agenda. A.D. Nock was a Doctor of Divinity -- a believing Christian. His Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Background was printed in a book of essays about the Anglican communion -- a book about Christians, by Christians, for Christians. It had an agenda.

In fact throughout academia most scholars of religion are Christian believers. That is a huge deal. It's a huge deal because believing scholars start with the idea the Christian story was new, unique, discontinuous -- true. That's what makes them believers. And as believers, they can't accept a Pagan origin for Christianity without throwing over their own faith. So they don't. In believing academia, like everywhere else, faith trumps fact.

What do I mean faith trumps fact? Here's an example, from a famous and widely quoted essay, talking about Pagan water purification sacraments, all of which were around before Christianity.

It's a long quote, but it's worth reading: >

By the way
The fact their faith trumps fact doesn't mean believing academics are bad people. It just means they are Christian believers. They aren't as rigorous as they imagine themselves? -- let he who is without sin toss the first stone. Not me, I've got a foible or two myself. You yourself might even have one. Come on, admit it.

"We know of an ablution [an ablution is a washing of the body, especially as part of a religious rite] in the ritual of Eleusis; the laurel-wreath oration of Demosthenes speaks of purificatory ablutions in the mystery of Sabazius; the cult of Attis had its taurobolium, and the mystery of Isis knew a sanctifying baptismal bath, as did the mysteries of Dionysus and of Mithras. Upon mature consideration modern scholarship has rejected the ideas that such rites exerted an influence on the baptismal doctrine of the New Testament." [Hugo Rahner, The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries, section 3, in The Mysteries; Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, edited by Joseph Campbell]

In other words, back when Christianity started, where it started, among the people who were its earliest converts, you couldn't walk down the street without tripping over a Pagan baptism; but our baptism, our Christian baptism, that's completely different and unrelated to all the other baptisms. This is the kind of stuff believing academics write down and pass around. You need to understand that as you sift through the scholarship.

Here's how the believers' scholarly argument goes.
Because the overarching facts aren't too complicated, the back and forth between Pagan Christers and Believing Scholars runs in pretty tight groves. Everyone agrees the facts suggest a Pagan - Christian connection. The believing scholars have four possible defenses. They have to say Christianity is:

	different
	not different, but it developed separately,
	not different, but it developed first.
	Or they can ignore the pagan origins.

A specific example
In the second century AD a Pagan fellow named Apuleius wrote a book about, believe it or not, the adventures he had when he was turned into a donkey. (It was a novel, so everyone understood the donkey stuff was made up.) In the book he includes stuff that wasn't made up -- a description of his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis.

Of his initiation Apuleius writes

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

How do mainstream scholars deal with this?
The Pagan Christ crowd says, "Baptism, salvation, dying- resurrected god -- looks a lot like Christianity." They add that that to the great mass of other evidence and say, "Gotta be a connection."

The believing scholars use each of their four possible defenses:

Different.

Yes Apuleius says the salvation of Isis guarantees his "rebirth," but he doesn't say "eternal rebirth," so it's not the same. Christian rebirth and salvation are completely different from Pagan rebirth and salvation -- we know this because some guy writing a novel about being turned into a jackass says "rebirth" and "salvation" instead of "eternal rebirth" and "salvation."

This is an actual example of modern scholarship, from a much quoted professor at Yale. I swear to you I am not making this up.

Or: Yes Tammuz dies and rises, but Tammuz isn't a dying and rising god because he's really a demi-God, not a fully vested, tenured god. So, see, there really were no pre-Christian dying and rising gods. So Jesus is completely different from Tammuz. QED. [Tryggve Nettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection, Dying and Rising Gods in the Ancient Near East, 2001, pg 37]

Or, get this, Yes Osiris did die and get resurrected and go to Egyptian heaven, where he judges people and gives his followers eternal life -- but his resurrection was to heaven, not to Earth, see, so it wasn't really a resurrection. So there really were no pre-Christian dying and rising gods. So Jesus is completely different from Osiris. QED. [Tryggve Nettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection, Dying and Rising Gods in the Ancient Near East, 2001, pg 173]

By the way: Jesus is different from Osiris. So what?

Jesus is different from Osiris. So what? Believing scholars say, "So, Jesus and Christianity could not have borrowed from Paganism." Call it the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule. Can I be honest here? I'm not smart enough to see how that reasoning works.

For example, when you apply the same reasoning to other ancient mystery religions, you get a silly answer. Here's what I mean: Osiris-ism, Dionysus-ism, MIthras-ism, Attis-ism, Adonis-ism, Ma-ism, the mysteries at Eleusis, and the mysteries at Samnothrace -- they were all different. Different rituals. Different festivals. Different myths. Different priests. Different temples. Different ideas. Different Gods.

The mystery religions are all different from each other. According to the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule, they didn't borrow from each other.

But wait, the mysteries weren't completely different. They had a lot of stuff in common too. For example, they all had Gods, and godmen. They also all had eternal life, and baptism and a Eucharist, and heaven, and hell, etc., etc. And if you believe the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule, then you believe the ancient mystery religions each came up with the idea of God all on their own. That they each came up with a godman, all on their own; and eternal life, all on their own; and a human soul, all on their own; and baptism, all on their own; and a Eucharist, all on their own.

All those people growing up together in the same civilization -- in the same towns, with their houses of worship on the same block sometimes, for Christ's sake -- and us thinking they all came up with godmen, baptism, Eucharists and salvation all on their own? To me that's crazy. For all I know, it sounds crazy to lots of people -- which is maybe why you never hear any believing scholar apply the difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to the mystery religions. Or else they were busy that day.

And what about Judaism? Christianity is different from Judaism. The Christian three-headed God is different from Judaism's one-headed God. Christian salvation is different from Jewish salvation. Christian baptism is different from Jewish baptism. The Christian Eucharist is different from Judaism's Eucharist -- does Judaism even have baptism and a Eucharist?

Apply the reasoning of the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to Judaism, and you learn that Christianity is free of the taint of Jewish origins. Which is maybe why you never hear any believing scholar apply the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to Judaism. Doesn't give the answer they want.

Not different, but it developed separately.

Christian rebirth and salvation are the same as Pagan rebirth and salvation, but you don't have written proof the early Christians actually copied the Pagan ideas. So they didn't. The ideas developed in parallel.

What "in parallel" is taken to mean is, "on their own," or "uninfluenced by."

Can you grow up in Japan, then develop chop sticks independently? Believing scholars say "yes."

How that works, how you can develop an idea on your own that everyone else in the culture, including you before you converted, knows about -- that's a detail the believing scholars don't dwell on. They're busy doing other stuff, I guess.

"The use of identical and similar words, gestures, rites in the Christian and the Hellenistic cults does not imply derivation of one from the other...The [Pagan] mystagogue kisses the altar and the Christian priest does likewise; both set their right foot first across the threshold of the sanctuary; in both the mysteries and the early Christian ritual of baptism, the novice is given milk and honey; but these are not "influences" of the mysteries on Christianity; they are simply usages that the various cults drew quite independently from daily life." [Hugo Rahner, The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries, in The Mysteries; Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks]

Not different, but it developed first

Maybe Apuleius copied from the Christians. The facts -- the fact that Baal died and rose again back in the bronze age, the fact that the followers of Isis had been having initiations like this for hundreds of years before Jesus, the fact that Apuleius mentions the Pagan Gods hundreds and hundreds of times but never mentions Jesus once, the fact there is absolutely no evidence at all, anywhere, whatsoever that Apuleius ever even heard of Christianity, the fact that the early Christian apologists saw the parallels and said the Pagan ideas happened first -- they don't prove anything. It could have happened backwards. Probably did.

Ignore it.

Don't bring it up. Or mention a theoretical and unproven mystery religion- Christian connection in a dismissive subordinate clause, maybe cite the authority of the mature consideration of modern scholarship, and move on. If you're writing for other believing scholars -- a good bet -- no one's going to call you on it.

This defense is the most popular.

Facts? What facts?

OK, this is number five, and I promised four. This one is so outlandish I didn't think of it at first. Here's what you do: Take a fact you don't like, and say it's not a fact.

For example, here's what Plutarch, away back yonder, wrote about Adonis >>

"As a memorial of his [Adonis'] suffering [i.e. his death] each year, they beat their breasts, mourn and... sacrifice to Adonis as if to a dead person, but then, on the next day, they proclaim that he lives and send him into the air" [Plutarch, Isis and Osiris]

Plutarch says Adonis' followers mourn his death, then the next day proclaim "he lives." "Dead," next day "He lives." Dead, lives. Dead. Alive. Got that?

"So what?" says the much cited hot shot Mark Smith, of NY University, who quotes this same passage...

...then says >>

"the passage is hardly clear," and anyway other "rituals accentuate Adonis's death, there is no hint of rebirth." [Mark Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 2001, page 116]

Well, it's only not clear if you want it to be not clear.

	By the way
	bym qbr 'lm -- say it five times, fast. Now, does it occur to you, as it does to me, that maybe the Phoenicians died out because, with a language like that they all choked to death?

Or, as G Knoppers puts it [The God in His Temple, page 120] the famous Etruscan inscription at Pyrgi [KAI 277], which says, and I quote, "bym qbr 'lm", which as you probably already know, is Phoenician for "the day of the burial of the god" doesn't mean "the day of the burial of the god." It means the day of the burial of "a recently deceased person" That everywhere else somebody cuneiformed 'lm everyone agrees they meant "god" doesn't matter. Here it means "a recently deceased person." That's Knoppers story, and he's sticking with it.

Mark the-passage-isn't-clear Smith finds this reasoning clear enough, in fact, "a very strong challenge to the theory of a dying and rising god". [Mark Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 2001, page 118]

Facts you don't like don't have to be facts. It's an Alice in Wonderland sort of science.

By the way

Did I mention that a lot of the Unique Christ people are believing Christians?

They are. You maybe guessed that.

Good Books for this section

The Riddle of Resurrection Dying and Rising Gods in the Ancient Near East
by Tryggve Mettinger

Ever since Jimmy Frazer wrote the Golden Bough more than a hundred years ago, pointing out that the ancient middle east was hopping with "dying and rising gods," people have argued if Jimmy had things straight.

Dr. Mettinger, of the Dept of Theology, Lund U. in Sweden, reviews the scholarship on the issue, through 2000.

That's less cool than you'd think for a couple reasons.
#1 The scholarship deals a lot on archaic gods like Baal, Melquart, Adonis, and there's not a lot of surviving info on them -- so the issue often comes down to scholarly speculation, or scholarly spatting over cuneiform verb forms, as in (I am not making this up):

hklh. sh. lqs. ilm. tlhmn
ilm w tstn. tstnyn `d sbí
trt. `d. skr. yí.db .yrh

(The Ugarites were a very poor people, and so couldn't afford vowels.):

#2 Scholars have defined the issue pretty tightly, so, for example Tammuz isn't a dying and rising god because he's really a demi-god, not a fully vested, tenured god. So, see, there really were no dying and rising gods. QED.

Or, yeah, Osiris did die and get resurrected and go to Egyptian heaven, where he judges people and gives his followers eternal life -- but his resurrection was to heaven, not to Earth, see, so it wasn't really a resurrection. So there really were no dying and rising gods. QED.

Because the scholarship is so narrowly defined, it doesn't touch on questions people like you or me would like answered. Questions like, "Well, is it possible there's a relationship between Osiris -- a pre-Christian godman who died and got resurrected and now lives in heaven and judges the dead, and Jesus -- a godman who died and got resurrected and now lives in heaven and judges the dead?"

Still, none of that is Dr. Metting's fault, and he's written a fine, readable book summarizing the state of the (narrow) scholarship.

Available only at Amazon .com.

The Golden Ass
or The Metamorphosis
by Apuleius

The ancients had novels (who knew?!), and this is one of them. And, believe it or not, it's a fun read, lighthearted, funny, and well written. The story moves. For the boys: it even has explicit sex. Amazing. Who knew?!

The story is about Lucius' adventures after he gets turned into a donkey. The first ten chapters are just fun, not related to the Pagan origins.

Chapter eleven is about Lucius in Egypt, and his study and initiation into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris (he's a man again by this point). For the ancients these mysteries were sacred secrets -- believers would and did die rather than reveal them. Apuleius' novel is the only surviving text that comes close to describing the mystery initiation ceremony. Apuleius also says initiation brought salvation:

"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."

And the good thing is, you don't have to believe me, you can read it for yourself. Available at amazon.com