Well, let's start by getting the language right. Nobody is "accusing" Christianity of anything.
Well then let's make sure we are discussing the same thing. Are you arguing that Christianity
drew its beliefs from mystery religions, or are you saying that there are
aspects of mystery religions which parallel aspects of Christianity?
All I am talking about is the observation that the central component of the Christian worship service is a meal
well... yes and no. The Eucharist as a Rite is very important, that is true, but it is not "the central component" of the Christian worship service.
It is uncanny how closely it parallels Mithraism in this regard
and, as I pointed out, most other faiths as well. that's not uncanny, that's human. we may as well declare it "uncanny" that both mithraism and Christianity believe in the divine. That, too, is an aspect they share with lots of other faiths, as well as a lot of non-faith-based groups.
in view of the savior-cult aspect which it also shares.
As far as I am aware, Mithra was not considered a savior deity, and the literature never describes him as such.
Of course, both of these religions appealed to different aspects of society, Mithras was strictly for men, soldier typically, whereas Christianity had a more universal appeal, which likely explains why it won out in the end.
Yeah it's worth pointing out due to those who claim that early Christianity was some kind of anti-woman conspiracy that in fact early Christianity was often considered a religion of women and slaves due to its' outsized appeal among those groups. Though I think we're going to differ on the sources of it's victory over Mithraism
.
I think your claim that the meal is a universal aspect of all faiths is wrong. The group meal is what I'm talking about. The worshippers all sitting down at a table and eating together with their deity at the head of the table (Mithras, with his distinctive phrygian cap is at the head of the table in the Mithraeum). This is different from the sort of "meals" that the Pagan rites had. Certainly there was feasting, but it wasn't this idea of breaking bread with a god. The closest the mainstream pagans came to this was the priests would typically eat the sacrificial animal, but this was not a group activitity, it was for priests.
There really isn't such a thing as "mainstream paganism" in the sense that there is a thread of Pagan beliefs which the vast majority of Pagan followers uniquely shared. Paganism by it's nature was diffuse, local, and incapable of producing a "mainstream" outside of a few basic human tendencies.
That being said, the notion of a communal meal is one of those human tendencies that we do indeed find springing up in almost all human social groups; religions included. Heck, even rotary clubs feel the need to have dinners. Groups of friends get together and do what? They go out to eat. If you want to discuss the unique tying of specific ritual to the communal meal, then the Christian ritual (the bread, the wine) flows directly from the Seder, not the meal that Mithra had with the sun god after killing a bull. Furthermore, if you will flip to
Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies (Manchester U. Press, 1975) p 348, you will note that the Mithraic meal was considered more of the communal gathering that I have described than a Rite such as the Eucharist.
The Jewish tradition of the Seder as we know it didn't develop until after late antiquity, so it doesn't really bear on this discussion.
It is difficult to describe how incorrect that last bit is. The Passover meal is pretty clearly the context of the Last Supper, as Jesus refers to it both explicitly and implicitly throughout the texts. The Synoptics and John disagree on the specific date of the supper itself, but you cannot separate the event itself from how Jesus portrayed it. Far from "not really bearing on this discussion", it is at the heart of this discussion.
I also disagree with your assertion that almost all faiths have the same religious texts
I said that all
do, not that all have the
same.
Well, the cult was dedicated to Isis, but Osiris figured prominently and by the Roman period Serapis had become conflated with Osiris. So you need to get out of the bronze-age Egyptology mindset when considering the Isis mystery cult and realize that it was very much a Roman phenomenon. And what is interesting about the Isis cult is the emphasis on life after death, and the personal attention from the deity. The afterlife concept has it roots in Egypt, and you might say that the bronze-age Egyptian obsession with the world beyond is the root of the Abrahamic conception of the afterlife.
The afterlife concept is far older than Egypt and seems to go back at least to the Ice Age. As long as man has walked thought and dreamed, it seems, something has told him that life on this planet is not all there is.
but let's move to the question of the resurrection.
Osiris/Serapis was killed and put back together again. He didn't "remain dead" as you put it, he was nothing when he was torn to pieces, and did not become lord of the underworld until he was resurrected by Isis. This is very similar to Christ's death, three days spent in the underworld, and resurrection. Just like Christ, Osiris died and was resurrected to become king of the afterlife. That is a very compelling parallel.
This is incorrect for two reasons:
1. Osiris was not resurrected - he remained dead. That is why he went to the land of the dead. Isis merely put him back together and/or buried him so that he could, which is a belief that you find in many religions (that it is possible to keep a spirit from moving on to the afterlife). Osiris did not return to the land of the living.
2. Jesus explicitly declares and his followers believed that he is
not to be considered a King of the Dead (as Osiris was), he is King of
this life, King of the Living. Christs' followers (at least, Christian theologians) do not claim that when we die Jesus will come to resurrect us to Heaven, but that we are
already in the New Life which we will merely continue. I have
already been resurrected.
The key to the Isis cult was the role of Isis as resurrector. The resurrection of her husband was what brought about the fervor from her worshippers: they expected her to do for them what she did for her husband.
to send them to the afterlife, where they would remain dead. Isis is playing the role of Charon more than of Jesus.
So the Isis cult has the same sort of elements of the afterlife you see in Christianity. Death and rebirth in central.
And, again, you have highlighted something that is common to the vast majority of religions (Buddhism, for example, with the constant death/rebirth cycle of reincarnation) and claimed a special relationship.
Also, the role of Isis as Madonna bears no small resemblance to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
:roll: strong female figure =/= Mary mother of Jesus.
Well, that's where you're wrong. Recall that the New Testament was originally written in Greek. Those first century Palestinian fishermen were fluent in Greek and Aramaic, and were highly Hellenized. Remember that the main mode of international transportation back then was sea travel on the mediterranean. Greece and Palestine were right next door, and by the first century the Levant was locked into the Helleno-sphere (to coin a phrase...).
So to claim that a fifteen hundred year old Greek cult could not exert influence on their Semitic neighbors, who were doing there best to talk and act like Greeks, is incorrect.
not at all. Firstly, the
most hellenized of the New Testament authors was Luke, and after him Paul. While Luke presumably could have run across the Eleusian ministries, he was a follower of Paul. Paul had studied since he was a boy in the rabinnic culture, and throughout his letters he
explicitly rejects the kind of mysterious knowledge that marked the Elueusian mysteries as having any place in Christianity. The only thing I can find is the
word "mysteries" used in the Greek Orthodox Church, which have the opposite meaning in that faith that they had for the Greeks - not the knowledge of a secret initiate, but rather something available to all but beyond human comprehension.
There is also little indication that first century palestinian fishermen such as (for example) Peter would have been raised speaking Greek, which was the language of the educated classes. Jewish nationalism, if anything, depressed Greek and Latin as lingua franca's in the region, and Aramaic was used instead.
