"When the Mysteries were first introduced to Greece from Egypt, the notion of an afterlife was a new and heretical doctrine to the Greeks. Likewise, the concept of heaven and hell is not found in the Old Testament, yet is a central idea in the gospels. Where did these notions come from? Just as in ancient Greece, these new ideas were introduced by the Mysteries."
"The Egyptian god Amun was called 'the One of One'. The great Egyptologist Wallis Budge remarks:
"It is also said that he is 'without a second' and thus there is no doubt whatever that when the Egyptians declared their God to be One, and without a second, they meant precisely what the Hebrews and Arabs meant when they declared their God to be One. Such a God was an entirely different Being from the personification of the powers of nature and the existences which, for want of a better name, have been called 'gods'."
Like every religion, Paganism had its superstitious and primitive side, and there certainly were many Pagan cults of different gods. But, as Budge explains, these so-called 'gods' represented aspects of nature. The ancient Egyptian word which we translate as 'god' is neter. Neter refers to a spiritual essence or principle. The many neters of the Egyptians represented the many natures of the one all-embracing Being — the gods were different aspects or faces of the one supreme God."
☆☆☆PERFECTED PLATONISM☆☆☆
"Many of the ideas of the Christians have been expressed better — and earlier — by the Greeks. Behind these views is an ancient doctrine that has existed from the beginning." ~ Celsus
Just as Pagan critics of Christianity saw the story of Jesus as an adaptation of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, so they also viewed Christian teachings as a poor copy of the ancient and perennial philosophy of the Pagan Mysteries. Celsus writes of the Christians dismissively:
"Let's speak about their systematic corruption of the truth, their misunderstanding of some fairly simple philosophical principles — which of course they completely botch."
Most early Christian intellectuals had been educated in Pagan philosophy and were well aware of its profound similarities with their own doctrines. Clement of Alexandria regarded the gospels as 'perfected Platonism'. Justin Martyr calls Heraclitus, Socrates and other Greek philosophers Christians before Christ. Yet he stops short of acknowledging a common spiritual heritage. To Justin the similarities are, once again, the results of 'diabolical mimicry' which blinds the foolish to the essential differences between Christianity and Paganism. He writes:
"For I myself, when I discovered the wicked disguises which the evil spirits had thrown around the divine doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from joining them, laughed both at those who framed these falsehoods, and at the disguise itself, and at popular opinion; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the Stoics, poets, and historians."
The Pagans were so persistent in accusing Christianity of borrowing from Plato, however, that St Ambrose wrote a treatise to confute them. He did not deny the resemblances, but explained them by claiming that Plato plagiarized Moses! Building on a fake chronology established in the fourth century by Bishop Eusebius, Augustine developed the equally ludicrous idea that Plato copied the Jewish prophet Jeremiah. He explains:
"Did not the illustrious bishop show that Plato made a journey into Egypt at the time when Jeremiah the prophet was there, and show that it is much more likely that Plato was through Jeremiah's means initiated into our literature. And thus, when we reflect on the dates, it becomes much more probable that those philosophers learnt whatever they said that was good and true from our literature, than that the lord Jesus Christ learnt from the writings of Plato — a thing which it is the height of folly to believe."
Justin Martyr went so far as to deny that Pagans had any right to their own prophets and claimed the wisdom of the ancient sages for Christianity! He writes: 'Whatever things were rightly said among all teachers are the property of us Christians.' Following this tradition, St Augustine later likewise declared:
"If those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with the faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it."
Why do these Christians feel forced to adopt such convoluted arguments as the only way of resisting Pagan accusations of plagiarism? Are the teachings of Jesus and the wisdom of the Mysteries really so similar? Let's see.
☆MORAL PURITY☆
Christians were very proud of their high moral doctrines. In contrast, they often sought to portray the Mysteries as morally degenerate. But this is absolute nonsense. The initiate Diodorus of Sicily writes, 'Those who have taken part in the Mysteries are said to become more pious, more upright, and in every way better than their former selves.' A follower of Sabazius announces after his initiation: 'I escaped evil, I found the good.' Sopatros tells us, 'On account of initiation I shall be quite prepared for every moral demand.' Iamblichus, talking of the Mystery pageant, writes:
"Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to free us from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with which these rites were accompanied."
Initiation into the Mysteries was seen as a source of moral purification and preparation for death. Aristophanes declares: 'All those who participated in the Mysteries led an innocent, calm and holy life; they died looking for the light of the Elysian fields.' Porphyry adds, 'At the moment of death the soul must be as it is in the Mysteries; free from any blemish, passion, envy or anger.' Celsus tells us that it was announced that initiation was only open to 'whoever is holy from every defilement and whose soul is conscious of no evil' and that 'No one should approach unless he was conscious of his innocence.'
Jesus taught his followers to strive for moral purity, not only in deed, but even in thought. The Church father Clement of Alexandria writes: 'He who would enter the shrine must be pure, and purity is to think holy things.' But Clement is merely echoing the ancient inscription over the Pagan shrine of Asclepius, which also read: 'Purity is thinking only holy thoughts.' Likewise, in the sayings of the Pagan sage Sextus, we read: 'Do not even think of that which you are unwilling God should know.' Celsus writes:
"What ought really to occupy our minds, day and night, is the Good: publicly and privately, in every word and deed and in the silence of reflection. The Stoic philosophers developed the idea of the 'conscience' which Christianity inherited. 'Conscience' means 'with knowledge'. For the Pagan sages, to listen to one's conscience was to follow the inner spiritual Knowledge, or Gnosis, possessed by the Higher Self. The followers of Pythagoras were required every night to remember all the events of the day and judge themselves morally from the standpoint of their Higher Self. The initiate Seneca describes his constant striving for moral perfection in simple homely language that could be that of a modern Christian:
"Every day I plead my case before myself. When the light is extinguished, and my wife, who knows my habit, keeps silence, I examine the past day, go over and weigh all my deeds and words. I hide nothing, I omit nothing: why should I hesitate to face my shortcomings when I can say, 'Take care not to repeat them, and also I forgive you today'?"
The need to confess one's sins was taught by Jesus and is still an essential element of Christianity. This idea was far from new, however. Initiates into the Mysteries were required to purify themselves by making a public confession of all their failings and misdeeds. In the Mysteries of Eleusis, the priest asked the initiate to confess the worst deed that he had ever committed in his life. This was not an empty formality, but a truly pious act. The despotic Roman Emperor Nero turned back from seeking initiation into the Mysteries when he realized he would have to openly admit murdering his mother. Even a tyrant accepted this loss of face, rather than lie before the most sacred institution of the ancient world. A modern classical scholar writes that the Mysteries 'anticipated Catholicism in the establishment of a Confessional — but less rigid — with the elements of a penitential system and absolution for uneasy devotees. The priests acted as representatives of the Mystery-god, exacting auricular confession.' A 'Negative Confession' of the evils one had avoided committing is found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead as long ago as 1500 BCE.
Contrary to Christian claims that the Mysteries were morally degenerate, the evidence clearly shows that initiation was designed to bring about moral regeneration.
Despite this, of course, the Pagan Mysteries were no less open to hypocrisy and abuse than any other religion. The Jewish Pythagorean Philo complains: 'It often happens that good men are not initiated, but that robbers and murderers, and lewd women are, if they pay money to the initiators and hierophants.' But as a modern scholar remarks, Such passages show that abuses existed, but also that it was felt to be a scandal if the initiated person failed to exhibit any moral improvement.
☆LOVE☆
In contrast to the traditional Jewish God of justice, Jesus preaches a revolutionary new conception of a God of love. Jesus' first and central commandment is that his followers should love God, and to this day having a personal loving relationship with God is at the heart of Christianity. This was also at the heart of the Mysteries. A modern scholar writes:
If one had to single out one paramount feature that distinguished all the Mystery cults from other religions of their period, it would be that they sought a personal relationship with their gods. Consequently the attitude of their devotees to the gods was one of love rather than fear or indifferent manipulation. The motive of much primitive religion seems to be to get rid of the gods, and by fair means or foul to prevent them from troubling mankind. For the Mystery religions the motive is quite the contrary: it is to get closer to them, recognising them as man's best friends.
The Christian sentiment of 'brotherly love' was also a feature of the Mysteries six centuries before there were any Christians. Initiates at Eleusis were called adelphoi, meaning 'brothers'. A philadelphian was someone who practised 'brotherly love'. The followers of Mithras were also called 'brothers'. Adherents of the Mysteries of Jupiter Dolichenus were fratres carissimi, or 'most loving brothers'.
However, Jesus taught his followers not only to love their fellow Christians, but also to love all their neighbours. In the Gospel of Matthew he instructs his followers: 'Treat others as you wish to be treated.' But this teaching was nothing new either. It is a perennial and ubiquitous precept found in nearly all religious traditions. Amongst the sayings of the Pagan philosopher Sextus, we find: 'Such as you wish your neighbour to be to you, such also be to your neighbour.'
But Jesus goes further than this. He teaches that we should even love our enemies. We should forgive those who wrong us and 'turn the other cheek'. These beautiful and profound teachings are usually seen as a revolution in spirituality, replacing the old Jewish Law of 'an eye for an eye'. They were indeed a radical departure from such Jewish sentiments, but they were perfectly familiar to initiates of the ancient Pagan Mysteries! In The Sayings of Sextus the Pythagorean we find the same teachings: 'Wish that you may be able to benefit your enemies.' Pythagoras himself had taught that even if abused, one should not defend oneself.
Epictetus similarly writes:
This is the philosopher's way; to be flogged like an ass and to love those who beat him, to be father and brother of all humanity.
But most famously in the ancient world, these teachings had been expressed by Socrates and recorded by his disciple Plato. Celsus writes:
"You Christians have a saying that goes something like this: 'Don't resist a man who insults you; even if he strikes you, offer him the other cheek as well.' This is nothing new, and it's been better said by others, especially by Plato."
In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates leads Crito, step by step, to exactly the same profound understanding that 500 years later appears in the gospels. We pick up the argument as Socrates is reaching his conclusion:
Socrates: 'Then we should never do wrong?'
Crito: 'Never.'
Socrates: 'And should we not even try to avenge a wrong if we are wronged ourselves, as most would do, on the premise that we should never do wrong?'
Crito: 'So it seems.'
Socrates: 'So, should we do harm, Crito, or not?'
Crito: 'I should say not, Socrates.'
Socrates: 'Well then, is it just or unjust to repay injury with injury?'
Crito: 'Unjust, I would think.'
Socrates: 'Because doing harm to men is no different from doing wrong?'
Crito: 'Exactly so.'
Socrates: 'So, we should never take revenge and never hurt anyone, even if we have been hurt.'
Socrates concludes: It is never right to do wrong and never right to take revenge; nor is it right to give evil, or in the case of one who has suffered some injury, to attempt to get even.
Celsus comments caustically:
"This was Plato's opinion, and as he says, it was not new to him but was pronounced by inspired men long before him. What I have said about it may serve, part for whole, as an example of the sort of ideas the Christians mutilate."
The great sages of the Mysteries even expanded their ethic of universal love to include animals. Although some Mystery religions practised animal sacrifice, Pythagoras was a vegetarian and Empedocles looked back to a golden age 'when no altar was wet with the unholy slaughter of bulls'. The enlightened Pagan sages, like the enlightened masters of any religious tradition, tried constantly to lead initiates away from out-of-date practices towards understanding the spiritual meaning of their rites. A modern classical scholar writes of the Mysteries of Orpheus as 'imposing — perhaps for the first time in the Western world — a lofty ethic of purity and non-injury'. He continues:
"The Orphics and Pythagoreans were truly the first Christians in the ethical sense, and a few Christians like St Francis have extended their compassion in Pythagorean fashion to the animal kingdom.
☆HUMILITY AND POVERTY☆
Jesus teaches his followers to emulate his own humility and poverty. He sends out his disciples, saying,
"Go and announce that the kingdom of heaven is approaching. Cure the sick, raise the dead, wash lepers, throw out demons. Accept free gifts, and give for free. Don't have gold, silver or brass in your belts. Don't take a knapsack on the road, or a second tunic or shoes, or a cane."
In doing so, his followers became indistinguishable from the Pagan Cynic philosophers, who travelled from place to place giving spiritual teachings. A modern scholar writes:
"Among the familiar sights during the first century of the Roman Empire were the Cynics wearing rough cloaks, carrying begging bags and thorn-sticks. They used to wander from town to town preaching to the people, and hammering in their platitudes. When the apostles went preaching the gospel, they travelled about in a similarly unencumbered manner."
Both Cynics and early Christians wore the same rough garments and both called their religion 'the Way'. Describing a Cynic, Epictetus writes in words that could equally describe Jesus and his disciples:
"He is a herald from God to men, declaring to them the truth about good and evil things; that they have erred, and are seeking the reality of good and evil where it is not; and where it is they do not consider. He must then be able, if so it chance, to go up impassioned, as on the tragic stage, and speak that word of Socrates, 'O men, whither are ye borne away? What do ye? Miserable as ye are! Like blind men ye wander up and down. Ye have left the true road, and are going by a false; ye are seeking peace and happiness where they are not, and if another shall show where they are, ye believe him not.'"
Celsus sees Christian humility as an enforced copy of the voluntary humility of the Pagan sages. He rants indignantly:
"Not surprisingly, they emphasise the virtue of humility, which in their case is to make a virtue of necessity! Here again prostituting the noble ideas of Plato. Not only do they misunderstand the words of the philosophers; they even stoop to assigning words of the philosophers to their Jesus. For example, we are told that Jesus judged the rich with the saying 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' Yet we know that Plato expressed this very idea in a purer form when he said, 'It is impossible for an exceptionally good man to be exceptionally rich.' Is one utterance more inspired than the other?"
Celsus is right to be critical of Christian claims that Jesus' teachings are original and distinctive. Jesus teaches, 'Lay up your treasure in heaven where no thief can get near it, no moth destroy it.' Sextus likewise exhorts, 'Possess those things that no one can take away from you.'
Jesus is the king of the world because he is wise, not because he is powerful. A popular Stoic maxim was 'The only true king is the wise man'.
Jesus teaches, 'Keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you asleep. Epictetus writes, 'Go not far from the ship at any time, lest the master should call and thou not be ready.'
Jesus teaches, 'I assure you, anyone who doesn't receive the Kingdom of. God like a little child, will never get into it.' Heraclitus writes, 'The Kingdom belongs to the child.'
Jesus teaches, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good, only God.' Four centuries previously Plato had defined God as 'the Good', a quality which, by definition, only God could fully manifest. In similar fashion to Jesus, Pythagoras had refused to be called wise, explaining that no one is wise except God; Pythagoras preferred to call himself a 'lover of wisdom' or 'philosopher' — a term he was the first person to use.
☆HEAVEN AND HELL☆
When the Mysteries were first introduced to Greece from Egypt, the notion of an afterlife was a new and heretical doctrine to the Greeks. Likewise, the concept of heaven and hell is not found in the Old Testament, yet is a central idea in the gospels. Where did these notions come from? Just as in ancient Greece, these new ideas were introduced by the Mysteries.
Christianity offers its adherents the consolation of a heavenly afterlife, whilst threatening the wicked and non-believers with the torments of hell. Sophocles writes:
"How thrice blessed are they of mortals who, having beheld these Mysteries, depart to the house of Death. For to such alone is life bestowed there: to others fall all ills."
On the death of his beloved little daughter Timoxena, Plutarch wrote a beautiful letter of consolation to his wife in which he urged her to remember 'the mystic symbols of the rites of Dionysus' which will prevent her from thinking that 'the soul experiences nothing after death and ceases to be'. Plutarch is confident that through 'the experience which we share together of the revelations of Dionysus', he and his wife 'know that the soul is indestructible' and in the afterlife is like a bird set free from its cage.
An inscription claims that initiates of the Mysteries, like the Christian faithful, are 'reborn in eternity'. A hierophant's funeral inscription tells us that he now knows 'death is not an evil but something good'. Glaucus writes: 'Beautiful-indeed is the Mystery given us by the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil but a blessing.' A priest of the Mysteries of Orpheus named Philip preached so enthusiastically about the bliss that awaited the initiated in heaven, that one wit asked him why he did not hurry up and die to enjoy it himself!
St Augustine complains that the Mysteries 'promise eternal life to anybody!' Yet the Mysteries only promised eternal salvation to the initiated, just as Christianity only promises eternal life to Christians. A hymn warns:
"Blessed is he who has seen this among earthly men; but he who is uninitiated in the sacred rites and who has no portion, never has the same lot once dead down in the murky dark."
The Mysteries of Orpheus were renowned in the ancient world for their vivid descriptions of the torments awaiting evil-doers in the afterlife. As one modern authority tells us, 'Orphics created the Christian idea of purgatory.' Indeed, the scholar Franz Cumont has shown that the vivid descriptions of the happiness of the blessed and sufferings of sinners found in Orphic books were taken over by the Jewish Books of Esdras, which were written in the first century CE and included amongst the apocryphal scriptures in some versions of the New Testament; these Pagan conceptions of the afterlife were then developed by St Ambrose and so became the standard imagery of Catholicism
No wonder, then, that when early Christians came across passages in Plato concerning the punishment of souls in Tartarus, the Greek hell, they found it difficult to explain how Pagans could have anticipated their own doctrine of hellfire. In Phaedo, for example, Plato describes a 'huge lake blazing with much fire ... and boiling with water and mud'. In the non-canonical Christian scripture The Apocalypse of Peter we find the same fate awaiting sinners in the Underworld, who will be trapped in 'a huge lake filled with blazing mud'.
Celsus is clear that Christian conceptions of heaven and hell borrow heavily from the Mysteries. He writes:
"Now the Christians pray that after their toil and strife here below they shall enter the kingdom of heaven, and they agree with the ancient systems that there are seven heavens and that the way of the soul is through the planets. That their system is based on very old teachings may be seen from similar beliefs in the old Persian Mysteries associated with the cult of Mithras."
The Mysteries of Mithras did indeed, like Christianity, teach of the terrors that awaited the damned in the bowels of the Earth and of the pleasures for the blessed in a celestial paradise. The belief in seven heavens has not come down to us in modern Christianity, but was prevalent amongst early Christians and is referred to by St Paul, who describes himself being 'caught up as far as the third heaven'.
Christian enthusiasm for the sufferings of the damned in hell reminds Celsus of the more superstitious initiates of the Mysteries of Bacchus:
"Christians babble about God day and night in their impious and sullied way; they arouse the awe of the illiterate with their false descriptions of the punishments awaiting those who have sinned. Thus they behave like guardians of the Bacchic Mysteries."
The more enlightened sages of the Mysteries viewed such horrors as merely stories to encourage better moral behaviour. Plutarch calls the terrors of the Underworld an 'improving myth'. The Christian philosopher Origen likewise argued that the literal terrors of hell were false, but they ought to be publicized in order to scare simpler believers.
Both the Pagan sages and Origen believed in reincarnation. Heaven and hell were seen as temporary states of reward and punishment followed by another human incarnation. Life and death were viewed as parts of a recurring 'circular' process, not once-only events leading to eternal reward or damnation. Hell was a purgatorial experience leading to further human experience, through which every soul could make its return journey to God.
Origen, however, was posthumously condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as a heretic for his compassionate belief that all souls would eventually be redeemed. The Roman Church required all Christians to believe that some souls would suffer in hell forever, while the faithful would enjoy eternal salvation. This is the one doctrine on the afterlife which Celsus regards as distinctively Christian. He writes:
"Now it will be wondered how men so desperate in their beliefs can persuade others to join their ranks. The Christians use sundry methods of persuasion, and invent a number of terrifying incentives. Above all, they have concocted an absolutely offensive doctrine of everlasting punishment and rewards, exceeding anything the philosophers (who have never denied the punishment of the unrighteous or the reward of the blessed) could have imagined."
The Roman Church also taught that at the Last Judgement there would be an apocalypse of fire at the end of time in which all non-Christians would be consumed and the faithful physically resurrected. Celsus is appalled, writing,
'It is equally silly of these Christians to suppose that when their god applies the fire (like a common cook!) all the rest of mankind will be thoroughly roasted, and that they alone will escape unscorched — not just those alive at the time, mind you, but they say those long since dead will rise up from the earth possessing the same bodies as they did before. I ask you: Is this not the hope of worms? For what sort of human soul is it that has any use for a rotted corpse of a body? The very fact that some Jews and even some Christians reject this teaching about rising corpses shows just how repulsive it is; it is nothing less than nauseating and impossible. I mean, what sort of body is it that could return to its original nature or become the same as it was before it rotted away? And of course they have no reply for this one, and as in most cases where there is no reply they take cover by saying 'Nothing is impossible with God.'
Yet even this rather bizarre Christian doctrine of apocalypse and physical resurrection is prefigured by the Mysteries of Mithras. This particular Mystery tradition taught that at the end of the present age God would send destruction upon the world. Then, like the 'Second Coming' of Jesus, Mithras would descend to Earth again and raise the dead from their tombs. According to the Gospel of Matthew, during the last days the Son of Man will separate the good from the bad, like shepherd separating sheep from goats, saving the one and condemning the other. Likewise the followers of Mithras expected that in the last days humanity would form one grand assembly and the good be separated from the bad. Finally, acquiescing to the prayers of the 'beautiful ones', they believe God would cause a devouring fire to fall from the heaven which would annihilate all the wicked. Just as the Christian apocalypse signals the final defeat of the Devil by Christ, so in Mithraism the Spirit of Darkness and his impure demons will perish in the great conflagration and the rejuvenated universe enjoy happiness without end for all eternity.
☆THE NEW AGE☆
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus predicts the coming apocalypse and birth of a New Age, saying,
"For nation will make war upon nation, kingdom upon kingdom; there will be famines and earthquakes in many places. With all these things the birth-pangs of the New Age begin."
Based on their understanding of astronomy, Pagans also expected a New Age. The ancients believed that approximately every 2,000 years we enter a new astrological 'Great Month'. They themselves were living in the Great Month of Aries, which began in about 2,000 BCE. The Age of Aries, was symbolized by the ram, hence Dionysus was often depicted with ram's horns. The New Age of Pisces began around 145 BCE and is currently changing into another New Age, the Great Month of Aquarius.
Pisces is symbolized by the fish and Christians obviously viewed their faith as a new religion for this New Age. The most common symbol used to represent Christianity was the symbol of the fish - the Pythagorean vesica piscis, which we have discussed previously. The apostles were known as 'fishers of men'. Early Christians called themselves 'little fishes'. The Greek word ICTHYS, which means 'fish', was used by early Christians as a code word for 'Jesus'. This was regarded as an acronym for 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'. The great mouthpiece of Christian orthodoxy, Tertullian, writes:
"But we, the Christians, are little fishes after the type of our great Fish (ICTHYS) Jesus Christ, born in the water."
However, Icthys had for centuries been the Greek name for Adonis the godman in the Syrian Mysteries!
As the Age of Pisces began, its opposite sign in the zodiac, Virgo the Virgin, was on the western horizon. Pagan mythology, therefore, expected the saviour of the Piscean Age to be born of a virgin. In the first century BCE the Roman poet and initiate Virgil, reputedly repeating a prophecy of a Pagan oracular priestess known as the Sibyl, predicted such a miraculous birth:
"We have reached the last era in Sibylline song. Time has conceived and the great Sequence of the Ages starts afresh. Justice, the Virgin, comes back to dwell with us. The first-born of the New Age is already on his way from high heaven down to earth. With him the iron race shall end and golden man inherit all the world. Smile on the baby's birth. This glorious Age will dawn. The ox will not be frightened of the lion. Your very cradle will adorn itself with blossoms to caress you. Enter, for the hour is close at hand. See how the whole creation rejoices in the age that is to be! Begin, then, little boy, to greet your mother with a smile."
This prophecy, so reminiscent of the story of the birth of Jesus and the Christian promise that the lamb and lion will lie down together, was interpreted by Christians as anticipating the coming of Jesus. Actually, Virgil was referring to the widely held Pagan belief that the coming age of Pisces would herald a new beginning for humankind, and the divine child was Osiris-Dionysus.
The ancients believed that the beginning of a New Age was marked by the destruction of the old. The Great Month of Taurus is symbolized by a bull. Scholars now understand that altar-pieces representing Mithras slaying a bull are actually star maps depicting the ending of the Age of Taurus. The following Great Month of Aries is symbolized by a ram. Is it a coincidence that the end of this Great Age is similarly marked by representations of the slaying of Jesus, the 'Lamb of God'?
The Persian Mysteries of Mithras taught that the Great Months were each bounded by an apocalypse — at one end by a flood and at the other by fire. The Greeks also held that there had been a dreadful but purifying flood, related in the myth of Deucalion. In the same way, early Christians looked back to a purging by water, the flood of Noah, and looked forward to a purging by fire, the coming apocalypse. No wonder, then, that Celsus sees in this Christian vision more plagiarism of ancient Pagan teachings:
"They postulate, for example, that their Messiah will return as a conqueror on the clouds, and that he will rain fire upon the earth in his battle with the princes of the air, and that the whole world, with the exception of believing Christians, will be consumed in fire. An interesting idea — and hardly an original one. The idea came from the Greeks and others — namely, that after cycles of years and because of the fortuitous conjunctions of certain stars there are conflagrations and floods, and that after the last flood, in the time of Deucalion, the cycle demands a conflagration in accordance with the alternating succession of the universe. This is responsible for the silly opinion of some Christians that God will come down and rain fire upon the earth.
☆ONE GOD☆
Paganism is traditionally classified as a 'polytheistic' religion, because Pagans believed in many gods. Christianity, by contrast, is classed as a 'monotheistic' religion 'because Christians believe in only one God. In their relentless campaign to rubbish Paganism, Christians have portrayed its so-called 'polytheism' as primitive idolatry. But this is a complete distortion of the sublime philosophical understanding of God held by the sages of the ancient Mysteries.
Five hundred years before Christ, Xenophanes had already written: 'There is one God, always still and at rest, who moves all things with the thoughts of his mind.' The legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus is credited with teaching: 'Do you think there are many Gods? That's absurd — God is one.' Writing at around the time that Christians were just beginning to preach their supposedly anti-Pagan doctrine of one God, the Pagan sage Maximus of Tyre declared: 'The one doctrine upon which all the world is united is that one God is king of all and father.'
Even Justin Martyr could not deny that Pythagoras had preached the doctrine of one God. He quotes Pythagoras' own words:
"God is one; and he himself does not, as some suppose, exist outside the world, but in it, he being wholly present in the entire circle, and beholding all generations, being the regulating ingredient of all the ages, and the administrator of his own powers and works, the first principle of all things, the light of heaven, and father of all, the intelligence and animating soul of the universe, the movement of all orbits."
This idea was not even new in the time of Pythagoras, but had existed for thousands of years amongst the ancient Egyptians, who talked of an ineffable one God who could not be represented in stone. In the Egyptian Mysteries, Osiris represents this supreme Being and was proclaimed 'Heir of the world and the One God'. Egyptian inscriptions reveal just how similar the Pagan and Christian conceptions of God in fact are:
God is One alone, and none other existeth with Him. God is the One who hath made all things. God is from the beginning, and He hath been from the beginning. He existed when nothing else existed, and what existeth He created after He had come into being. He is the father of beginnings.
The Egyptian god Amun was called 'the One of One'. The great Egyptologist Wallis Budge remarks:
"It is also said that he is 'without a second' and thus there is no doubt whatever that when the Egyptians declared their God to be One, and without a second, they meant precisely what the Hebrews and Arabs meant when they declared their God to be One. Such a God was an entirely different Being from the personification of the powers of nature and the existences which, for want of a better name, have been called 'gods'."
Like every religion, Paganism had its superstitious and primitive side, and there certainly were many Pagan cults of different gods. But, as Budge explains, these so-called 'gods' represented aspects of nature. The ancient Egyptian word which we translate as 'god' is neter. Neter refers to a spiritual essence or principle. The many neters of the Egyptians represented the many natures of the one all-embracing Being — the gods were different aspects or faces of the one supreme God.
In the ancient world, a particular god was often chosen to represent the one ineffable God, and the epithet pantheus, meaning 'all-god', was added to his name. Thus we find Latin inscriptions to Osiris-Dionysus, in his forms as Serapis and Liber, which address the godman as 'Serapis Pantheus' and 'Liber Pantheus'.
Pagans could all worship the same one God via any particular god or goddess that appealed to them without being in contradiction with their neighbours who chose a different divine face. Celsus writes:
"It matters not a bit what one calls the supreme God — or whether one uses Greek names or Indian names or the names used formerly by the Egyptians."
By denying the validity of all other faces of the divine except Jehovah, the god of the Jews, Christians stepped outside this common understanding.
Pagans found this inexplicably small-minded. Such exclusivity was alien to the Pagan spirit of religious tolerance, beautifully captured by Maximus of Tyre:
"Let all the nations know the divine, that it is one; and if the art of Phideas arouses the Greeks to the remembrance of God, the worship of animals the Egyptians and a river others, and fire others again, I do not find fault with their differences. Let them only know, let them only love, let them remember."
This open-minded tolerance did not stop initiates of the Mysteries trying to free their fellow Pagans from pointless superstition, however. When Christians criticized the Pagans for worshipping idols they were actually echoing the sages of the Mysteries, who had been gently mocking more primitive Pagan practices for centuries. Celsus complain; indignantly of the Christians:
"There is nothing new or impressive about their ethical teaching; indeed when one compares it to other philosophies, their simple-mindedness becomes apparent. Take their aversion to what they term idolatry. As Herodotus shows, the Persians long before our time held the view that things that were made with human hands cannot be regarded as gods. Indeed it is preposterous that the work of a craftsman (often the worst sort of person!) should be considered a god. The wise Heraclitus says that 'those who worship images as gods are as foolish as men who talk to walls'."
Diagoras was renowned for mocking the gods, as was Diogenes of Pontus, who, when asked why he was begging from a statue, answered sardonically, 'To get practice in being refused.'
Xenophanes had attacked the immoral behaviour of the gods as portrayed by Homer and Hesiod, commenting sarcastically,
"Human beings think of the gods as having been born, wearing clothes, speaking, and having bodies like their own. Ethiopians say the gods are black with snub noses. Thracians say they have blue eyes and red hair. If cows and horses had hands they would draw pictures of the gods looking like cows and horses.
The satirist Lucian has his fictional character Momus complain to Zeus about all the bizarre representations of the gods with animal heads. In reply Zeus acknowledges, 'These things are unseemly,' but explains that 'Most of them are a matter of symbolism and someone who is not an initiate into the Mysteries really should not laugh at them.' Celsus likewise explains that the Pagan representation of the gods are understood by the initiated as having symbolic meaning and should not be taken literally, since they are 'symbols of invisible ideas and not objects of worship in themselves'.
Ironically, many Pagan philosophers thought it was the Christian conception of God which was primitive. Whilst it was all right to personify aspects of God as the 'gods', they regarded it as impossible to portray the ineffable nature of the supreme God in human terms as the Christians did. Celsus, finding such anthropomorphism ridiculous, writes:
"The Christians say that God has hands, a mouth, and a voice; they are always proclaiming that 'God said this' or 'God spoke'. 'The heavens declare the work of his hands,' they say. I can only comment that such a God is no God at all, for God has neither hands, mouth nor voice, nor any characteristics of which we know. Their absurd doctrines even contain reference to God walking about in the garden he created for man; and they speak of him being angry, jealous, moved to repentance, sorry, sleepy — in short as being in every respect more a man than a God. Further, for all their exclusiveness about the highest God, do not the Jews also worship angels?"
Not only did the Jews and Christians worship angels, which Pagans saw as directly equivalent to their many gods and goddesses, they even talked about 'the gods' in exactly the same way that Pagans did! The Church father Clement of Alexandria writes of spiritual illumination 'teaching us beforehand the future life that we shall lead according to God and with the gods'. The illuminated, he explains, are called gods because they are 'destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Saviour'.
The Pagan initiate Cicero writes, 'Know then, that thou art a god.' In the same way, in the Gospel of John we read that Jesus answers the Pharisees' accusation of blasphemy for having claimed to be the Son of God:
"Is it not written in your own law 'I said: You are gods?' These are called gods to whom the word of God was delivered — and Scripture cannot be set aside. Then why do you charge me with blasphemy because I, consecrated and sent into the world by the Father, said, 'I am God's Son?'"
The early Christian philosopher Origen used phrases such as 'two Gods' in discussing the creed. Justin Martyr speaks of 'a second God'. And then, of course, there is the decidedly 'polytheistic' Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The idea that God can manifest in 'three persons' is identical with the Pagan concept of the many natures or faces of the one supreme ineffable God.
The notion of a divine trinity is not found in Judaism, but it is prefigured by Paganism. Aristotle writes of the Pythagorean doctrine that 'the whole and everything in it is comprehended by the number three, for end, middle and beginning have the number of the whole, that is the trinity'. Hundreds of years earlier, an ancient Egyptian text has God proclaim: 'Being One I became Three.' Another reads:
"Three are all the gods, Amon, Ra, Ptah; there are none like them. Hidden in his name as Amon, he is Ra, his body is Ptah. He is manifested in Amon, with Ra and Ptah, the three united."
On close examination the line between so-called 'monotheism' and 'polytheism' is not as hard and fast as some would have us believe. In fact it is so fluid as to be of no real consequence at all.
To be continued... Tim Freke and Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries - Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?)