Attis

Robert Tulip · Wed Apr 06, 2011 5:57 am

The famous DM Murdock has just written the following on the ancient god Attis. Murdock has been immensely frustrated by the opposition of bigots. This is a superb piece that well illustrates how the myth of Jesus Christ was based on older mythology.

http://truthbeknown.com/attis.html

Attis: Born of a Virgin on December 25th, Crucified and Resurrected after Three Days

by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S

In many mythicist writings, the ancient Phrygo-Roman god Attis is depicted as having been born of a virgin mother on December 25th, being killed and resurrecting afterwards. Here we shall examine the evidence for these contentions, which parallel the gospel story and Christian tradition concerning Jesus Christ.

Providing a summary of the mythos and ritual of Attis, along with comparisons to Christian tradition, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester Dr. Andrew T. Fear states:


	Quote: The youthful Attis after his murder was miraculously brought to life again three days after his demise. The celebration of this cycle of death and renewal was one of the major festivals of the metroac cult. Attis therefore represented a promise of reborn life and as such it is not surprising that we find representations of the so-called mourning Attis as a common tomb motif in the ancient world. The parallel, albeit at a superficial level, between this myth and the account of the resurrection of Christ is clear. Moreover Attis as a shepherd occupies a favourite Christian image of Christ as the good shepherd. Further parallels also seem to have existed: the pine tree of Attis, for example, was seen as a parallel to the cross of Christ. Beyond Attis himself, Cybele too offered a challenge to Christian divine nomenclature. Cybele was regarded as a virgin goddess and as such could be seen as a rival to the Virgin Mary... Cybele as the mother of the Gods, mater Deum, here again presented a starkly pagan parallel to the Christian Mother of God. There was rivalry too in ritual. The climax of the celebration of Attis' resurrection, the Hilaria, fell on the 25th of March, the date that the early church had settled on as the day of Christ's death.... (Lane, 39-40)

As we can see, according to this scholar, Attis is killed, fixed to a tree, and resurrects after three days, while his mother is "regarded as a virgin goddess" comparable to the Virgin Mary.

These conclusions come from the writings of ancient Pagans, as well as the early Church fathers, including Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Tatian, Tertullian, Augustine, Arnobius and Firmicus Maternus.

Born of the Virgin Nana

The Phrygian god Attis's mother was variously called Cybele and Nana. Like the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Christian figure Mary, Nana/Cybele is a perpetual virgin, despite her status as a mother. The scholarly term used to describe virgin birth is "parthenogenesis," while many goddesses are referred to as "Parthenos," the Greek word meaning "virgin." This term is applicable to the Phrygian goddess Cybele/Nana as well.

"Attis is the son of Cybele in her form as the virgin, Nana."

The diverse names of Attis's mother and her manner of impregnation are explained by Dr. David Adams Leeming , professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut:


	Quote: Attis is the son of Cybele in her form as the virgin, Nana, who is impregnated by the divine force in the form of a pomegranate.

Regarding Nana, in Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity (111), Dr. Marguerite Rigoglioso states:


	Quote: ...Another instance of spontaneous conception occurred when Nana, whose very name was one by which the Great Goddess was known, became pregnant simply by eating the tree's fruit...

December 25th

The "December 25th" or winter-solstice birth of the sun god is a common theme in several cultures around the world over the past millennia, including the Egyptian, among others. As it is for the Perso-Roman god Mithra, the Egyptian god Horus and the Christian godman Jesus, this date has likewise been claimed for Attis's nativity as well. For example, Barbara G. Walker (77) writes:

Attis's passion was celebrated on the 25th of March, exactly nine months before the solstitial festival of his birth, the 25th of December. The time of his death was also the time of his conception, or re-conception.

"Each year, Attis was born at the winter solstice."

In this same regard, Shirley Toulson (34) remarks:


	Quote: In the secret rites of this Great Mother the young god Attis figured as her acolyte and consort.... Each year he was born at the winter solstice, and each year as the days shortened, he died.

The reasoning behind this contention of the vegetative and solar god Attis's birth at the winter solstice is sound enough, in that it echoes natural cycles, with the god's death at the vernal equinox also representing the time when he is conceived again, to be born nine months later.

Moreover, at times the young Attis was merged with Mithra, whose birthday was traditionally held on December 25th and with whom he shared the same Phrygian capped attire.

Marble bust of Attis wearing Phrygian cap
2nd cent. ad/ce
(Paris)

Mithra in a Phrygian cap
2nd cent. ad/ce
Rome, Italy
(British Museum, London)

Crucified

The myths of Attis's death include him being killed by a boar or by castrating himself under a tree, as well as being hung on a tree or "crucified." Indeed, he has been called the "castrated and crucified Attis." (Harari, 31) It should be noted that the use of the term "crucified" as concerns gods like Horus and Attis does not connote that he or they were thrown to the ground and nailed to a cross, as we commonly think of crucifixion, based on the Christian tale. In reality, there have been plenty of ancient figures who appeared in cruciform, some of whose myths specifically have them punished or killed through crucifixion, such as Prometheus.

"The god has been called the 'castrated and crucified Attis.'"

Moreover, Attis is said to have been "crucified" to a pine tree, while Christ too was related as being both crucified and hung on a tree (Acts 5:30 ; 10:39). As stated by La Trobe University professor Dr. David John Tacey (110):


	Quote: Especially significant for us is the fact that the Phrygian Attis was crucified upon the tree...

In antiquity, these two concepts were obviously similar enough to be interchangeable in understanding.

Tomb/Three Days/Resurrected

We have already seen Dr. Fear's commentary that Attis was dead for three days and was resurrected, worth reiterating here:


	Quote: "The youthful Attis after his murder was miraculously brought to life again three days after his demise."

The death and resurrection in three days, the "Passion of Attis," is also related by Professor Merlin Stone (146):


	Quote: Roman reports of the rituals of Cybele record that the son...was first tied to a tree and then buried. Three days later a light was said to appear in the burial tomb, whereupon Attis rose from the dead, bringing salvation with him in his rebirth.

Concerning the discovery of a throne at Herculaneum, Italy, buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD/CE, archaeologist Dr. Mark Merrony remarks:


	Quote: ...Unusually, the throne is carved with scenes depicting the mystery cult of Attis, which spread to Rome from Turkey via Greece during the reign of Claudius (AD 41-54). Essentially, historical texts indicate that this cult was concerned with the life, death, and resurrection of the goddess, and involved several key stages enacted in March: the procession of the reed-bearers and flute-blowers; the entrance of the sacred pine tree; the burial of the effigy of Attis strapped to a stake; mourning, sacrifice, and bloodletting; and the resurrection of Attis. The best-preserved scene on the throne shows the deity collecting a pine cone next to a sacred pine tree.

There is a debate as to when the various elements were added to the Attis myth and ritual. Contrary to the current fad of dismissing all correspondences between Christianity and Paganism, the fact that Attis was at some point a "dying and rising god" is concluded by Dr. Tryggve Mettinger, a professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Lund and author of The Riddle of the Resurrection, who relates:


	Quote: "Since the time of Damascius (6th cent. ad/ce), Attis seems to have been believed to die and return." (Mettinger, 159) By that point, we possess clear discussion in writing of Attis having been resurrected, but when exactly were these rites first celebrated and where? Attis worship is centuries older than Jesus worship and was popular in some parts of the Roman Empire before and well into the "Christian era."

In the case of Attis, we possess a significant account of his death and mourning in the writings of the Greek historian of the first century BCE, Diodorus Siculus (3.58.7), including the evidently annual ritual creation of his image by priests, indicative of his resurrection. Hence, these noteworthy aspects of the Attis myth are clearly pre-Christian. The reason these motifs are common in many places is because they revolve around nature worship, solar mythology and astrotheology.

Bibliography

stahrwe · Wed Apr 06, 2011 2:45 pm

A thread like this one places me in a quandry. Should I ignore it, as most of the BT paricipants will and let it sink into the mire, or challenge its assertions. The former course has the benefit of minimal notice while the latter course calls undeserved attention to the post. I suppose that neither course of action is 'the better one' but, believing that 'truth and honesty' deserve respect I will challenge the post, albeit with little or no original input of my own. Instead, I will join the battle with references to the material within the essay. But before doing so, let me caution the reader than 'the Famous D. M. Murdock' while having a devoted following cannot be relied on to honestly represent material. She adds, subtracts, alters, embellishes and redacts to support her position and Freak and Gandy must be suspect too. I urge you not to take my word for it, check the sources.


	Quote: A. T. Fear, in an essay devoted entirely to this subject [Fear.CC, 41-2] notes that the Attis cult "did modify itself in significant ways with the passing of the years" and concludes, based on the dated evidence, that the ways of the Attis cult similar to Christianity "seem to have been provoked by a need to respond to the challenge of Christianity." In this case, the church was Pokemon, and the Attis people were doing the Digimon ripoff. But not very well ... Now Was That Honest? It's worth noting that copycat theorists Freke and Gandy refer to Fear's essay in a footnote in The Jesus Mysteries -- but for some reason, do not report Fear's conclusions about how the religion of Attis derived so much from Christianity. http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/attis.html

If the reader will be so kind as to take two minutes and follow the following link you can read what A.T. Fear says and concludes about Mithraism and Attis. Pay attention to pages 41-2. It is diametrically opposed to RT's post and Murdock, et al's fairy tale.

books.google.com/books?id=T1nmUY70OzEC& ... mp;f=false

Robert Tulip · Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:58 am

I have read this attempted rebuttal that Stahrwe kindly posted, and did not find any strong arguments in it. The Tektoniks piece by Holding is a typical piece of duplicitous Christian apologetics, starting from the premise that the Gospels are literal history, and distorting or ignoring all the evidence to fit within the false framework of dogma.

Attis was worshipped as a fertility God in Greece and Phrygia (now Turkey) as long ago as the second millennium before Christ. (See wikipedia for details) The key to note is that fertility cults were directly based on the annual cycle of birth and death, a natural order that structured religion since prehistoric times. Easter is the spring equinox, celebrating the moment when days become longer than nights, the end of winter. Christmas is the winter solstice, celebrating the moment when days first begin to lengthen. It is utterly implausible to suggest that the widespread celebration of these pivotal moments of the year was borrowed by the ancient cults from Christianity! The far more obvious and correct argument is that Christianity superimposed its rituals on already existing and strongly established patterns of worship.

The cult of Christ borrowed from older religions such as those of Attis and Mithras in order to align to the natural cosmic cycles that are at the basis of worship, to be more acceptable to existing cultures, and to more readily displace them.

Below are some informative extracts on the cult of Attis - http://www.bartleby.com/196/81.html Note the abundant parallels with Christianity, and the implausibility of the argument that these were somehow invented at a late date to copy the new Christian faith. The argument that Attis motifs were invented later rests on a pure secret agenda of bolstering false Christian dogma and discrediting scholarly research into its real origins.


	Quote: Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough. 1922. XXXIV. The Myth and Ritual of Attis ANOTHER of those gods whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep roots into the faith and ritual of Western Asia is Attis. He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the ancients themselves sometimes identified them. Attis was said to have been a fair young shepherd or herdsman beloved by Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, a great Asiatic goddess of fertility, who had her chief home in Phrygia. Some held that Attis was her son. His birth, like that of many other heroes, is said to have been miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a virgin, who conceived by putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom. Indeed in the Phrygian cosmogony an almond figured as the father of all things, perhaps because its delicate lilac blossom is one of the first heralds of the spring, appearing on the bare boughs before the leaves have opened. ... Emperor Claudius when he incorporated the Phrygian worship of the sacred tree, and with it probably the orgiastic rites of Attis, in the established religion of Rome. The great spring festival of Cybele and Attis is best known to us in the form in which it was celebrated at Rome; but as we are informed that the Roman ceremonies were also Phrygian, we may assume that they differed hardly, if at all, from their Asiatic original. The order of the festival seems to have been as follows. On the twenty-second day of March, a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted to a guild of Tree-bearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse with woollen bands and decked with wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as roses and anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy of a young man, doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem. On the second day of the festival, the twenty-third of March, the chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets. The third day, the twenty-fourth of March, was known as the Day of Blood: the Archigallus or highpriest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice. Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood. The ghastly rite probably formed part of the mourning for Attis and may have been intended to strengthen him for the resurrection... broken instruments of fertility were afterwards reverently wrapt up and buried in the earth or in subterranean chambers sacred to Cybele, where, like the offering of blood, they may have been deemed instrumental in recalling Attis to life and hastening the general resurrection of nature, which was then bursting into leaf and blossom in the vernal sunshine.... The greatest festival of the year at Hierapolis fell at the beginning of spring, when multitudes thronged to the sanctuary from Syria and the regions round about.... The parallel of these Syrian devotees confirms the view that in the similar worship of Cybele the sacrifice of virility took place on the Day of Blood at the vernal rites of the goddess, when the violets, supposed to spring from the red drops of her wounded lover, were in bloom among the pines. ... the Day of Blood witnessed the mourning for Attis over an effigy of him which was afterwards buried. The image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had hung upon the tree. Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted from bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the death of Attis, but really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they wept for Tammuz. To partake of bread or flour at such a season might have been deemed a wanton profanation of the bruised and broken body of the god. Or the fast may possibly have been a preparation for a sacramental meal. But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he 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. On the morrow, the twenty-fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal equinox, the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival. It was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria). A universal licence prevailed.... The next day, the twenty-sixth of March, was given to repose, which must have been much needed after the varied excitements and fatigues of the preceding days. Finally, the Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh of March with a procession to the brook Almo. The silver image of the goddess, with its face of jagged black stone, sat in a waggon drawn by oxen. Preceded by the nobles walking barefoot, it moved slowly, to the loud music of pipes and tambourines, out by the Porta Capena, and so down to the banks of the Almo, which flows into the Tiber just below the walls of Rome. There the high-priest, robed in purple, washed the waggon, the image, and the other sacred objects in the water of the stream. On returning from their bath, the wain and the oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers. ... Such, then, appears to have been the annual solemnisation of the death and resurrection of Attis in spring. But besides these public rites, his worship is known to have comprised certain secret or mystic ceremonies, which probably aimed at bringing the worshipper, and especially the novice, into closer communication with his god. Our information as to the nature of these mysteries and the date of their celebration is unfortunately very scanty, but they seem to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood. In the sacrament the novice became a partaker of the mysteries by eating out of a drum and drinking out of a cymbal, two instruments of music which figured prominently in the thrilling orchestra of Attis. The fast which accompanied the mourning for the dead god may perhaps have been designed to prepare the body of the communicant for the reception of the blessed sacrament by purging it of all that could defile by contact the sacred elements. In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout eagerness by the worshipper on every part of his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull. For some time afterwards the fiction of a new birth was kept up by dieting him on milk like a new-born babe. The regeneration of the worshipper took place at the same time as the regeneration of his god, namely at the vernal equinox. At Rome the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull’s blood appear to have been carried out above all at the sanctuary of the Phrygian goddess on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St. Peter’s now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From the Vatican as a centre this barbarous system of superstition seems to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that of the Vatican. From the same source we learn that the testicles as well as the blood of the bull played an important part in the ceremonies. Probably they were regarded as a powerful charm to promote fertility and hasten the new birth.

stahrwe · Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:31 am

Robert, the problem you run into is that your sources distort reference material knowing that most people won't bother to check or don't care as their conculsions conform with theirs. In the case of your initiating post you cited a festchrift on Cybele and Attis. It seemed a safe bet as the book sells for over $100 online but it turns out that the book is available on Google and the cited pages are included in the posting. They totally contradict your claims that Christianity borrowed from Attis. In fact, the pages state tht opposite.

So, in addition to the cited pages, since you choose to continue the ruse, I add the below. It elaborates a bit on the Cybele and Christ discussion expanding on the demolition of Murdock's 'stuff'


	Quote: Borrowings from Christianity in late paganism July 26th, 2010 by Roger Pearse Quite by accident I encountered a paper by Andrew Fear in a Festschrift, entitled “Cybele and Christ.”[1] In this article, he makes the interesting suggestion that late paganism started to adopt various features from Christianity. His examples are the cult of Cybele, but probably the trend would be equally visible elsewhere. There is the well known statement in the Historia Augusta [2] that Alexander Severus had a shrine in which he had statues of Moses, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus, alongside his ancestors. This text is now known to be fourth century. Indeed such an attitude towards Jesus is difficult to imagine in the second century, and not that easy in the early third century. Jesus was a disreputable figure in that period, as the accusations of Celsus in Origen’s Contra Celsum, or of Caecilian — possibly copied from Fronto — in Minucius Felix’ Octavian make clear. In the early fourth century, the idea of the sage was present to all. In Eusebius’ Contra Hieroclem, we find discussion of the cult of Apollonius of Tyana, whom Hierocles had remanufactured as a pagan Jesus as part of the Great Persecution in the reign of Diocletian in the late third century. Eusebius attacks this; but he makes the interesting statement that he would otherwise treat Apollonius as a sage, someone of wisdom and knowledge, advocating virtue, and in a way laying the groundwork for the Christian gospel. In all this we see the germ of the later Byzantine habit of treating pagan philosophers rather like Jewish prophets, both predicting the coming of Christ; although the collections of sayings of the philosophers that were used to prove this all seem to be bogus! But what of Cybele? Was the cult redesigned in the mid fourth century, to adopt certain elements of Christianity? It’s an intriguing idea. Fear refers to the “resurrection” of Attis, recorded by Firmicus Maternus ca. 350 AD, and dismissed by him as a new fabrication in response to official pressure on a discreditable cult. Julian the Apostate refers to Cybele as a virgin goddess [3]. That description makes nonsense of the key cult myth. This may be summarised as follows. In this, Attis is the boyfriend of Cybele. One day he goes off and shags a nymph, and his missus finds out. She drives him mad, he chops his willy off while under the influence and dies. Then she calms down and decides this wasn’t a good idea. She asks Father Zeus to resurrect Attis. Zeus, no mean shagger himself, disapproves of this adultery=castration myth, and declines. The most he will do is preserve the dead body. And there the myth ends. The myth makes no sense if Cybele is a virgin goddess, and still less when the fertility aspects of the cult are considered. But the Christian cult of the Virgin Mary explains all — someone felt it necessary to attribute this idea to Cybele. Julian himself tries to get the pagan priesthoods to do the social work that the Christians do, to try to compete. His Hymn to the Mother of the Gods is still extant. But the most interesting element of this is the 5th century work, the Life of Proclus by his successor Marinus, online here. Fear suggests that Proclus composed a “bible” for the cult, although the actual statement is more prosaic: 33. But if I was to enumerate all the facts of this kind, and to report the particular devotion which he held for Pan, son of Hermes, the great favors he received, and the numerous times he was, in Athens, saved by intervention of the divinity, and to relate in detail the protections and the advantages he received from the Mother of the Gods, of which he was particularly proud and happy, I would no doubt seem chattering vainly, to those who may light on this book by chance, and some may even think I am saying things little worthy of belief. For there were a considerable number of episodes, that were of almost daily occurrence, when this goddess [Cybele] spoke or acted in his favor; and their number and character are so unusual that I myself do not have their exact and precise memory. If anyone desires to know with what favor he was attached to this goddess, let him read Proclus’s book on the Mother of the Gods, and it will be seen that with inspiration from on high he has been able to expound the whole theology relative to the goddess, and to explain philosophically all that the liturgical actions and the oral instructions mythically teach us about the goddess, and Attis, so that they will no longer be troubled by those seemingly absurd lamentations [for Attis] and all the secret traditions related in her ceremonies. Certainly, however, we see the philosopher composing a tract describing a “theology”, and explaining away all the discreditable stuff about Attis and his self-castration by allegory. It is unlikely that any such effort would be felt necessary before the fourth century. I think we could use a proper list of borrowings, from primary sources. The material given by Andrew Fear is a good start, but it is partial. Paganism was syncretic. If there was useful material to be borrowed, there was no reason not to do so. But specific evidence would be most interesting to see. 1. A. T. Fear, “Cybele and Christ” in Eugene N. Lane (ed.), Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M. J. Vermaseren. Religions in the Greco-Roman World, 131. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996. Pp. vi + 441. $138. ISBN 90-04-10196-9. Mostly online here. 2. “Alexander Severus”, 29. 3. “Against the Galileans”, 262D. Tags: Ancient world. 3 Responses to “Borrowings from Christianity in late paganism” ________________________________________ stephan huller Great piece Roger. I have the Loeb for all of Julian’s letters and fragments of his Against the Galileans. There are clear references to Julian wanting pagans to imitate Christian virtues and most especially their habit of taking care of their poor. Comment on Jul 28th, 2010 at 9:06 am Roger Pearse I’d like all of Julian’s work to be online. I did do the fragments of Against the Galileans. But the Loeb’s are in print, and I hate the idea of impacting their sales. So… I left most of it. By the way, be a bit wary about the “Against the Galileans”. All that material comes from Cyril of Alexandria, “Contra Julianum”. But when I was translating book 2 of that, I had occasion to compare the text of “Julian” in that with the translation of W.C.Wright, in the Loeb. Wright seems to have treated the text extremely loosely, and I’m not at all sure that he represents Julian correctly. Another point to bear in mind is that the arrangement of the material is not Julian’s, but Cyril’s. Julian apparently rambled like anything, and it was Cyril who arranged it in logical order and chopped out the repetition so that he could refute it. (All this from the start of book 2). We desperately need a translation of Contra Julianum. We haven’t even got a critical edition! Comment on Jul 28th, 2010 at 9:11 am http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=4669

I don't hold much hope that RT, or other participants will admit the obvious, but I do challenge open minded readers to check the primary sources cited here. Additionally, check the primary sources* cited in Murdock's works and be suspicious of everything else.

*by going back to the original material. Not always easy but necessary.

Robert Tulip · Sat Apr 09, 2011 5:00 pm


	stahrwe wrote: Robert, the problem you run into is that your sources distort reference material knowing that most people won't bother to check or don't care as their conculsions conform with theirs. In the case of your initiating post you cited a festchrift on Cybele and Attis. It seemed a safe bet as the book sells for over $100 online but it turns out that the book is available on Google and the cited pages are included in the posting. They totally contradict your claims that Christianity borrowed from Attis. In fact, the pages state tht opposite.

Do you mean Fear's paper, the one cited in the OP as follows?


	Quote: The youthful Attis after his murder was miraculously brought to life again three days after his demise. The celebration of this cycle of death and renewal was one of the major festivals of the metroac cult. Attis therefore represented a promise of reborn life and as such it is not surprising that we find representations of the so-called mourning Attis as a common tomb motif in the ancient world. The parallel, albeit at a superficial level, between this myth and the account of the resurrection of Christ is clear. Moreover Attis as a shepherd occupies a favourite Christian image of Christ as the good shepherd. Further parallels also seem to have existed: the pine tree of Attis, for example, was seen as a parallel to the cross of Christ. Beyond Attis himself, Cybele too offered a challenge to Christian divine nomenclature. Cybele was regarded as a virgin goddess and as such could be seen as a rival to the Virgin Mary... Cybele as the mother of the Gods, mater Deum, here again presented a starkly pagan parallel to the Christian Mother of God. There was rivalry too in ritual. The climax of the celebration of Attis' resurrection, the Hilaria, fell on the 25th of March, the date that the early church had settled on as the day of Christ's death...

So Stahrwe, you say that Fear makes these comments and then goes on to "totally contradict" any claim of Christian borrowing from Attis? I don't think so.

stahrwe · Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:30 pm


	Robert Tulip wrote: So Stahrwe, you say that Fear makes these comments and then goes on to "totally contradict" any claim of Christian borrowing from Attis? I don't think so.

Robert, Did you bother to read the google book pages?
The passage you cite does reference similarities between Cybele and Christianity but it does not address the which came first question. Cybele was around but Fear's essay pages 40-42 clearly state that the similarities in Cybele/Attis cult to Christianity resulted from the cult borrowing from Christianity and no the other way round. Murdock trades in that currency. Read the material or better yet, spring for the book.

Robert Tulip · Sat Apr 09, 2011 7:28 pm


	stahrwe wrote: Did you bother to read the google book pages?

Yes, I did. What we see is that the Christian lie of "the devil got there first" was used to denigrate the Attis cult by Saint Augustine. Augustine would say that, wouldn't he? Fear wrongly calls Augustine an early Christian, when he actually lived several centuries after Christ. We see that by the late empire the modus operandi of denigration of pagan sources of Christian ritual had become entirely entrenched. This is irrelevant to whether the actual authors of the Gospels used pagan material such as the fertility cult of Attis as a model for the myth of Christ.

In the pages you cite, Fear says "Vermaseren believes that much of what was perceived was merely in the eye of the Christian beholder". Fear acknowledges Augustine may have been sincere, but as we see with fundamentalism today, sincerity is no guide to accuracy. Fear says the scholarly work by A Loisy, Pagan and Christian Mysteries, asserts that the primitive church borrowed from pagan mysteries.

Stahrwe, the material you point us to says the exact opposite of what you claim it does. Yes, the Cybele cult mutated over time as pagan doctrine was systematised to confront Christianity, but this is irrelevant to how Attis and similar cults such as Adonis, Mithras and Horus provided models for Christian beliefs around Easter and Christmas.

stahrwe · Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:09 pm


	Robert Tulip wrote: Stahrwe, the material you point us to says the exact opposite of what you claim it does. Yes, the Cybele cult mutated over time as pagan doctrine was systematised to confront Christianity, but this is irrelevant to how Attis and similar cults such as Adonis, Mithras and Horus provided models for Christian beliefs around Easter and Christmas.


	Quote: page 44 We can see therefore how the changes in the metroac cult might not have been merely mutations which took place unconsciously over time to ensure the cult's survival in the religious marketplace of antique polytheism, but could rather have been a deliverate attempt to produce a rival to Christianity. This rival, born as a reaction to the Christian agenda, used the symbolism and ethos of the Christian church while claiming them firmly for paganism. Cybele as the standard bearer of the new paganism therefore was set on an inevitable collision course with Christ. This would explain the volent reaction of Christian writers to Cybele. Not only would her cult be seen as a direct challenge to the faith, but its rituals would be regarded as a deliberate blasphemous parody of Christian religious practice aimed at tempting the faithful away from the truth. Cybele and Attis became a target for Christian polemic not because they presented easy pickings, but because they had been posted at the fore-front of the battle. pages 44-5 http://books.google.com/books?id=T1nmUY ... &q&f=false

Robert Tulip · Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:40 pm

And that passage is completely compatible with what I said. The Cybelic use of Christian symbols does not in Fear's account agree that these symbols originated with Christianity. Fear also points out that the venerable age of the Cybele cult, in Rome since the Punic Wars, gave it a powerful basis. The Easter cult of death and resurrection of a fertility god had been part of the Attis-Cybele material from the start. What happened later was some theological systematisation and greater prominence of some rituals such as the 'washed in the blood of the lamb'. These are incidental to the main story, that Attis as a dying and rising God was celebrated at Easter in an annual ritual that long pre-dated Christianity.

stahrwe · Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:22 am


	Robert Tulip wrote: And that passage is completely compatible with what I said. The Cybelic use of Christian symbols does not in Fear's account agree that these symbols originated with Christianity. Fear also points out that the venerable age of the Cybele cult, in Rome since the Punic Wars, gave it a powerful basis. The Easter cult of death and resurrection of a fertility god had been part of the Attis-Cybele material from the start. What happened later was some theological systematisation and greater prominence of some rituals such as the 'washed in the blood of the lamb'. These are incidental to the main story, that Attis as a dying and rising God was celebrated at Easter in an annual ritual that long pre-dated Christianity.

I regretfully must conclude that you are incapable of suppressing your instinct to deny the obvious. When Fear says that Christians considered Cybele to be a parody of Christianity the 'chicken/egg' sequence is obvious.

THere are only 365 days in a year and any celebration will likely share a date with another. As for Easter, it was directly related to Passover not Cybele and for December 25th, that date is an abitrary one not establshed by the Bible.

Robert Tulip · Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:29 am


	stahrwe wrote: Fear says that Christians considered Cybele to be a parody of Christianity the 'chicken/egg' sequence is obvious.

Stahrwe, your comment is ridiculous. Cybele was a major cult in Rome from about 200 BC, hundreds of years before Christ. It was only the late revisions of the Cybele cult that were slandered by Augustine and co, as part of their propaganda effort to justify their literal historical faith as a church power grab. These late revisions to the Cybele cult did not, repeat not, include the introduction of a dying and rising Attis at Easter as a supposed copy of Jesus Christ. The dying and rising of Attis at Easter clearly predates the Christian copy, as should be expected from the fact that Attis is a fertility God and Easter is the natural time of the year when fertility is celebrated as the death of the old year and the birth of the new year.

Your illogical mode of argument continues on display. Murdock says Attis was a dying and rising God at Easter, and cites Fear in support of this observation. You take the entirely separate point made by Fear that late Christian apologists criticised the Attis cult, and expect readers to believe this somehow refutes Murdock's argument.

It is a genuinely interesting question, does Fear's article support the interpretation made by DM Murdock or that of JP Holding? Answering this question in a scholarly way will help to assess the overall intellectual status of the thesis that Jesus Christ is a myth.

Chris OConnor · Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:08 am

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!!
Robert, you win the big fuzzy teddy bear! You made the 20,000th post in this forum.

Vishnu · Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:04 pm

Tried to stay out of this one, but can't resist any longer.

Our earliest indication of syncretism between Christianity and the Attis cult occurs sometime around the late 1st to early 2nd century CE. And in this instance, the party guilty of instigating this syncretism was... Christianity. Specifically the Naasene sect. As Hippolytus records, and some scholars affirm, in around the early 2nd century the Naasene Christians had taken 1ST CENTURY Prygian hymns to Attis and used them as hymns about Jesus Christ. Basically just exchanging the names.
So as far as the chicken-egg thing goes, in the earliest instance of borrowing between these two religions we have on record, it is Christians who were doing the borrowing from Attis. The extant content of these hymns do not reveal any significant attributes that usually come up in comparative mythology discussions like this. It's not as though these hymns explicitly indicate that Attis was born of a virgin or died & resurrected etc. But the point is, and the fact still remains, that Christians borrowed first, they set the prescedent here. So they incriminated themselves here and so in subsequent instances of observed parallels between these two religions, if borrowing is implied as the cause for a parallel, it is Christianity who should first be suspect of doing the borrowing, not vice versa, given their track record here. They started it. Although, I can already hear the knee jerk response that will rehash the "no true scotsman" allegation against the Naasenes. But we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

Now, getting back to the hymns, scholar Maria Grazia Lancellotti (Ph.d. in Religious History) wrote "Two short hymns dedicated to Attis go back to the 1st century of our era on which the Gnostic sect of the Naasenes (2nd cent. CE) used their own exegetical sieve. In these compositions, especially the first, Attis is given a series of epithets that correspond to an equivalent number of divine beings."- Attis, Between Myth and History: King, Priest, and God p.117

Also, Helmut Koester wrote "According to Hippolytus's report about the Naasenes, their syncretistic attitude permitted them to borrow materials from Hellenistic religions. Thus one finds a pagan speech of religious propaganda (known as the "Naasene Sermon") based on a hymn to Attis, which surprisingly also contains some Jewish elements, but was only superficially Christianized." Introduction to the New Testament: History and Literature of Early Christianity p. 237.

Now as I said, these 1st century hymns do not EXPLICITLY contain any of the major features alleged by comparative mythology discussions, but these features are IMPLICIT, because of the major syncretism revealed by the contents of these hymns, as I will elaborate upon later.

Lancellotti continues, ibid., "The latter, who belong to various religious traditions although they are all connected in some way with Attis, are identified by the author(s) of the hymn with Attis himself."

The relevant content of these hymns are, "Hail, Attis, gloomy mutilation of Rhea. Assyrians style you thrice-longed-for Adonis, the whole of Egypt (call you) Osiris, ..."
"I will hymn Attis, son of Rhea, ... in as much as you are everything, as you are Dionysus, as you are shepherd of the brilliant stars."

This reveals that by the first century Attis had already become completely conflated with Osiris and Dionysus, who themselves were already completely identical with each other ever since the time of Herodotus(5th century B.C.). Not just similar to each other, no, they were considered IDENTICAL to each other.

"For no gods are worshipped by all Egyptians in common except Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysos; these are worshipped by all alike." - Herodotus, Histories 2.42, 5th century B.C.
"Osiris is he who is called Dionysos in the Greek tongue." - Histories 2.144

"Dionysos and Osiris are the same" - Mnaseas, 3rd century B.C.

"There is only the difference in names between the festivals of Bacchus[Dionysus] and those of Osiris, between the Mysteries of Isis and those of Demeter." - Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 1.13, 1st century B.C.
"Osiris, they say, was reared in Nysa, a city of Arabia Felix near Egypt, being a son of Zeus; and the name which he bears among the Greeks is derived both from his father and from the birthplace, since he is called Dionysus." - Library 1.15
"Osiris has been given the name Sarapis by some, Dionysus by others" - Library 1.25

"That Osiris is identical with Dionysos who could more fittingly know than yourself, Clea? For you are at the head of the Thyiades of Delphi, and have been consecrated by your father and mother in the holy rites of Osiris." - Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 35, 1st-2nd century CE
"It is proper to identify Osiris with Dionysos." - Isis and Osiris 28

And the syncretism of Attis with Osiris is further affirmed by this Roman lamp of the composite figure "Osiris-Attis",

which, although it is second century CE, it still bears witness to how they had become conflated and thus corroborating with the aforementioned Phrygian hymns. Those hymns are not just a lone witness. Same with the syncretism with Dionysus, which is attested to by Clement of Alexandria- "For this reason, not unnaturally, some wish to call Dionysus Attis".

So, it being the case that Attis had already become identical with Osiris and Dionysus by the at least the first century CE, if Attis borrowed his death & resurrection from anyone, he borrowed it from Osiris and/or Dionysus, and NOT from Jesus Christ.

And the fact that Osiris and Dionysus are recorded as having returned from the dead in PRE-christian times, is indisputable.

And I know of the many objections there are that try to ad hoc Osiris into not being a resurrecting god, which is a ridiculous notion, but I will address those another time.
But to contend against the pre-christian resurrection of Dionysus is based on nothing but outright ignorance. It cracked me up when I saw a clip from an interview between Gary Habermas and Tim Callahan, in which neither was aware of a pre-christian source for the resurrection of Dionysus and then Habermas went so far as to assert "I don't know of anybody who thinks that Dionysus was pre-christian, not the resurrection portion. ... And since we don't have any resurrection predating the 2nd century, all the way to the 4th century are the earliest ones, 2nd to 4th, we can say 'well, maybe there's a resurrection there' but there's no data".

Idiot.

There is data.

Diodorus of Sicily was a Greek historian who wrote sometime between 60 and 30 B.C. That's BEFORE Christ. As in PRE-chrsitian.
In his work known as Bibliotheca Historica or Library of History, in Book 3, 62.6, Loeb Classical Library edition, 1935, he describes many versions of the myth of how Dionysus returned from the dead. In particular he describes how Dionysus was killed and torn apart by the Titans(much like Osiris was) and the goddess Demeter resurrected him from the dead, good as new as if he had born for the first time.
That's a primary source, from the 1st century B.C., attesting to how Dionysus returned from the dead. Does that sound similar to the gospel narrative? No. The only commonality is the death and resurrection, but that's enough, as Jesus himself tried to draw a parallel between his own death & resurrection and the regurgitation of Jonah by the fish/whale/sea monster/whatever.
So if getting swallowed by a marine animal and then puked back up is a sufficient enough similiarity to Jesus's death and resurrection, how much MORE would an ACTUAL death and resurrection be seen as similar to Jesus's own death & resurrection? And BTW, when I say "actual" I mean in terms of literal vs. allegorical, and NOT in terms of historical vs fictional. I know that Dionysus is just mythology(as far as we can tell).

Anyway, there's a few other pre-christian evidences for Dionysus's return from the dead, but I'll reference those some other time.

Right now, here are just a few of the overwhelming number of texts attesting to the PRE-christian resurrection of Osiris.

That he literally, physically died(inspite of J.P. Holding & others dubiously asserting otherwise)- "O, Osiris the King, you have gone, but you will return, you have slept, [but you will awake], YOU HAVE DIED, but you will live." Utterance 670, lines 1975-77, of The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts(2323 B.C.-2152 B.C.) as translated by R.O. Faulkner. Also see Utterance 532 , line 1256; Utt. 543-544; Utt. 505, line 1090.

That he literally, physically rose from the dead(inspite of J.P. Holding & others dubiously asserting otherwise)-

^Osiris of Hermopolis of Lower Egypt rising from his bier at the command of Horus. Mariette, Dendérah, IV, 72.
"O Horus, this one here is your father Osiris, whom YOU have caused to be restored that he may live" Faulkner PT - Utterance 219 , lines 172 & 176;
"O King, you have not departed dead, you have departed alive" Utterance 213, line 134.
"Raise yourself, O King; receive your head, collect your bones, gather your limbs together, throw off the earth from your flesh" Utterance 373, lines 654-655
(BTW, very similar to Ezekiel 37, just too bad the Pyramid Texts came WAAAY earlier).
Also see Utterance 355, 364, 366, 373, 412, 462, 477, 482, 483, 497, 536, 547-48, 553, 556, 576, 578, 603, 619, 665, 666, 667, 676, 697, 700, 703, 723, etc.

That he DID infact return to the world of the living, and did NOT remain dead or stuck in the underworld(inspite of J.P. Holding & others dubiously asserting otherwise)-
"O King, you have not departed dead, you have departed alive; sit upon the throne of Osiris, your sceptre in your hand, that you may give orders TO THE LIVING" Utterance 213, line 134.
"If he lives among THE LIVING, then will Sokar live among the living; if he lives among the living, then will the King live among the living. O King, come, live your life here from season to season in these years when you are content and your desire is at ease." Utterance 535, 1290.

That he even ASCENDED TO HEAVEN ON A CLOUD, to sit on the throne of Ra(the sun), reigning in Ra's stead, traversing the sky with the sun- "The King has ascended on a cloud" Utterance 627, line 1774.
(Very similar to Acts 1:9, just too bad the Pyramid Texts came WAAAY earlier).
"I will ascend and rise up to the sky" Utterance 539.
"My seat is with you, O Ra, and I will not give it to anyone else; I will ascend to the sky to you" Utterance 302, line 461.(Very similar to all the the talk of Jesus ascending to sit at the right hand of the god, etc.).
Also see Utt. 267, lines 364-65; Utt. 303, line 464; Utt. 321; Utt. 337; etc.

And this ascension to heaven took place THREE DAYS after his resurrection- "O King, there comes this time of tomorrow and this time of three days; a stairway to the sky is set up for you among the Imperishable stars" Utterance 667, line 1941
"O my father Osiris the King.... Awake, stand up at yonder eastern side of the sky at this place where the gods are born, when there comes this time of tomorrow and this time of the third day. Lo, my father the King arises as the Lone Star" Utterance 556, lines 1382-1384.

Other interesting similarities-

"The King is one... who will never become corrupt, therefore the King will not become corrupt; who will never decay, therefore the king will not decay" Utterance 683, line 2058
"O flesh of the King, do not decay, do not rot, do not smell unpleasant." Utterance 412, line 722.
Reminds me of Psalm 16:10, also cited in Acts 2:27 "Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption."

"Ascend and descend with Ra, sink into darkness with Ndi. Ascend and descend with Ra, rise with the Great Float-user" Utterance 222, line 209. Reminds me of Ephesians 4:9-10 "(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things)".

"A ladder is set up for him that he may ascend on it in its name of 'Ascent to the sky'" Utterance 568, line 1431.
"they make a ladder for you that you may ascend on it to the sky" Utterance 571, line 1474.
Reminds me of Genesis 28:12 "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of god ascending and descending on it."

"I have come to you, O Ra, a calf of gold born of the sky, a fatted calf of gold which Hzrt created" Utterance 485A, lines 1029-30.
Well, I guess now we know who it was the children of Israel were worshipping after leaving EGYPT, while Moses was up on Sinai, since we see here that Osiris/the pharoah was the calf of gold. Also proving that the Jews, you know, the ones who gave birth to Christianity, were familiar with Egyptian mythology regarding Osiris.

"Recitation by Nut, the greatly beneficient: The King is my eldest son who split open my womb; he is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased". Utterance 1.
Not hard to see the similarity in that one, eh? Matthew 3:17 "And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."

There are countless other similarities, and thus potential sources of influence, in the Pyramid Texts, and even more throughout the plethora of Egyptian literature and iconography, etc. But this is getting off track, so I'll stop here for now.

Now, a few things to keep in mind here, first of all, remember that the Egyptian religion lasted for over 3000 years and so several variants branched off and so that is often the cause of confusion about the attributes of Egyptians gods, including Osiris.
Yes, there were variants that developed in which Osiris remained in the underworld and such, but the Pyramid Texts are the earliest extant religious texts from Egypt and so reflect the earliest traditions regarding the death & resurrection of Osiris, as James P. Allen affirms in the intro to his translation of the Pyramid Texts- "These inscriptions constitute the oldest body of Egyptian religious writings; usually literary in form and language, they are also the oldest representatives of Egyptian literature. In both respects, the Pyramid Texts are primary sources for the history of ancient Egyptian thought and its relationship to that of the biblical world."

Second of all, the other thing to keep in mind is that the Pyramid Texts, as well as most funerary texts involving the Osirian rituals, are magical rituals and spells for the purpose of making the deceased become one with Osiris in order to obtain Osiris's resurrection power. Hence the deceased is playing the role of Osiris, while his son plays the role of Horus, and his widow plays the role of Isis in these texts. So sometimes you will read a passage about Osiris, and it will simply say Osiris, other times it will use Osiris and the deceased's names, such as with Pharoah Pepi, some of the passages say "Osiris Pepi, this is your son Horus" etc., and other times, only the name of the deceased is used without the name of Osiris, yet it is still obviously describing the narrative of Osiris, such as when it says things like that Pepi is the firstborn son of Nut or was killed by Set, etc.
The point of that is, don't let that confuse you when you read Osirian funerary texts such as the Pyramid Texts as translated by James P. Allen, although Faulkner's translation just refers to every deceased as "the king", making it more consistent.

Now, bringing this to a close, the fact that Attis was already conflated with Osiris and Dionysus by the 1st century CE, and thus by extension, inherited their resurrection motif, Attis had already "borrowed" a death & resurrection and several other archetype elements before he ever crossed paths with Jesus Christ.

This is not to say that it wasn't the case later on that Attis might have indeed borrowed things from Christianity, but what I am saying is that Attis already had many of these parallels before Christianity got the ball rolling, and that it has been shown that it was Christians who did the borrowing first, thus making THEM the primary suspects in any other instance where borrowing might be implied.

Attis's chicken came before Jesus's egg. And in turn, Dionysus & Osiris's chicken came before Attis's egg.

stahrwe · Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:54 am


	Vishnu wrote: Tried to stay out of this one, but can't resist any longer.

Vishnu, nice try but while you did not provide the source information for your extended post I believe that it is based on Murdock's inventive compositions and is available on TBK's forum. I appreciate your devotion to her but the legitimacy of her scholarship is as suspect as her claim to the designation; acharya.

On the other hand, here is what some legitimate scholars have to say on the subject. Note, this is just a small sample, I can provide many more if necessary.


	Quote: Jonathan Z. Smith in his book Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (1990) concludes: "...it is now held that the majority of the gods so denoted appear to have died but not returned; there is death but no rebirth or resurrection. What evidence was relied on by previous scholarship for the putative resurrection can be shown, it is claimed, to be based on a misinterpretation of the documents, or on late texts from the Christian era (frequently by Christians) which reveal an interpretatio Christiana of another religion's myths and rituals, or a borrowing of the Christian motif, at a late stage, by the religions themselves...." (J. Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine, page 101) Smith then briefly covers Mithras, Marduk, Tammuz, Kore, Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Cybele (page 101-102). He goes on: "While these negative conclusions have not been without challenge by scholars of Late Antiquity [see especially the more recent The Riddle of Resurrection by T.N.D. Mettinger (2001) ]....[they] represent a genuine reversal in scholarly thought. That which was posited as most 'primitive' -- a myth and ritual pattern of 'dying and rising' deities ultimately based on human sacrifice or ritual murder in relation to the fertility of vegetation -- has turned out to be an exceedingly late third or fourth century [AD] development in the myths and rituals of these deities....[scholars] ignoring their own reiterated insistence, when the myth and ritual complex appeared archaic, that analogies do not yield genealogies, they now eagerly assert what they hitherto denied, that the similarities demonstrate that the Mediterranean cults borrowed from the Christian." (J. Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine, page 103-104, emphasis added) Bruce Metzger, the great New Testament scholar and textual critic, is cited by Ronald Nash on this "reversal" : "It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction....Unlike the deities of the Mysteries, who were nebulous figures of an imaginary past, the Divine Being whom the Christian worshiped as Lord was known as a real Person on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New Testament were written." (Metzger in Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, page 187, 186, emphasis added) http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/Jesu ... aviors.htm


	Quote: Christianity Wasn't Influenced by Pagan Religions! Summary Many Christian college students have encountered criticisms of Christianity based on claims that early Christianity and the New Testament borrowed important beliefs and practices from a number of pagan mystery religions. Since these claims undermine such central Christian doctrines as Christ's death and resurrection, the charges are serious. But the evidence for such claims, when it even exists, often lies in sources dating several centuries after the New Testament. Moreover, the alleged parallels often result from liberal scholars uncritically describing pagan beliefs and practices in Christian language and then marveling at the striking parallels they think they've discovered. During the first half of the twentieth century, a number of liberal authors and professors claimed that the New Testament teaching about Jesus' death and resurrection, the New Birth, and the Christian practices of baptism and the Lord's Supper were derived from the pagan mystery religions. Of major concern in all this is the charge that the New Testament doctrine of salvation parallels themes commonly found in the mystery religions: a savior-god dies violently for those he will eventually deliver, after which that god is restored to life. Was the New Testament influenced by the pagan religions of the first century A.D.? Even though I surveyed this matter in a 1992 book,[1] the issues are so important -- especially for Christian college students who often do not know where to look for answers -- that there is considerable merit in addressing this question in a popular, nontechnical format. The Cult of Cybele and Attis Cybele, also known as the Great Mother, was worshiped through much of the Hellenistic world. She undoubtedly began as a goddess of nature. Her early worship included orgiastic ceremonies in which her frenzied male worshipers were led to castrate themselves, following which they became "Galli" or eunuch-priests of the goddess. Cybele eventually came to be viewed as the Mother of all gods and the mistress of all life. Most of our information about the cult describes its practices during its later Roman period. But the details are slim and almost all the source material is relatively late, certainly datable long after the close of the New Testament canon. According to myth, Cybele loved a shepherd named Attis. Because Attis was unfaithful, she drove him insane. Overcome by madness, Attis castrated himself and died. This drove Cybele into great mourning, and it introduced death into the natural world. But then Cybele restored Attis to life, an event that also brought the world of nature back to life. The presuppositions of the interpreter tend to determine the language used to describe what followed Attis's death. Many writers refer carelessly to the "resurrection of Attis." But surely this is an exaggeration. There is no mention of anything resembling a resurrection in the myth, which suggests that Cybele could only preserve Attis's dead body. Beyond this, there is mention of the body's hair continuing to grow, along with some movement of his little finger. In some versions of the myth, Attis's return to life took the form of his being changed into an evergreen tree. Since the basic idea underlying the myth was the annual vegetation cycle, any resemblance to the bodily resurrection of Christ is greatly exaggerated. Eventually a public rehearsal of the Attis myth became an annual event in which worshipers shared in Attis's "immortality." Each spring the followers of Cybele would mourn for the dead Attis in acts of fasting and flagellation. It was only during the later Roman celebrations (after A.D. 300) of the spring festival that anything remotely connected with a "resurrection" appears. The pine tree symbolizing Attis was cut down and then carried corpse-like into the sanctuary. Later in the prolonged festival, the tree was buried while the initiates worked themselves into a frenzy that included gashing themselves with knives. The next night, the "grave" of the tree was opened and the "resurrection of Attis" was celebrated. But the language of these late sources is highly ambiguous. In truth, no clear-cut, unambiguous reference to the supposed "resurrection" of Attis appears, even in the very late literature from the fourth century after Christ. http://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-pag ... ianity.htm

In the article the author includes the following:"Raise yourself, O King; receive your head, collect your bones, gather your limbs together, throw off the earth from your flesh" Utterance 373;" from Pyramid Texts. Once again, there is no exact citation provided for 'your' utterances; what I found read as follows:


	Quote: • The hidden ones worship you, The great ones surround you, The watchers wait on you, Barley is threshed for you, Emmer is reaped for you, Your monthly feasts are made with it, Your half-month feasts are made with it, As ordered done for you by Geb, your father, Rise up, O Teti, you shall not die! o Utterance 373 • Stand at the gates that bar the common people! The gatekeeper comes out to you, He grasps your hand, Takes you into heaven, to your father Geb. He rejoices at your coming, Gives you his hands, Kisses you, caresses you, Sets before you the spirits, the imperishable stars. o Utterance 373, as translated by Miriam Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol. 1 ([1975] 2006) pp. 41-42. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts

Neither reads as the translation you provided.

You probably should have stayed at TBK.

Interbane · Mon Apr 11, 2011 10:39 am


	Quote: I appreciate your devotion to her but the legitimacy of her scholarship is as suspect as her claim to the designation; acharya.

Anyone you don't agree with is a terrible scholar and therefore anything they write is false. Maybe you're not taking it quite that far, but you're definitely closer to that end of the spectrum than the unbiased middle. I can tell you honestly that is all people see when they read your replies. It's transparent, to never engage in the details but instead always attack the person.

Rather than realizing that the most unbiased objective position is to understand Murdock has a lot of truthful research even though she may have fabricated some(I'm not saying she did). You conveniently ignore everything with even the slightest trace to her. How is that honest? Disregarding everything she says on principle is dishonest, it's a defensive tactic to hold on to your beliefs. As much as you may dislike it, the only unbiased way to proceed is to consider everything from Murdock critically with no preemptive dismissals.

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