Paganism

[Faith1960]

I did, Faith. See post #15, that you quoted. I don’t mind writing long (or long-winded) responses in response to a sincere question, but you are actually reading the responses, I hope.

You can also Google some of the writings of the early Church fathers on this subject, such as the sermon of Bishop Gregory Nazianzen, On the Theophany, or St. Athansius’s On the Heathen. There’s a good book collecting the writings of the ECFs that you would probably enjoy, and it’s available on the store website of this website - *The Fathers Know Best *by Jimmy Akins.

St. Justin Martyr wrote for the ECF majority in his First Apology:

(emphases are mine)

If you don’t accept that as evidence that the early Christian Church utterly rejected any affinity between Christ and Dionysus, Grace, I’m not sure what will convince you.

Interestingly, St. Justin’s writings are used by some to try to argue that he admitted to similarities in some pagan beliefs to Christianity. That’s a complete misunderstanding of his point. His point, like that of David Zampino and C.S. Lewis, was that pagan philosophy contained some dim apprehension of the truth that is found fully only in Christian revelation. He wrote this in an attempt to persuade the pagan authorities to stop the persecution of the Christian Church, and used some pretty far-reaching and inaccurate parallels (but then, he was trying to use his persuasive powers to save innocent lives).

If they were ninnies, yes.

I know you are smarter than that, and understand that a legendary event (Dionysus did not really exist) is not the same as an historical event (Jesus did, as the vast majority of all reputable historians agree.) We have sufficient textual evidence from multiple sources for the historicity of Jesus. We have none for Dionysus. The Transubstantiation of the Eucharist is quite a different order of event than a mythical figure supposedly being torn apart and consumed by giant Titans, and then having his heart patched into another mythical god’s thigh…

I read what you quoted of .Justin the Martyr, First Apology, plus read more of it that I found online later. So, thanks for the help. People living then rejected the pagan gods and came to despise them.

1. So, are you positive they didn’t take any of the characteristics, miracles, activities, behaviors or qualities of any of the pagan gods and attribute them to Jesus or his ministry?
2. Are you positive their knowledge of pagan gods didn’t influence what they wrote, said, taught and believed about Jesus?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I read what you quoted of .Justin the Martyr, First Apology, plus read more of it that I found online later. So, thanks for the help. People living then rejected the pagan gods and came to despise them.

1. So, are you positive they didn’t take any of the characteristics, miracles, activities, behaviors or qualities of any of the pagan gods and attribute them to Jesus or his ministry?
2. Are you positive their knowledge of pagan gods didn’t influence what they wrote, said, taught and believed about Jesus?

1. Yes.
2. Yes.

 

[Faith1960]

1. Yes.
2. Yes.

I asked you another question but it never appeared. I just read about Alexander The Great. Wasn’t he supposedly conceived by a virgin? And, if so did his conception or anytjing else influence the NT authors when writing and teaching about Jesus’s conception, birth or life or did ATG conception, birth and life have zero influence on Jesus and what’s known, written and taught about Him?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I asked you another question but it never appeared. I just read about Alexander The Great. Wasn’t he supposedly conceived by a virgin? And, if so did his conception or anytjing else influence the NT authors when writing and teaching about Jesus’s conception, birth or life or did ATG conception, birth and life have zero influence on Jesus and what’s known, written and taught about Him?

No. Most if not all of the non-Christian Virgin Birth claims for mythological (or in this case, historical) figures are nothing of the kind, unless you mean the mother was said to have been a virgin before she had physical sexual intercourse with a god (after which, she was no longer a virgin, right?)

If you can find an original textual source that says Alexander was a virgin birth, let me take a look. We know his biological father was Phillip, as Plutarch wrote in his Life of Alexander:

“It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father’s side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother’s side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias…Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept, which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip’s passion for her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was ever after less fond of her conversation.”

"Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honor, above all other gods, to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he presumed to peep through the chink of the door, when he saw the god, under the form of a serpent, in the company of his wife. Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to his divine extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, “When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno?”

So, like most pagan myths, his mother was said to have sexual intercourse with a god in the shape of an animal, after she had already consummated her marriage to Phillip, it is implied. Not a virgin birth.

 

[Faith1960]

1. Yes.
2. Yes.

No. Most if not all of the non-Christian Virgin Birth claims for mythological (or in this case, historical) figures are nothing of the kind, unless you mean the mother was said to have been a virgin before she had physical sexual intercourse with a god (after which, she was no longer a virgin, right?)

If you can find an original textual source that says Alexander was a virgin birth, let me take a look. We know his biological father was Phillip, as Plutarch wrote in his Life of Alexander:

“It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father’s side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother’s side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias…Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept, which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip’s passion for her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was ever after less fond of her conversation.”

"Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honor, above all other gods, to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he presumed to peep through the chink of the door, when he saw the god, under the form of a serpent, in the company of his wife. Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to his divine extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, “When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno?”

So, like most pagan myths, his mother was said to have sexual intercourse with a god in the shape of an animal, after she had already consummated her marriage to Phillip, it is implied. Not a virgin birth.

Ok. I just posted another post and it didn’t show up, either. I’m trying to get used to my new Kindle.
So, ATGs birth/conception was not a Virgin birth.

Is there anything at all about ATG that may have influenced what has been written and taught about Jesus?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Ok. I just posted another post and it didn’t show up, either. I’m trying to get used to my new Kindle.
So, ATGs birth/conception was not a Virgin birth.

Is there anything at all about ATG that may have influenced what has been written and taught about Jesus?

I’m not aware of anything.

May I ask where you are getting all these claims?

 

[Faith1960]

I’m not aware of anything.

May I ask where you are getting all these claims?

Internet.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Internet.

Nothing good comes from the Internet.

 

[Faith1960]

Nothing good comes from the Internet.

CAF is on the internet. But seriously, my SD has advised my staying off CAF due to problems I’ve had from topics posted here. I’ve tried talking a few too many times with my pastor about questions I’ve come up with from CAF and he sometimes doesn’t know the answers.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

CAF is on the internet. But seriously, my SD has advised my staying off CAF due to problems I’ve had from topics posted here. I’ve tried talking a few too many times with my pastor about questions I’ve come up with from CAF and he sometimes doesn’t know the answers.

I was kidding about the Internet. Well, a little bit.

Well, here’s the thing. I suspect you are in a similar position as I was. I returned to the Faith, a little gingerly at first, after long decades of agnosticism. That was less due to some kind of philosophical investigation than other issues, and the gift of Grace. Once I had made that commitment, however, I realized one of my many problems was that I had been badly catechized, and I had spent years as an agnostic listening and repeating all the things I thought were true about Catholicism, which were mostly a mix of screwy atheist agneda-based folklore, poorly understood history, and a bad understanding of theology on my part. I didn’t reason my way back to faith - I’m not sure if that’s even possible. But once I had made my first tentative approach back to God, through the gift of His Grace, I immediately began wondering about all the things I had heard before, and worried that I was fooling myself in my new movement back to faith. Why would God allow people to suffer? Were the Gospels written centuries after the fact, and how accurate could they be? Were there additions to the Gospels with each version that was passed down? What about papal infallibility? Did the Church model Jesus on pagan myths? What about Galileo? And the Inquisition? And the Crusades? And the selling of indulgences? Did Jesus even really exist? Could He have been just a wise teacher? Why do priests have to be celibate? Has science, and Darwin, and neuroscience, and psychology made Christianity irrelevant? What about other faiths, and could they be right? And birth control? And so on, and so on.

I spent a lot of years researching these and other issues, and eventually realized that the arguments I had heard over the years, and that now proliferate on the Internet, were not valid arguments (to put it charitably). Examining this evidence was a process I probably had to go through, just as you may, but at some point, you realize that the faith that led you this far is a good guide, and that the evidence within your heart that has led you back to Christ is the best evidence.

It now seems to me to be a properly basic belief that there is a God, and that He created everything from nothing, and that this was something he could have done or not done, and as making the universe, life and the human soul was a good thing to do, we have evidence that God is good. Because He was good, and because humans have messed up what he taught us so badly, Jesus came to redeem us. The teachings of Jesus are so fundamentally right, and so radically different from what come before, that I have no trouble believing He was who He said He was. It seems reasonable that Jesus would not have wanted to leave us alone, so he created the Church as His Mystical Body to remain on earth and guide us.

As I said, I have other reasons from my life why I believe this, and this is based on the Grace extended to me. Faith, it seems to me, is a reasoned extension of belief, based on good evidence and one’s experiences. I have faith in God’s existence and Jesus as my Savior, as I do in the goodness of my wife and children. I could possibly be wrong on all of those, but I don’t think so.

The Church was waiting all those years for me, with the patience of millennia, as a repository of the truth, while I wandered in the wilderness. I can accept that if they were right for all that time about the things I now believe, the Church is probably right about the issues I had problems with.

There will always be doubts and objectives raised by people who have honest doubts or those who dishonestly want to make you doubt, but the core truth in what I have experienced, what I have learned, and what has been passed down is sufficient for me.

At some point, after one has confronted one’s doubts, it is probably appropriate to decide for oneself that, while positive proof can never exist for either faith or non-belief, it is more reasonable to believe in God than not to do so

I’d encourage you to research and learn more (but I would suggest looking at more books that approach arguments on belief from a pro-Catholic viewpoint - I’d be happy to recommend some titles for you if you think it will help) , but at some point, I found it became less important to continually look for new ways to challenge my new beliefs than to actually start trying to live life as a Catholic - I had to start looking for ways to serve the poor, try to be a better person in my relations to others, work on an active prayer life, receive the sacraments, find ways to help serve the Church, and generally just try to live a more Christ-centered life. It’s a continuing journey, and I often fall short.

Just some advice based on my own experiences, it may or may not apply to you.

 

[Faith1960]

I was kidding about the Internet. Well, a little bit.

Well, here’s the thing. I suspect you are in a similar position as I was. I returned to the Faith, a little gingerly at first, after long decades of agnosticism. That was less due to some kind of philosophical investigation than other issues, and the gift of Grace. Once I had made that commitment, however, I realized one of my many problems was that I had been badly catechized, and I had spent years as an agnostic listening and repeating all the things I thought were true about Catholicism, which were mostly a mix of screwy atheist agneda-based folklore, poorly understood history, and a bad understanding of theology on my part. I didn’t reason my way back to faith - I’m not sure if that’s even possible. But once I had made my first tentative approach back to God, through the gift of His Grace, I immediately began wondering about all the things I had heard before, and worried that I was fooling myself in my new movement back to faith. Why would God allow people to suffer? Were the Gospels written centuries after the fact, and how accurate could they be? Were there additions to the Gospels with each version that was passed down? What about papal infallibility? Did the Church model Jesus on pagan myths? What about Galileo? And the Inquisition? And the Crusades? And the selling of indulgences? Did Jesus even really exist? Could He have been just a wise teacher? Why do priests have to be celibate? Has science, and Darwin, and neuroscience, and psychology made Christianity irrelevant? What about other faiths, and could they be right? And birth control? And so on, and so on.

I spent a lot of years researching these and other issues, and eventually realized that the arguments I had heard over the years, and that now proliferate on the Internet, were not valid arguments (to put it charitably). Examining this evidence was a process I probably had to go through, just as you may, but at some point, you realize that the faith that led you this far is a good guide, and that the evidence within your heart that has led you back to Christ is the best evidence.

It now seems to me to be a properly basic belief that there is a God, and that He created everything from nothing, and that this was something he could have done or not done, and as making the universe, life and the human soul was a good thing to do, we have evidence that God is good. Because He was good, and because humans have messed up what he taught us so badly, Jesus came to redeem us. The teachings of Jesus are so fundamentally right, and so radically different from what come before, that I have no trouble believing He was who He said He was. It seems reasonable that Jesus would not have wanted to leave us alone, so he created the Church as His Mystical Body to remain on earth and guide us.

As I said, I have other reasons from my life why I believe this, and this is based on the Grace extended to me. Faith, it seems to me, is a reasoned extension of belief, based on good evidence and one’s experiences. I have faith in God’s existence and Jesus as my Savior, as I do in the goodness of my wife and children. I could possibly be wrong on all of those, but I don’t think so.

The Church was waiting all those years for me, with the patience of millennia, as a repository of the truth, while I wandered in the wilderness. I can accept that if they were right for all that time about the things I now believe, the Church is probably right about the issues I had problems with.

There will always be doubts and objectives raised by people who have honest doubts or those who dishonestly want to make you doubt, but the core truth in what I have experienced, what I have learned, and what has been passed down is sufficient for me.

At some point, after one has confronted one’s doubts, it is probably appropriate to decide for oneself that, while positive proof can never exist for either faith or non-belief, it is more reasonable to believe in God than not to do so

I’d encourage you to research and learn more (but I would suggest looking at more books that approach arguments on belief from a pro-Catholic viewpoint - I’d be happy to recommend some titles for you if you think it will help) , but at some point, I found it became less important to continually look for new ways to challenge my new beliefs than to actually start trying to live life as a Catholic - I had to start looking for ways to serve the poor, try to be a better person in my relations to others, work on an active prayer life, receive the sacraments, find ways to help serve the Church, and generally just try to live a more Christ-centered life. It’s a continuing journey, and I often fall short.

Just some advice based on my own experiences, it may or may not apply to you.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Faith1960]

What specific problems do you have with it, Faith1960? Dionysius was just one of many gods.
Jesus was the Son of God but also God, one of the three Persons of the Trinity, pre-existent and uncreated, sharing in the Divine Substance. Dionysius doesn’t match up well with that. His father was Zeus, who had sex with and impregnated Semele. Zeus sewed the infant Dionysus into his thigh to hide the illegitimate child from his jealous wife, Hera, so he was “twice born,” being born from the bodies of both a man and a woman. (Dionysus was frequently associated with sexual role reversal and homoeroticism, so his birth legend may be associated with those connections.) Other legends describe him as giving birth to himself, or as the child of incestuous sex between Zeus and his own daughter, Persephone, or Zeus and his own sister, Demeter. Unlike some claims by those who claim Jesus was a myth, there is no original textual evidence or traditions that he was associated with a December 25 birth or a March 27th death. Like most claims by the mythicists, someone made up those claims and they are uncritically cut and pasted on atheist sites, ad infinitum.

Almost all of the gods of ancient Greece and Rome were sons or daughters of other gods, and all were created beings. None were eternal, like God. None were virgin births, they were the offspring of sexual intercourse between two gods, or between a god and a human who is seduced, tricked by subterfuge, or raped by a god (and no longer a virgin). This bears no similarity to Jesus, who was conceived without sexual intercourse, by a young woman who was and remained a virgin, who was offered a choice to become the Mother of God, and who consented of her own free will.

Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) was the head of a fertility cult, which sought sexual and sensual abandon.

What miracles was Dionysius said to have performed? Every pagan god is said to have performed supernatural miracles. Jesus performed miracles as a Man, walking the earth, that were described as to person, place of occurrence, and approximate time in history, from the context of the Bible. Jesus’ miracles were acts of charity - healing the sick and lame, raising the dead to life. Dionysus’s miracles, by contrast, included driving the women of Thebes insane, after which they ran off into the woods, because he is peeved that the people of Thebes and their king refused to honor him. Dionysus is arrested, tricks the king into cross-dressing so he can spy on all the crazy women, and the king is then torn apart by the wild women, including his own deranged mother, who keeps his head as a trophy, thinking it is the head of an animal. He also drove women to devour their own children.

Okay, I missed that part of the New Testament.

Pliny the Elder, whose nephew provided some of the first extra-Biblical textual evidence for the Christian Church, wrote that a spring sacred to Dionysus produced wine, or at least water that was scented like wine. Pausanias wrote that the priests of Dionysus would put casks of water in a sealed vault, allow people to put their marks on the seals (sounds like a modern magic trick), and in the morning, then in the morning, abracadabra, the water would have been transformed into wine. Wow. There aren’t many more references to miracles.

In what sense was Dionysius “possibly” resurrected? In Jesus’ example, we have a specific place for the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, which was a one-time event, with numerous named witnesses who are known to be real historical figures. There were many mythological gods who died and were resurrected again and again, because they were symbols for the cycle of the harvest. There is one short reference in classical literature that describes Dionysus as participating in this kind of agricultural cycle. Thasos described Dionysus as a “god who renews himself and returns every year rejuvenated.” Diodorus Siculus tells a similar story, based on the cycle of grape harvest. This folk agricultural mythos was clearly not the case with Jesus. Dionysus was never said to have been crucified, but was torn apart as an infant by the Titans, and recreated by Zeus after he made a drink out of his crushed heart.

Hope this is helpful to you. If there are specific points that you have problems with, or think that this all still has some connection with the Gospels. let me know and I’ll try to point you towards the original textual sources.

You helped me with Dionysius, but what about Mithras? Justin Martyr wrote that they copied the Last Supper from Christianity. How do we know that they copied from us rather than us copying them ?
The more I research, the more articles I find where the experts say it’s “unlikely” or “improbable” Christianity stole ideas from the pagan religions. I’d prefer a more definative answer.

Just bought a book that talks about “true myths” which I posted about in another thread.

 

[Faith1960]

The book is The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Tradition. It talks about “true myths” which I don’t understand, either.

 

[Faith1960]

Is this what’s meant by a “true myth” and, if so, why refer to it as a “myth?”

catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0071.html

 

[Faith1960]

It occurs to me that part of the problem, at least in this thread, is that the word “pagan” remains undefined. Even now, do we use the word as it might have been used 2,000 or more years ago?

There are a couple of points I’d like to bring up, but would like to learn how other posters define the term.

When I talk about pagans I mean those from the old mystery religions or wiccans today.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

You helped me with Dionysius, but what about Mithras? Justin Martyr wrote that they copied the Last Supper from Christianity. How do we know that they copied from us rather than us copying them ?
The more I research, the more articles I find where the experts say it’s “unlikely” or “improbable” Christianity stole ideas from the pagan religions. I’d prefer a more definative answer.

Just bought a book that talks about “true myths” which I posted about in another thread.

On all these claims of pagan borrowing, it’s important to remember what R.A. Lafferty wrote - lots of other religions claim they worship a son of a god. We worship God the Son. That’s quite a different claim, and unique among the world’s religions.

I know of no legitimate scholar whose specialty is Mithra or Mithras (the two are easily confused) or in the International Congress of Mithraic Studies who feels there was any borrowing from Mithra/Mithras by the Church. Is there a specific instance of supposed borrowing that concerns you? I’ll help you if I’m knowledgeable about the claim.

But here’s something important for you to consider when considering conspiracy theories, such as the claim that the early Church borrowed elements from pagan religions to concoct a false Messiah, Faith. Otherwise you’ll waste a lot of time playing the historical equivalent of the “Whack-A-Mole” carnival game with Mythicist conspiracists.

I once had to review a “documentary” that was very popular and espoused a political conspiracy theory that was very common for a while in the 1990s. The filmmakers used a piece of footage that appeared to show evidence that directly contradicted the government’s account of events. But if you looked at the entire video, not just the portion they edited, it was obvious that the film proved none of their claims, but in fact supported the government’s claims. It had been purposely edited to advance a falsehood. The filmmakers, when caught in this falsehood, edited it out from later editions of the documentary and when questioned in interviews, admitted that the video had been edited to advance an agenda, but in effect said, “But, hey! Look at all this other evidence we’ve assembled that supports our argument! What about that evidence?”

It could be safely ignored, in my opinion, because they had lied to the audience once. The video had to have been knowingly edited by the filmmakers to lie, so why should I give any credence to the rest of their claims? If they lied to me once, I’m not going to take any of their further claims seriously, just as I won’t trust a used-car salesman if he lies to me even once. A hoaxer doesn’t get an endless series of strike-outs to convince us, if his candor is compromised there isn’t a need to continue to examine his claims. He’s just a liar, and can be dismissed as such.

I think the same applies with many of the websites you have viewed that supported the “Jesus is a Myth” conspiracy theory, and with online videos such as the “Zeitgeist” film that is often cited. I’ve shown you how ancient texts were misquoted, taken out of context, or where claims are simply made up by such people, in discussing the people who have made false claims about Hercules, Alexander, and Dionysius to you. They lied to you to try to gain your trust.

Why should you continue to give their claims any credence?

 

[Faith1960]

On all these claims of pagan borrowing, it’s important to remember what R.A. Lafferty wrote - lots of other religions claim they worship a son of a god. We worship God the Son. That’s quite a different claim, and unique among the world’s religions.

I know of no legitimate scholar whose specialty is Mithra or Mithras (the two are easily confused) or in the International Congress of Mithraic Studies who feels there was any borrowing from Mithra/Mithras by the Church.

Thanks again, you’ve been a great help.

 

[Faith1960]

On all these claims of pagan borrowing, it’s important to remember what R.A. Lafferty wrote - lots of other religions claim they worship a son of a god. We worship God the Son. That’s quite a different claim, and unique among the world’s religions.

I know of no legitimate scholar whose specialty is Mithra or Mithras (the two are easily confused) or in the International Congress of Mithraic Studies who feels there was any borrowing from Mithra/Mithras by the Church. :

I know it’s probably semantics but that’s where my OCD kicks in… When you said that no credible scholar believes any borrowing has been done from Mithra/Mithras by the Church, you mean the CC did not copy anything from Mithra/Mithras, right?

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I know it’s probably semantics but that’s where my OCD kicks in… When you said that no credible scholar believes any borrowing has been done from Mithra/Mithras by the Church, you mean the CC did not copy anything from Mithra/Mithras, right?

Right.

 

[Faith1960]

I know it’s probably semantics but that’s where my OCD kicks in… When you said that no credible scholar believes any borrowing has been done from Mithra/Mithras by the Church, you mean the CC did not copy anything from Mithra/Mithras, right?

My saying the “CC”, I meant the Catholic Church, but you already knew that, right?