So I know someone who has been raising some points about Christianity. He claims that the notion of a savior, resurrection, the veneration / worship of feminine figures (Aphrodite / Mary, etc.) appeared when Christianity began expanding into Greek-speaking territories. Stories about a burial and empty tomb were also contrived by pious legend years after the fact. Any thoughts?
I think it would best to dissect this one carefully - especially given what exactly is being claimed.
1.)
Savior figures are a common product of Religious Thought
I mean, can anyone really show me an ancient religion without some sort of Savior figure? This is like saying “Religions have Rituals.”
And in our very specific case of Jesus of Nazareth, we have evidence for this search for a Messianic figure outside of the Jewish Faith - the 3 Magi. Assuming that the Magi are in fact Zoroastarians, they weren’t exactly looking for “The Christ, the Word, the Son of God” - they were looking for the
Saoshyant… which fulfills a Messiah-like role in the Zoroastarian religion.
In fact, for those enterprising enough, i’d invite you to take a strong hard look at the Avesta, the sacred writings of the Zoroastrians. You might see -alot- of familiar ideas.
Technically, Jesus Christ did have a kind of Graeco-Roman competitor born 15 years after him if we assume 1 AD as the year of our lords birth.
Apollonius of Tyana was a noted ascetic/mystic/wonderworker who… has a lot of similarity in terms of repetoire of miracles ascribed to him. The only thing that Apollonius lacks is the Christ’s Passion. Although, he too was handed over to Roman authorities. Bart Ehrman summarizes his career as follows:
Even before he was born, it was known that he would be someone special. A supernatural being informed his mother the child she was to conceive would not be a mere mortal but would be divine. He was born miraculously, and he became an unusually precocious young man. As an adult he left home and went on an itinerant preaching ministry, urging his listeners to live, not for the material things of this world, but for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of disciples around him, who became convinced that his teachings were divinely inspired, in no small part because he himself was divine. He proved it to them by doing many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. But at the end of his life he roused opposition, and his enemies delivered him over to the Roman authorities for judgment. Still, after he left this world, he returned to meet his followers in order to convince them that he was not really dead but lived on in the heavenly realm. Later some of his followers wrote books about him.
I think what would be best said, is that the during the time of our Lord, the Mediterranean world was looking for Savior figures. There was a feeling or sense of the Old World crumbling, that the ways of immediate Past were not working out correctly…
2.)
Mother figures are also common in religious thought
Same reasoning applied above.
Ultimately, what i’m trying to convey to you, is that if we take Religion to be a Universal Category of Human Experience - then of course there are going to be similarities across the board.
If the claim is formulated in this manner, it would be the equivalent of saying “Well, the Indus River Valley culture was the first civilization to have a system of Government… therefore all Governments that popped up in China, Egypt, Sumeria, etc. are derivative of that Original Government.”
Instead of thinking like - “There’s a need for some sort of system to order society, therefore these civilizations form a concept of Government.”
Now did we borrow from “Paganism”… yes. But think about this concretely for a second - “Paganism” is just a catch-all term for everything that isn’t Christianity right?
There are alot of nuances to be found beneath. It would be better to ask **“What was borrowed?” ** In other words, what can we really pin down and say “That Term/Philosophical Context was taken from -X-.”
I would argue that’s where Christianity had its greatest interaction with the Graeco-Roman world - not with sifting up details of old legends, but rather engaging with the great philosophic schools of the time period.
Mr Khan actually pointed out a good starting point for investigation,
Philo of Alexandria spoke of a Logos. But he wasn’t the only one. Certain Hellenistic philosophical schools started “looking for the Logos” so to speak.
