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Mystic Initiation Origin of Christianity
Contents
Mystianity article is unusually
clear and cogent
Christianity began as esoteric
mystery initiation
Mythic-experiential allegory,
origins of Christianity
Luke Johnson: religious
experiencing caused Christianity
"Esoteric initiation"
proposal of Christian origins
I'm amazed
at the excellent quality of this summary by a student. This "report",
a graduate thesis, is about Christianity and the Mystery Religions.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesdiscussion/files/Mystianity.zip
You might
need to "join" to view it.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesdiscussion
This
article strangely lacks a cover sheet and author name and title.
It's a
clearer, better summary and introduction than I've seen in any book. It was written by a student with nothing to
lose, not a professor with a salaried income to protect.
Top
recommendation. Read this first. Hits the nail on the head many times. He uses many expressions and constructs that
I've recently favored, such as "official Christianity" versus
"esoteric Christianity". This
article is the clearest confirmation and affirmation I've seen of several
things I've started to suspect, several hunches I've developed. It has decent emphasis of entheogens, and
strong emphasis on allegory of mystic-state *experience*, and a bit of mentions
of Fate.
I
recommend that the author:
o Provide a cover with title and author name.
o Edit to eliminate square brackets.
o Provide more material on Fate, heimarmene,
cosmic determinism, and the project of somehow transcending cosmic determinism.
o Combine into a single file.
o Provide in HTML format first, and possibly
either .doc or .pdf.
o Upload HTML version to the Web.
jef358 is
evidently the author, but there's no indication to establish this.
What's the
title of the article (graduate thesis)?
Maybe I'll
take another look at Angus' book.
>From:
jef358
>Sent:
Monday, July 08, 2002 4:28 PM
>To:
JesusMysteriesdiscussion~at~yahoogroups.com
>Subject:
[JesusMysteriesdiscussion] Book recommendation for Michael
>Hoffman
>
>
>I
recommend you consult a classic work on the subject by Samuel Angus,
"Christianity and the Mystery Religions". I used it for my graduate thesis in college and found it very
useful. Most of what I have read since
is just repeating the information.
>I'm
amazed at the excellent quality of this summary by a student. This
"report", a graduate thesis, is about Christianity and the Mystery
Religions.
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesdiscussion/files/Mystianity.zip
>
>You
might need to "join" to view it.
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesdiscussion
>
>This
article strangely lacks a cover sheet and author name and title.
>
>It's a
clearer, better summary and introduction than I've seen in any book. It was
written by a student with nothing to lose, not a professor with a salaried
income to protect.
The title
of the thesis is "Early Christianity as a Mystery-Religion".
The author
is James Faubel.
The thesis
will be available as a Web page.
My
Subconscious Self wrote:
>>If
there was no historical Jesus, from where did the teachings and sayings come
from that are attributed to the mythical Jesus? ... There seems to have been some
sort of intentional or unintentional collusion between the writers ... Were
they all members of some sort of secret group ...
Steve
wrote (excerpts):
>There
were vibrant Jesus communities in all the principal locations of Jewish
settlement long years before in expectation of a Messiah figure and evolved an
apocalyptic myth of fulfillment. Remains of the faith of these communities are
preserved in the fragmented scriptures of various sects and in the earliest
writings of the New Testament.
>These
writings are esoteric in content and they are uninterested in the nitty-gritty
of history, matters of time, place, and person. Their content is the New Testament mystery tradition and by all
reckonings they constitute the oldest surviving stratum of the New Testament.
>These
books actually consist of initiatory rites, hymns, ritual catechisms, and
ceremonials similar to other texts found throughout the ancient near east. They are replete with references to heavenly
mysteries hidden for long ages, mysteries concerning a dying and rising
redeemer who is God's Son.
>With
the "conversion" of Constantine in the fourth century, the various
Christian sects (still a minority religion existing in the form of numerous
competing sects, some literalist and some Gnostic) were amalgamated with a
number of other Greco-Roman religions, brought under imperial control, purged
of all esoteric elements, and crafted into the orthodox Christian church from
which have come all the denominations we know today.
Steve's
full posting is recommended reading.
Re:
Origination of Jesus' teachings
Nov. 7,
2002
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Christ_Conspiracy/message/578
Like Earl
Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle), Steve assumes Paul existed as an individual
historical person. Similar to Doherty, Steve
characterizes original Christianity with terms including: esoteric, Gnostic,
initiation, initiatory rites, ritual, philosophy, myth, Greco-Roman religions,
the mysteries, inner mysteries, mystery teachings, Platonic mystery tradition,
the New Testament mystery tradition, rabbinical tales and midrash based on the
Old Testament and Greek myth.
Like
Doherty, Steve doesn't here concern himself with explaining the workings of
such esoteric initiation. It is right
to differentiate this explanation of revisionist history from a theory of what
mystery initiation was really about -- but it is also necessary to integrate
such a revisionist history with a detailed explanation of mystery initiation,
so that people know exactly what's being asserted when we assert that
Christianity was actually begun as an instance and version of "esoteric
mystery initiation".
To draw up
the most compelling alternative to the official history of Christian
beginnings, we must draw up that alternative with full inner detail, and also
gain a more accurate idea of the isomorphic equivalence of Jewish esoteric
initiation, the Greek symposium, and the sacred meals of the Hellenistic
mystery religions, where "Hellenistic" is used in a broad sense
spanning many centuries such as 1200 BCE to 500 CE, and a wide region to the
extremities of Europe and the Mediterranean and beyond.
Neither
does Steve mention the degree to which Christianity remained, unofficially, a
framework for esoteric mystery initiation, now heavily encoded. The unofficial divinization of Mary,
together with the allegorically encoded mystic-state myth of purgatory, are key
areas to study as evidence of the continued existence of the original, esoteric
form of Christianity.
Too many
scholars get stuck at the stage of insisting that "Earliest Christianity
was *not* Literalist (but rather, esoteric mystery initiation)." We need to go beyond that and overshoot the
point to make the point, by definitively entering into the realm of explaining
what esoteric mystery initiation was really about, and by tracing the later
equivalents in Christianity, shamanism, and world mysticism.
>Anyone
have any thoughts on the Essenes?
>http://www.thenazareneway.com
>They
seem to be 'the Borg' of theology.
>
>-Brian
That site
says "The ... practice of fasting is observed for the purposes of
purification, for heightening states of awareness."
Scholars
tend to elect a few small isolated groups as mystics, but it's nonsense: there
were countless groups all over the Hellenistic world getting together, praying
for safety, and embarking on visionary-plant ascensions. It's like doing away with the entheogen
theory of mysticism by electing just 3 "safe" representatives: Charles
Tart, Stanislaus Grof, and Aldous Huxley -- after you "treat" these,
you then say you've "covered" the theory (more like, covered it
over).
A better
approach would be, how do the Essenes exemplify the countless mysticism-on-tap
get-togethers that everyone was doing in the great Hellenistic Age of Initiation? How was it that all these groups were able
to have intense mystic states on tap, so intense that protective prayer was
seemingly invented just for this purpose?
Their natural mystic experiences were as strong as Henbane or mushrooms,
datura or eaten hashish on an empty stomach, so how did they achieve it, given
that they only used wine, watered down fourfold?
Picture
the Essenes as utterly typical of thousands of get-togethers that were founded
on mystic experiencing that was routinely on tap, and that's closer to the
picture that provides understanding.
Qumran: a
mass-production assembly-line enlightenment factory and spiritual resort.
The
Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the
Christian Vision
Andrew
Welburn
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863152090
Reprinting-due
01/01/2004
Gnosis:
The Mysteries and Christianity: An Anthology of Essene, Gnostic and Christian
Writing
Andrew
Welburn
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863151833
Peter
posed the following questions. The
following are essentially the answers provided by the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.
___________________________
1. What is
"mythic-experiencing allegory"?
Religious
myth serves to metaphorically describe, convey, and make tangible the
characteristic phenomena, experiences, and insights encountered during the
intense mystic state. The term
"mystic" is too associated with later Catholic esotericism, whereas
the term "mythic" helps to keep our conceptual framework fully
relevant to late antiquity. My term
"mythic-experiencing" describes intense mystic experiencing, but in a
specific context of late antiquity.
For
example, "walking on water" or "seeing walls of water on the
left and right during the exodus" is an allegorical metaphor for
perceptual distortion during intense mystic experiencing. As another example, "casting out
multitudes of demons from a man" or "casting out the demon that was
possessing a man" is an allegorical metaphor for fully and formally
rejecting in principle the lower way of thinking.
The lower
way of thinking assumes ego, free will, and separate self to be simply real --
more generally and vaguely, it means rejecting the lower way of thinking and
embracing a new, higher way of thinking (the no-free-will/no-separate-self
framework of thinking).
Freke
& Gandy discuss the details of this conceptualization of lower and higher
thinking in the books The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess.
Freke
& Gandy discuss the no-free-will doctrine in Lost Goddess -- that's a
classic universal doctrine for mystics.
The devastating encounter with fatedness and some sort of transcendence
of it is allegorized as movement from slavery, captivity, prison, fetters, or
chains, to freedom.
In mythic
experiencing, one moves from freedom to slavery to freedom: from 1) ignorant
lower assumption of metaphysical freedom to 2) the realization of metaphysical
unfreedom during initiation and metanoia (awakening to the hidden fact of
imprisonment in the deterministic cosmos), to 3) recovering practical sense of
freedom and feeling lifted out from helpless embededness in the deterministic
cosmos by the work of the hidden author of all thoughts.
Luther
Martin in Hellenistic Religions proposes that there are many mystery-cults but
only one mystery-religion, and *the main theme* of mystery religion, expressed
in various metaphorical allegories, is some sort of transcendence of Fate and
Necessity.
David
Ulansey proposes that Mithraism used astrotheology and the discovery of the
precession of the equinoxes -- "the stars are *not* fixed! we who know
that secret are free!" to metaphorically allegorize such transcendence of
cosmic necessity.
Freke
& Gandy discuss the Dionysian sacramental use of wine in such mythic
experiencing in Jesus Mysteries; in the section "Bread and Wine" on
page 48-50. All theologians and
denominations, all mystery-religions, and the Passover tradition consider the
sacred meal an unassailable traditional part of their practice. The Mystery-Religions allegorize such a meal
as eating the savior's flesh.
The Jews
allegorize their sacred meal as a celebration of (or to their mystics a
reinstantiation of) the passing over of death of their firstborn children
through the death of their lamb, to escape slavery in Egypt and regain their
freedom.
Freke
& Gandy discuss no-separate-self in both books, especially in Lost Goddess.
___________________________
2. What
indications do we have that ancient Christianity contained elements of
mythic-experiencing allegory?
Gnostic
Christian writings reflect use of sacred meals and are dominated by
allegory. Gnostic Christians claimed
that they experienced Christ personally and in a vivid way whereas non-Gnostics
only have doctrines, not experience of the doctrines. No scholar doubts that ancient Christianity included the use of
allegory.
The
question that needs addressing is whether such allegorism specifically served
to express, report, and convey mythic-experiencing. By definition, allegory expresses *something*.
Literalists
say early Christian allegory expresses a promise of literal bodily resurrection
after literal bodily death, and they say early Christian allegory about the
Eucharist as flesh of the savior expresses our uniting with the savior in his
transcendence of bodily death and our escape from the literal spirit-creature,
the Devil.
So
Literalists maintain that Christian allegory does *not* mainly serve to express
mythic experiencing, but rather, serves to represent our salvation from moral
evil and from eternal torment in Hell.
Moderate
Literalist Christians say that Christian allegory serves to express
socio-political principles, and mystic principles of enlightenment, but are not
overwhelmingly about expressing mythic/mystic experiencing.
Gnostic
Christians maintain that Christian allegory serves to describe and report and
convey a kind of metanoia and transformation of thinking that one experiences
directly.
All three
of these basic types of Christian agree, unproblematically, that early
Christianity included allegory. The
dispute was, and the present question is: whether, or to what extent, the
allegorism is about mythic/mystic experiencing. Even supernaturalist Literalists agree that Christian allegory is
*partly* about mythic/mystic experiencing.
Textual
and other evidence indicates that Literalists say Christian allegory is a
little bit about mythic experiencing, and Gnostics, at the other extreme, say
Christian allegory is essentially entirely about mythic experiencing
(intertwined with socio-political allegory as in Matthew and Revelation).
___________________________
3. What
are the facts that need to be explained in an explanation of the origin of
Christianity?
Mystics
and Gnostics report an experience and vision of Christ, and experience unity
with him, even if they haven't met him or met someone who met them. That fact needs to be explained in an
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
After being told about Christ or reading about him, and often in conjunction
with a sacred meal and the practice of prayer, people report encounters with
and experiences of Christ or an equivalent mythic savior godman or deity
figure.
The origin
of Christianity can be fully explained without the hypothesis that there was a
(single, distinct) HJ. That fact needs
to be explained in an explanation of the origin of Christianity.
Some
Gnostic writings are Christian yet don't postulate an HJ. That fact needs to be explained in an
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
All scholars
agree that sacred meals were central and essential in early Christianity, as
well as in Pagan mystery-cults, and that the Jews had a sacred Passover meal
that is central to the Exodus from Captivity story. That fact needs to be explained in an explanation of the origin
of Christianity.
The
Hellenistic philosophers of the early Christian era were very concerned with
Fate, necessity, heimarmene, and destiny, and looked to religion to shed light
on the matter and provide some way of rising above these. That fact needs to be explained in an
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
The
scriptures inside and outside the canon disagree about everything and every
canonical book was considered heretical by various groups during early
Christianity. There is abundant
evidence that all the scriptures were involved in a redactive battle and
tug-of-war between various groups.
The
history of early Christianity is heavily dominated by obviously political
power-struggles overlaid with a transparently thin veneer of "theological
dispute". That fact needs to be
explained in an explanation of the origin of Christianity.
The figure
of Dionysus was co-opted and counter-co-opted by rulers and ruled. Similarly, the Dionysus-like figure of Jesus
was co-opted and counter-co-opted by rulers and ruled. That fact needs to be explained in an
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
The figure
of Paul is credited with contradictory doctrines in the canonical scriptures,
forming an impossible mixture of Gnostic thinking and Literalist thinking. That fact needs to be explained in an
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
There were
many different camps of Judaism, many different mystery-cults, and many
different schools of Christianity. The
forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Paganism often overlapped. Yet the official history reported by the
Literalists over the millennia portrays Judaism, Christianity, and Paganism as
three basically different, opposing religions.
That fact
of rich overlapping multiplicity and interpenetrating influence --
interpenetrating practice and doctrine -- needs to be explained in an
explanation of the origin of Christianity.
___________________________
4. What is
the origin of Christianity?
There were
many schools of Judaism and Paganism and Christianity during the era of 200 BCE
to 200 CE. These schools all fully
interpenetrated. Out of this mix came
various Gnostic Christian schools and various Literalist schools, forming two
streams existing continuously to this day, cross-influencing each other and
contending against each other.
Gnostic
Christians were dominant in driving the formation of Christianity and in
shaping its development over the millennia.
Literalism did its best to coerce Christians into Literalism. Literalism was driven strategically by
unbelieving elite power-mongers manipulating gullible masses. Gnostic Christianity was more of a middle
ground driven by those who neither wielded such political clout nor were
gullible.
Gnostics
were vastly more influential not only in creating but also continuing to shape
Christianity, than the authoritarian Literalist leaders who write the history
books admit.
Christianity
was not started by an HJ, and did not depend on the existence of a single,
distinctive HJ. It did depend on the
existence of a great enough number of partially Jesus-like men to establish a
familiar *type* of man. Christianity
was based on the existence of Jesus-type men, but not a single, distinctive HJ.
The Jesus
figure is very loosely based on various actual men and various mythic figures,
especially figures that allegorically represent experiential encounters with
fatedness and some kind of transcendence of it. It was useful to focus ideas and ideals and experiential allegory
upon a single figure who personified the set of experiences and insights.
Christianity
was socio-political and centrally used socio-political allegory in the Gospel
storyline, but was even more driven by experiential allegory representing the
mystic-state experiences that were consistently associated with the sacred
meals. Wherever you find sacred meals,
you'll find experiential mythic allegory and concerns with freedom and
transcendence.
Experiential
allegory heavily used the metaphors of kingdom, kingship and sovereignty,
representing the discovery that ego is a false and illusory separate
controller-self -- at the same time as expressing socio-political resistance to
the honor-based, honor-hyperinflating system of Caesar and Ruler Cult. Experiential allegory also used metaphors of
death and resurrection.
In
general, all religion was mainly created and shaped by mystics and merely
borrowed by Literalists. All religion
uses metaphors of kingship and death to express the conceptual and experiential
transcendence of the ego delusion.
Christianity began as a standard religion.
It was
created especially by mystic Gnostics in Alexandria, but was eventually (to a
lesser degree that the history books say) co-opted by power-mongers, especially
power-mongers operating from Rome.
Freke
& Gandy assume a historical Paul, but I don't. With several scholars, including Max Rieser and Acharya S, I
maintain that Paul was a fictional mouthpiece created by the Gnostics, later
largely co-opted by the Literalist authoritarian power-mongers.
Similarly,
I maintain that the 12 Disciples were fictional figures that may have been
created by Gnostic Christians but were quickly (rather than slowly like Paul)
co-opted and made to say what the Literalists wanted them to say, rather than
what their Gnostic creators wanted them to say.
Per
Michael Conley, Ignatius is instructive because he is a third step in a
progression from the fictional 12 disciples to the fictional travelling apostle
Paul -- Ignatius is a fictional bishop-type character and was originally set up
to simply reject and oppose Paul, where Paul was considered entirely to
represent the Gnostics.
The
writings of Ignatius were not admitted into the canon, because they too
explicitly revealed the actual power struggles and fictional character of these
figures.
The
distinctive aspect of Christianity is that it used the Jewish approach to
mythic-experiential allegory, which had an unusually high degree of realism in
its socio-political allegorism. Some of
the Jews were intent on using that political allegorism seriously to resist
Roman occupation.
The
pseudo-history aspect of religious-experiential allegory is common in
religions, but the Jews strategically used such pseudo-historical Literalism to
an uncommon degree (even while the ever-important mystic Jews likely understood
the stories as only mystic-experiential allegory). Dionysus contended against a king against a vaguely historical
backdrop, but it was clear that the king was mostly just a symbol of the
initiate.
To the
extent Christianity was based on Jewish strategic historical Literalism, it
contained the possibility of being officially framed as Literalist and
historical.
The Jewish
religion was unusual because the political domain of allegory was as prominent
as the mystic domain of allegory. If
conventional readings are worth anything, in the Jewish religion, political
allegory outshined mystic allegory, even though both were, in fact, present
when the varieties of Judaism are considered.
Paganism
had a strong mystic domain of allegory but a weak political domain of
allegory.
Earliest
Christianity was an effective combination of a strong mystic domain of allegory
with a strong political domain of allegory.
Officially, the political allegory domain became strongly dominant over
the mystic allegory domain, mainly because Literalism restricted varieties of
Christianity.
Why didn't
the authoritarian power-mongering rulers, who wanted to form a single, uniting
religion, create one particular *authentic* experiential version of
Christianity, instead of creating one particular *inauthentic* and lower
version of Christianity? Authentic
religion is inherently exclusive and elitist and divisive: only the mystics are
full members and participants of the religion, and they tend to multiply their
versions of the religion.
Moving
toward authentic, experiential religion is a move toward multiplicity of
religious metaphor and expression and is a move away from the masses. The authoritarians needed to move instead
toward a single religious metaphor and move toward the masses, to round up
everyone.
It was
easier to force the mystics to conform to the masses or abandon them, than to
elevate the masses to the mystic level and enforce a single mystic system of
religion. Literalism was more effective
for collecting money and concentrating power.
Peter,
At page
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
you could
link to the following by Luke Johnson, which propose that the cause of the
spread of Christianity was the experience of Jesus' resurrection during
religious experiencing.
This
mystical theory, when taken along with sociopolitical theories, explains the
start of Christianity better than the author may intend; there is a risk of
Jesus as a historical individual becoming irrelevant and superfluous.
Johnson's
book Religious Experience isn't prominent at Amazon. It doesn't say that Christianity began because of people's
experience of Jesus, but rather, because of their mystical experience of the
resurrection of Jesus. Thus it
inadvertently helps support the Jesus Mysteries thesis. The book criticizes the exclusive emphasis
on *historical* studies of early Christianity and endorses considering
religious experience, including the experience of the resurrection of Jesus, as
a cause at the start of Christianity.
Your list
may divide authors into historical investigators versus mystics (Freke &
Gandy), but this work of Johnson's may profitably complicate such a
distinction.
Johnson
warns of the danger that socio-political explanations of the origins of
Christianity may reductionistically omit religious experiencing, eliminating
the specifically religious dimension from the Christian religion.
If you
omit Johnson's work on religious experiencing as cause of Christianity, your
portrayal of his stance about the historical Jesus may omit something relevant
and important to Johnson. Given the
flood of history-oriented studies that explain the origins of Christianity in a
socio-political framework, a survey of theories should be balanced by studies
that include a strong (if not total, like Freke & Gandy) emphasis on
religious experiencing.
Religious
Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Study
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800631293
Early
Christianity: The Experience of the Divine
http://www.teach12.com/store/course1.asp?id=647
Lecture
course
Also of
note:
Bart
Ehrman's lecture course on New Testament:
http://www.teach12.com/store/course1.asp?id=656
Bart
Ehrman's lecture course on the Historical Jesus:
http://www.teach12.com/store/course1.asp?id=643
Havrylak
Kern wrote (excerpts):
>initiation
rites
>the
"Hero-Journey" stages described by Joseph Campbell
>psychological
breakup and reconfiguration healing schemes
>shamanic
traditions of many cultures
>"visionary
journeys" whose sequential commonality of some perceived
"god-man" experience
>the
"Dying/Resurrecting Savior" tradition
>varied
religious menu of psychological metamorphoses made available to mass devotees
>the
quasi-scientific precepts and allegorical techniques of medieval alchemy
>Mystery
Religion rites circulating around the Mediterranean
>Mystery
Religion's initiation rites
>variation
of some archaic religious initiation ceremonies
>guide
people through universal biological and psychological phases
>tribal
shamans from Siberia, India, Australia, and America
>all
humans go through during the course of a natural life-cycle
>a
logos-bearer like Jesus as some a kind of human "step-down
transformer"
>"sunlight"
is made available by the "transformed initiate" who has developed
>ability
to Duracell "download" or Fresnel "lens" the Logos and then
shine it upon everyone
>"living
water" baptism of the Holy Ghost
>spiritual
"sunlight" has an ultimate source: the "sun"
>"Logos":
"As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Joseph
Campbell too often tells his popular audience that myth is relevant to everyone
because it represents what all people go through.
On the
contrary, myth is, first of all, metaphor conveying the pattern of a life that
includes a mystic-state turning point, such as, for example, a *series of
several* intense mystic experiences of cognitive loosening within the ages
18-22. It is a terrible reduction of
myth that misses the essential function of it, when myth is held to describe
mere mundane lifecycle.
In
Christian Gnostic allegorical terms, we could say that myth is not for
describing the life of the lost, but the life of those who are saved. Its purpose is to describe the pneumatic's
lifecycle, not the sarcik/hylik person's lifecycle.
In Greek
terms, myth's purpose is to describe the lifecycle of the civilized, who by
definition are initiated at some point, rather than the barbarians who don't
have initiation and thus don't have civilization.
The
concepts of 'sun' and 'logos' in Hellenistic-era thinking need full study. These terms can have a vast array of
meanings.
We need
studies that sweep across the mystery-initiation aspect of all esoteric
religion, centered first around Hellenistic mystery religion, then including
esoteric Jewish initiation such as the Therapeutae and earliest Christian agape
feasts and the Greek symposium and Gnostic sacred meals, then moving out to
find equivalent initiations in shamanism and mysticism.
These
subjects are artificially put asunder into separated categories, preventing
from seeing that seder, agape feast, symposium, and sacred meals of the mystery
religions are functionally and ritually the same thing. This study would include Isis and
Zoroastrian religions and all godmen.
Such a
study would cover and related all religious systems for which we have evidence
of the pattern:
o Uninitiated thinking
o Sacred drinking/eating
o Drastic mental transformation
o Prayer and divine rescue
o Initiated thinking.
The above
pattern is the given; the question is, how do the following concepts integrate
into that given bedrock scheme?
o Godman
o Logos
o The esoteric visionary conception of Jesus
o The Literalist conception of the Historical
Jesus, with supernatural & magical motifs
o The Literalist conception of the Historical
Jesus, without supernatural or magical motifs
We need
such a History of Esoteric Initiation.
This would help provide a more detailed description of the proposed
Mythicist scenario in the Historical Jesus debate. Even with Freke and Gandy's book Jesus and the Goddess, there is
too little recognition of commonality of the initiations across religions of
antiquity.
Some say
the term 'Mystery Religions' really should be 'Mystery Cults' where 'cult'
means 'version', 'variation', 'variant', or 'instance' -- what I think of as a
"brand" of *the* Hellenistic Mysteries (Luther Martin's book
Hellenistic Religion). By that
criterion, so should the Greek symposium, Jewish seder, and Christian agape
love-feast or communion meal be considered as simply cults or brands of *the*
Hellenistic Religion.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)