Jesus & mystery
latest entry in the Jesus project
Early Christians treated Jesus as something like Orpheus, the god to which a pious mystery religion was devoted. A mystery two thousand years ago, however, was very different from a mystery today.
The heyday of mystery religions was, not coincidentally, the first three centuries of the Christian church. As Christianity was spreading through the Roman empire, so were religions devoted to Demeter, Dionysus, Orpheus, and others. Christianity resembled these cults in general, with initiations, common meals, personal religious experience, and personal salvation. Of the major cults, Christianity most closely resembled the one devoted to Orpheus. Like Jesus, Orpheus was the son of a deity, and he had descended into the underworld and returned. Orpheus’s cult followed a set of sacred scriptures comprising Orpheus’s teachings, and it required an abstinent lifestyle. While the Dionysaic and Eleusinian mysteries involved the whole community in festivals, the Orphics were concerned with the individual sinner struggling to live a pious life, in preparation for the judgment that comes to each soul at death.
The word “mystery” originally referred to cult secrets that only insiders know. In this sense, the concept is akin to the term occult, which originally meant “hidden,” as in “forbidden books of occult lore.” It refers to the eyes and ears being closed, alluding to secrecy. Today, Christians use the term to mean something that even they don’t really understand. The true nature of the trinity, for example, is a mystery not because only Christians understand it but instead because _not_even_ Christians understand it. The concept of mystery is now used as a dodge. What sense does the trinity make? It’s a sacred mystery! How can bread and wine turn into God’s flesh while still looking and tasting for all the world like bread and wine? It’s a mystery! Roman catholic priests even added the phrase “mystery of faith” to Jesus’ words of institution, said at the point in the mass when the bread and wine turn into God’s flesh and blood. More recently, why have Catholic priests been raping so many boys and young men? It’s the mystery of sin! In 2002, in response to explosive Catholic sex scandals, Pope John Paul II pled “mysterium iniquitatis” (mystery of iniquity), when in fact it’s no mystery at all that you get into trouble when you take unmarried men and assign them private authority over vulnerable people, and then cover it up for decades.
For another pagan religion that is strikingly similar to early Christianity, see Mithraism.
Early Christians treated Jesus as something like Orpheus, the god to which a pious mystery religion was devoted. A mystery two thousand years ago, however, was very different from a mystery today.
The heyday of mystery religions was, not coincidentally, the first three centuries of the Christian church. As Christianity was spreading through the Roman empire, so were religions devoted to Demeter, Dionysus, Orpheus, and others. Christianity resembled these cults in general, with initiations, common meals, personal religious experience, and personal salvation. Of the major cults, Christianity most closely resembled the one devoted to Orpheus. Like Jesus, Orpheus was the son of a deity, and he had descended into the underworld and returned. Orpheus’s cult followed a set of sacred scriptures comprising Orpheus’s teachings, and it required an abstinent lifestyle. While the Dionysaic and Eleusinian mysteries involved the whole community in festivals, the Orphics were concerned with the individual sinner struggling to live a pious life, in preparation for the judgment that comes to each soul at death.
The word “mystery” originally referred to cult secrets that only insiders know. In this sense, the concept is akin to the term occult, which originally meant “hidden,” as in “forbidden books of occult lore.” It refers to the eyes and ears being closed, alluding to secrecy. Today, Christians use the term to mean something that even they don’t really understand. The true nature of the trinity, for example, is a mystery not because only Christians understand it but instead because _not_even_ Christians understand it. The concept of mystery is now used as a dodge. What sense does the trinity make? It’s a sacred mystery! How can bread and wine turn into God’s flesh while still looking and tasting for all the world like bread and wine? It’s a mystery! Roman catholic priests even added the phrase “mystery of faith” to Jesus’ words of institution, said at the point in the mass when the bread and wine turn into God’s flesh and blood. More recently, why have Catholic priests been raping so many boys and young men? It’s the mystery of sin! In 2002, in response to explosive Catholic sex scandals, Pope John Paul II pled “mysterium iniquitatis” (mystery of iniquity), when in fact it’s no mystery at all that you get into trouble when you take unmarried men and assign them private authority over vulnerable people, and then cover it up for decades.
For another pagan religion that is strikingly similar to early Christianity, see Mithraism.