The derivation of the word "Easter" from the name of a pagan
goddess is peculiar to English and to German, which got it from Anglo-Saxon missionaries. Those were hardly the first languages in which the
Paschal Mystery was ever celebrated. Likewise, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
is entirely without parallel in mere mythology.
The example
usually cited is the early Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris. Osiris is
murdered by his brother Seth, who then sinks his coffin in the Nile.
Isis, wife of Osiris and most powerful of goddesses, discovers her
husband's body and returns it to Egypt. Seth, however, regains the body,
cuts it into fourteen pieces, and scatters it abroad. Isis counters by
recovering the pieces. How does this resemble the Resurrection Narratives in the slightest? Some much later commentators refer to this
as an anastasis, but the fact that they were writing in Greek rather illustrates how far removed they were.
In
all the mystery cults, no early text refers to any resurrection of
Attis, nor of Adonis, nor, as we have seen, of Osiris. Indeed, according
to Plutarch, it was the pious desire of devotees to be buried in the
same ground where the body of Osiris was held still to be lying. Of
Mithra, popular among Roman soldiers and often invoked at this point, it
is not in dispute that stories of death and resurrection were devised
specifically in order to counter the appeal of Christianity.
There is no suggestion that any pagan deity was ever held to have risen from the dead never to die again, nor to have appeared in the flesh several times thereafter (and soon thereafter, at that), nor to have been recounted doing so by eyewitnesses, nor even to have lived and died, never mind risen from the dead, at a specific, and quite recent, point in investigable history.
There is no suggestion that any pagan deity was ever held to have risen from the dead never to die again, nor to have appeared in the flesh several times thereafter (and soon thereafter, at that), nor to have been recounted doing so by eyewitnesses, nor even to have lived and died, never mind risen from the dead, at a specific, and quite recent, point in investigable history.
You might deny or dispute this in
investigable historical terms, although good luck, because you are going to need
it. The historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth can be very hotly
denied on the Internet by people who have that particular bee in their
bonnets, but it is subject to no scholarly dispute whatever. But the
present point is that, uniquely, any such investigable claim is made at
all.
It is also contended that Attis is supposed to have come
back to life four days after his death. There is one account of Osiris being reanimated two or three days after
his death, though only one, not four. And it is even suggested that Adonis may have been
"resurrected" three days after his death. In the case of all three,
then there is no evidence of any such belief earlier than the second century
AD. It is quite clear which way the borrowing went.
There is, furthermore, no evidence whatever that the mystery religions had any influence in Palestine in the first century. And there is all the difference that there could possibly be between the mythological experience of these nebulous figures and the Crucifixion "under Pontius Pilate". Hellenism and the Roman Empire did not view the Christian message as merely another legend of a cultic hero, just as neither the philosophical Greeks nor the pragmatic Romans dismissed it as either harmless or ridiculous. Just look at how they did react to it.
There is, furthermore, no evidence whatever that the mystery religions had any influence in Palestine in the first century. And there is all the difference that there could possibly be between the mythological experience of these nebulous figures and the Crucifixion "under Pontius Pilate". Hellenism and the Roman Empire did not view the Christian message as merely another legend of a cultic hero, just as neither the philosophical Greeks nor the pragmatic Romans dismissed it as either harmless or ridiculous. Just look at how they did react to it.
As Rousseau said, men who could invent such a story would be greater and more astonishing than its central figure.
I think that the resurrection story is far from unique, but that does not matter because as to cultural consequences that story however central to christian theology is overshadowed by a much bigger one: the end of sacrifice of others (another story that is not unique but is so important anyhow).
ReplyDeleteFor most cultures and most history sacrifice was a bribe paid to a deity to win their favor, and often it was the sacrifice of someone else: "take them, not me" (which is pretty much the root of evil, not money).
With christianity sacrifice must be personal, for atonement, and ideally it should be selfless. This has been taken to an excess (from a yearning for martyrdom to a passion for self-torture) in some cases, but in its proper interpretation it changes the relationship with the deity quite a lot, and I think it is also the biggest difference between biblical judaism and christianity, even bigger than the "messiah" issue.
BTW I found some time ago an essay online on a similar theme of all places on a larouchist site, and while I think it greatly exaggerates the "filioque" aspect it is quite interesting to me:
https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/fid_912_hzl_c_flor.html