Talk:Greco-Roman mysteries

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Christianity and the Mysteries

Why is there a paragraph on Christianity in this topic; it does not have the same charactersitics as a Mystery at all and is not considered by Scholars to be a Mystery. If Mysteries influenced Christianity, then that should be included under the "Christianity" article and not here. Discussion of early Christianity under an article specifically dealing with Mystery groups (the title Religions or even Cults is not correct), is misleading. If there are no objections I will remove it. Ben ^(talk) 16:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Of course there are objections to squelching text at Wikipedia. --Wetman (talk) 15:53, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I just can't see that it is directly relevant to an understanding of the Mysteries. If it has merit, then I suggest it would be better placed under the "Christianity" article because it pertains more to the development of that. It is also slightly misleading. Ben ^(talk) 21:48, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The whole text is so bias I don't even know where to begin. This is one of my irritations in general for wikipedia. Some statements are soooo untrue!!! The fact alone that the text makes a destinction between "christianity" and "pagan" is misleading in itself because saying everyting else is pagan is an invention from christianity to put itself apart from everything else. It's typically how a christian would write or say this and that's why it is bias. And then we quote this on wikipedia with one source and then it is the truth: "Searches for Christianity deriving content from mystery religions has also been unsuccessful" While whole books are written that state otherwise! Need I go on... bias, bias, bias and dangerous for people who believe everything wiki says. 85.148.96.173 (talk) 22:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

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Overall I thought this article was poor and not very useful. Even the relatively well-written first paragraph omits to mention that many authorities make a tightly-focussed view and refer to the "Mystery Cults" primarily as the Hellenic and Roman mystery rites (and associated Persian and Egyptian links). There is some validity in this approach as the word "mystery" itself comes from the Greek name for these rites/religions (see Collins and Oxford dictionaries). In my opinion this article should start off by concentrating on the Hellenic/Persian/Egyptian and Roman mysteries. And there is a lot of material available. (EB has 8 pages solely on this aspect) It is a subject in its own right because of its relevance to understanding the history of Hellenic period, Roman history and archaeology, etc. Only after the above aspect has been exhausted, the article should then graduate on to the interface between the Hellenic/Persian/Egyptian/Roman mystery rites and Judaism - and the various cults that developed there - e.g. the Gnostics, the Essenes, and (arguably) various precursors to Christianity, the "people of the Way"(?), Arianism(?), etc. (This part of the article could be rich with areas of controversy.) Early Christianity must have formed surrounded (and arguably influenced) by these diverse beliefs and practises (e.g. resurrection, baptism, churches (ecclesia), liturgy, hymns etc.) These two areas need to be focussed-on in order for the article to be regarded as authoritative. The article could then be broadened-out by acknowledging that "mystery" is the Greek name for a set of characteristic beliefs and practices whose origins go back to primitive tribal practices. And that these were not confined solely to the Hellenic sphere - but can be found world-wide. Perhaps at the end some mention could be made of Freemasonry (NOT a religion! - but at least its roots go half-way back to the Roman era), Wicca (perhaps, but I think it will be very difficult for anyone to find authoritative sources), Mormonism (too modern and contrived to qualify really), etc. etc. J0n0rth 15:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 23:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 02:22, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

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Christianity and Mystery Religions

I'm not an expert, but the section on Christianity utilizes only one ( seemingly apologetic ) source multiple times ( Bremmer ). I have read other texts that have briskly mentioned the actual metaphysical and ritual corrupting of Christianity ( in its eventual state sanctioned form ) by the popular mystery schools. DiogenesOfSinop (talk) 21:52, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The section isn't ideal because it was haphazardly put together. I hastily pasted into it some text that was originally written for mysteries of Isis but was more relevant to the mystery cults in general, and then another editor tried to remove redundancy between my text and what was there beforehand but ended up arranging it in a less-than-ideal way. But the section is not intended as apologetics, and its sources aren't either—well, I don't know about Nock, but Jan N. Bremmer is a highly respected present-day scholar of ancient religion, and Jaime Alvar's book on the mystery cults takes several sharp editorializing jabs at Christianity, which the translator's note implies were still more numerous in the original Spanish edition.

Unfortunately, writing a proper treatment of this topic would take time I don't have. But the fundamental point that it should convey is that there were points of commonality between Christianity and the mystery cults, but not because of simplistic copying from one cult to another. (The idea that mystery-cult influence "corrupted" Christianity is an old Protestant polemic, which Wikipedia shouldn't have anything to do with.)

The three recent major sources to address this issue (Bowden, Bremmer, and Alvar) all basically agree, though Alvar may express it best (pp. 420–421): "Each cult found the materials it required in the common trough of current ideas. Each took what it needed and adapted these elements according to its overall drift and design… Because they developed in a similar religio-cultural context, all these cults show clear parallels to one another, even though Christianity in particular refused to accept the fact… The simple transactional model of borrowings, which assumes a dominant cult as donor, and a junior one in no position to do more than passively receive, cannot do justice to the complexity of the real-world situation."

While the other two aren't as easily checked, Bremmer's book is open-access, so any editors who want to improve the article can easily make use of it. A. Parrot (talk) 08:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)