Is Christianity unique or not?

[Minimalist]

I shan't quibble.

---

Let's see Chad's head explode.  This is what Richard Carrier has to say on the subject.

To say Christianity was a mystery religion is not to say that Christianity
is exactly like any other mystery religion, any more than any mystery
religion was 'exactly like' any other. Often when scholars deny that
Christianity was a mystery religion, they real1y mean it wasn't just one of
the already-existing mystery religions superficially overhauled with Jewish
concepts. Christianity wasn't 'Osiris Cult 2.0'. Which is certainly true. But
that's all that anyone's evidence can prove. If instead we define a mystery
religion as any Hellenistic cult in which individual salvation was procured
by a ritual initiation into a set of 'mysteries', the knowledge of which and
participation in which were key to ensuring a blessed eternal life, then
Christianity was demonstrably a mystery religion beyond any doubt.
I f we then expand that definition to include a set of specific feat ures
held in common by all other mystery religions of the early Roman era, then
Christianity becomes even more demonstrably a mystery religion, so much so,
in fact, that it's impossible to deny it was deliberately constructed as
such. Even the earliest discernible form of Christianity emulates numerous
cultic features and concepts that were so unique to the Hellenistic mystery
cults that it is statistically beyond any reasonable possibility that they
all found their way into Christianity by mere coincidence. They formed a
coherent, logical and repeatedly replicated system of ideas in every other
mystery cult. It would be irrational to conclude the same wasn't so of Christianity.
Christianity cannot be understood apart from this fact. And any
theory of historicity that fails to account for it cannot be credible.72
That Christianity taught eternal salvation for the individual cannot be
denied. That it taught that this salvation was procured by initiation rituals
(such as undergoing baptism and partaking of the Eucharist) cannot be
denied. And that these rituals involved an induction into a set of'mysteries',
the knowledge of which and participation in which were key to ensuring
a blessed eternal life, is explicitly stated throughout the authentic epistles
of Paul-and nearly everywhere else in the NT. In Paul's letters essential
Christian doctrines are routinely called mysteries. 73 The NT evinces other
common vocabulary of mystery cult, used with the same peculiar connotations,
not just mysterion (divine secret), but teleios (mature [as higher
ranking initiates]), nepios (immature [as lower ranking initiates]), skene
(body [as discardable and unneeded for salvation]), epopt􀈩s (witness [to the
mysteries]), etc.74

Pg 96-97 of "On the Historicity of Jesus."  

Bold added to help out the dummies who will refuse to see it!

[JairCrawford]

Frankly, Id like to know more about these "hundreds" of dying and rising savior gods. I have heard of Mithras as the proverbial elephant in the room but not much information about others.

[Silver]

It's not "hundreds", and a simple Google search can provide you with the information.

http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-chris...ate-jesus/

[The Grand Nudger]

Frankly, Id like to know more about these "hundreds" of dying and rising savior gods. I have heard of Mithras as the proverbial elephant in the room but not much information about others.

How much time you got?


(it's a common motif, as common as the sun rising every morning - some of them have absolutely nothing to do with christianity, but they still show that worlds and centuries away...the narrative still rang true to the human mind.)

[JairCrawford]

It's not "hundreds", and a simple Google search can provide you with the information.

http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-chris...ate-jesus/

This is interesting. The main one being the description of Dionysus. I'm going to do more reading on that.

[Minimalist]

Frankly, Id like to know more about these "hundreds" of dying and rising savior gods. I have heard of Mithras as the proverbial elephant in the room but not much information about others.

And do try to remember that the earliest xtians did not deny the similarities but rather invented the absurd concept of Diabolical Mimicry as an excuse for why their godboy seemed so much like all the others.

http://www.holyblasphemy.net/diabolical-mimicry/

Conventional wisdom views Jesus Christ as being a novel and revolutionary person, whose message of love and kindness was rejected by the wicked Jews and Pagans, because they were evil and stupid. This is Christian propaganda of the worst kind, and absolutely untrue; the reason that many could not accept Jesus Christ, was because they saw him as an obvious copy of Pagan spiritual tradition. Those who argue against the historical Jesus point out that the Jesus Christ of the gospels didn’t say or do anything new – how could Jesus be the Word, Truth and Life, if his birth, death, resurrection, and every single detail of his earthly ministry was already recorded in earlier mythological traditions?

There is no question that these similarities exist, and were often pointed out to Christians of the first few centuries of the Church, because Christians were always defending themselves against them. In all of the collected literature of the early Church, however, the similarities between Jesus and other Pagan figures were never denied by Christians. Nor, as they are today, were they called accidents or coincidences. Instead, early Christians formulated the only possible explanation they could think of, an argument referred to as Diabolical Mimicry.

[JairCrawford]

Yes I know early Christianity polemicized against Mithraism as a satanic counterfeit.

Based on my reading (I'm doing some on Dionysus right now) I am definitely finding parallels, but I expected to. But said parallels aren't as broadly similar as that link above suggests^.

I can see a parallel with the Eucharist, and parallels with dying and rising (this goes way back in many many cultures), but as a concept of a savior, I have not come across any parallels yet. And this is the one I really don't get because I've heard it quoted by skeptics a lot but not much information to be found on it.

I see that Carier explains that this saving is through mysteries, but that is not Paul's message of salvation through Christ. Paul emphasizes grace. Paul's mysteries are written more as epiphanies on the Kingdom, and not as 'things you must experience to get into Heaven'.

[The Grand Nudger]

The notion of christ-as-savior actually comes from a dead christianity that asserted that Jesus was a god come to save us from OT Cunt-God.

Proto catholicism killed those motherfuckers for heretics.  Kept their books, though.  Useful.

[Angrboda]

[JairCrawford]

The notion of christ-as-savior actually comes from a dead christianity that asserted that Jesus was a god come to save us from OT Cunt-God.

Proto catholicism killed those motherfuckers for heretics.  Kept their books, though.  Useful.

Are you referring to certain non canonical gospels? Which ones? I don't remember any that reflect that theology. I know of the gnostics.

There is Marcion, now that I think of it, but unless you shift all of Paul's writings into the second century (which I am dubious of the viability of such a theory), then it doesn't really fit.