Work in Progress:

Jesus Mortal

jesusstatue

mystery

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.

 

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contents

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table of contents you're already looking at it

introduction for the inquisitive reader

biographical overview who he was and wasn't

 

afterlife not Jesus' concern

animal sacrifice bloodless religion

apocalypse did Jesus preach hellfire?

baptism sin wash for Jesus and others

beatitudes Jesus' words and others' words

beloved disciple witness for the un-gospel

bible scripture old and new

bishop the unjesus

body focus on the physical

Buddha Jesus' close kin

charity key Christian virtue and legacy of Jesus

The Da Vinci Code secret (and false) messages

divorce women's status

dreams convenient literary device

Elijah Jewish prophet with his own second coming

equality ancient source of modern egalitarianism

exorcist Jesus and demons

failure reinterpreting Jesus as a failure

faith from trust to blind belief

father Jesus on titles of honor

Francis of Assisi the most Christlike Christian

Gandhi the 20th century's most Christly holy man

Galilee Jesus' inauspicious homeland

gentiles Jesus' inadvertent audience

god how Jesus became god

golden rule key to Jesus' success

gospels competing accounts

heaven from sky to spiritual home

hell revenge fantasy

humanism Jesus' legacy

inerrant Christian treatment of scripture

Thomas Jefferson ethics of Jesus

Jewish guilt Christian libel

John's gospel the un-gospel

John the baptist, see John the washer

John the washer Jesus' apocalyptic mentor

Judaism libeled religion of Jesus

kingdom of god what Jesus promised

Lao Tzu poet of the cosmic way

logos jesus as the word of god

C. S. Lewis famous, flawed trilemma

little drummer boy Luke beats Matthew

logos Jesus as the divine word

LORD Yahweh transitioning to the one god of all

Luke's gospel the all-around best gospel

Mark's gospel the gospel that lost its point

Mary of Magdala women, visions, and sex

massacre of the innocents bloodshed starts early

Matthew's gospel best gospel for church reading

Mormon, see Joseph Smith

Moses Jewish lawgiver

Muhammad a prophet who got it right

mystery Orpheus and transubstantiation

oppression origin of Jesus' compassion

The Passion of the Christ Luke as buzzkill

Paul revealer of the revealer

private and public public Jesus and secret Christ

relativism the secret power of the golden rule

sacrifice Jesus' death and Christian sacrament

Albert Schweitzer Jesus as a failure

sheol dark pit of death

show Jesus' deeds as put-ons

slavery abolished by Jesus' efforts

Joseph Smith flesh-and-blood Jesus

Socrates secular Jesus

son of god on close terms with the man upstairs

soul, see body

synoptics three gospels that agree

temple center of Jewish religion

trinity unifying and divisive doctrinre

vision, see dreams

Yahweh, see LORD

Zoroaster Persian dualistic holy man