Where did Christianity come from?

 

Have you ever asked yourself; Where did Christianity come from?’, ‘What are the origins of Christianity?’ or ‘Where did all of this come from that became known as Christianity?’ Since Christianity was derived from Jewish tradition and the writings of the Old Testament, if you answered ‘the Bible’ to the initial question, then you’re on the right track. 

 

However, it is a track that is too often obstructed by the notion that Christianity came about as a result of prophesy from the Torah. In that case, the question on the origin of Christianity should be amended to ‘Where did ‘Jewishness’ come from?’ Was it born full-blown from the head of Yahweh or El? Did it suddenly occur when Abram cut off his foreskin? Was it taken by Moses directly from god His/Its-own-self on Mount Sinai? Was it fabricated from the dreams and hallucinations of Elijah or Daniel or one of the other prophets? Is the Torah, as the Word of God, made from whole-cloth without plagiarism or syncretism; without precedence or outside influence?

 

Another useful term to internalize: ‘syncretism’…

 

Syncretism is the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought. It is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion. 

 

The advancement in the trek towards further, fuller understanding of the origin of Christian dogma is blocked and the trekker way-laid by the general acceptance that god is a real thing; established belief-system. That belief system – both the Christian and Jewish variants – at its foundation, contends that all the matters of the Bible (at the least the Old Testament) are strictly and ultimately Jewish and handed down through the levels of heaven to the Chosen People. As in all matters of Faith, further critical examination of the claims presented in the Bible as the ‘Word of God’ is squelched by the dogma that ‘Thou shalt NOT question or challenge the Lord God!’ The Bible as a testament of anything of any value becomes a cul-de-sac and a dead-end for thought.

 

As the believe system of a tiny, desert-dwelling group, which were conquered by mighty empires throughout the ages (e.g. Babylonian, Egyptian, Greco/Roman, etc.) there mostly likely was a considerable amount of ‘syncretism’ involved in the development of the faith of the Hebrews. Syncretism is evident in every other philosophy or system of worship on the planet. It would be more than remarkable that the Hebrews would be a sole exception. It would be preposterous that it would be the case. Unless one were to give warrant the claim that the Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham – ‘the father of many’ - were the ‘Chosen of God’

 

Scholars such as Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, Robert Price and many others have devoted segments of their professional lives to the study of syncretism and the influences of one culture on another throughout history. Standing on the shoulders of these giants one is afforded the vista across the ages; connecting the dots which comprise the portrait of the human story. As is often said ‘Nothing can come from nothing’. So, it is with the entirety of all god-myths, fables, legends. They did not come from nothing; they came from earlier god-myths, legends and fables which permutated to fit a new audience, culture and time.

 

When the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians (Persians), they took many ideas from Zoroastrianism as well as the cultural history of the Persian culture; the concept of Satan as the evil counter-weight to god and the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example. There would most likely be no story of Noah if it weren’t for the epic of Gilgamesh which includes a massive flood guided by a god which chose a human to survive the flood. Richard Carrier and other scholars point out that during the Persian rule of the Hebrews, the Jewish cosmology changed to reflect the cosmological understanding of the Babylonian (Persian), Zoroastrians. The Hebrews sought to improve their god and their cosmology.

 

The Zoroastrian priests of Babylonia informed the Hebrews of the teachings of Ahura-Mazda, the imagined battle of Light against Dark. Before this, Lucifer – the Light-bringer – wasn’t the opponent of god Lucifer, was the ‘right-hand-man’ of Yahweh. Likewise, the concepts of eternal life, the redemption of an ephemeral soul in a heavenly paradise, Hell as punishment for evil-doers and the ‘apocalyptic’ destruction of the world by fire were all concepts syncretized and absorbed by Hebrew scholars and made to align somehow with Jewish traditional beliefs. The Hebrews took the dualistic tenets of Zoroastrianism and syncretized those tenets to fit the Jewish adherence to their henotheistic/monotheistic religion.

 

It should be easily understood that the Christian faith - and its variants - then took these tenets from the Hebrews who had syncretized Zoroastrian tenets and added them along with several other syncretized elements such as resurrection and dying and rising gods to the Old and New Testaments.

 

The Egyptians also had a great influence on Hebrew thought; many diasporas Jews lived in Alexandria where they learned of the myths of Osiris, Thoth, Set and the pantheon of the culture. Jews passed along bits and pieces of Egyptian culture to the people of Judea and the Temple priests in Jerusalem who syncretized those bits to suit the belief system of the Jewish Faith. Once again, the concepts of ‘eternal life’, ‘resurrection of the body’ and a ‘redeemer figure’ who saves the righteous from death were adapted to suit the evolving needs of Hebrew culture. These concepts - further syncretized - were then adapted by the Christians as articles of Faith.

 

Further, the Christ story borrowed heavily from the tales of Osiris, Horus and other myths of the Egyptian pantheon. Osiris was born of a virgin; his suffering death and resurrection were celebrated in annual mystery play around the vernal equinox just as the Christian Easter is celebrated. As referenced in the chapter on ‘Mystery Cults’, close parallels abound in the fictional life-stories of Osiris, Hercules, Adonis, Tammuz, Attis, Mithra, Zalmoxis, etc, and the Christian life-stories of the Man from Nazareth.

 

Myths regarding Lord Krishna – a major god of the Hindu pantheon - also are mirrored by the Christian tales. Krishna was born of a virgin and his birth was heralded by a star, for example. His death was sought by the local king, Kansa, just as the Judean king, Herod the Great, sought to kill the Christ-child. As the eighth avatar of Vishnu and Vishnu’s human incarnation, Krishna was the second entity in a Hindu Trinity; Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Later in his story, Krishna was crucified and is pictured in Indian art as hanging on a cross, arms out-stretched.

 

Curiouser and curiouser…

 

As coincidences pile up, the logician as well as the apologist would warn that correlation does not infer causation and that the plural of anecdote is not ‘evidence’. Nevertheless, the abundance of parallels and similarities between the authorized story of Christ, the religious cosmology inherited from the Israelites and the religions of Persia, Babylon, Egypt and India must be considered and pondered. One possible conclusion is that Judaism and therefore Christianity were cobbled together from bits and pieces of Zoroastrianism, Egyptian tenets and influence of the various mystery cults of the turn of the first millennium, CE. Another might be that humans and proto-humans invented stories to assuage their feeling of helpless ignorance of the world and embellished those stories as needed.