Comment on Anon studies Buddhism
nickiwest@lemmy.world 5 weeks agoThere are definitely elements of Christianity that mimic Greco-Roman (and other, older) mystery religions. Down to celebrating their deity’s birth at the same time and commemorating his death and rebirth by having followers share bread and wine.
My favorite theory of the origin of Christianity is that it was a Jewish attempt to mimic the mystery religions that were popular at the beginning of the Common Era.
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
The central point of mystery religions like the Eleusinian Mysteries is to cultivate the mystical experience. In judeochristian theology, that experience is considered sacrilegious. Some Jews let Jesus have it and became Christians, but nobody else is allowed. And the ones we call Jewish today didn’t even let that one guy have it.
The similarities between Christianity and Greco-Roman mysticism are only surface-level and were a marketing ploy to gain followers. In its core, Christianity is still Judaism, just packaged for export. Hence why two thousand years later, Christians are still quoting the Old Testament to justify bigotry, even though they claim to be followers of the guy who said “love each other as I have loved you”.
deathbird@mander.xyz 5 weeks ago
It feels to me like there’s an inconsistency between calling Christianity “Judaism for export”, and saying that it quotes the Old Testament for the purposes of bigotry. Or maybe it just feels antisemitic, even if not deliberately so. I mean it’s not like there isn’t bigotry in the New Testament, or radical acceptance in the Old.
But also I don’t think you can argue that Christianity is a mere extension of Judaism and at the same time argue that it shouldn’t utilize Jewish text.
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I didn’t say that “Christianity” itself quotes the Old Testament for purposes of bigotry, but that the fact that some Christians do even when said bigotry contradicts Jesus’s teachings, which is indisputable, is proof that Judaism is indeed packaged into Christianity in a certain form. And the point of view under which it can be called Judaism for export is really quite simple: Judaism considers Hebrews to be the Chosen People and everyone else is just out of luck. At best, you can marry into the religion. Jesus comes along and in a manner of speaking opens up access to the Hebrew God for anyone willing to follow him, regardless of their bloodline. Hence Judaism for export. Christianity quite literally took several Jewish ideas, such as their creation myth, and packaged it with a new doctrine that allowed it to be exported to other peoples.
Let’s not throw around words like antisemitism with such carelessness. There is bigotry in the Old Testament, such as the infamous Leviticus 20:13. Mentioning this is neither an attack on an entire race of people nor an implication that bigotry is somehow exclusive to Judaism, which just for the record, it most certainly is not. I’m trying to have a good faith conversation comparing different belief systems, and I don’t have the filthy habit of judging a human being’s worth from their religion, or worse, from their ethnicity.
deathbird@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
There’s bigotry in the New Testament too, and great wisdom in the Old. Neither is without merit or flaw. The idea that the NT is insufficient for finding bad ideas that one must trawl back into the OT for such things is fundamentally what I was critiquing.
I think it’s fair to say that some Jewish text is incorporated into Christianity, but the interpretation is generally not the same. Christians may see themselves as practicing a logical extension of the worship of the God of Abraham, but from a Jewish perspective they’re doing their own thing.
Objectively I think that holds. A rabbi could explain it better I’m sure, but Christianity is quasi-polytheistic, often iconoclastic, and importantly rejects pretty much all Jewish law, supplanting it with the particular interpretations of one rabbi who is also the son of God but is also God himself.