Initiation in Paul and John

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nightshadetwine
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Initiation in Paul and John

Post by nightshadetwine »

I think that Paul's description of baptism and the story of the raising of Lazarus in John are influenced by initiation rituals. I'll go through some of the specific aspects found in the ritual of baptism and the story of Lazarus that correlate with initiation rituals.

The Egyptian mortuary ritual may possibly be the first "mysteries". In Egyptian texts it was referred to as an "initiation into the mysteries of the netherworld". This mortuary initiation ritual likely influenced the mystery cult initiations, the ritual of baptism in Paul, and the story of Lazarus in John.

Diodorus Siculus in his Library of Histories (1.96.4–6) says:
Orpheus, for instance, brought from Egypt most of his mystic ceremonies, the orgiastic rites that accompanied his wanderings, and his fabulous account of his experiences in Hades. [...] and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the Righteous, and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many, which are figments of the imagination – all these were introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs.
So Diodorus Siculus says that the mystery cult initiations were brought from Egypt and were influenced by the Egyptian funeral customs. He seems to be correct.

"Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (Yale Egyptological Studies 3, 1989):
In the initiation of Lucius, the voyage through the underworld stands for a symbolic death, followed on the next morning by his resurrection as the sun-god: adorned with a palm wreath, he appears to the cheering crowd, just as the justified deceased at the judgement of the dead... No one doubts that the initiation rites of the Isis mysteries, as Apuleius ventures to describe them, are deeply rooted in the uniquely elaborated rituals and conceptions of Egyptian funerary religion. The same holds true for other initiation rituals. Seen from this aspect, a relationship between death and initiation is not disputed.
In Paul and John you find the concept of "perfection" and "completion". This concept is also found in the mystery cults and the Egyptian mortuary ritual. Through initiation you become "perfected" and "completed".

"John’s Counter-Symposium: 'The Continuation of Dialogue' in Christianity—A Contrapuntal Reading of John’s Gospel and Plato’s Symposium" by George van Kooten (Brill, 2019):
Apart from the intermediary character and duality of love, Diotima’s speech also brings out another aspect of love that is echoed in John’s Gospel, namely the colouring of love in the tones of initiation into the mysteries. According to Diotima, the successive stages of spiritual generation constitute a progressive initiation into the mysteries, an initiation that takes the form of a gradual ascent on “the ladder of love,” from physical love to spiritual love, at the end of which—as we shall see shortly—awaits the full attainment of purity, contemplation of the divine unity, truth, and immortality. With an allusion to the difference between lower and higher mysteries in the contemporary mystery cults, the higher levels of this ladder are seen as “the final perfection (i.e., initiation, τὰ τέλεα) and full vision”—that is, “the highest mysteries”...

The mystery cults Plato refers to here are most likely the mystery cults that were especially well known in Athens: the Eleusinian mysteries at Eleusis, one of the demes of Athens, ca. 21 kilometres west of Athens and connected with it via “the Sacred Way” (Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.36.3), with its sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone/Kore, which was the center of—as Kevin Clinton concisely puts it—“the annual festival of the mysteries, which attracted initiates from the entire Greek-speaking world.” As I will now indicate, this language of “perfection” and “vision,” as expressed in the phrase τὰ τέλεα καὶ ἐποπτικά (“the final perfection and full vision”) and denoting “the highest mysteries,” is also present in John’s Gospel. Firstly, with regard to the language of perfection, in his final prayer at the conclusion of the last symposium, Jesus states his intention to his divine Father, that his pupils “will be perfected into one” by experiencing the same divine love that the Father has for Jesus... As those who ascend the ladder of love in Plato’s Symposium become perfected—that is, initiated into the mysteries—so the pupils at the last symposium are also perfected into one, and into the divine love...

In the Johannine corpus, all of these instances—of a perfecting into one that conveys the experience of comprehensive divine love, and of the perfection of divine love in those who love—seem to resonate with the notion of perfection through initiation into the higher mysteries of love on the ladder of love. This combination of perfection and love is altogether absent from the Synoptic Gospels. Is it a coincidence that Lazarus, who is described to Jesus as “him whom you love” (11:3), is also ambiguously described as “the one who has finished” (ὁ τετελευτηκώς; 11:39)—meaning “the one who has finished life, who has died,” “the deceased”—but, in a sense, only apparently so, because he “has fallen asleep” and needs to be awoken from his sleep, as Jesus says (11:11–14), and thus seems to be the one who is initiated into death and resurrection? Hence the beloved pupil (inasmuch as he seems to be identical with Lazarus) is not expected to die again (21:21–23), and he is also the first who, seemingly from his own experience (if he is indeed identical with Lazarus), understands upon seeing the empty tomb (and especially because he notices the separate position of the σουδάριον, the facial covering that he himself had worn when he walked out of his tomb; 20:7, cf. 11:44) that Jesus has been brought to life again (20:8). Consequently, there seems to be a wordplay between “being perfected” or “initiated” (τετελειωμένος; 17:23) and “having finished” or “died” (τετελευτηκώς; 11:39), between τελειόω and τελευτάω.

A similar wordplay between τέλειος / τέλεος (“perfect,” “initiated”), τελευτάω (“to finish,” “to come to an end”), and τὸ τέλος (“the end”) is made in Diotima’s speech, as the final perfection (τὰ τέλεα; 210a) and full vision of the highest mysteries consist in the fact that those who are initiated into them and ascend the ladder of love “end” their former forms of knowledge and love, “come to an end,” “issue in,” and are thus fully initiated into the highest form of knowledge and love, which focuses on the very essence of beauty itself... A similarly playful combination of cognate forms such as τελέω, τελειόω, τελευτάω, and τὸ τέλος also occurs in the Gospel of John, not only with regard to the pupils who are perfected and initiated into one, and with regard to Lazarus, but also with respect to Jesus himself: he loves his pupils “till the end” (εἰς τέλος), as the author notes in his description of the last symposium (13:1), and it is at this symposium that he talks about his pupils’ perfection and initiation into one (17:23) before he finishes his life by exclaiming, again in marked difference from the Synoptic Gospels: “It has been finished, it has been perfected” (Τετέλεσται; 19:30). Both Lazarus’s and Jesus’s deaths are described in the ambiguous terminology of finishing, perfection, and initiation, and thus understood as initiations into a death that is followed by a resurrection, just as in the mystery religions. It seems that Jesus’s final exclamation, “It has been finished” (Τετέλεσται), signals the end of such an initiation, thus putting the event of his death on a par with the place of initiation at the Eleusinian mysteries, which—as becomes clear in Plutarch’s description of the building of the Eleusinian sanctuary—is called a τελεστήριον, a place for initiation...

This is by no means the only allusion to the Eleusinian mysteries in John’s Gospel. Just before his death, at the beginning of the last festival that he attends in the Jerusalem temple, it is the very Greeks who wish to see Jesus whom he answers with a reference to his approaching death, cast in a hidden allusion to the Eleusinain mysteries, which revolve around the contemplation of an ear of wheat that was seen as the fruit of the resurrection of Aphrodite/ Kore:56 “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (12:24)... What the Gospel of John reveals is that its author follows Diotima’s speech even in its use of initiation terminology and its reference to the Eleusinian mysteries. Whereas the annual festival of the Eleusinian mysteries at the τελεστήριον of the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone/Kore at Athens attracted religious seekers from the entire Greek-speaking world, the author of John’s Gospel mirrors and inverts this festival in the annual Passover festival at the Jerusalem temple, which is visited by Greeks who seek Jesus and see the Eleusinian mysteries accomplished in him, whose very body is a temple (2:19–21) and a place of initiation (τελεστήριον; 19:30).
Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (Yale University Press, 2009), Luke Timothy Johnson:
Two cultic activities of early assemblies would easily be recognized by members of Greco-Roman religious associations. The first was baptism, the ritual of initiation that marked entry into the community. As an initiatory ritual, it was notable primarily for its simplicity and its singularity; in the Mysteries, initiations tended to be complex and multiple. For Jewish believers, baptismal washing for males would represent an addition to the Jewish ritual of circumcision; for Gentile converts, baptism replaced circumcision (Col 2:11-12)-a circumstance that also could be the occasion for conflict. The second cultic activity was the meal. Some version of "breaking bread in houses" (Acts 2:42, 46) that Paul calls the "Lord's Banquet" (kyriakon deipnon; 1 Cor 11:20) was celebrated in the gathered assembly, probably on the day of resurrection, the first day of the week (1 Cor 16:2; see Rev 1:10). The rituals of initiation and meals were occasions for enacting the presence of the risen Lord in the assembly and for remembering the words and deeds of Jesus in the context of his continuing powerful presence... As he reports the risen Lord saying to him when Paul asked to be freed from the stake in his flesh, "My grace [charis-that is, "benefit"] is sufficient for you, for [my] power [dynamis] is brought to perfection [teleitai] in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9). ...

Paul's response to those Colossians who, after their baptism into Christ, pursued further "perfection" or "maturity" through circumcision, asceticism, and visions-all instinctive to Religiousness A as found in Greco-Roman religion makes the role of thinking even more explicit. Their maturity does not result from adding on but from digging deeper. Paul wants them to be filled with "recognition of [God's] will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding" (Col 1:9). To what end? That they might "walk worthily of the Lord in everything pleasing, bearing fruit in every good deed and growing in the recognition of God" (1:10). Paul connects this growth in knowledge and in moral behavior precisely with the divine dynamis in which they had become participants... Paul again argues morally from their religious experience of baptism, in which they were "buried together with him" and were "raised with him" through faith (Col 2:12). If then they died with Christ (2:20) and if they were raised with him (3:1), that ritual pattern should determine their moral behavior: they should put to death all modes of vice and "put on" the new humanity, resisting all impulses that drive them to rivalry and competition and instead showing toward each other the same compassion that was shown them (3:12-13). And over all these, Paul says, they should put on agape, which is the bond of perfection (teleiotetos, or maturity)... Paul's language of "perfection" echoes that used for the Mysteries; see Phil 1:6; p2; Gal 3=3; 2 Cor 8:6, 11; Rom 15:28; and R. S. Ascough, "The Completion of a Religious Duty: The Background of 2 Cor 8:1-15," New Testament Studies 42 (1996): 584-599.
Mystery Cults, Theatre and Athenian Politics: A Reading of Euripides' Bacchae and Aristophanes' Frogs (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), Luigi Barzini:
Initiation (τελετή) from τελεῖν (accomplish, finish), originally meant ‘accomplishment’, ‘performance’. The term is characteristically used to denote initiation in the mysteries, and in plural to mystic rites practised at initiation, such as the festival accompanied by mystic rites. This term covers a wide semantic field. Meanings include ‘initiation in the mysteries’ but also ‘accomplishment’, ‘fulfilment’, ‘perfection’ and ‘completion’, terms that express the spiritual weight that mystery initiation had for the Greeks in terms of the spiritual state of the individual.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann:
The Egyptians wanted to overcome death in both kinds of time, and to do this, they relied on both Re and Osiris... To achieve this goal of Osirian continuation, they needed embalming, mummification, and, above all, the Judgment of the Dead. The concept of completion/perfection, Egyptian nfrw, not only had connotations of beauty, perfection, and imperishability but also, and above all, connotations of virtue and righteousness, of moral perfection and conformance with the norms of maat. From djet-time, there arose a moral perspective. Only good could continue unchangeably; evil, bad, uncleanliness, and imperfection were given over to perishability. The moral qualities of a result, that is, its conformance to maat, decided its imperishability... The Judgment of the Dead represented an extreme spiritualizing and ethicizing of the mythical concept of vindicating the deceased against death... The guilt of the deceased was that which stood in the way of his transformation into the eternal form of a “transfigured ancestral spirit.” It was the Egyptian form of the Pauline concept, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)... He who is vindicated in the Judgment of the Dead will “stride freely like the lords of eternity,” he will be accepted among the gods. He will thus not only enjoy continuance on earth but also immortality in the next world... This was the moment when the process of life turned into the unchangeable and indestructible permanence of Wennefer [= Osiris], the “completed lasting one”... There is good reason to think that ancient Egyptian burial customs lived on in the Hellenistic Isis mysteries, though in the latter case, they were enacted and interpreted not as a burial of the deceased but as an initiation of the living.
Justification or being "justified" is important in both Paul and the Egyptian mortuary ritual.

Romans 5:
Results of Justification:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God... Much more surely, therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God... Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all... But law came in, so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so grace might also reign through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 8:
And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
1 Cor. 6:11:
And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
"Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3, 1989:
"Justification" is the central concept of Egyptian funerary religion in which all aspects of the "overcoming of death" and of salvation in the next world come together... The deceased must justify himself: with respect to the enemy (as the personification of death)... [and] with respect to the divine prosecutor and judge, in whose presence the deceased must answer for his conduct on earth and prove himself worthy of eternal salvation.
Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Smith:
In the same way that Osiris was restored to life and declared free of wrongdoing, so all who died hoped to be revived and justified... As in earlier periods, those who passed the test of judgement were declared ‘justified' and accepted into the following of Osiris...transfiguring them and endowing them with a new eternal form. This transfiguration was accomplished in the same manner as before, by means of special spells known as sakhu or ‘glorifications’... In the same way that justification and acceptance into the company of Osiris’s followers offered a means of social reintegration for those whom death had cut off from friends and relations, the mummification rites restored the physical integrity of their bodies, transfiguring them and endowing them with a new eternal form... the concepts of mummification and justification were closely linked.
Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism (Walter de Gruyter, 2011), David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Oyvind Norderval, Christer Hellholm:
The ritual [baptism] is said to have cleansed the ritual participants from the state of being that existed prior to the ritual. By means of the ritual they have acquired a state of purity categorically different from the one that characterised their previous state of being, i.e. they have been transferred from a state of impurity to a state of purity. It is certainly not coincidental that the cleansing metaphor precedes the next two metaphors which serve to make it clear to the recipients that the Corinthian Christ-believers have been initiated into a new form of being. They have not only been set apart from the world which is ultimately what the metaphor of sanctification implies but due to their justification in the name of the Lord Jesus and by means of the spirit of God they have also entered into a new legal state before God, i.e. they have been justified or acquitted of their previous guilt. In order to obtain justification, however, it is essential that the ritual participants have been transferred to a state in which they have been made ritually prepared for the acquisition of the justification. We do not need to enter into the discussion whether Paul in 1 Cor 6:11 is quoting from a pre-Pauline tradition or not. It suffices to note that in one of the earliest strands of what later became known as Christianity we find an amalgamation of elements pertaining to rituals of purification as well as rituals of initiation. Apparently, the two do not exclude each other... In fact I will argue that a ritual of initiation cannot be separated from the element of cleansing irrespective of whether that element is merely present in the form of a metaphorical formulation or as an independent, preparatory rite of purification... Although a rite of purification may not be part of the ritual of initiation per se, it does play a prominent role in the preparatory rites that precede Lucius’ initiation into the mysteries of Isis as recounted in the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass by Apuleius... It is a prevalent phenomenon frequently found in connection with rituals of initiation that a rite of cleansing or purification is somehow related to it.
In the quote above it says: "In fact I will argue that a ritual of initiation cannot be separated from the element of cleansing irrespective of whether that element is merely present in the form of a metaphorical formulation or as an independent, preparatory rite of purification". The water purification ritual cleanses the initiate of sin and corruption. In order for there to be a rebirth there usually has to be a purification of some sort, usually by water.

Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann:
This first phase [of the Egyptian mortuary ritual] was carried out in the name of purification. Everything “foul,” that is, everything perishable that could represent a danger to the goal of achieving an eternal form, was removed from the body. For this reason, in the few representations of the embalming ritual, this phase is represented as a purifying bath. The corpse lay “on” (that is, in) a basin, and water was poured over it. The Egyptian word for such a basin is Sj, “lake,” and such a “lake” is mentioned repeatedly in the accompanying spells, some of which we shall cite in chapter 5... The Coffin Texts give us an unexpected insight into the ritual enactment of the Judgment of the Dead in the form of liturgical recitations. They closely connect the concept of vindication with the process of embalming and mummification. Guilt, accusation, enmity, and so forth are treated as forms of impurity and decay—as, so to say, immaterial but harmful substances—that must be eliminated so as to transpose the deceased into a condition of purity that can withstand decay and dissolution. Vindication was moral mummification... The guilt of the deceased was that which stood in the way of his transformation into the eternal form of a “transfigured ancestral spirit.” It was the Egyptian form of the Pauline concept, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)... What mattered was whether he had lived righteously, already judging himself during life against the norms of the next world.
Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001), John H. Taylor:
The first stage was the purification of the corpse by washing... Cleansing of the corpse before mummification was doubtless a practical necessity, but the ritual aspects of the washing were perhaps of greater significance. According to Egyptian belief, water held important purifying and life giving qualities. Each dawn was a repetition of the original birth of the sun god from the watery chaos of Nun... Hence lustration came to be closely associated with rebirth...A ritual purification was necessary before the dead king could ascend to heaven in the manner of his divine model the sun god... In some of the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (5th to 6th Dynasties) the dead king is identified with Osiris, and thereby was believed to experience rebirth just as the murdered god had done.
A Journey Through the Beyond: The Development of the Concept of Duat and Related Cosmological Notions in Egyptian Funerary Literature (ISD LLC, Feb 1, 2022), Silvia Zago:
Moreover, at least some of these passages mentioning the lake(s) of the Duat associate these with the sun and the eastern horizon, near which such lakes may have been imagined to be located. In virtue of this connection, the Duat may be surmised to assume the connotation of a liminal, transitional place, where the sun and the king get cleansed before being ready to reappear on the horizon every morning and to rise in the sky. Ultimately, (ritual) purity was a necessary condition for being reborn, and for this reason it is often connected with the notion of the (initiatory) journey of the deceased through the Duat. The association between Osiris and water in a context of purification, renewal, and rebirth also had a long tradition in ancient Egyptian (funerary) literature.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day edited by Eva Von Dassow:
Every evening the aged sun entered the underworld and travelled through it, immersed in Nun, only to emerge at dawn as Khepri, the newborn sun. Thus, the waters of Nun had a rejuvenating, baptismal quality essential to rebirth.

So every night the sun god dies, enters the primordial waters of the netherworld, and is reborn/resurrected. Egyptian water purification rituals were usually associated with the sun god.

Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Dallas Museum of Art, 1993), Sue D'Auria and Peter Lacovara:
The renewal, that mysterious process that Kristensen’ called life from death, came about outside the created world in the unfathomable depth and darkness of the primeval waters (Nun) that surround this world. It is in that mysterious space that the deceased could live again. One sun-hymn reads: "How beautiful is thy shining forth in the horizon We are in renewal of life. We have entered into Nun. He has renovated (us) to one who is young for the first time. The (one) has been stripped off, the other put on." The last sentence has been interpreted to mean, “The old man is cast off and the new man is put on."
Paul's idea of baptism isn't just a water purification ritual, it's also a reenactment of the story of Jesus's death and resurrection. This reenactment of a deity's death and resurrection or journey to the underworld and back is found in the Egyptian mortuary ritual and the mystery cults.

Cosmology & Eschatology in Jewish & Christian Apocalypticism (Brill, 1996), Adela Yarbro Collins:
Two sayings attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic tradition seem to use the word baptism metaphorically to mean death, especially the death of Jesus. In these sayings, the operative symbol has shifted from cleansing that leads to a pure and holy life to death that leads to new life. These sayings are close to Paul's interpretation of baptism in Romans 6, one of the most important passages on baptism in the NT... In Romans 6: 1-14 the ritual of baptism is explicitly interpreted as a reenactment of the death and resurrection of Jesus in which the baptized person appropriates the significance of that death for him or herself. In this understanding of the ritual, the experience of the Christian is firmly and vividly grounded in the story of the death and resurrection of Christ. These qualities of reenactment of a foundational story and the identification of the participant with the protagonist of the story are strikingly reminiscent of what is known about the initiation rituals of certain mystery religions, notably the Eleusinian mysteries and the Isis mysteries.
Corresponding Sense: Paul, Dialectic, and Gadamer (Brill, 2001), Brook W. R. Pearson:
Following some of Wagner's critics, my assessment is that the evidence does indeed suggest that Paul's interpretation of baptism in Rom. 6:1-11 is parallel to elements in the mystery religions, especially the Isis cult, which was located in many different Hellenistic centres throughout the Greco-Roman world. In my opinion, the most important element of this similarity is the language of identification utilized by Paul of the individual Christian's 'sharing' (Rom. 6:5) in the activities of Jesus by participation in a ritual reenactment of Christ's death. As we shall see, the language used in Romans 6 to describe this participation, in addition to the similarities of Paul's equation of baptism and death with the similar equation in the Osiris myth, clearly evokes a connection with Rom. 1:23, and stands in developed contrast to typical Jewish use of similar language... Paul uses the example of Christ's death and resurrection, linking the presuppositions of this experience through baptism: 'Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life'... The language of identification and imitation in this passage is not reminiscent of Jewish ideas—Jews were not called to participate in ritual so as to identify with the actions of Yahweh, nor to imitate their God, but rather to follow his Law. Other cults of the ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds, however, contain many different levels of such identificatory phenomena.
"Transferring a ritual: Paul’s interpretation of baptism in Romans 6", Hans Dieter Betz, Paul in His Hellenistic Context (A&C Black, 1994), edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen:
Baptism 'into Christ' means, therefore, being incorporated into the body of Christ and having some form of union with Christ. These notions, to be sure, must be compared with initiation rituals as we find them especially in Hellenistic mystery religions. Of course, careful distinctions have to be made between these mystery cults, since each of them is characterized by its own features. Different deities require different initiations. And yet, there are common features, too... We were able to trace the history of baptism from John the Baptist, for whom it was a sacrament of penitence, to an early Christian conversion ritual, and finally to Paul, who in his last letter, following the Corinthian crisis, interprets baptism as the Christian initiation ritual... Interpreting baptism as the Christian initiation ritual then also explains why there are so many analogies to other Hellenistic initiations, especially those from the mystery religions.
Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians (Mohr Siebeck, 2015), Courtney Friesen:
Like Judaism, Christianity was at times variously conflated with the religion of Dionysus. Indeed, the numerous similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac myth and ritual make thematic comparison particularly fitting: both Jesus and Dionysus are the offspring of a divine father and human mother (which was subsequently suspected as a cover-up for illegitimacy); both are from the east and transfer their cult into Greece as part of its universal expansion; both bestow wine to their devotees and have wine as a sacred element in their ritual observances; both had private cults; both were known for close association with women devotees; and both were subjected to violent deaths and subsequently came back to life… While the earliest explicit comments on Dionysus by Christians are found in the mid-second century, interaction with the god is evident as early as Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (ca. 53 CE). The Christian community founded by Paul in Corinth was comprised largely of converts from polytheism (1 Cor 12:2) in a city that was home to many types of Greco-Roman religion. At Isthmia, an important Corinthian cult site, there was a temple of Dionysus in the Sacred Glen. Perhaps most important for the development of Christianity in Corinth are mystery cults. Not only does Paul employ language that reflects mystery cults in several places, his Christian community resembles them in various ways, They met in secret or exclusive groups, employed esoteric symbols, and practiced initiations, which involved identification with the god’s suffering and rebirth. Particularly Dionysiac is the ritualized consumption of wine in private gatherings (1 Cor 11:17-34).
In ancient Egyptian religion, there were two deities that were associated with salvation from death - Osiris and the sun god. They were the two deities that experienced and conquered death and they became closely associated with each other. During the mortuary ritual, the deceased person would be ritually identified with these two deities. The deceased would share in their resurrections.

Following Osiris (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Smith:
However, there was one important difference between these gods and Osiris. Unlike them, he had triumphed over death, and the ability to do likewise could be conferred upon his followers. The colophon of Pyramid Text Spell 561B states that whoever worships Osiris will live forever, showing that already at this date those who devoted themselves to the god might expect to share in his resurrection... Osiris is one of the few ancient Egyptian deities of whom it is possible to write even the outline of a biography. More personal details about him are extant than about any other god or goddess. This is not simply an accident of preservation. The Egyptians considered some deities important because of their impersonal attributes and powers, the roles they were believed to play in the maintenance of the cosmos. But the crucial significance of Osiris for them lay in what he personally had done and undergone. His life, death, and resurrection were perceived to be particularly momentous in relation to their own fates, and thus they figure more prominently in the textual record than do accounts of the exploits of other divinities. Moreover, because so much importance was invested in the fact that these were events actually experienced by a real individual, and not merely abstractions, personal detail was essential in recounting them.
Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001), John H. Taylor:
In some of the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (5th to 6th Dynasties) the dead king is identified with Osiris, and thereby was believed to experience rebirth just as the murdered god had done. In the First Intermediate Period, this path to new life became available to all Egyptians, each of whom could be identified with Osiris... Since gods such as Ra and Osiris were immortal and were repeatedly rejuvenated, the deceased, through a close identification with them, could hope to retake of endless rebirths as well... In the ritualised process of mummification the deceased was identified with Osiris... The state of existence which the deceased aimed to reach in the beyond was called akh... In this context it can be translated as 'transfigured being'... Those who had lived wicked lives were denied the blessed state, and were condemned to a second death, total extinction, after suffering horrible punishments.
The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs (Harvard University Press, 2002) Jan Assmann:
The spread of the religion of Osiris and, inextricably bound up with it, the emergence of a universal Judgment of the Dead constituted the most significant new paradigm in the Egyptian history of meaning... The idea of the Judgment of the Dead is crucial both to Osirian religion itself and to the new semiology of the Middle Kingdom... Every dead person hoped to find similar vindication after death and to follow Osiris into the realm of immortality... In the context of the Osirian doctrine of self-justification, autobiographical discourse rose to spectacular new heights and confirmed the emphasis on the inner man, virtue, and character - in short, the heart... The Egyptian concept of the verdict passed on the dead bears some comparison to the early Christian notion of divine judgment as set out in chapter 25 of the Gospel According to St. Matthew. Instead of the Egyptian tribunal, the gospel offers the Last Judgment, instead of individual lifetimes the lifetime of the world; the "House of Osiris" into which the vindicated Egyptian dead were admitted is replaced by the Kingdom of God. And here too, admission to everlasting bliss depends upon the dead person's compliance with the norms of human fellowship; in the hereafter, those transgressions not susceptible of retribution on earth are accorded the ultimate sanction of eternal damnation.
A Journey Through the Beyond: The Development of the Concept of Duat and Related Cosmological Notions in Egyptian Funerary Literature (ISD LLC, Feb 1, 2022), Silvia Zago:
It is only with the appearance of the Pyramid Texts, where this god [Osiris] is associated with the deceased king and treated as an important model for his afterlife aspirations (along with the sun god), that the Osirian doctrine assumes a major role in Egyptian religious beliefs. Texts stemming from nonroyal ritual and funerary contexts, on the other hand, suggest that the Osirian element was more explicit and likely deep-rooted from early-on. The belief that the deceased entered the realm of Osiris became more widespread from the reign of Djedkare Izezi, from whose pyramid temple comes the first representation of the god. By this time, the figure of the god Osiris had received some degree of canonization (as the Pyramid Texts exemplify) and had become a paradigm of kingship, intended to ensure both the claim to the earthly throne of the new Horus-king and a destiny of eternal life for the deceased Osiris-king... Osiris and Re together play a central role in this corpus, as far as the eschatological expectations of the pharaoh are concerned, granting the survival and successful rebirth of the later in any possible way and in any possible otherworldly scenario.
Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Dallas Museum of Art, 1993), Sue D'Auria and Peter Lacovara::
The Egyptians believed that, although life is transitory, it could be preserved through renewal. In ritual this mythical truth was reversed, and life renewed by preservation... The underlying idea was that life can only exist, be renewed, and be regained through death. Not only human beings, but also such gods as Re and Osiris were mortal: They had life in the sense that they had died and arisen from the dead.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005) Jan Assmann:
We now understand why the embalming ritual had to portray the corpse not just as a lifeless body but as a dismembered one... The myth dramatized this condition, telling how Seth slew his brother Osiris, tore his body into pieces, and scattered his limbs throughout all of Egypt. In the embalming ritual, this myth was played out for each deceased person, even if he had in no way been killed and dismembered but rather had died a peaceful, natural death... In Egyptian mortuary belief, Osiris was the prototype of every deceased individual. Everyone would become Osiris in death and be endowed with life by Isis... With his public vindication against his enemy—that is, death as assassin—Osiris regains both rulership and life, for in this image of death, these two things are closely related. The crown that Osiris regains symbolizes eternal life and ultimate salvation from death... The ordinary deceased was a follower of Osiris, was called Osiris and compared to him, and became a member of his following. He came into possession not only of life but also of personal status and recognition. He bore the name of the god, along with his own titles and his personal name, as well as the epithet “justified/vindicated.” He smote Seth, which meant that he had conquered death... In the Hellenistic Isis religion, the goddess embodied her adherents’ hope for eternal life, and she brought a great deal from her Egyptian past to this role. It was she who had awakened Osiris to new life through the power of her magical spells. And since, according to Egyptian belief, every individual became an Osiris by means of the mortuary rituals, his hope for immortality depended on Isis as well... In accordance with the image of death as mystery, the deceased not only crossed over, or returned, to the netherworld, he was initiated into it. In their rubrics, many spells of the Book of the Dead identify themselves as initiations into the mysteries of the netherworld... In any event, the Egyptian texts say one thing clearly enough: that all rituals, and especially those centered on Osiris and the sun god, were cloaked in mystery. And it is also clear that there is a relationship between initiation into these (ritual) mysteries and life in the next world.
Compare the above quote to Colossians 2:12:
And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with [Him] through [your] faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.
And Romans 6:
Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin.
So the Egyptian mortuary ritual was a reenactment of the death and resurrection of Osiris. The deceased person was depicted as being killed and dismembered just like Osiris, and raised to new life just like Osiris. In the ritual of baptism Christians are said to be crucified and killed like Jesus, and then raised to new life like Jesus. It's the same concept.

“Resurrection and the Body in Graeco-Roman Egypt,” Mark J. Smith in The Human Body in Death and Resurrection (Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 2009), eds. T. Nicklas, F.V. Reiterer, and J. Verheyden:
Three basic conceptions underlie all ancient Egyptian beliefs and practices concerning the afterlife. This applies to the Graeco-Roman Period as well as earlier periods of Egyptian history. The first conception is that of the continued survival of those who die as physical or corporeal entities. The second is that of the existence of a hierarchy of divinities and other immortal beings into which the deceased hope to be integrated. The third conception is one of a causal relationship whereby the position of the deceased within this hierarchy, and indeed whether they are admitted to it or not, is determined by their conduct while alive... In obtaining justice against Seth, Osiris regained full life, since his death was an injustice. By his justification, he gained total mastery over death. In the same way that Osiris was restored to life and declared free of wrongdoing, so all who died hoped to be revived and justified, as a result of the mummification process and its attendant rituals... Here we have the answer to our question, how could the deceased hope to emulate that god? By being glorified or transfigured in the same manner as he was.
Osiris was the first to experience and conquer death so his followers hoped to be "glorified" or "transfigured" just like him. Christians have the same relationship with Jesus. They hope to be resurrected in "glorified" spiritual bodies just like Jesus.

Paul says Christians are one body in the spirit of Christ.

1 Cor. 12:
One Body with Many Members

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
You also find this concept in the Bacchae. The cult of Dionysus was also know for bringing together people of different ethnicities, classes, ages, and genders. It's interesting that in the above quote Paul says we were all made to drink of one spirit. Drinking wine was one of the ways Dionysus's followers experienced him.

Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains (Prometheus, 1994), R. Joseph Hoffmann:
Paul's use of body imagery in his first letter to the Corinthians and the theme of spiritual communion through the incorporation into "the body of Christ"(1 Cor. 12.27f.) is familiar from the language of the Dionysiac mysteries: "Blessed is he who hallows his life in the worship of God, he whom the spirit of God possesseth, who is one with those who belong to the holy body of God" (Euripides, Bacchae 73-75). Pagan critics of the early movement pointed to the fact that Christians addressed Jesus in terms equivalent to those used by the bacchantes (Dionysus' worshipers). Jesus was kyrios(lord) and lysios, redeemer. In the Dionysiac cult, the god redeemed adherents from a world of darkness and death by revealing himself in ecstatic visions and providing glimpses of a world-to-come.
Paul says that the "perishable must put on imperishability".

1 Corinthians 15:
What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable... For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law."
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann:
The Egyptians wanted to overcome death in both kinds of time, and to do this, they relied on both Re and Osiris... To achieve this goal of Osirian continuation, they needed embalming, mummification, and, above all, the Judgment of the Dead. The concept of completion/perfection, Egyptian nfrw, not only had connotations of beauty, perfection, and imperishability but also, and above all, connotations of virtue and righteousness, of moral perfection and conformance with the norms of maat. From djet-time, there arose a moral perspective. Only good could continue unchangeably; evil, bad, uncleanliness, and imperfection were given over to perishability. The moral qualities of a result, that is, its conformance to maat, decided its imperishability... The Judgment of the Dead represented an extreme spiritualizing and ethicizing of the mythical concept of vindicating the deceased against death... The guilt of the deceased was that which stood in the way of his transformation into the eternal form of a “transfigured ancestral spirit.” It was the Egyptian form of the Pauline concept, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)...
"Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3, (1989):
The embalming process, to which it refers, is related to the topic of initiation in manifold ways. It is conceived not so much as a preservation of the corpse, but rather as its transfiguration to a new body: one "filled with magic," the perishable substances of which have been replaced by everlasting ones, resting in the mummy-cover as if it were a kind of magic garment.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain... What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
In both Paul and John the planting and sprouting of a seed is used as a metaphor for resurrection which you also find in the Egyptian mortuary cult and the mystery cults. In John 12:24 Jesus says: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”

Ancient Egyptian Magic (William Morrow Paperbacks, 1998), Bob Brier:
One of the most interesting magical objects in this room was a wooden mold in the shape of Osiris. This mold was lined with linen and filled with rich topsoil deposited by the Nile. Seeds, mostly for grain, were planted in the topsoil. When they sprouted, they would be a green, living representation for Osiris, symbolizing resurrection. Tutankhamen had sought to identify himself with Osiris in that way and bring about his resurrection.
All Things Ancient Egypt: An Encyclopedia of the Ancient Egyptian World (ABC-CLIO, 2019), Lisa K. Sabbahy:
Osiris beds were placed in tombs. These consisted of a hollow frame in the shape of the mummiform Osiris that was filled with earth in which seeds were sown. These would have then grown after the tomb was sealed, actualizing the resurrection of Osiris and, hence, that of the deceased.
In John, Lazarus is mourned by two sisters, is said to be "asleep" but will be awakened, and is bound with strips of cloth similar to a mummy.

John 11:
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill... After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days... he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
"The Baptismal Raising of Lazarus: A New Interpretation of John 11", Bernhard Lang, Novum Testamentum 58 (2016):
Though well hidden, the theme of baptism informs the whole story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11)... Ritually, the person being baptised is pushed into the realm of death, so that he can emerge to a new life... Unfortunately, our ancient sources on mystery religions tell us very little about how the “second birth” was ritually staged, for initiates were required to remain silent about it. Nevertheless, some hints found in ancient sources give an indication. The magic papyrus of Paris provides a good example. Around eleven o’clock in the morning and in the presence of the magician, the candidate is supposed to mount the roof of a house and spread out a piece of cloth. Naked he places himself upon it. His eyes are blindfolded, the entire body wrapped like a mummy... When this occurs, possibly in the form of a draught of air felt by the candidate, the latter stands up. He dons a white garment, burns incense and again utters a spell. The rites completed, he descends from the roof. Now he knows that he has acquired immortality. Similar rites and symbolic representations of death and resurrection can be found in all ancient mystery cults. “When the candidate of the mysteries of Isis applies for initiation, he chooses the ritual death in order to gain true life,” explains Reinhold Merkelbach. In fact, according to the ancients, each initiation ritual involves the death of the old and the birth of a new person; there are no exceptions. Early-Christian baptism divides the lives of those baptised in a sequence of three phases. In the first phase, the human being is enslaved to sin and the world. The second phase means death: the baptismal candidate is killed—symbolically, but not actually drowned by being forced under water. This “drowning” is the actual rite of baptism.
In the Egyptian mortuary ritual there are two sisters who mourn Osiris, Osiris is said to be "asleep" but will be awakened, and he is wrapped as a mummy.

The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (SBL Press; Second edition, 2015), James P. Allen:
Recitation 194: This Teti’s sister (Wadjet), the Lady of Pe, is the one who cried for him, and the two attendants, (Isis and Nephthys), who mourned Osiris have mourned him...
Recitation 526: Raise yourself, clear away your dust, remove the shroud on your face. Loosen your ties...
The Mortuary Papyrus of Padikakem Walters Art Museum 551 (ISD LLC, 2011), Yekaterina Barbash:
Both compositions of papyrus W551 are mortuary in character and address Osiris or the deceased associated with him... Thus while section 1 contains earthly expressions of love and mourning for the deceased, section 2 deals with his transition to a new state of being in the hereafter. The sequence of the texts corresponds with the Egyptian perception of death, i.e., the deceased is gradually transformed after death, from this world to the sphere of the divine... The two goddesses, Isis and Nephthys, refer to death from the viewpoint of the living, uncovering their human emotions, as they recall their love for Osiris and grieve for him... the myth of Osiris, Horus, and Seth is evoked in spell 10 of PW 551: "The Great One (=Osiris) awakens, The Great One wakes up. Osiris raised himself on his side, the One who hates sleep (i.e., death), one who does not love weariness. The god stands, being powerful of his body. Horus has lifted him up, he's raised in Nedit."... In the s3hw as well as in other mortuary texts such as the BR, the transformation into an akh occurs by means of association of the deceased with the god Osiris and his incorporation into the sphere of the divine... Isis and Nephthys perform the widest range of tasks for the deceased Osiris, including purification, protection, and reassembling. At the same time, the two sisters act as they do in the lamentations, mourning and "glorifying" Osiris.
Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (Yale Egyptological Seminar, 2006), David Klotz:
Rather, the true meaning goes back to the Pyramid Text originals, where the deceased Osiris/King is asked to “wake up” (viz. “resurrect himself”), a common theme in mortuary spells. As Griffiths has noted, “death is really only a sleep, then, a phase of tiredness,” while in the same vein sleep was considered a death-like state. Thus the term rs (“awake”) could refer as easily to resurrection from death as to physical awakening from sleep, since the two states were conceptually synonymous.
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2001), Jan Assmann:
Both spells proceed from the situation of the deceased lying on his bier, and both set it in the light of a mythic situation or an event in the divine realm: the discovery of Osiris, who has been slain by his brother Seth. The mythic explanation facilitates action; in spell 532, the action of the mourning women, who bewail the deceased as Isis and Nephthys, embalm and awaken him... Death is not an end, but the beginning of the funerary rites, and thus it is also the beginning of the story that explains these rites... The Osiris myth overcomes the experience of death by according this apparently catastrophic and hopeless situation an orientation in which it becomes meaningful to say to the deceased: "Arise!" "Stand up!" "Lift yourself!"—called out to the deceased as he lies stretched out, these exhortations constitute a common element shared by the two texts. They occur in a hundred other spells of the Pyramid Texts, and in later funerary literature, they are expanded into lengthy recitations and litanies that make a refrain of them, consistently addressing them to the deceased lying on the bier or to Osiris... We can summarize all these recitations, from the Pyramid Texts through the latest Osirian mysteries, as a genre of "raise-yourself spells."... Addressed to the deceased lying inert, the spells say, "Raise yourself!" on various mythic grounds. Their function is to raise the dead.
Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Dallas Museum of Art, 1993), Sue D'Auria and Peter Lacovara:
The process begins with mummification: “the evening is set aside for you with oils and wrapping in the arms of the Weaving-Goddess"... Mummy-bindings had to be removed at the moment of resurrection... The thoroughness with which the Egyptians are wrapped makes understandable such special prayers as the one written on a coffin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, directing the goddess Isis to free the mummy from its wrappings at the moment of resurrection: “Ho my mother Isis, come that you may remove the bindings which are on me".
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann:
“Salvation” and “eternal life” are Christian concepts, and we might think that the Egyptian myth can all too easily be viewed through the lens of Christian tradition. Quite the contrary, in my opinion, Christian myth is itself thoroughly stamped by Egyptian tradition, by the myth of Isis and Osiris, which from the very beginning had to do with salvation and eternal life. It thus seems legitimate to me to reconstruct the Egyptian symbolism with the help of Christian concepts. As with Orpheus and Eurydice, the constellation of Isis and Osiris can also be compared with Mary and Jesus. The scene of the Pietà, in which Mary holds the corpse of the crucified Jesus on her lap and mourns, is a comparable depiction of the body centered intensity of female grief, in which Mary is assisted by Mary Magdalene, just as Isis is assisted by Nephthys.
Lamentation and mourning seem to be common in mystery cults. The mourning women seem to always play a role in anointing, purifying, and protecting the deceased's body.

Dionysos (Routledge, 2006), Richard Seaford:
There is considerable evidence (albeit much of it from late antiquity) for lamentation in mystery-cult, sometimes for the deity. The dismemberment of Dionysos was associated with – or perhaps in some way enacted in – his mystery-cult: we know this mainly from late texts, but there is evidence that the myth was known in the archaic and classical periods, and in view of our vase-painting of maenads attending the head (mask) of Dionysos in the liknon, it is possible that in the fifth century BC maenads in mystery-cult lamented the death of Dionysos. And given the importance of Dionysiac cult – and specifically of mystery-cult performed by the thiasos – in the genesis of Athenian tragedy, it is not unlikely that the centrality of lamentation for an individual in tragedy derives in part from maenadic lamentation.
nightshadetwine
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Re: Initiation in Paul and John

Post by nightshadetwine »

As mentioned above, mourning and lamentation were part of mystery cult ritual. Another theme you find is suffering or a traumatic experience that leads to rebirth. I think the story of Jesus's suffering, death, and resurrection may be influenced by mystery cult initiation rituals, suffering saviors, and suffering heroes such as Heracles. Obviously, Jesus's suffering, death, and resurrection is influenced by passages in the Hebrew scriptures such as the Suffering Servant, passages in Psalms, and passages about the restoration of Israel that use resurrection and agricultural imagery. I think Thomas L. Thompson puts it perfectly in his book "The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David" (Basic Books, 2009):
The figure of the messiah in Psalm 2 and the Psalter takes up the role of Yahweh's divine warrior to bring the nations in uproar to submit to Yahweh's imperial patronage through holy war. However, the narrative traditions move in a different direction. Beginning in the leitmotif of the curse of the land from which mankind was created, Genesis projects an ideal figure of a new mankind to replace violence and corruption—which had led Yahweh to reject his creation in the story of the great flood—and to bring an end to war and bloodshed. This biblical chain narrative of new beginnings—both for the land and for the humanity created from it—draws heavily on the patterns of ancient Near Eastern myths of seed and harvest and the annual cycle of the seasons. Such myths of the death and rebirth of the god of fertility, using metaphors of drought and the spring rains, were centred in the important harvest festival of the new wine. In the biblical story, this mythic theme is integrated with the metaphor of covenant through which Israel was bound to its God with ties of loyalty and obedience to create an army of salvation, giving the pious of Judea the task of imitating the Psalters role of the messiah. Each generations reiterated failure, however, in both loyalty and obedience, allows the narrative to develop a never-ending chain of stories marked by death and rebirth. The New Testament gospel stories, reusing the concept of a new covenant from the Hebrew Bible, pursue this hope of a new humanity in its effort to create a generation of understanding... The story of Jesus cannot be understood apart from the metaphor of covenant within the Bibles story of never-ending failure. The gospels presentation of Jesus' death and resurrection has its most immediate roots in the biblical revision of ancient Near Eastern myths of resurrection. A single scene in Matthew's Last Supper story opens this theme.

Matthews Last Supper scene is borne by three thematic elements, all well-known from earlier biblical literature: the metaphors of my fathers kingdom, of new wine and of the blood of the covenant... Matthews use of the Last Supper scene to introduce the following narrative of suffering and death allows us to recognize the reference to the "blood of the covenant" as a plot-related citation from Zechariah. This citation encourages a theological interpretation of the story of Jesus' passion. Jesus' passage through suffering and death to resurrection reiterates the story of Israel's exile and return... An even more expansive version of the innocent and righteous sufferer is found in Isaiah's figure of Israel as Yahweh's servant and firstborn: one, who bears the sins of many (Is 53:4-12). As in Zechariah, Isaiah's use of Israel as Yahweh's suffering servant presents an atoning figure... It is Isaiah's people whom Jesus personifies in Matthew's theology... In Matthew's rendering, Jesus is put in the role of the animal sacrificed. Those sprinkled with its blood are the guilty to be reconciled... The passion narrative reiterates the myth of Dionysus, with its many motifs of wine and fertility borne by a dying and rising divine figure... Among many variations, the most popular themes are the drinking of wine as blood, the dying and rising of one who is half god and half man, the transformation of tears of mourning into gladness and singing, suffering transformed into the intoxication of new wine, the ecstatic meal, the fertility of spring and a new creation. Such themes are abundantly present in biblical literature and reflect similar patterns and purpose... This figure of Dionysus has as much in common with the gospel figure of Jesus as it has with Isaiah's Israel. This figure is exploited eagerly in the wide range of songs and stories of the savior-king and is echoed throughout the Bibles rich contrasting repertoire of metaphors for fertility and barrenness... While the figure of Dionysus, in particular, may well go back to the Mycenaean period in the Late Bronze Age, his underlying themes of life and fertility, of life's victory over death, of the spring wine, and so on, all so central to the Dionysian myth of resurrection, are also major themes of ancient mythology in cultures ranging from ancient Ur and Babylon to Thebes. The myth is as old as stories come in the ancient Near East. For example, close to the Hebrew language of biblical tradition is the millennium earlier Ugaritic poem of Baal from the ancient coastal city of Ugarit in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE. Almost every element of the story of Baal's battle with Mot finds a reiteration somewhere in the Bible and almost all of the elements in the myth of Dionysus echo this story. It is a tale of a divine king, whose death and resurrection celebrate life's victory over death.
So it would have been very easy for Christians like Paul to read a suffering, dying, and resurrecting savior-hero into passages in the Hebrew scriptures. I think this may have even been part of the "mystery that has now been revealed". Paul is saying "it's now being revealed that we have our own dying and resurrecting savior-hero! You can find him in the scriptures! It was hidden in the scriptures but now it's revealed!". Some of the passages in the Hebrew scriptures that are applied to Jesus by early Christians may have been influenced by dying and rising agricultural deities as Thomas L. Thompson says in the quote above.

Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (Yale University Press, 2006), Jon D. Levenson:
Having traced the antecedents of the expectation of a general resurrection of the dead in the form in which it appears in Dan 12:1–3, we are now in a position to summarize the results and draw conclusions... Among the immediate antecedents of Dan 12:1–3 is Isa 52:13–53:12, which seems to speak (admittedly with considerable obscurity) not only of the postmortem vindication and exaltation of a faithful but mistreated servant of the Lord but also of his being awarded new life in the process. It is evident that the vision in Daniel identifies the righteous of its own time of persecution with the servant of that text and sees the language of healing and restoration after death therein as references to resurrection... In the background of this application of resurrection language to Jewish national restoration lies the idea that the advent and presence of God not only brings about deliverance for his people; it also revitalizes nature, bringing lifegiving moisture to desiccated land and fertility to dwindling flocks and herds. As I have noted, the dichotomy of history versus nature is alien to the Israelite worldview and productive of much modern confusion. Thus, a prophet like Hosea (whose oracles influenced Isaiah 24–27), who speaks of God’s reviving and raising up those he has punished (Hos 5:14 6:3), can describe Israel after its revival in terms of luxuriant nature. In response to the Lord’s life-giving dew, the people blossom like the lily and strike root like a great tree, giving forth a fine fragrance (14:2–9)... Behind all these older biblical antecedents of the prediction of resurrection in Dan 12:1–3 lies, in turn, the momentous Israelite transformation of the myth of the Canaanite god, Baal. In the Canaanite version, Baal dies, a victim of deified Death (Mot), in the hot, dry summer; nature dies with him. But Death is, in turn, killed, Baal lives anew, and nature flourishes and luxuriates in response. Israelite culture (at least as reflected in the Hebrew Bible) adapts this model to a theology centered on the Lord’s relation to the people Israel in history. He is the living God and never dies, but the people Israel’s own fortunes dwindle and revive in relation to their distance from or nearness to him (which often but not always correlate with their own moral wickedness or goodness, respectively). When they are distant from him, or he from them, they sicken and perish. When they reapproach him in repentance, or he returns to them in deliverance, they revive and flourish.
Osiris, Dionysus, and Heracles were all known for going through suffering, death, and resurrection. Heracles wasn't worshiped as a mystery cult savior but he was said to have been initiated and has a close connection with the mystery cults. Initiates into the mysteries seem to have gone through some kind of suffering or traumatic experience that was associated with a journey to the underworld and back. Other mystery cult deities like Isis, Demeter, and Persephone were all known for mourning the loss of their loved ones. Isis and Demeter became closely associated with each other because they both mourn the loss of a loved one and offered salvation from death to their followers. These themes of suffering, mourning, and death were what attracted people. People could relate to these stories and look to these deities for help. I would say that these themes also continued in Christianity.

Dionysos (Routledge, 2006), Richard Seaford:
Dionysos, like Jesus, was the son of the divine ruler of the world and a mortal mother, appeared in human form among mortals, was killed and restored to life... a secret of the mystery-cult was that dismemberment is in fact to be followed by restoration to life, and this transition was projected onto the immortal Dionysos, who is accordingly in the myth himself dismembered and then restored to life... this power of Dionysos over death, his positive role in the ritual, makes him into a saviour of his initiates in the next world... Dionysos could be called 'Initiate' and even shares the name Bakchos with his initates, but his successful transition to immortality - his restoration to life and his circulation between the next world and this one - allows him also to be their divine saviour. Plutarch (Moralia 364) compares Dionysos to the Egyptian Osiris, stating that 'the story about the Titans and the Night-festivals agree with what is related of Osiris - dismemberments and returns to life and rebirths'... The restoration of Dionysos to life was (like the return of Kore [Persephone] from Hades at Eleusis) presumably connected with the immortality obtained by the initiates... Not inconsistent with this is the possibility that the dismemberment myth was related to the drinking of wine that we have seen to be common in the mystic ritual...wine is earlier identified with Dionysos himself (e.g. Bacchae 284), more specifically with his blood (Timotheos fragment 780)...

The Pauline letters sometimes contain clusters of terms or ideas that suggest the influence, direct or indirect, of mystery-cult. One instance is the words ‘for now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face’ (1 Corinthians 13.12). What the Greek says is, in modern English, ‘through a mirror in a riddle’. The image owes something to the Old Testament (Numbers 12.8), but this is not enough to explain it. In mystery-cult the transition from the phase of ignorant anxiety to the phase of joyful knowledge might be effected by the use, in the first phase, of riddling language and of the mirror, both of which gave an obscure image of what was subsequently revealed (ancient mirrors were much obscurer than modern). I have mentioned the use of the mirror in Dionysiac mysteries both in the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii and (along with the use of riddling language) in Bacchae (Chapter 5). Paul is here imagining eschatological transition in terms taken from the transition (itself embodying a kind of death) from ignorance to knowledge in mystery-cult. Paul in his letters also proclaims a doctrine of baptism ‘into the death’ of Jesus Christ, of burial with him (through baptism), and of resurrection associated with his resurrection (Romans 6.3–6; also e.g. Romans 8.11; Galatians 2.20; 3.26–7). This doctrine is to be found neither in the Gospels nor in Judaic religion. It has been suggested that it is influenced by one or more of the forms taken by mystery-cult, whether performed for Greek deities such as Dionysos or Demeter or for deities originating from outside the Greek world such as Isis and Attis... Suffice it to say that although we know of no mystery-cult that reproduces exactly the same configuration as the Pauline doctrine, we do find in mystery-cult the ideas of the death and rebirth of the initiand, of the sufferings of the deity, of the identification of initiand with deity, and of the initiands’ (transition to) salvation depending on their finding – or the return to life of – a deity.
Tracing Orpheus: Studies of Orphic Fragments (De Gruyter; 2011), Albert Henrichs:
According to Philodemus, the god's "third birth" occured when Rhea put him together again after he had been killed and dismembered by the Titans... In a later section of Piet. that deals with divine wounds and deformations, the reference to Dionysos' dismemberment by the Titans is repeated almost verbatim, with or without mention of rebirth (N 1088 XI 14-21; HV II 9 = OF 59 II): 'Some (report) that Dionysos too [came back to life] after his dismemberment by the Titans when his limbs were reassembled and his wounds [healed] by Rhea.'...

The dismemberment of Dionysos and the reassembling of his limbs correspond to the fate of Osiris as described by Greek sources. The reconstitution of the divine body in particular has been taken as a sign of Egyptianizing influence on the Zagreus myth in the early Ptolemaic period... In the lines that follow after the reference to the Orphics, the death of, and lament for, Adonis as well as the mourning rituals for Egyptian gods like Osiris are mentioned as further examples of gods who experience death. The fragment that precedes N 247 III deals in rapid succession with the violent deaths of the Kyklopes, Asklepios and Kheiron. It is obvious that this particular section of Piet. was concerned with divine deaths and that the enumeration of the three births of Dionysos functions as a priamel in disguise in which the first two items – the god’s double birth from Semele and from the thigh of Zeus – prepare the stage for the third, namely his return to life or his ‘rebirth’ after his dismemberment by the Titans. It is his extreme form of death that puts Dionysos into the ranks of ‘dying gods’ as defined by J. G. Frazer. Yet the ultimate emphasis in Philodemos’ text is not on Dionysos’ violent death, but on the reconstitution of his limbs by Rhea and thus on his rebirth... As has been pointed out by Alberto Bernabe and others, the revived Dionysos who died and came back to life again was regarded as a divine role model for the Dionysac initiates and their expectations of a happy afterlife.
Herodotus, Histories 2.171:
It is on this lake that they put on, by night, performances of his [Osiris] sufferings, which the Egyptians call Mysteries. Although I am familiar with the details of this performance and how each part of it goes, I will keep silence.
Plutarch, On Meat Eating, 1.7, 996b–c
This doctrine, however, seems to be even older, for the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.37.5:
From Homer the name of the Titans was taken by Onomakritos, who in the orgies he composed for Dionysos made the Titans the authors of the God’s sufferings.
Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras (Brill, 2008), Jaime Alvar:
Triumph over destiny and admission to eternal felicity were however only possible through divine suffering. That is why the mysteries needed divinities who had had some experience of something like the human condition, had themselves lived historically, so that they could function as models. Their adherents might suffer pain and torment, but with the god's aid they could overcome them... It is typical of the gods of the oriental cults that they have some experience of human existence characterised by direct contact with death. Some indeed suffered it themselves, which would be unthinkable for the Olympian gods, whose manifold experiences do not include their own deaths... Moreover, the mystery gods’ direct experience of death is fundamental to what they were subsequently able to achieve: life can triumph only because they have gained immortality. Death brings them close to human beings, while the rebirth they offer has a grandeur about it unattainable by the traditional gods of the Graeco-Roman pantheon... In my view, however, the triumph over Fate remains a constant; and, from a certain point in the High Empire, salvation in the other world came to be a deep conviction shared among many of the adherents of the oriental cults. The main reason for thinking this is that their central rituals, to which I shall later devote more particular attention, are in fact initiatory, and were replete with the symbolism of death and resurrection. Since this symbolism is so transparent, it seems perverse to deny the centrality of the belief in these cults.

Of course, it is not merely the fact that they have lived that defi nes these gods as mystery-divinities. There can be nothing more anthropomorphic than the Homeric gods, with their enviable vices and virtues. However the most striking peculiarity of those traditional deities was that they had no share in one of the most private of human experiences, death. They were immortal. By contrast, the gods of the oriental cults shared with their adherents in one way or another the ultimate rite of passage, the transition from being to not-being. Thanks to this experience they acquired a special claim to be able to attend to the problems, anxieties and needs of human beings, so much so that these concerns are to all appearances the main preoccupations of the divine world. This was certainly the case in the first three centuries AD.
"The Worship of Jesus and the Imperial Cult", Adela Yarbro Collins in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism (Brill, 1999):
Herakles was the best known of the Greek heroes, although he was not a typical hero at all. The popular tales about him were known everywhere, and thus his cult extended throughout the Greek world and beyond. He was the son of Zeus, but mortal. Suffering dreadful torment, he immolated himself on a pyre and then ascended through the flames to the gods. He was remembered as a benefactor of humanity and was frequently invoked as an omnipresent helper. He is also the prototype of the ruler who, by virtue of his divine legitimation acts for the benefit of humankind, is rewarded by being taken into the company of the gods after his death. He is also the model for the ordinary person who can hope for the life among the gods as a reward for an upright life of drudgery. The complex of traditions about Herakles thus provide a striking analogy to the second and third stages of the Philippian poem: a human being suffers for the good of humankind and is, therefore, given a divine nature and status.
Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, book 1:
Now it is an excellent thing, methinks, as all men of understanding must agree, to receive in exchange for mortal labours an immortal fame. In the case of Heracles, for instance, it is generally agreed that during the whole time which he spent among men he submitted to great and continuous labours and perils willingly, in order that he might confer benefits upon the race of men and thereby gain immortality; and likewise in the case of other great and good men, some have attained to heroic honours and others to honours equal to the divine, and all have been thought to be worthy of great praise, since history immortalizes their achievements.
Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), M. David Litwa:
Likewise for Philo of Alexandria, “beneficence is the peculiar property of a god” (Mut. 129), and the “proper” name of the power called “god” is “Benefactress” (QE 2.68). Philo’s example of a deified human is Heracles, who “purged the earth and the sea, undergoing trials of endurance most necessary and profitable for all humankind in order to destroy things which are mischievous and baneful” (Legat. 81; cf. 90). Consequently Heracles and the other deified men, “received and still receive admiration for the benefits for which we admire them, and were judged worthy of worship and the highest [i.e., divine] honors” (Legat. 86)... For Philo, as we have seen, Heracles was a model of patient endurance of suffering (Prob. 120)...

In the first-century play Hercules Oetaeus, Hercules appears to his weeping mother Alcmene after his transformation. He gives her courage: “Now I have reached the realms of the starry sky and have finally been granted my place in heaven, why do you force me by your mourning to feel fate? Refrain! My virtue has made a path for me now to the stars and the very gods” (1940-43). The deified Hercules then prophesies his mother’s triumph over their sworn enemy Eurystheus (1972-74). Though she begs him to stay, Hercules ascends to heaven (1975). Alcmene responds to his appearance with a mixture of wonder and confusion. Doubts assail her. “Am I deceived, or do my eyes believe that I saw my son? My wretched mind is incredulous” (1978-79). But doubt is replaced with worship: “You are a divine being, and the heavens hold you forever. I believe in your triumphs [over death]” (1980-81). She then goes off to announce the good news: “I shall make for the kingdom of Thebes, and proclaim this new god that joins their temples” (1981-82 [Fitch, LCL]).

The themes of a resurrected individual appearing to a mourning woman to offer hope and encouragement is reminiscent of Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-15). After finally recognizing Jesus, Mary worships and proclaims him (vv. 15-18). Similarly, Alcmene declares Hercules a god and proclaims his new status in Thebes. Immediately afterwards, the chorus of Greeks worships Hercules, praying to him to “be with us!” as the “great conqueror of beasts and bringer of peace to the world” (1989-90)... In a report of Diodorus of Sicily, after his ascent on the pyre, Heracles was first sacrificed to as a hero, and then as a god (Bibl. hist. 4.39.1). In the Homeric Hymn to Heracles, the new god is prayed to as one who can bestow prosperity and virtue. As one who suffered many evils himself, worshippers of Heracles often appealed to him as the “averter of evil”.
Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Thalia Papadopoulou:
Euripides’ Heracles is an extraordinary play of great complexity, exploring the co-existence of both positive and negative aspects of the eponymous hero. Euripides treats Heracles’ ambivalence by showing his uncertain position after the completion of his labours and turns him into a tragic hero by dramatizing his development from the invincible hero of the labours to the courageous bearer of suffering... An important element added in Heracles is the connection between Heracles’ rescue of Theseus from Hades and his own initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. As he says to Amphitryon in the play, he fought with Cerberus in battle, but it was his experience of the Mysteries which helped him accomplish his task (612–13). The initiation of Heracles into the Great as well as the Lesser Mysteries was one way in which the Athenians associated their city, which controlled the Mysteries in the fifth century, with the great hero. At the same time, the mention of the help that the Eleusinian Mysteries provided to Heracles serves a specific purpose in the play by making clear that he already received benefits from Athens in Hades. This help is the first in the reciprocal relation which continues with Heracles’ rescue of Theseus from Hades and then with his own rescue in turn by the Athenian hero.
Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (Taylor & Francis, 2002), Jennifer Lynn Larson, Michael B. Cosmopoulos:
For a possible illustration of this rite we may turn to two Roman works of art, the Lovatelli Urn and the Torre Nova Sarcophagus. Although they only indirectly and imprecisely reflect Eleusinian imagery, each shows three roughly corresponding scenes: Demeter seated at the left (on the sarcophagus flanked by a figure who looks like Iakchos or Eubouleus and by fragmentary female figures; on the urn by Kore and by the initiate Heracles), in the center a seated Heracles as initiate, hooded (on the sarcophagus flanked on the left by a woman with downturned torches; on the urn by a woman holding a winnowing fan over his head), and on the right an altar scene (on the sarcophagus a priest and Heracles pour libations onto the flames; on the urn a priest seems to be pouring a libation on a piglet held by Heracles). Similar scenes on Campana revetments that come from a building on or near the Palatine suggest that all these Roman scenes are derived from a local cult that must have been modeled in some respects after the Eleusinian Mysteria. The downturned torches and the winnowing fan are emblematic of a rite of purification, in this case the purification of Heracles. The fact that he is hooded suggests that he is becoming a mystes, and that this scene reflects the Eleusinian myesis.
Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual, and Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 1996) Angus M. Bowie:
At 159, Xanthias says 'I'm the ass at the Mysteries.' The precise point of this jest is unfortunately not yet recovered, and at this stage in the play it seems to be a gratuitous remark prompted from Xanthias by Heracles' reference to the Mystae and by exasperation. So far the play has given us Dionysus, on his way to Hades to fetch back Euripides, dressed in a bizarre combination of clothes appropriate to himself and to Heracles, two dialogues in which the derelict state of comedy and tragedy has been lamented, and a description of the various ways of completing a katabasis or journey to Hades. Heracles' account of the travails on the journey to Hades culminates in the promise of the music, lights and dancing of the Mystae, the Eleusinian Initiates, but at this point we do not know what, if any, part they are to play in the drama... My argument will be that this Chorus is indeed composed of Eleusinian Initiates who, having achieved the posthumous happiness promised by their initiation, are continuing to practise a form of their cult: the scene is after all Hades, not Athens... There are hymns too to Persephone as Soteira and Demeter as Basileia. In the latter, the Chorus pray to Demeter that they may be able 'having won, to wear a garland' (395), which can be referred both to the victor's garland with its streamers and to the similar garland worn by the Initiates. We shall come to other aspects in due time.

In his book, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens, Fritz Graf argued convincingly that, by the end of the fifth century, the Eleusinian Mysteries had taken on elements not only from Orphic religion, but also from Dionysiac. That this should be the case need be no cause for surprise: given the popularity of these other cults, it would have made sense for the polls to incorporate elements of them in the great city mystery cult, and thus provide 'mystic' experiences that were under its control and not the control of goetes or other marginal figures. In discussing Frogs, therefore, we should perhaps not confine ourselves solely to parallels with the Eleusinian Mysteries, but also widen the discussion to include Orphic cult and, with due care, Athenian mystery cults in general, especially, given the presence in the play of the god, the Dionysiac mysteries... Dionysus' journey to Hades takes up a good part of the play, but this is not merely because of its comic potential. In Eleusinian and other mystery cults, the journey was a standard image for the process of initiation: wandering, tribulation and uncertainty led to the bright lights at the end of the initiatory tunnel. Plutarch speaks of the journey as follows: "wanderings astray in the beginning, tiresome walkings in circles, some frightening paths in darkness that lead nowhere; then immediately before the end all the terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat, and amazement. And then some wonderful light comes to meet you, pure regions and meadows are there to greet you, with sounds and dances and solemn, sacred words and holy views; and there the initiate, perfect by now, set free and loosed from all bondage, walks about, crowned with a wreath, celebrating the festival together with the other sacred and pure people; and he looks down on the uninitiated, unpurified crowd in this world in mud and fog beneath his feet".

That Dionysus should begin by visiting his brother Heracles is appropriate, since Heracles was the 'mythical archetype of the Eleusinian initiate': he had been purified by Eumolpus and initiated into the Mysteries before his descent to the Underworld in search of Cerberus. There are many parallels between the two descents, which figure, in their different ways, the experiences of the initiand... Both encountered mud and the punishment of sinners. Dionysus then meets the Mystae. There seems to have been no comparable episode in Heracles' case, but Pindar and Virgil, who seem to be using the same source for Heracles' journey, both refer to the lights and music. Persephone received Heracles well, as she does Dionysus in Frogs'... The initiand is treated to bright lights, welcomed and symbolically reborn. The journey-image also represented the way in which in initiatory rites things were done to the initiand which were intended to jolt him out of his normal psychological state, to render him susceptible to receive the new sensations and to purify him of his earlier less satisfactory condition... Aristotle said that the initiand did not 'learn' (mathein) but 'experienced' [patheiri] in order to undergo a change of state of mind (diathenai), and the image of the journey from tribulation to salvation was in part a metaphor for a change in the nature of the initiand... Dionysus' journey therefore and the Eleusinian Mysteries have a similar end in view: salvation...
"Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3, 1989, S. 135-159:
Even the "passage" of the deceased through the 21 gates, the 7 halls, the 15 places (BD 149), etc. of the underworld represents a descensus ad inferos which brings him at long last in the physical presence of Osiris and of his divine retainers: "To separate NN from all his sins, to see the face of all gods"... But by the same act the deceased enters also into the presence of the sun-god, who travels nightly through the underworld with his own divine retinue... In the initiation of Lucius, the voyage through the underworld stands for a symbolic death, followed on the next morning by his resurrection as the sun-god: adorned with a palm wreath ad instar solis, he appears to the cheering crowd, just as the justified deceased at the judgement of the dead... No one doubts that the initiation rites of the Isis-mysteries, as Apuleius ventures to describe them, are deeply rooted in the uniquely elaborated rituals and conceptions of Egyptian funerary religion. The same holds true for other initiation rituals. Seen from this aspect, a relationship between death and initiation is not disputed.
Defining Orphism (Walter de Gruyter, 2020), Anthi Chrysanthou:
And this specific telete was of a performative nature involving a journey in the darkness in imitation of a katabasis. This journey could have taken place either inside a cave, or subterranean location, or at a superterranean location with the use of a blindfold. A similar initiation might have been performed by the owners of the gold tablets. A katabatic mystery would not only serve as ‘practice’ for the actual afterlife journey but also symbolise the initiate’s death and rebirth as a purified member of the holy thiasos. The katabasis would eventually lead to an epiphany (through the mystic light) which would lead to an ascent to an open meadow. According to Plutarch fr.178, quoted above, after the journey into the darkness the initiate would be crowned with a garland, join in the revel of dance and music with the other initiates and converse with ‘pure and holy men’. This is parallel to the communal perception of the afterlife in the gold tablets where the initiate asks to be sent to the thiasoi of the blessed. It is not hard to imagine an initiation such as the one described in Plutarch being performed by the gold tablets’ owners... This progression from "intensity to reassurance constitutes the dynamics or the implicit drama of the represented event". Such dynamics were characteristic of mystery-rites such as the Eleusinian. In general, mystery cults usually have three components: 1) the existence of mystai, 2) a death-like or suffering experience for the mystai and 3) a promise of a happy afterlife and present prosperity. It is possible, thus, that the milk phrase was either uttered or related to a ritual and that this ritual was related to motifs of death and ‘renewal’. In the case of the tablets this ‘renewal’ or change of status is a rebirth or an apotheosis since the phrase follows assertions such as ‘Now you have died and now you have been born’ [D1+D2] and ‘…a god you shall be instead of a mortal/man’ [A1+A4]...
Dionysos (Routledge, 2006), Richard Seaford:
As for Dionysos, the gold leaves (Chapter 5) preserve the mystic formulae ‘Hail you who have suffered what you had never suffered before. You became a god instead of a human,’ and ‘now you died and now you came into being, thrice blessed one, on this day. Tell Persephone that Bakchios himself freed you.’ And the mystic myth of the dismemberment of Dionysos and his restoration to life was probably associated with a similar transition for the initiand in the mystic ritual (Chapters 5 and 8)... The fundamental sequence of dismemberment followed by restoration to life belongs to a type found elsewhere expressing the extreme ordeal of imagined death and eventual restoration to life in initiation. Dionysiac (or ‘Orphic’) mystery-cult had inherited a myth that projected onto Dionysos the imagined bodily death and restoration to life of the initiand.
Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets (Brill, 2008), Alberto Bernabé Pajares, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal:
The narrator then refers to “the experience you never had before”. This is not just any experience, but, as indicated by the de nite article, it is “the” experience. Taking the context into consideration (the reference to being converted into a god and the new mention of the mystical phrase of the kid fallen into the milk, which, as we have already seen, evoke rebirth and the happiness of the new of identification with the god),the experience alluded to may be death or initiation, or better yet, as Burkert would have it, both at the same time. In making this affirmation, he bases himself on an interesting text by Plutarch: "In this world [sc. the soul] has no knowledge, except when it reaches the moment of death. It then undergoes an experience like that of those who participate in the great initiations. This is why they resemble each other so much, both in word and in action. First there is a wandering without direction, the tiring turns and running about in the darkness with the suspicion that they are never going to end, and then, before one reaches the actual end, all the terrors, shudders, trembling, sweat, and confusion. From here, however, a wonderful light comes to greet him, and he is received by pure places and meadows, full of sounds, dances, and the solemnity of sacred words and sacred visions. Once he has had his ll of this and has been initiated, he becomes free and walks as a free man. Crowned, he celebrates the mysteries and in the company of holy and pure men, he sees from there the uninitiated, impure crowd of living beings, in the midst of the mud and the darkness, trampling and pushing one another, persisting in the fear of death and the union of the malevolent, for lack of faith in the good things that are there." The initiatory experience prepares us for death, and in death there is a repetition of what was experienced in initiation. The result for the initiate, both in initiation and in death, is the passage to a state of felicity, coinciding with identification with the god.
"Milk as a symbol of immortality in the “Orphic” gold tablets from Thurii and Pelinna" by Stian Torjussen in Nordlit 33(33), 2014:
In both tablets the formula follows a change in the status of the deceased from mortal to god... The phrase's connection with status change was further emphasized with the publication of the Pelinna tablets, where we find the same thing: first the subject is dead, then reborn making her thriceblessed. Then her status as released is confirmed, followed by the "immersion-in-milk" formula. As others have argued, it seems probable that this part of the text, or rather the formula itself, refers to some kind of initiation ritual. Initiations often use symbolic death and rebirth in order to emphasize the initiate's new status, as is seen in the Pelinna tablets... The purity is connected to the deceased and to something that the deceased has come from. It is an affirmation of the subject's favorable status. The text, then, seems to mean: "Hail Persephone and the other gods of the Underworld. I am initiated and have therefore escaped the sorrowful circle of life. Because of this I will become a god in the afterlife." This is followed by the "immersion-in-milk" formula. The other Thurii tablet has the same meaning: "I have died and wander in the underworld. I remember the life of suffering I have left. Now that is all behind me since I have become a god through initiation. Because of this I will find my way to the groves of Persephone." The initiation is signaled by the "immersion-in-milk" formula. The repetition of "pure" in the first line, "Pure I come out of the pure," also suggests an initiatory context; the proclaimed purity of the deceased had most likely been obtained through initiation. Persephone is thereby reminded of the deceased's status as initiate...

The deceased has been initiated - and therefore attained immortality as a god - a status which will lead to a blissful afterlife. There is a general emphasis on past suffering in all these texts, e.g. "The Suffering", "Fate subdued me", which seems to be referring to an event like an initiation where the initiate left the old life behind in order to step into a new. The vocabulary in initiation is similar to that used in a funeral since the initiate may experience a symbolic death and rebirth... But the emphasis on purity in the Thurrii tablets and the promise of a good afterlife together with the "other blessed one" suggest initiation. This initiation is probably referred to and summed up in the "immersion-in-milk" formula, making the formula a synthema, defined by Ralph Porta as "statements or catch-words which in some way attempt to sum up what an initiate into a mystery has undergone". It is especially the placement of this formula in the texts from Thurii and Pelinna, immediately after a change in status to initiate, from man to god and from bound to released, that makes it probable that it worked as a sythema summarizing this transition... The texts focus on suffering, but also on immortality. In the tablets from Thurii the deceased claims to be of the same race as the immortal gods, they have become gods... By "rushing" into milk, the initiate imitates the famed apotheosis of myth, such as that of Herakles' and others... If we consider the "immersion-of-milk" formula, and the change in status immediately in front of it, in light of the above mentioned texts, it seems that the formula is expressing the moment of apotheosis for the initiate... The initiation led to new life, expressed quite literally in the first line of the pelinna tablets, which in turn led to a blissful afterlife among the other immortals.
Handbook of Egyptian Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2002), Geraldine Pinch:
Isis and her sister, Nephthys, kept a long vigil over the restored corpse and became the prototypes for all mourners... Two young women, preferably twin sisters, played the roles of Isis and Nephthys to mourn the Apis bull as if he had been Osiris himself. Versions of the types of laments that they sang have survived in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus and other sources. The laments are notable for their emotional intensity. Osiris is mourned not just as a king but as a beloved husband and brother... Greeks and other immigrants found the joys and sorrows of Isis to have meaning for their lives. Isis and Osiris came to be the most famous Egyptian deities among foreigners, but the native Egyptians continued to worship a multiplicity of deities...

The Greeks identified Isis with Demeter, the harvest goddess who perpetually searched for a lost child. In her stellar form of Sopdet/Sothis, Isis had always been linked with the coming of the inundation that made the harvest possible. She was now credited with inventing agriculture and all manner of useful crafts and institutions. According to hymns of the Greco-Roman Period, it was Isis who made the world and decreed that men should love women and children should love their parents. All other goddesses became merely “names” of Isis. In his book “Concerning Isis and Osiris,” Plutarch suggested that the all-powerful Isis allowed herself to be portrayed as a woman of sorrows to console suffering humanity. This, and her promise to believers of a happy afterlife, made the Isis cult the closest rival to Christianity in the early centuries of the first millennium CE.
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 361d and 378e:
Stories akin to these and to others like them they say are related about Typhon; how that, prompted by jealousy and hostility, he wrought terrible deeds and, by bringing utter confusion upon all things, filled the whole Earth, and the ocean as well, with ills, and later paid the penalty therefor. But the avenger, the sister and wife of Osiris, after she had quenched and suppressed the madness and fury of Typhon, was not indifferent to the contests and struggles which she had endured, nor to her own wanderings nor to her manifold deeds of wisdom and many feats of bravery, nor would she accept oblivion and silence for them, but she intermingled in the most holy rites portrayals and suggestions and representations of her experiences at that time, and sanctified them, both as a lesson in godliness and an encouragement for men and women who find themselves in the clutch of like calamities. She herself and Osiris, translated for their virtues from good demigods into gods, as were Heracles and Dionysus later, not incongruously enjoy double honours, both those of gods and those of demigods...

How, then, are we to deal with their gloomy, solemn, and mournful sacrifices, if it be not proper either to omit the customary ceremonials or to confound and confuse our opinions about the gods by unwarranted suspicions? Among the Greeks also many things are done which are similar to the Egyptian ceremonies in the shrines of Isis, and they do them at about the same time. At Athens the women fast at the Thesmophoria sitting upon the ground; and the Boeotians move the halls of the Goddess of Sorrow and name that festival the Festival of Sorrow, since Demeter is in sorrow because of her Daughter's descent to Pluto's realm.
Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum 10.414f–415a:
They put the case well who say that Plato, by his discovery of the element underlying all created qualities, which is now called ‘Matter’ and ‘Nature’ has relieved philosophers of many great perplexities; but, as it seems to me, those persons have resolved more and greater perplexities who have set the race of demigods midway between gods and men, and have discovered a force to draw together, in a way, and to unite our common fellowship - whether this doctrine comes from the wise men of the cult of Zoroaster, or whether it is Thracian and harks back to Orpheus, or is Egyptian, or Phrygian, as we may infer from observing that many things connected with death and mourning in the rites of both lands are combined in the ceremonies so fervently celebrated there.
The Mortuary Papyrus of Padikakem Walters Art Museum 551 (ISD LLC, Dec 31, 2011), Yekaterina Barbash:
For a discussion of the revival of the deceased by means of mourning, see Smith, Mortuary Texts of Papyrus BM 10507. He points to an inscription on col. 2 of the back pillar of a LP statuette, addressing the deceased person: "The two sisters will glorify you as they lament"... The Liturgy of Opening of the Mouth for Breathing depicts the same concept: "You Osiris will rise up from Rostau diurnally in exultation every day. Betake yourself to earth daily"... Thus Osiris is enabled to rise up from the underworld and travel to earth daily by praises/songs of Isis and Nephthys... Similarly, Osiris' mother, Nut, functions mainly as the protector in his time of vulnerability and rejuvenation, as for example in spell 5 of PW 551: "Your mother, Nut, has spread herself over you... She protected you of all evil things". Her motherly role is repeatedly stressed throughout the composition... Isis and Nephthys perform the widest range of tasks for the deceased Osiris, including purification, protection, and reassembling. At the same time, the two sisters act as they do in the lamentations, mourning and "glorifying" Osiris.
Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Michael B. Cosmopoulos:
The facts deriving from the epigraphic, literary, and iconographic evidence leave open one realistic possibility: that the dromena included a reenactment of the sacred drama of the story of Demeter and Persephone, accompanied by music, singing, and perhaps dancing. This reenactment probably aimed at inspiring in the hearts of the initiates feelings such as awe, sorrow, despair, and finally joy; Mylonas parallels it to the Aristotelian katharsis of Greek tragedy. The famous passage from Plutarch’s On the Soul, preserved by Stobaeus, describes what may have been the experience of the initiates: "The soul suffers as do those who have been initiated into the great Mysteries, that is why the words and the actions of dying and performing the rituals resemble each other. At first there are wanderings and exhausting walks, and unfulfilled and unclear journeys. Before the end come all terrible things, terror and trembling and sweat and awe. But after this, a marvelous light appears, and pure spaces and meadows receive [the initiate], with voices and chants and the solemnity of sacred sounds and holy spectacles."...

It appears that initiates actually took part in the reenactment of the story, rather than being mere spectators... perhaps the reenactment picked up the story after the abduction of Persephone and at the time when Demeter came to Eleusis and sat on the Mirthless Rock. It is possible that the initiates felt Demeter’s pain at the loss of her child as they walked past the Mirthless Rock, their despair and fear intensified as they entered the darkness of the Telesterion... If agriculture were one of the main gifts of Demeter to humankind, it was not the only one. In the Hymn, Demeter is only secondarily the divine nurturer – first and foremost she is the mater dolorosa. As such, she is connected with death and the afterlife, a connection that explains why the resolution of the drama brings about not one, but two gifts: prosperity in this life and hope for the next. This hope is granted to mortals through the second gift that Demeter granted to humankind, her secret rites – the Mysteries.
Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Harvard University Press, 2004), Sarah Iles Johnston:
From Herodotus we hear about a thiasos (group) of Dionysiac initiates raving through the night in a sort of maddened, ecstatic release (4.79). We hear elsewhere about initiates, especially female, ascending mountains to participate in initiations that included nocturnal dancing... Less wild, perhaps, were initiations connected with the gold tablets, which centered on learning the story of Dionysus's birth and sufferings...

Demeter searched desperately for her missing daughter and, having discovered Persephone's fate, retreated in grief from the gods' company, disguised herself as an old woman, and took work as a nursemaid in the royal Eleusinian family... Demeter, reunited with her daughter, restored fertility to the fields and instructed the Eleusinians in her mysteries, promising blessings to initiates both during life and after death and warning that the uninitiated would face an afterlife in dank darkness... It is likely, for example, that individuals somehow imitated Demeter's experiences during initiation and in doing so passed from grief to joy (ancient sources mention such a transition)... The myth connected with Isiac mysteries comes to us only in the 1st centuries BCE and CE and closely mimics that of Eleusinian Demeter (Diodorus Siculus r.21-25; Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 12-19 ). That Isis seeks and then mourns her husband Osiris, rather than her child, underscores the close link between the two spouses, which was already important in Egypt.
"The Suffering of Isis/Io and Paul's Portrait of Christ Crucified (Gal. 3:1): Frescoes in Pompeian and Roman Houses and in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii" David L. Balch in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 83, No. 1 (The University of Chicago Press, 2003):
Surprisingly perhaps, Paul's gospel of Christ crucified has far more in common with Greco-Roman domestic art than I would have guessed. The thesis of this article is that Greco-Roman, tragic art emphasizing pathos found both in Greco-Roman houses and, in this instance, in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii would have provided one meaningful cultural context for understanding Paul's gospel of Christ's passion. Although Dionysian themes are more prominent than scenes of suffering and death in Roman domestic art, tragic art portraying suffering was surprisingly significant in domestic contexts-where Christians lived and worshiped. The gospel itself (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:3-8) and the rituals of baptism (Rom. 6:3-4) and the eucharist (1 Cor. 11:23-26) all focus on the meaning of Christ's death... Further, the central frescoes on both the north and south walls of the ekklesiasterion in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii visually represent the myth of Io (VIII 7, 28; see figs. 8-11). This ekklesiasterion, a large room, "was probably the place where worshippers of Isis gathered and ritual banquets were held."...

I turn from documenting frescoes of Io/Isis on Roman and Pompeian walls and from aesthetic, domestic Egyptomania in Rome to a brief investigation of the myth of Io's suffering in literary sources. Literature may aid in understanding these visual representations of the myth of Io, whose importance may be seen especially since her image is the central fresco on both the north and south walls of the ekklesiasterion in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii. Both Isis and Io are women who suffered while wandering around the world. Isis is Egyptian, but the Greek Argive Io also finally finds refuge in Egypt. Both give birth to royal sons (Horos and Epaphus)... The story is known to and criticized by several church fathers, for example, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Lactantius, and Augustine. Drawing on diverse evidence, Ferguson concludes: "during the first two centuries of the common era they [Isis and Osiris-Sarapis] were the most popular and widespread of the non-Greek deities."...

Perhaps we can interpret the picture of Io in Livia's house in light of the image of Augustus on the temple gate from Kalabsha in Egypt. "Augustus, depicted as a pharaoh, stands before Osiris and Isis. He is the one giving. Here Augustus symbolically offers the land of Nubia to Isis, and not the other way around."' Io is closely associated with Isis and her rule in the picture in Pompeii... Frederick E. Brenk emphasizes a religious interpretation of the two central Io/Isis panels in the ekklesiasterion: both represent the mercy of Isis related to the role she plays in Apuleius's Metamorphoses. The new hymns of the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman period humanized some of Isis' features: "the destiny of every man then depended on the goddess who, in her love for the suffering, oppressed, imprisoned, and imperiled, became a succor and a savior of mankind. It was this hellenized Isis who conquered the Mediterranean world."...

Io does not die in the myth and ritual of her cult, in contrast to the myth and rituals related to Osiris; this article primarily concerns the goddess Isis, not Osiris. Some argue that it is misleading to speak of "dying and rising gods." Greece (Eleusis) and the East did know of dying gods; there were always two, usually an older female goddess and a younger male partner who dies. The older female mourns, and death is partially abolished, but Gerd Theissen argues that there is never a real resurrection... The ritual around the fate of dying deities is lamentation: cult members join the female deity in mourning the loss of the partner deity... Other scholars argue that Osiris is indeed raised from the dead. Since this article focuses on Isis, I will not debate this crucial question. But in the Christian sacraments, adherents experience Jesus' death in symbolic form, being buried in baptism and eating food identified with Jesus' death. The longing for nearness to the deity also found in cults of dying deities becomes central and is transformed. Christ is close to Christians' transitoriness, wretchedness, and guilt...

Isis' suffering as she wanders is a constituent aspect of the myth that can be observed in both Plutarch's text (Isis and Osiris 354A, 356E, 358A, 373A) and the popular visual representations of Io at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome. This myth and ritual is analogous to those at Eleusis, where Demeter is filled with sorrow for her daughter Kore/Persephone (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 192-211). The myth has meaning in an agricultural society: Persephone remains in the underworld while the seed is underground, and she returns when it begins growing. But a second, anthropological meaning is that "the human person, threatened by transience and death, is to receive a share in the vital force of nature, which is ever renewing itself."... Here the mysteries have become gnostic, individualized eschatology.
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