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:
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.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.
"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 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".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.
"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):
Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (Yale University Press, 2009), Luke Timothy Johnson: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).
Mystery Cults, Theatre and Athenian Politics: A Reading of Euripides' Bacchae and Aristophanes' Frogs (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), Luigi Barzini: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.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann: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.
Justification or being "justified" is important in both Paul and the Egyptian mortuary ritual.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.
Romans 5:
Romans 8: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.
1 Cor. 6:11:And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
"Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3, 1989: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.
Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Smith:"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.
Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism (Walter de Gruyter, 2011), David Hellholm, Tor Vegge, Oyvind Norderval, Christer Hellholm: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.
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.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.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann:
Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001), John H. Taylor: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.
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: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.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day edited by Eva Von Dassow: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.
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:
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.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."
Cosmology & Eschatology in Jewish & Christian Apocalypticism (Brill, 1996), Adela Yarbro Collins:
Corresponding Sense: Paul, Dialectic, and Gadamer (Brill, 2001), Brook W. R. Pearson: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.
"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: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.
Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians (Mohr Siebeck, 2015), Courtney Friesen: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.
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.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).
Following Osiris (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Smith:
Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001), John H. Taylor: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.
The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs (Harvard University Press, 2002) Jan Assmann: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.
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: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.
Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Dallas Museum of Art, 1993), Sue D'Auria and Peter Lacovara::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.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005) Jan Assmann: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.
Compare the above quote to Colossians 2:12: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.
And Romans 6: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.
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.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.
“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:
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.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.
Paul says Christians are one body in the spirit of Christ.
1 Cor. 12:
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.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.
Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains (Prometheus, 1994), R. Joseph Hoffmann:
Paul says that the "perishable must put on imperishability".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.
1 Corinthians 15:
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann: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 Initiation in the Funerary Religion of Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale Egyptological Studies 3, (1989):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)...
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: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.
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”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.
Ancient Egyptian Magic (William Morrow Paperbacks, 1998), Bob Brier:
All Things Ancient Egypt: An Encyclopedia of the Ancient Egyptian World (ABC-CLIO, 2019), Lisa K. Sabbahy: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.
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.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.
John 11:
"The Baptismal Raising of Lazarus: A New Interpretation of John 11", Bernhard Lang, Novum Testamentum 58 (2016):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.”
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.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.
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (SBL Press; Second edition, 2015), James P. Allen:
The Mortuary Papyrus of Padikakem Walters Art Museum 551 (ISD LLC, 2011), Yekaterina Barbash: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...
Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (Yale Egyptological Seminar, 2006), David Klotz: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.
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2001), Jan Assmann: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.
Mummies & Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Dallas Museum of Art, 1993), Sue D'Auria and Peter Lacovara: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.
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2005), Jan Assmann: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".
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.“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.
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.