Because early Christianity made its appeal to Gentiles as well as to those who had been Jews, the New Testament reflects something of the Gentiles’ background, along with that of the Israelite people. Of course, to mention more than a few of the more important influences that have a direct bearing on the literature produced by the early Christians is impossible. However, three major influences on the Gentile version of Christianity are mystery cults, emperor worship, and Greek philosophy.
Mystery cults were secret organizations whose membership was restricted to people who made application for admittance and then passed through a probationary period during which their conduct was carefully observed by qualified officials. Unless they performed the necessary rites and met all of the specified tests, they were not allowed to become members. Many mystery cults existed throughout the Greco-Roman world during New Testament times, including the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orphic Mysteries, the Attis-Adonis Mysteries, and the Isis-Osiris Mysteries.
The actual ceremonies that took place within any of these cults were supposed to be kept secret. However, certain general characteristics of the mystery religions are fairly well known. All of them were concerned primarily with the means of obtaining salvation. Life in this present world was so infected with evil that no permanent good could be achieved in it. Consequently, salvation meant leaving this world and entering into a new type of existence in a life that comes after physical death.
Each of the mystery cults had its own peculiar mythology describing in some detail the activities of the gods that were involved. Many of the myths appear to have originated in order to explain the change of seasons, which causes the death of vegetation in the fall of the year and its rebirth in the spring. As the mythology developed, the death and resurrection that occur in the vegetable kingdom came to be regarded as appropriate symbols for the lives of human beings. Because vegetation overcomes death through the power of the gods, humankind, through the aid of a supernatural power, might also triumph over death.
The agent through whom this power to overcome death would be made available was known as the heroic redeemer. Unlike the Jewish concept of the Messiah, whose function was that of establishing a kingdom of justice and righteousness on this earth, the heroic redeemer of the mystery cults was a savior able to conquer death not only for himself but for all of his faithful followers. He was a heavenly being who would come to earth in human form and use his miraculous power to perform deeds of mercy and kindness toward human beings. His work would encounter opposition from the forces of evil, and his earthly career would be brought to an end by a sacrificial death. By virtue of his power as a divine being, he would rise from the dead and ascend back to the heaven from whence he came.
The power that was manifest in the experiences of the heroic redeemer could be imparted to the members of the cult who were prepared to receive it. In order to prepare for this experience, the applicants for membership were required to go through certain initiatory rites, which usually included a sprinkling ceremony in which either water or blood was used, thus signifying a purifying process that cleansed the individual of evil. After the applicant became a member, other ceremonies were designed to bring about a mystical union between the believer and the redeemer. In one of these ceremonies, the initiates would sit in front of a stage, where they would witness a dramatic performance that portrayed the life, death, and resurrection of the redeemer. As they saw this drama enacted, they would feel a sense of kinship with the hero. Being united in spirit with him, they, too, would possess the power to overcome the evils of mortal existence, including even death itself.
In another type of ceremony, union with the redeemer was accomplished through participation in a common meal. The members of the cult gathered around a table and partook in a symbol of the body and blood of the redeemer, believing that in this way the life present in the redeemer was imparted to them. Membership in the cult and participation in its many rites and ceremonies were regarded as essential means for transforming the quality of one’s living on this earth in preparation for the true salvation achieved in a life to come after death.
Emperor worship was another factor that had an important bearing on the religious life of the Gentile world. Its chief significance lies in the concept of a human being who, over the course of time, is elevated in the minds of his followers to the status of deity. In other words, a person becomes a god. This way of thinking contrasts that of the Jews. Judaism always made a sharp distinction between the human and the divine. Yahweh, the god of the Jewish religion, was regarded as the creator and, in a sense, the father of all humankind. But he was not a father in any physical or biological sense of the term. Human beings were born of two human parents, not of one human parent and one divine parent. However, among some non-Jews of the world, the concept of an individual who has one human parent and one divine parent was fairly common. To be sure, only the exceptional individual’s earthly career could be explained in this way, the most frequent example of which was found in the ruler of a country. One way of accounting for the extraordinary achievements of a head of government was to credit him with supernatural ancestry on the grounds that no ordinary human being born in the usual way could have accomplished so much. Having a divine parent was interpreted to mean that the individual belonged to the race of the gods and was therefore not comparable to ordinary mortals.
