Re: fundamentalism

[Christopher D. Green]

It is hard to tell exactly what the question at issue is here. If the question is whether the early (e.g., Roman) Christians "borrowed" their holidays from others, there can be no doubt of this. Christmas and Easter are essentially solstice holidays, which are common to so many cultures throughout history that they can hardly be numbered. The essential "raw materials" for many later Christian stories, rituals,  and celebrations can be found by looking through the various "mystery" religions of Rome. For instance, according the the cult of Cybele (the "Great Mother"), Cybele's lover, Attis, castrated himself for an infidelity and then bled to death under a pine tree. He was said to have risen again three days later. The ritual associated with this involved the letting of blood, and the cutting down of a tree, which was then adorned with violets as symbols of Attis' blood. When was this celebrated? Why March 22-25, of course. Another instance: Mithras, the god of light (as in "I am the light"), was said to have saved humankind from a world-destroying flood. Mithraism seems to have evloved into the the cult of Sol Invictus, the most popular religion among Roman Soldiers. Sol's birthday was traditionally celebrated (you guessed it!) on Dec. 25. Indeed, there seems to be some question as to whether Constantine's famous vision was Christian or Sol-ist, or if, indeed, he and his followers recognized an important difference between the two. (I cover some of this briefly on (pp. 148-149 of my and Phil Groff's _Early Psychological Thought_.) If the question is the "exclusivity" of early Christians, there can be little doubt about that either (this and the former question do not exclude each other). Indeed, contrary to popular (Christian) belief, the Romans were generally quite tolerant of the religious diversity of the empire, provided everyone took time out to celebrate the holidays of the official state gods as well. One of the reasons they cracked down so hard on the Christians was that Christians refused to go along with this reasonable demand, not only putting their own god above all others, but claiming it to be the only god in existence. The first chapter of Henry Chadwick's _The Early Church_ covers some of this material accessibly and reliably. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ============================ . Paul Brandon wrote: At 5:40 PM -0500 11/17/04, Jim  Guinee wrote:  > If I remember correctly, the church was originally focused on getting  members, so accepted a number of different behaviors - sort of a Hey, you  are already celebrating X - let's just call it Y instead and it means this  now. Loads of examples exist, such as Easter (focus on life and rebirth),  the birth of a child from a virgin, Christmas (and the lights), etc.  Christmas used to be so bad (drunkenness and so on) that it wasn't  celebrated in parts of America. No offense, but this response demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of early Christianity. Early Christians were generally perseceuted for being so exclusive in their beliefs. That this changed later may be true to some extent. My suggestion is to read the writings of early Christians and get a better handle on how things started. Which ones? If by 'early' you mean the first century or two, there was a lot more variety of opinion in the movement than there is now. As in most movements, the winners got to write the (official) history. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]