Was Jesus new?  Was Jesus unique?  Lets talk about the Mystery Religions.

Although you don't hear about them in Sunday School, mystery religions are an established part of mainstream religious scholarship. 

The mystery religions date from at least 1,500 BC, though some antropoligist claim they can trace them back into to old stone age.  Maybe.

Pagan writers wrote about a Pagan Mystery God "incognito, disguised as a man"; about Pagan Gods dying and being reborn with the meaning that "the God is saved, and we shall have salvation."; about initiation ceremonies described as "a voluntary death"; about sacred meals; ceremonial washing; Pagan miracles; the Pagan God who changed water into wine; the Pagan version of the great flood. And much more.

If you're interested in discovering more about the Mysteries from the writings of the ancients themselves, The Ancient Mysteries; A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts is a good place to start.

By the way

Count 'em. What you read about are the big name mysteries, those of Eleusis, Isis and Osiris, Dionysus and a few others. That may make you think mystery religions were isolated, eccentric cults, something only a few people knew about. In fact the mysteries were mainstream religion.

Effectively everyone in Athens (of course we don't have census statistics) was initiated into the great Mysteries of Eleusis. Joining mysteries was part of the culture. And there were hundreds of mystery religions -- world class mainstream scholar Walter Burkert estimates 600.

"I, who always lived in a pious body, inhabit, thanks to divine law, the sweet Elysian Fields."

And:

Beautiful indeed is the Mystery given us by the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing.  [Inscription found at Eleusis]

It was the common belief in Athens that whoever had been taught the Mysteries [at Eleusis] would, when he died, be deemed worthy of divine glory. Hence all were eager for initiation. [Scholiast on Aristophanes The Frogs, 158]

"Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these [Eleusinian] mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom." [Hymn to Demeter, 480-2] 0691014795

And

 It looks as if those also who established rites of initiation [into the mysteries] for us were no fools, but that there is a hidden meaning in their teaching when it says that whoever arrives uninitiated in Hades will lie in mud, but the purified and initiated when he arrives there will dwell with gods.  [Plato, 'Phaedo, 69 c]

Osiris' followers found salvation in his rebirth. The exact ritual steps of the initiation into the Mysteries of Osiris, we don't know -- they were kept secret on pain of death. That the initiation meant salvation could be written -- and was:

"The keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess, and the initiation ceremony itself a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace."  [Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 21]

And, "Be of good cheer, O initiates, for the god is saved, and we shall have salvation for our woes."  [Firmicus Maternus, The Error of Pagan Religions, 22.1]

Quoting the Goddess Isis:

" I have come with solace and aid. Away then with tears. Cease to moan. Send sorrow fleeing. Soon through my providence shall the sun of your salvation rise."  [Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.5]

Mithras Inscriptions in a Mithraeum (temple of Mithras) in Rome read:

Enough said.

"reborn and created for delights," and "you have saved us by the shedding of eternal blood."

Sabazius A fresco in Rome shows one of the God's faithful, now dead, banqueting among the immortal blessed.

Dionysus In Italy, in the third or fourth century BC, texts written on gold plates and buried with the dead, describe the souls of Dionysus followers in the afterlife, drinking not from one particular spring in Hades, but from another cool pool -- and that will give them divinity and eternal life.

"For suddenly a light shone in the darkness; the tomb was opened; the God had risen from the dead...[and the priest] softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the God was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave."  [for more see Frazer, Attis, chapter 1]

Who you gonna trust?  The ancients. Believing scholars shade the facts in favor of the myth.  Non-believers exaggerate and make up facts and connections as a way to attack the church. 

So who are you going to trust?  That's up to you.  I trust the ancients -- people alive back when Christianity began, and before. That's what this book is about.

This is a sourcebook, is a collection of primary documents -- excerpts from ancient authors who wrote about Pagan religion and early Christianity.  It's a great collection, with the original text of most of the standard ancient references to the pagan mystery religions.

This is a powerful book. You'll discover firsthand, right from the pens of the ancients themselves,  that Dionysus came to earth "incognito, disguised as a man"; that Pagan Gods died and were reborn with the meaning that "the God is saved, and we shall have salvation."; that pagans had initiation ceremonies seen as "a voluntary death", sacred meals shared with the God, ceremonial washing, Pagan miracles, a Godman who changed water into wine, and a Pagan version of the great flood.  And much more.  

Wow.

An important book that no serious student will be without. Highly recommended.

Available at Amazon .com.