Rache...the tragedy of some religions is that on both the literal AND the underlying levels.. its 'kill kill kill' selected individuals because of what they represent. Fortunately there is no such double barrelled danger in the Christian Scriptures.

I totally reject the idea of 'many overlays' and that early Christianty simply absorbed prevailing religious ideas.. that simply goes against the evidence as it stands. You would need to re-write pretty much all archeology from the time of Christ till now to support such a view...it just doesn't have legs.

When Paul preached to the Jews, he connected the proclamation of "messiah" to the Jewish history and scriptures. When he proclaimed the Gospel to the Greeks, he connected it to their "unknown god" (Acts 17).

What we are seeing there is not some kind of 'mystery religion overlay' we are seeing GOOD COMMUNICATION practice. Paul did not try to scratch the Greeks where they were not itching. Hebrew Scriptures would not mean anything to them, so... he preached the death and resurrection of Christ and related this to their existing concept of God.. "The Unknown one"

Boazy, before you totally reject an idea because it doesn't fit what you want to think, ask yourself: what is Christian about putting up a decorated tree at Christmas? Have you ever put up a tree?

BUGSY.. I love it when people ask questions like that :) you are quite right. Christmas trees have ZERO to do with the faith of the early Church or Christianity in general....

In our case, we sometimes have a tree, but I specifically point out that it:

a) was once a pagan thing
b) For us, we attribute Christian symbolic meaning as a family.

My wifes people used to have a thing called an "Irau" a big booze up and rather sleazy party every year. But this has now been 're-badged' and timed to coincide with Easter, and the events of the Cross are now the focus..and no one gets drunk any more.

But when it comes to Christianity as a historic faith..I simply re-iterate.. the evidence is just 'not there'.. as much as some people would like it to be, that it became influenced or infected by the local mystery religion.

Some have speculated that Gnostic influence is evident in some of Pauls letters, but this is not sustainable. His letters were before Gnosticism anyway.

Cheers.

I find it very odd that you can acknowledge that elements of Christianity have inherited parts from other religions and "rebadged" them, and then totally reject that idea in the same post. Very odd.

BD I think you're too quick to dismiss the influence of other religions on Christianity, and vice-versa. Christianity didn't come into being whole, it is explicitly built on innovation in the Jewish relgion (New Testament versus Old). Less explicitly it draws on the influence of Greek philosophy, and probably even contains some elements derived from Buddhism.

Careful reading of the scriptures shows a development from a pagan understanding of God as being one god amongst many to the one all-powerful creator. It was a neat rhetorical trick of Paul's to refer to the unknown god, but that god was the Greek equivalent of the god of the gaps. They believed in so many gods that this was the one that they might have forgotten.

Paul was turning this on its head. In his pantheon the most minor of their gods was the most major and only God. Which is why Christianity was so powerful - there was a void at the heart of Hellenic and Roman pantheism. It explained different phenomena episodically and partially. An all-powerful creator God sorted all of this mess out, but the personality of the God through Jesus made it more powerful than more abstract monotheism. (And I think the evidence for Jewish monotheism points towards an Egyptian origin in Akhenatenism).

Graham I'd like to see that case well argued, with some sources, rather than just stated.

"Less explicitly it draws on the influence of Greek philosophy, and probably even contains some elements derived from Buddhism."

Key words 'It draws on'....

so less explicitly I can't see it :)

BUGSY.. and I thought you were a bright fellow :)

Rebadging a traditional practice, .. As I said..Paul just used it at as a communication point of contact..."the Faith" was not influenced by those practices.

The Catholic approach to evangelism among traditional tribes of Sarawak was notably different. They accepted 'taboos' and all manner of pagan practice, and basically threw some holy water at it, baptized all and sundry, told them they were now 'Catholics' and life went on as usual, but the Bungan Cult is still alive and kicking, not among the evangelical Kenyas but among the others.
http://www.joshuaproject.net/peopctry.php?rog3=ID&rop3=104836
Look at the 'What do they believe' subheading, and refer to the last sentence

http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/u9030e/U9030E02.htm
There are some good pics in that link, might be of general interest.
You'd be amazed at how gracefully the ladies who wear those heavy ear lobe rings can walk :) they make catwalk supermodels look positively clumsy.