The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?

The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?

is a 1999 book by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy that claims to reconstruct the true origins of Christianity. It relies heavily on the Gnostic gospels found at Nag Hammadi.

Prior to publishing Jesus Mysteries, Freke and Gandy had collaborated in writing books on mysticism and paganism. The authors suggest that a number of pagan mystery religions, such as those of Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, and Mithras, were all manifestations of a single cult of a dying and rising "godman" myth, whom they call Osiris-Dionysus.

The authors propose that Jesus did not really exist, but was instead a syncretic re-interpretation of the fundamental pagan "godman" by the Gnostics, who were the original sect of Christianity.

Orthodox Christianity, according to them, was not the predecessor to Gnosticism, but a later outgrowth that rewrote history in order to make literal Christianity appear to predate the Gnostics. They describe their theory as the "Jesus Mysteries thesis."

The Jesus Mysteries thesis

Freke and Gandy base the Jesus Mysteries thesis partly on a series of parallels between their suggested biography of Osiris-Dionysus and the biography of Jesus drawn from the four canonical gospels. Their suggested reconstruction of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, compiled from the myths of ancient dying and resurrected "godmen," bears a striking resemblance to the gospel accounts. The authors give a short list of parallels at the beginning of the book:

Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the savior and "Son of God."

His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin, 7 month pregnancy.

He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on December 25 before three shepherds.

He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism.

He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony.

He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him.

He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.

After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.

His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, which symbolize his body and blood.

Later chapters add further parallels, including Mary's 7 month pregnancy.

According to The Jesus Mysteries, Christianity originated as a Judaized version of the pagan mystery religions. Hellenized Jews wrote a version of the godman myth incorporating Jewish elements. Initiates learned the myth and its allegorical meanings through the Outer and Inner Mysteries. (A similar pattern of "Lesser" and "Greater" Mysteries was part of the pagan Eleusinian Mysteries. Mithraism was structured around seven serial initiations.)

They suggest that, at some point, groups of Christians who had only experienced the Outer Mysteries were split off from the elders of the religion and forgot that there had ever been a second initiation, and that, later, when they encountered groups who had retained the Inner Mysteries, the "Literalist Christians" attacked the "Gnostics" for claiming what the Literalists saw as false knowledge and false initiations.

They claim that the Literalists won out when the emperor Constantine saw the political merit of 'one empire, one emperor, one god', nearly exterminating the Gnostics, and became the Roman Catholic Church and its modern descendants.

Criticism and support

David Allan Dodson, a reviewer for CNN, found the book to be interesting, he stated that "while the authors discuss many examples of elements of Osiris/Dionysus in the Jesus story, they virtually ignore the more direct ties to Jewish tradition and prophecy.

This oversight undermines the credibility of many of their arguments, and could have the tendency to mislead the novice reader in this subject". (CNN.com, "Review: Jesus -- man or myth?", September 21, 2000).

However, while Dodson wasn't fully convinced by the authors that Jesus was completely fictional, he did end his review with the following supportive remarks: "The Jesus Mysteries left this reviewer more convinced than ever that the life of Jesus as we know it is filled with mythological, political, and even polemical elements.

Freke and Gandy succeed in bringing some important points about Christianity to the public in a readable, compelling book.

Perhaps their willingness to state 'the unthinkable thought' will lead to more objective thinking about religion and tolerance. If so, The Jesus Mysteries is a worthy effort indeed".

The book has 63 pages of citations in the endnotes which constitutes a hefty 18% of the entire book.

Australian Bishop Paul Burnett, a New Testament scholar who has authored several books in favor of a historical Jesus, argues that a good proportion of the citations in the 63 pages of end notes are out of date. "Like the Gnostics, Freke and Gandy have a mystical mindset and therefore oppose Christianity as grounded in history," he wrote.

"They hate the idea that the incarnation of the Son of God and his resurrection could have been a matter of actual flesh and blood and time and place."

it is worth noting however that in the first chapter of the jesus mysteries freke and gandy state that they started this book not from a mystical but literal mindset and only after years of careful research did they stop thinking of the jesus mysteries theory as "unthinkable".