Some background on how Christianity got started (stuff not in the NT) might be of value. I think what grew into Christianity was just one of the Mystery Religions that floated around the Mediteranean world a couple thousand years ago. For some reason, Saul of Tarsus really took to it and spread it to the Gentiles where it took root, and by the fourth century CE the Roman Emperor decided to take it on. Whether he ever really got baptized and was a "real" Christian is an open question that not even my prof could answer. (Being a Lutheran, for him being a real Christian would mean being baptized. For some of us, being a real Christian means living a certain way, keeping certain rules, etc.)

For those who don't know what the Mystery Religions are, there were others beside the Christian one. The others also had stories to go with them. I'm not talking about Osiris and the other Greek gods and their myths, but stories less well known. I can get authors' names or maybe find something online if anyone is interested. I took a course in it and have a few textbooks. Marvin W. Meyer--I think that is the name of one important scholar in the field. There's also something called the Eleusynian Mysteries. (Not sure of the spelling.)

Aesclepius is the name of a god I did a presentation on. Unfortunately, I did not understand the course too well so I didn't get as much out of it as I wish I had. The big thing I got out of it was that Christianity is not the only religious story of that era. At the time, I was in desperate need for an alternative view of Christianity and it provided some excellent food for thought. The confessions of the author of the Passing of Peregrinus (if you google that title you'll find the story) provided major insight on how the writers of the NT may have viewed their responsibility as writers of religious texts. (Peregrinus was another story I encountered in my research for assignments for that course.)

The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, edited by Marvin W. Meyer is a good book on the Mystery Religions in general. This is a "Search Inside" book so you can see for yourself what the contents are. It will give you some idea as to what the Mystery Religions are.

I'll look and see if I can find some more information online.

Wikipedia has an article on Demeter. There is a Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Here are a few lines from it:

480 Olbios among earth-bound mortals is he who has seen these things.

But whoever is uninitiated in the rites, whoever takes no part in them, will never get a share [aisa] of those sorts of things [that the initiated get],

once they die, down below in the dank realms of mist.

But when the resplendent goddess finished all her instructions,

they [Demeter and Persephone] went to Olympus, to join the company of the other gods.

485 And there they abide at the side of Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt.

Holy they are, and revered. Olbios is he whom they,

being kind, decide to love among earth-bound mortals.

Meyer organizes the Mystery Religions according to region and ethnicity or religion. For example, there are The Greek Mysteries of the Grain Mother and Daughter, to which the Homeric Hymn to Demeter belongs (in my former post). There are The Andanian Mysteries of Messenia, the Greek Mysteries of Dionysos, The Anatolian Mysteries of the Great Mother and Her Lover, and the Syrian Goddess, among others. There is also The Mysteries within Judaism and Christianity.

In this chapter we find:

Plutarch of Chaeronea, Table-Talk, Book 4 (selection)
Philo of Alexandria, On the Contemplative Life (selection)
Clement of Alexandria, "To Theodore"
Gospel of Philip (selections)
Clement of Alexandria, Exhortations to the Greeks (selections)

This Internet Ancient History Sourcebook looks like it might be good.

Here you can read about Paul and the Mystery Religions written by Don Closson who was educated at Dallas Theological Seminary. In my opinion, that school is about as fundy as you can get.

Here is the Britannica article. I'm not quite sure how they work--if you have to pay to read it or get a free trial or something. There are enough links and snippets in the part of the article that is posted to start googling for free stuff.

So if the Jesus story, like the stories of some of the other Mystery Religion stories, was acted out in a dimly lit midnight ceremony, perhaps in the bowels of the earth (read cave), who knows what impressions were left on the minds of the initiates? An unscheduled sun eclipse could easily have been simulated. With nothing but the light of a flickering flame lighting the scene, the sonorous cry "My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?" would have thrilled the most solemn soul.

Contrast this scene with the story of Saul being struck down on the Damascus Road at the height of the noonday sun by a sharp light. In other words, this Jesus was apparently the strongest character of all the characters in all the Mystery Religions--he was strong enough to outshine the noonday sun of the Middle East out on the open road. No need to hide away in the bowels of the earth in the middle of the night to get the "effect" with this Jesus guy. He was for real!

Even though his companians did not see and hear everything Saul did, they did notice something out of the ordinary. (Who wouldn't have?) Also, these people were very highly superstitious, not having a clue in the world how the human body, brain, and natural elements worked. The line between the spiritual or imaginary and the concrete was every bit as thin and permeable for them as it is for radical Christians today.

If we look at the Jesus story as a Mystery Religion acted out in the bowels of the earth from time immemorial like the other Mystery Religions, then the structure of the NT, and gospels that didn't make it into the Bible, makes sense. We have birth naratives and a few childhood stories, Jesus' coming of age (baptism, confrontation with Satan in the wilderness), his ministry, and then a major focus on his Passion. Then, as now, people loved gut-wrenching stories, thrillers, something that arroused their feelings and proved to them that they really were alive. Everything else was a prelude; it built up to that one peak event--the climax of the story.

And having Jesus as the Pascal Lamb, what would be more natural for the Jewish context? There was Abel, there was Isaac, there was Moses. Historically, the Jewish people had human sacrificial lambs. Several thousand years had passed. It was time for a new one. Jesus fit the picture. No one knows where the Mystery Religions came from. Jesus may have been a composite figure that evolved out of the Macabean Revolts in the centuries prior to the Roman Empire.

Thus, the entire story builds up to that one moment in time when the utterly helpless Son of God cries out on the cross, "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" There is a minor reaction and then he dies. Suddenly it is Easter morning and he is alive, walking through walls and locked doors, barbequing fish nobody caught and rebuking Peter for not standing by his side through the trial. And then when they've run out of sensational stuff he floats off to heaven.

Probably the light is extinguished at that very instant. And when the light comes on again the disciples are assembled in the Upper Room ordaining a man to replace Judas Iscariot.

Does it not seem suspect that it was only after Saul-Paul's Damascus Road conversion that Christianity really took off? I don't know enough about the other Mystery Religions, but I get the impression that they were secret to the extent that only initiates knew about them. That is, family members would not know. Thus, there is no way these religions could be "national religions" like Judaism or Christianity. They could not be a way of life. They were of necesssity personal, private, perhaps for private devotions and secret fellowship. I don't know but that would make sense to me. That is the impression I get from reading some of the Gnostic literature--that members of some of the Gnostic sects were also members in the regular Christian church, and that family members and fellow parishoners did not really know what went on at that "other place."

There is a story of a young man, was it Eusibius?, who got permission from his pastor to pretend to become a member in order to spy. When we covered his "reports" in class we didn't put too much stock in them because they would have been severely biased and possibly far from factually accurate as we consider factual accuracy today.

What I am positing is this: Christianity may well have emerged from a Mystery Religion and possibly nobody considered Jesus to have been a real historical figure quite like you and me until Saul-Paul had his conversion experience. That convinced Paul that there was something "real" about Jesus--something more real about Jesus than about the other Mystery Religion characters.

Given that it may have been a Mystery Religion acted out on the stage impromptu throughout a wide geographical area, there would have been many versions of the story. See what I'm getting at? No wonder we have various versions of the story. No wonder that the best efforts at harmonizing always fail. Did the people who decided the Canon know about the Mysterious Origins of Jesus? Quite possibly. I suggest that the inclusion of contradictions was intentional to retain the flavor of the traditional Mystery. I further suggest that teaching Mystery as history is the biggest mistake the church has ever committed.

I'm rereading the last few sentences. I am asking myself how much of this was intentional? How much was accidental? The Council of Nicea was not voluntary on the part of the Bishops. In other words, the closing of the Canon was not a choice made by the Christian Church. It was a order imposed by the Emperor Constantine. The Bishops who assembled at the Council of Nicea were in no way united in their beliefs. Constantine demanded that they fight it out and become united. I'm not sure but I'm under the impression he wouldn't let them go until they did.

Let's see, maybe I'm getting my history mixed up. I don't know too much about how the Canon was closed. It isn't actually closed but it was more or less "set" in the fourth century. I guess the Council of Nicea had to come up with a Creed. Here's what I am getting at. Is it possible that the Church Fathers got back at Constantine by intentionally including contradictory stuff in the Creed and New Testament--stuff that only religious specialists would notice but not a converted Emperor more interested in military conquests?

This way they would not have to be as united as he thought. They had, after all, inherited centuries worth of under-handed dealings where civil governments were concerned by mere virtue of practicing an illegal religion. Who's to say this didn't come down to us via the Canon and the Creed? If Jesus is a mythical figure and if Christianity comes from the Mystery Religions, this would be far more probable than if all of this were based on factual history. That is my hypothesis.