Evangelicals across the political spectrum, from Pat Robertson to Jim Wallis, seek to shape our government and life-ways by appealing to the authority of the Christian Bible. It is virtually impossible to understand American politics without understanding the book that drives their priorities. Given that three quarters of Americans are Christians, I would argue that it is virtually impossible to move forward as a people without growing our understanding of the Book.
The Christian Bible culminates in a death and resurrection story. What is this story, and where did it come from? In this post, Valerie Tarico, author of The Dark Side, interviews Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions and mythology. Dr. Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is a Presbyterian minister.
Easter is coming. Some people are saying that the crucifixion and resurrection narratives simply retell the cycle of seasons, the death and return of the Sun. Others say that these stories are literal histories. But you say the reality is more complicated than either of these. You argue that the Easter stories - the death and resurrection of Jesus have very specific mythic origins.
I view the story of Christ in the Gospels of the New Testament as a powerful and spiritually wise sacred story. While the story is told as if it happened, it is a theologically and mythically constructed history. The conclusion of the story, the account of Christ's crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to heaven, has many layers. But at its core I would say it is an historicized version of a very ancient myth from Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization, the land we today call Iraq.
What does that mean?
Some stories speak to people in a deep spiritual way. These sacred stories are what are called "myths" in the field of religious studies. Despite our common usage, a myth traditionally is not just a false tale. Rather, it is a story that, at least at one point in time, had a very powerful spiritual resonance. The story of death and resurrection is one such story. In the Sumerian tradition, in which much of the Bible is rooted, the story is called, "From the Great Above to the Great Below" or "The Descent of Inanna." There is also a Babylonian version of the myth, which is called "The Descent of Ishtar," and she is known elsewhere as Astarte.
Let's hear the story!
The Sumerian goddess Inanna is the personification of the planet Venus the "Queen of Heaven" and a major deity in the Sumerian pantheon. A long, long time ago, before humans are even created, Inanna, takes a journey to the Underworld, a realm under the control of her sister Ereshkigal. Before heading out Inanna gives instructions to her assistant about rescuing her if she runs into trouble, which she does. In the underworld, she enters through seven gates, and her worldly attire is removed. "Naked and bowed low" she is judged, killed, and then hung on display.
I can't help but notice that the number seven is a sacred, just like it will be later in the Bible.
Yes, the numbers three, seven, twelve are sacred throughout ancient Mesopotamian writings including the Hebrew Bible (seven days of creation, twelve tribes of Israel) and subsequently Christianity (three days in the tomb, twelve apostles, twelve days of Christmas). They have their roots in universal human perceptions of the movements of the heavens (e.g. twelve signs of the zodiac).
To return to the story, the result of Inanna's death is that the earth becomes sterile. Plants start drying up, and animals cease having sexual relations. Unless something is done all life on earth will end. After Inanna has been missing for three days her assistant goes to other gods for help. Finally one of them Enki, creates two creatures who carry the plant of life and water of life down to the Underworld, sprinkling them on Inanna and resurrecting her. She then prepares to return to the upper realm.
So Inanna is the prototype for Jesus in the Easter story?
Not quite. She is part of the prototype. After Inanna gets out of the underworld we are introduced to her husband Dumuzi. When mythic stories get passed from one culture to the next, sometimes one character can split into two or two characters come together. In this case, the Jesus of the resurrection story blends parts of Inanna and Dimuzi.
Ok, let's hear about Dumuzi.
The Underworld has a number of names, including "the Great Earth" and "the Great City", and it is also called the "Land of No Return." If, by extraordinary chance, someone is resurrected or escapes from there, a substitute must be provided. So when Inanna returns to the upper realm she searches for a substitute. She doesn't want to send anyone who has been missing her and mourning her down there, but she finds her husband Dumuzi on his throne and totally unconcerned about her being gone. She decides that he will be her substitute.
He protests vigorously and is helped to escape by his brother-in-law Utu, the Sun-god. But then a compromise is agreed upon, whereby Dumuzi will spend six months of every year in the Underworld, and for the other six months his devoted sister will substitute for him. Life and fertility thus return to the earth. And that's how the story ends.
Six months up and six down. Now I am reminded of Persephone.
Yes, and many other dying and rising gods that represent the cycle of the seasons and the stars. In Christianity one way the story changes is that it is detached from this agricultural cycle. The dying happens just once.
But this story of Inanna/Ishtar is the oldest, the prototype?
It is one of the earliest epic myths recorded. We know this story because it has been found inscribed on cuneiform clay tablets dug up from the sands of Iraq by archaeologists, and because linguists have deciphered the Sumerian language and provided translations in English. This was a popular myth, and so we have multiple copies of it, or of portions of it. The earliest tablets inscribed with this story date to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and it is thought to have been originally formulated about 2100 BC, i.e., 4200 years ago.
Lay it out for us. How do you see this being a prototype for the story of Christ's death and resurrection?
Let's start with the first part of the myth. Inanna and Jesus both travel to a big city, where they are arrested by soldiers, put on trial, convicted, sentenced to death, stripped of their clothes, tortured, hung up on a stake, and die. And then, after 3 days, they are resurrected from the dead. Now there are, to be sure, a number of significant differences between the stories. For one thing, one story is about a goddess and the other is about a divine man. But this is a specific pattern, a mythic template. When you are dealing with the question of whether these things actually happened, you have to deal with the fact that there is a mythic template here. It doesn't necessarily mean that there wasn't a real person, Jesus, who was crucified, but rather that, if there was, the story about it is structured and embellished in accordance with a pattern that was very ancient and widespread.
So what about the 2nd part of the myth?
The 2nd part of the Inanna myth really focuses on her husband Dumuzi. Dumuzi is the prototype of the non-aggressive, non-heroic male; he cries easily; he is the opposite of the warrior-god in the ancient pantheon. The summer month which corresponds to our month of July is named after him in both the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars, and during this month each year his followers, mostly women, mourn his death. From this myth we are talking about, and from a few other references, we also know that he is resurrected. But unlike Jesus, who dies and is resurrected once, he is imagined to die and be resurrected over and over, each year. There are other major differences. However, there really are a lot of similarities between the personalities and the stories of Jesus and Dumuzi. They both are tortured and die violent deaths after being betrayed by a close friend, who accepts a bribe from his enemies. They both have a father who is a god and a mother who is human. Dumuzi's father, the god Enki, also has many similarities to Yahweh, the father of Jesus.
Other than this gospel story, are there any other signs of Inanna's influence on Christianity or on Easter?
There are a few points I would mention. Inanna becomes known outside of Mesopotamia by her Babylonian name, "Ishtar". She is a personification of Venus as an evening star, and there is also a male aspect of the deity who is usually the morning star. At the end of the Book of Revelation when Christ speaks to John he says, "I am the bright morning star." In ancient Canaan Ishtar is known as Astarte, and her counterparts in the Greek and Roman pantheons are known as Aphrodite and Venus. In the 4th Century, when Christians got around to identifying the exact site in Jerusalem where the empty tomb of Jesus had been located, they selected the spot where a temple of Aphrodite (Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna) stood. So they tore it down and built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest church in the Christian world.
Also, our holiday of Easter was traditionally called 'Pascha', and still is in many languages, named after the Jewish festival of 'Pesach' or Passover. In the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon world we have, however, come to name the holiday 'Easter'. This name is almost surely a reflex of the goddess Ishtar. In the pagan spiritual traditions of Germany and England in the medieval period Ishtar, who came to be called the goddess Easter, and who as a deity of resurrection and rebirth became strongly associated with the season of springtime and ultimately gave her name to Christianity's main holy day.
No rudeness intended, but how can you call yourself a Christian? Mark Driscoll, rising Evangelical star, told his Seattle congregation: "If the resurrection of Christ didn't literally happen, there is no reason for us to be here."
Well, many Christian theologians see the crucifixion and resurrection as a spiritual story rather than a literal one--a story about hope beyond despair, redemption and new life. But they are not the ones who get the media attention. I consider myself to be a Christian in a spiritual sense, not in a doctrinal sense. This means my Christianity is defined by values, spiritual practices, and faith rather than belief in a specific set of doctrinal agreements. Before the 4th Century, when orthodoxy was established, Christianity was characterized by heterodoxy -- many different forms of belief.
If the resurrection of Christ didn't literally happen, that shouldn't have any bearing on whether life now is worth living or how we live. From my vantage point, where values and practices are the heart of Christianity, the contradiction lies in people like our recent president who think it's ok to practice torture and yet call themselves Christians. Who would Jesus waterboard? Christ's torture and execution remind us that we are called to put an end to such practices in human affairs. From the standpoint of my Christianity, right-wing evangelical fundamentalism is really the opposite of what Christ was about. Those who subscribe to an intolerant, arrogant, inhumane form of Christianity are following a religion that is literally antichrist.
Follow Valerie Tarico on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ValerieTarico
Sheldon C. Good: Christ is Risen: Our Story to Share
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori: Easter 2011 Message From the Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop
When Miss Torinco says all religions are infleunced by past ones, and notes the common theme of dying and rising saviours prevalent int he Medeteranian, she falls into the trap of assuming that enlightenment is identical to accepting critism of Christianity. In this case its unjustified, though.
Christianity emerged from Judaism, not from Paganism, and the themes of dying and rising gods wheren't that common in the region and time period.
The name Ishtar may phonetically sounds vaugley similar to our "Easter", but the name of the Holiday is derived from a Celtic deity, and then only because the Holiday fell in a month named after her. We have no actual reason to think Oester is a corruption of Ishtar other than a similar sounding name, and no reason to think Christians appropriated a pagan Holiday because the British Christians named the holiday after a month that she happened to have named for her.
Why should we assume that Easter is connected to Ishtar at all?
And to this Im dismssed as a fundamentalist CHristian who read sonly Apologetics?
COem on, you surely see the weakness of this postulate.
Now, back to the discussion. Thank you, Valerie, for sharing your interview of Dr. Nugent with us. Even if a person does not agree with the interviewee's opinion or insight, it is good to hear what others have to say and what they think. It gives us more fodder for our minds to chew on when we contemplate all things spiritual, helping us to come to our own, individual conclusions and beliefs.
I still consider myself a Christian because I believe that Jesus is the Christ, whether or not his resurrection is true and literal. My faith is not dependent on that.
The rigidity of most of the Western church is less about spirituality and more about control. We have free will, which means we can seek God and the truth from every angle, even if that journey takes us to other conclusions. If we have our beliefs forced upon us, the enforcers are taking the place of God by taking away our free will. I identified all too well with Valerie in her book "The Dark Side" when she described the reactions of family & friends to her questions about her faith.
Jesus taught love, respect, patience, the search for truth, being at peace with God and man, and similar virtues and morals. In that regard, I have met a lot of people who reflect the teachings of Christ better than many Christians do.
Suppose I look inside of my heart for the truth and discover that I like the traditional church experience and don't wish to get "spiritual." It would be O.K., wouldn't it? I mean, there's no right answer in the quest for "our own, individual conclusions and beliefs." Is there?
I try to picture Jesus telling people not to go to church, but it doesn't compute. Jesus commanded us to belong to the larger community of humanity, and going to church seems a very effective way of following that command. I wonder if Jesus would agree?
It's absolutely okay for you or anyone else to enjoy and be comfortable with the traditional church experience. My use of the word "spiritual" applies to both Christianity and other belief systems (Religious Science, Buddhism, or anything else that embraces the spiritual side of life). You're absolutely correct: there's no right answer.
Many people do not agree that a person can be Christian without going to church. I agree that being among a group of like-minded individuals can be good, but Jesus never said we HAVE to. Paul encouraged it, but also never said it was a prerequisite to entering Heaven.
When a person has too many negative experiences from the petty, back-stabbing, political games within a church (synagogue, etc.), I believe Jesus completely understands and had compassion on that individual. I think he can easily accept that they may shy away from that type of organization because of the hurt that was done "in his name."
(And yes, I just described my own personal experience, but I have talked with many others who have the same frame of mind.)
It just doesn't occur to you that I might be right and that my sources may not be apologetics, because in your mind scholarships will always favour the Pagan Borrowing, and enlightened people such as yourself will accept it, and only closed minded people like me will reject it based on our beliefs.
And thats the Bias you hold to, the Bias that assumes that Traditional Christianity must be wrong and all enlightened thinker should to this view. Its such an ingrained one you can't even see that there are more than just two sides to this.
That said, sorry these posts are multiple, but the word limit hindered me placing them in all at once.
We've basically been trained to associate the traditional Christian belief system with lies, the Church as deceptive, and scholarship and enlightenment as on the side of those revealing how Christianity emerged from theft and murder, or the real wisdom coming form an obscure sect that died thousands of Years ago because the evil Church suppressed them.
You fall in the latter Category, in that you think its open minded and enlightened to look at the evidence and accept the conclusion that Christianity built from a rich tapestry of Pagan mythology to create its own myths, and want us to embrace this as a mean to take in the true power of the transformational myth, rather than be trapped in ignorance and fear, as generated by literalism. You see Literalism as causing strife and division, and rooted in ignorance, whilst accepting the story as a myth with a common pagan background as somehow more compelling.
But, what you don't see is that the position you take is severely flawed by a lack of real evidence and based on erroneous information.
And thats your Bias, to somehow think that the enlightened position is the position that accepts that Christianity emerged from earlier Pagan roots, and that Fundamentalism is some sort of horrible thing that causes problems by not recognising this. (And seeing Fundamentalism in basically any position that refuses to accept the Pagan Parallels nonsense.)
Easter isn't a word derived from Ishtar. Its actually Celtic or Indo-Germanic in origins.
The first reference to any Pagan link at all comes from the Venerable Bede, who said that the people of Britain called the Holiday Easter based upon the month that the Holiday fell in. (always the same month, as the Celts used a Lunar Calender.)
The Month itself was named for a goddess of some sort, Oester, but other than the Holiday sharing her name based on the month it fell in, we have no actual evidence of a direct link.
In the 19th century some people decided Oester had to have been a Spring Fertility goddess, and Easter originally a Holiday to honour her, and thus the Christians stole it.
This came at a time, much like our own, in which criticism of Christianity was in vogue, and people thought that they sounded more intelligent and enlightened by knowing "The real origins of Christianity."
This, and a lot of the people who started, or later bought into, these theories actually where Anti-Christian, such as Bertrand Russel, or Kersey Graves.
Jeuss's death is also nothing at all like Ishtar's decent into the Underworld. Ishtar didn't die, she only traveled tot he realm of the Dead to retrieve her lover. She also went their to bring back one person, for her own reasons, not to atone for the nebulous sins of all of Humanity.
And I'd be willing to prove it to you line by line book by book primary source by primary source. its what I study and what my degree is to be in, from a Secular University.
But if your going to dismiss anyone who comes here that challenges the premise you lay out as a fundamentalist Christian who only reads Apologetics, how on earth is not not a Biased treatment?
Are you really all that certain that Christianity took preexisting pagan Themes to make the Resurrection story, and that its a proven fact, enough to leap to that conclusion about me, or anyone who dares challenge what this article says?
The themes aren't really the same at all.
Because you are right about one thing, Valarie, that we should truly understand our past, and we do build form the past, and we should dissuade ignorance. But its a promotion of ignorance to promote the idea that Jeuss's resurrection came from older Pagan Mythology.
And thats the Bias I say you have. You are Biased into thinking that the intelligent , well reasoned approach requires that we accept that Traditional Christian Claims lack any currency, and the ideas that Christianity built up form Earlier Religions (Pagan ones) is just a part of the inculturated mindset we have today in a world that see's intelligence as defined as who spouts the most post-modernism.
You assume I am a Fundamentalist Christian who takes exception tot his fine peice of scholarhsip because it goes against my beelifs, and that Im workign backwards form conclusions rather than looking at the way my religion developed form previous religions.
This is all fine and dandy, but its not true.
The trouble is, what your citing is a 19th century theory thats been largely debunked for about a century now. The concept your citing can be found in Frazier's "The Golden Bough" but not in contemporary studies, because, quiet frankly, it lacks even the slightest support form modern academia.
Bart Ehrman wouldn't support this, and neither would E.P. Sanders, and neither of them are Apologists. I could list others, from McGrath to Hood to Curtis, to literally a hundred more, if given the time to look.
The idea that Christianity borrowed the theme of a dying and rising Saviour is simply not one that modern Academia takes seriosuly, and thats what Im objecting to.
But you won't hear that, you instead see me as a Fundamentalist Christian who read sonly apologetics works and works backwards form those conclusions, rather than objectively looking at the evidence.
Why is that, Valarie?
Mithras wasn't Born of a Virign and wind up crucified, neither was Horus, the theme of a dying and rising saviour god wans't rpevialent in the medeteranian, and Christianity was actulaly mocked for its devotions.
I understand that fundamentalist Christianity makes many many claims to exceptionalism. It is the one way to understand God. It is the one religion that isnt a religion (it's a relationship.) It has the only true and complete revelation of God to human kind. If we start from a set of conclusions and work backwards, then of course we can find enough evidence to support this kind of story line. That is how the human mind works. It is why our court system and laboratories work forward from evidence to conclusions. If you are reading only apologists--only defenders of orthodoxy, then orthodoxy is what you will find.
Because if we start from the presumption that religion is evil in a special and unusually pervasive way, and that it's a virus that has the potential to kill reason and science (which no one has come close to proving) or, even worse, get HBO taken off the air, then every bit of negative data we can collect seems worse in that presumed context. Once we've labeled someone or something a monster, then anything we care to mention about that monster becomes a monstrous detail.
The same people who constantly demand that I examine myself and my own beliefs don't seem remotely aware that the requirement is mutual.
It's not news to me that Christian mythology has older roots, but I've always been vague on the details. Thank you.
Love Dr. Nugent's comments on the meaning and value of myth. As someone interested in popular music history, I find a similar situation in the folk and pop ballads of the 19th century--specifically, the murdered-girl, dying-mother, temperance, orphan-on-train, etc. songs that survive in the repertoire of country music (or did until recently). Namely, these songs tell us things about their period of origin that are true and profound in spite of the fairly rigid conventions on display and the repetition of detail--mothers really did die during (or just after) childbirth, orphaned children were everywhere, alcohol destroyed families, and young, pregnant women were frequently killed by their lovers. The songs, of course, also document cultural values and perceptions.
For instance, the country standard "Only a Tramp" isn't factual in the documentary sense, but it contains a message that all people matter, even the tramp who dies on the street. In the last verse, the song makes an allusion to Christ's "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me," wherein the lowly, forsaken tramp on the street becomes Jesus. The song is from the late 1870s.
I first heard it 20 years or so ago, and I've yet to recover....
The claim has been long since abandoned by reputable scholars since at least the mid 20th century.
If you examine those "dyings and rising " saviours you learn they arne't really at all similar, and we ave no evidence that the Jesus story was in any way base don them.
I'll post mroe later but, this idea has been debunked already.
Dirkster42 who commented at StreetProphets had these comments and resources to offer:
The Biblical/Pagan divide is a kind of late development, really, and they're categories that get imposed after the fact on a complex development of ancient near eastern religions. The archaeological evidence shows little differentiation between Israelite and Canaanite religion in the second millennium BCE. One text that gets at this is The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark Smith, and another text that's pertinent is The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism.
Also, once the distinction is more established (for example in the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah) there are definite interactions between the Israelite religions and the surrounding religions, sometimes hostile, sometimes not. Up to the exile, Israelite women were mourning for the Babylonian God Tammuz, as reported by Jeremiah (who didn't like that fact at all, but there it was). Genesis 1, part of the Priestly source of the Pentateuch, is obviously modeled on the Bablylonian creation myth Enuma Elish.