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''The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?'' is a 1999 book by British authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.〔Maurice Casey ''Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?'' T&T Clark 2014 FREKE, N.T. and GANDY, L.P. p.17〕 ''The Jesus Mysteries'' is an investigation of early Christianity prior to the 4th century CE, when direct political intervention by the Roman Emperor Constantine forced various competing Christian sects to unify under a statement of faith (the Nicene Creed). Freke and Gandy claim to have examined evidence from ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilisations, and to have found important parallels of Jesus' divinity with a number of mystery religions, such as those of the ancient gods Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, and Mithras, apparently manifestations of a single cult of a dying and rising "godman" myth, known to classical scholarship as Osiris-Dionysus. The authors propose that Jesus did not literally exist as an historically identifiable individual, 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." ==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:〔Freke and Gandy, ''Jesus Mysteries'', p. 5.〕 * 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 25 December 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. 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.) Freke and Gandy 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, these "Literalist Christians" (Freke and Gandy call them ) attacked the "Gnostics" for claiming that what the Literalists considered false knowledge and false initiations, was, in fact, the original second initiation of primal (Gnostic) Christianity. Freke and Gandy claim that the Literalists won out when the emperor Constantine saw the political merit of 'one empire, one emperor, one god', practically exterminated the Gnostics, and saw to it that 'Literalist Christianity' became the officially-approved Roman Catholic Church and its modern descendants. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Jesus Mysteries」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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