Words for Board: Original Sin, Baptism, Holy Eucharist, Transubstantiation, Christianity

All of the mystery religions had some standard ideas. One of these was the idea of Original Sin. This concept goes back to the days when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and ate the forbidden fruit. For this they were punted out of Paradise. This sin was the original one and was so horrible it wiped off on the entire race of humans forever. Every human is corrupt and born sinful and is going straight to hell. But after awhile God got a plan to save a few humans to live with him forever in tingly bliss. All you have to do is believe in Jesus and how he says to live and God is saving you a chair. Jesus was also one of the dying/rising gods. The Christians had some sacraments to kind of remind you of the good stuff and to show how God was relating to you. One of these was Baptism. The other mystery religions also had Baptism which did the same thing. Baptism basically is used to remove your filthy cruddy self and wash you clean so you can start over. For the Christians it was neat cuz they baptized with water (which is sure a lot cheaper than a bull). Baptism removes sin -- especially original sin. The other biggie sacrament for the Christians was the Holy Eucharist alias Communion, alias the Lord's Supper. It is a mystic meal which the followers did as a commemorating of Jesus' death on the cross. They ate bread and wine but did something special to it. They believed in Transubstantiation ("Substance across"). When the priest said the blessing over the bread and wine, God transformed into the real literal body and blood of Jesus to give you more spiritual strength. They were eating the god. That's why the Romans thought the Christians were eating people out in the cemeteries. Just overhearing their service would make you wonder!

Why did Christianity succeed over the other mystery religions? Christianity promised the same things so why did it win out? 1. Christianity was cheap. You didn't have to buy a bull for baptism since they did it with water. 2. Some of Christianity's competitors were sexist -- Isis was for women and Mithras for men only. Christianity had a better market by appealing to both sexes. 3. It was highly organized, patterned after the organization of the Roman Empire. 4. Christianity stressed that God loves you and the others said you should love god. 5. It taught that all men were brothers and the same in the eyes of God. That appealed to the lower element -- to think that they were the same as the emperor! And remember there were a lot of the lower element as compared to the elite.

Christianity was a compromise. It gave the same promises of life after death in tingly bliss that the others have. It had miraculous ceremonies, i.e. baptism. it advertised there were miracles done by Jesus, especially healing done by the founder of the religion. A miracle (according to a non-believer in the dictionary) is an event or action apparently contradicting known scientific law and hence though to be due to an act of god. Actually, Jesus' miracles weren't that impressive as a selling point in the ancient world. They weren't special enough. The Emperor Vespasian performed some healing of paralysis and blindness. Were Jesus' miracles real or psychosomatic? There's some evidence that even he knew they could have been psychosomatic. For one thing, he couldn't do them in his own hometown, Nazareth. Nobody would take him seriously cuz they could remember when he was a ‘lil kid and ran around. Plus he stressed the fact that people were healing themselves with their faith.