Well, I personally only used "Pagans" because you did yourself, but in fact that would be incorrect. Those faiths were pre-Christian, but would not have self identified as "Pagan" in any way. Greeks and Romans of the era did not consider themselves "Pagan", and that's who I was thinking of.
Anyway... well Euripides refers to bread and wine as the two powers supreme in human affairs (in The Bacchae), communion with the god through consuming the god's flesh/blood is found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Mithras cult had 6 sacraments which correspond exactly to those of the Catholic church. Celsus complained the Christians were corrupting the truth by stealing ideas from those whom we would call classical philosophers (translation from Hoffman). Sorry this is not more complete, I am going off the top of my head here.
But yes, I would very much like to have your list of Roman writers and where they said these things. That would be great. Perhaps I am thinking of an earlier time period than you were referring to. I just went and looked at your user page and I see you had a minor in Classics.
I don't really know anything about the European or Teutonic conversion; that is not my area of study.
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Date: 2008-11-27 03:08 pm (UTC)Anyway... well Euripides refers to bread and wine as the two powers supreme in human affairs (in The Bacchae), communion with the god through consuming the god's flesh/blood is found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Mithras cult had 6 sacraments which correspond exactly to those of the Catholic church. Celsus complained the Christians were corrupting the truth by stealing ideas from those whom we would call classical philosophers (translation from Hoffman). Sorry this is not more complete, I am going off the top of my head here.
But yes, I would very much like to have your list of Roman writers and where they said these things. That would be great. Perhaps I am thinking of an earlier time period than you were referring to. I just went and looked at your user page and I see you had a minor in Classics.
I don't really know anything about the European or Teutonic conversion; that is not my area of study.