Is Catholicism the "Babylon Mystery Religion"?
by Mark P. Shea
How the story of the
Magi sheds plenty of light on the historical soundness of the Gospel of Matthew
and how early Christians viewed paganism
As
we saw last time in this space, the notion that
Christianity is "really" warmed-over paganism is contradicted by the
fact—abundantly in evidence not only in the New Testament but in the writings
of the Fathers and the liturgy of the Church—that, well, early Christians just
don't care much about pagan things, while both the New Testament and the
Fathers are positively drowning in the images, words, ideas, thought forms,
questions, and concerns of the authors of the Old Testament. Reading the New
Testament in the hope of discovering the secret paganism that it is the real root of
Christianity is like reading Shakespeare with the undying conviction that
sufficient scrutiny will uncover his massive debt to Korean literature: it just
ain't gonna happen. The New Testament is obsessed with the Old Testament, not
with paganism. It makes reference to paganism only very occasionally, and to
pagan literature only a handful of times
Meanwhile,
the New Testament is soaked in Hebraic thought, imagery, poetry, prophecy, law,
and wisdom. The early Christians don't care too much about paganism, seeing it
as, variously, 1) a dim hunch about things Jews and Christians were privileged
to know by revelation from God; 2) a demonic deception; 3) a source of human
wisdom, but not divine revelation. For that, they turn with obsessive
fascination to what Paul calls "the oracles of God" (Romans 3: Early
Christians will turn to it to illustrate a point, as when Paul quoted a to
connect with the Greek locals, just as a stump speaker might mention the local
football team in attempting to connect to his audience). In much the same way,
even today modern Christians offer punning riffs on current cultural phenomena
(“Jesus: He’s the Real Thing,” “Christ: Don’t Leave Earth Without Him,” etc.).
But exactly what these
Christians did not do was take passages of Scripture that
referred to Jesus and apply them to Apollo or some other pagan deity. Nor did
they look to any pagan deity to tell them about Jesus; they knew perfectly well
that Jesus could be represented as the Sun of Justice and Light of the World
long before Aurelian invented his pagan festival. That’s because early
Christians were behaving in a way perfectly consistent with Scripture, becoming
“all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22), not “holding the form of religion while
denying the power of it” (2 Tim. 3:5).
This matters immensely
because it bears directly on the first moment the early Catholic Church really
did borrow something from pagans. And not just any pagans, mind you, but actual
adherents of Babylonian Mystery Religion. And most amazingly, the early
Catholics’ decision to do so receives the complete approval of, and even hearty
defense by . . . Bible-believing Christians!
We Three Kings of
Orient Are /Astrologers Who Traverse Afar
As a young
Evangelical, one of the things I routinely heard from critics of Christianity
was that “everybody knows” the story of the Magi in Matthew 2 is a pious
fiction invented by the Evangelist. Since Evangelicals take a very high view of
Scripture and believe (in the words of Dei Verbum) that “Scripture
must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that
truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation,”it
mattered to me whether Scripture was preserving truth or was just a bunch of
legends. And since my first investigation, subsequent reading has only added to
my conviction that there are ample historical grounds for the story of the
Magi.
First—and often
overlooked by moderns who have an irrational prejudice against treating
Scripture as one source of ancient historical testimony—is Matthew 2 itself,
which says “wise men (Greek: magoi) from the East” appeared in
Jerusalem one day, seeking “he who has been born king of the Jews.” They
claimed to have “seen his star in the East” and came to worship him. Matthew
tells us they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts and that their
visit provoked the paranoid Herod to kill all the boys in Bethlehem under two
years old. Matthew also notes they returned to their own country in secret
after having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod.
Not that there’s no
hint of legend attaching to the Magi, of course. Matthew doesn’t tell us how
many Magi there were, nor does he claim any of them were royalty. So how did
they attain their legendary crowns and fixed number of three?
The number part is
pretty easy: three gifts, three magi. Also, as Christians reflected on their
significance as the first Gentiles to worship Jesus, it was natural to connect
the Magi with the three biblical races of human beings descending from the sons
of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth—and thus representing all of humanity.
It is Advent, the time of year where we reflect upon the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to the luminescent glow of our purple candles, slowly progressing through the Veni Emmanuel until we get to the beautiful O Antiphons immediately prior to celebration of our Lord's Nativity. Yes, a beautiful, wonderful liturgical season; having purified our hearts by meditation on the Last Things, we turn to preparation for the reception of the Lord Jesus and the celebration of His Incarnation. What a profoundly Christian celebration! Unfortunately, it is also the time of year that the faithful are scandalized and assaulted by claims that Christmas is nothing other than a pagan holiday "stolen" by the Church, a baptized Roman solar feast, or perhaps a Celtic winter solstice festival with a thin Christian veneer. What can we say to these accusations by Protestant fundamentalists and other skeptics?
