Later on Celsus added to this list the aforementioned Aristeas of Proconnesus -as well as the deified Dioscuri, Asclepius (see below), and Dionysus. Zalmoxis in Scythia, the slave of Pythagoras and Pythagoras himself in Italy and Rhampsinitus in Egypt, whom, they say, played at dice with Demeter in Hades, and returned to the upper world with a golden napkin which he had received from her as a gift and also Orpheus among the Odrysians, and Protesilaus in Thessaly, and Hercules at Cape Taenarus, and Theseus. Lucian records that the pagan Antigonus had told him: “I know a man who came to life more than twenty days after his burial, having attended the fellow both before his death and after he came to life.” Celsus, though himself a doubter, attested to a widespread belief in resurrected men among pagans, rattling off a list of those whom pagans believed rose again: Herodotus records the Thracians believed in the physical resurrection of Zalmoxis, and formed a religion around it that promised eternal paradise for believers, and later on certain Italians came to believe in the resurrection of Aristeas of Proconnesus. We have so many stories and claims of physical resurrection within the pagan tradition that there can be no doubt the Christian claim would face no more difficulty than these tales in finding pagan believers. Theopompus wrote in particular that “according to the Magi, men will be resurrected and become immortal, and what then exists will endure through their incantations.” So the idea of a physical resurrection would be readily accepted by enough Jews and Persians to present no difficulty for the Christian message.īut even a great many Greco-Roman pagans flirted with the possibility of being raised from the dead. Theopompus and Eudemus of Rhodes, both Greek historians of the 4th century B.C., described this Persian belief. Already the Jews appear to have gotten the idea of a resurrection of the flesh from pagans: it was a fundamental of Zoroastrian belief, and throughout the Roman period Zoroastrianism was the common national religion in the Persian Empire (in practical terms, everything east of the Roman Empire up to about India). And those were probably the very pagans the Christians converted. But it is false anyway: many pagans believed resurrection was possible, even desirable. “Indeed,” he says, “among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible.” Of course, this would be no problem for the mission to the Jews, since a great many Jews (though not all of them) already expected such a thing. James Holding’s next argument is that pagans would not buy a physical resurrection of the flesh. Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) ģ.2 How the Pagan Mission Changed Christianity
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