One area of special comparison between the mysteries and Christianity, especially in early-twentieth-century literature, involves the matter of salvation and dying and rising gods. Against some, there were stories of dying (and something like rising) deities before the time of Jesus.57 Descent to the underworld in such texts need not be permanent; deities might visit or even be restored to life.58 Greeks seem to have been most familiar with Egyptian accounts of dying and rising deities.59
But the parallels remain problematic. While there seems to be pre-Christian evidence for the account of Osiris’ rescusitation,60 he is magically revivified, not transformed into an eschatological new creation. His corpse is awakened through the same potencies as exist in procreation, and he remains in the netherworld, still needing protection by vigilant gods, and replacement on earth by his heir.61 Adonis’ death was mourned annually,62 but his rising is not documented prior to the middle of the second century CE.63 (Some sources suggest simply seasonal revivification,64 which, as we argue below, differs greatly from early Jewish and Christian notions and origins of the resurrection.) Attis, too, was mourned as dead,65 but there is no possible evidence for his resurrection before the third century CE, and aside from the testimony of the Christian writer Firmicus Maternus, no clear evidence exists before the sixth century CE.66
Dionysus’ return from death67 is clear enough, but perhaps in the same category as Heracles’ apotheosis or the wounding of Ares in the Iliad; mortals could be deified and deities could suffer harm.68 Some also understood him as returning annually for his holy days in the spring.69 And even Persephone was taken down to the underworld alive (rather than dying), as Orpheus descended alive to rescue his beloved Eurydice.70 Frazer’s scheme of the “dying and rising god,” based on patching together elements of disparate stories and famous over a century ago, has thus been largely discredited in more recent times.71
A number of earlier New Testament scholars asserted, again perhaps through the grid of their own religious understanding, that the Mysteries must have provided salvation through union with dying-and-rising gods.72 While there may be some truth in the idea that a god not subject to death could grant immortality, a specialist in mystery cults cautions against finding this pattern as a common element.73 Much of the evidence is late74 and/or specifically Christian.75 More recent writers are therefore generally more cautious about connecting spiritual salvation (when it appears in the mysteries) with the dying deity motif.76
In the Eleusinian rites, the mystēs received the promise of a happy afterlife, but by being pledged to the goddess, rather than being reborn or by dying and rising with the deity.77 The cult of Cybele likewise does not support the hypothesis of immortality through a rising deity, as Gasparro notes.78 The main problem with the view that many members of the early-twentieth-century “history-of-religions” school, eager to produce “parallels” to primitive Christianity, adduced, is that most of the people who turned to the mysteries already believed in some afterlife in the netherworld anyway. At most (in some cults), it was merely a happier afterlife in that world that the gods could guarantee.
Those like Bousset who drew such connections79 did not take adequate account of the vegetative, cyclical, and seasonal nature of most of the rescusitation rituals.80 The annual renewal of life in spring is a far cry from the earliest Christian picture of Jesus’ bodily resurrection rooted in explicit Jewish eschatological hopes. It also differs substantially from Paul’s claim that Jesus’ eschatological transformation was an event in recent history guaranteed by hundreds of eyewitnesses, including himself. Paul even insists, despite his hellenistic audience, that this perspective is a necessary understanding of resurrection for a true follower of Jesus (1 Cor 15:1-2, 12-19, 29-34). Earlier Palestinian Christianity would not have held a less rigorously Jewish perspective than Paul did.81
The “third day” tradition offers potential parallels, though most of these were not very significant.82 Most importantly, the “third day” was a fairly regular expression for a short period of time (such as “the day after tomorrow”). While the third day is used for resurrection in the later ritual for Attis and perhaps for Adonis, these may be based on Christian precedents.83 The third day in the cult of Osiris is most significant, but the traditional Jewish view about the corpse, the use of a “third day” for an interval between two events in close succession in the Hebrew Bible, and the inherent likelihood of some coincidence between a brief period in early Christian tradition and one in the Mysteries, qualify its significance considerably. Some other Jewish traditions may also shed light on this idea, but appeal to them must remain tentative because of their uncertain date or because they were not widely enough recognized to have been obvious without explicit qualification.84
The fixing of the third day in the pre-Pauline formula in 1 Corinthians 15:4, however, weights the case in favor of a Palestinian Jewish-Christian tradition for Jesus’ resurrection prior to any exposure to the cult of Osiris in the hellenistic world.85 And while gods could often die in the Mysteries, their deaths were not portrayed as triumphant or meaningful as in many early Christian traditions. Further, the gospel narratives suggest that to whatever extent the early Christians might have adapted the language of three days, they historically intended only parts of three days.86 That is, they interpreted rather than invented the interval.
