XLVII. The Relation of St. Paul to the Greek Mysteries In regard to the influence which Greek thought exercised on Paul, an attempt has been made in the preceding pages to describe its character and extent. An opinion has been put forward by recent scholars that the most impressive side of Greek religion, viz. the Mysteries, had a powerful, even a transforming effect on his teaching. No reference has been made in the preceding chapters to this opinion, because the writer considers it erroneous; but it seems right not to conclude without making some reference to it. This opinion bears on the recent development of Pauline study, in which the questions that were formerly central have ceased to be so. (Especially in Sections V and VI.) Stress is no longer laid on the question whether the Apostle wrote the letters that bear his name. It is only among rather old-fashioned theologians that those elaborate discussions about authenticity and the minutiae of style are still maintained. There will, doubtless, always be some who, unable to comprehend the wide sweep of thought and the extraordinary variety of topic and tone in the few short letters of Paul, condemn one or another as spurious, or fly to the quaint resort that some of the extant letters are elaborated by accretions which have been worked up with original scraps of Pauline writings; but their questionings are no longer central in scholarship, though the curious will always recur to them, and will learn something from them.
Yet we cannot get away from Paul. He holds the thought of thinking men as much as ever; and discussion still rages round him. The question that has of late been most prominent is as to the implication and teaching of his letters. We no longer ask, “What did he write?” Still less do we inquire, “Who wrote the Pauline Epistles?” Scholars are now debating, “What is it, after all, that Paul taught?” — and that old question now meets with a new answer. The view has been maintained that what he did teach was not the religion of Jesus, whatever that may have been and whoever He may have been, but a syncretistic philosophy expressed in ritual, which Paul substituted for that religion. The modern world has awakened to the complexity and the intensity of the religious questionings that were then burning in the pagan world. Paul, in presenting the religion of Christ to that world, had to put it in forms that could be understood by the men of his time. He had to show them that this religion answered the questions which they were asking. He had to know those questions, and to comprehend and use the language that was employed in pagan religious thought. “The divine nature which you unintelligently worship I declare to you in its real character,” as he says to the Athenian audience thronged in the Court of Areopagus; and (like the lawyers and orators of that time, as known to and depicted by Pliny a few years later) Paul was addressing, not so much the Court, as the corona or circle of listeners, idle, curious, full of a certain intellectual interest, ever seeking after some new thing, who thronged the hall of Areopagus.
All men in that age throughout the Eastern Roman Provinces were seeking for “Salvation,” and asking how to reach it. Lecturers were expounding philosophic theories and rules of life to classes of disciples. Records of prayer and vow for “Salvation” are found in many hundreds of villages of Asia Minor. St. Paul may have caught the Greek word from the lips of thousands of pagans. It is the same word that became specially characteristic of Christian teaching. Yet it would be a serious error to argue that, because pagans and Christians alike longed and prayed for “Salvation,” therefore the thing that they sought was the same. To the pagan and the Christian the same Greek word bore totally different meanings. To the former it was vague; and, where it approached definiteness, it was material. To Paul it was spiritual. There also was a close resemblance in the words which both parties used to describe the way of attaining “Salvation”: purification, the new life, seeking after God, and so on, were common terms, but their sense was changed to Paul. The meaning which Jesus had imparted to them was unintelligible to the pagans without a new education of intellect as well as of heart: this is often forgotten by modern scholars, and the demands which Christianity made on the understanding are ignored. (See Section III.)
I do not propose, by an elaborate examination of the Pauline teaching and thought, to show that it stands on a totally different plane from the methods and the answers of contemporary religious minds in the Graeco-Roman world, I take only one detail of the general problem. The religious ideas of the Graeco-Roman paganism were focussed in the Mysteries. The general character of the Mysteries was certainly known to the Tarsian citizen. What did he think of them? In what relation did he stand to them? I hope to answer these questions by showing that Paul refers to the Mysteries, and states his own opinion about them very clearly.
According to some recent speculations, Paul was not much more than a borrower from the Mysteries. In these speculations the outstanding name is that of Dieterich (whose death we have had to mourn). The tendency is now to regard Paul as powerfully influenced by the teaching conveyed through those impressive rites. Loisy and others have crystallised the drift of this theorising into the epigrammatic saying that “the mystery of Paul’s conversion is his conversion to the Mysteries”: from this source he derived all those ideas with which he overlaid the teaching of Jesus, transforming it into “a religion of Mystery,” which promised salvation as a reward for the performance of ritual and sacrament.
Even in this narrower form I shall not try to test the theory by comparing it with the spirit and general tone of the Pauline teaching. That has been done by Professor H. A. A. Kennedy in a series of articles (which we hope soon to see as a book) in the Expositor, 1911, 1912, much better than the present writer could do. I shall restrict this investigation to one passage, viz. to Colossians 2:8-23, and especially to Colossians 2:18, which presents very serious difficulties. Not merely is there divergence in the MSS. on a matter no less serious than where there should be the word “not” in one part of the sentence. Modern scholars regard the text as hopeless and resort to conjectural alterations. It cannot be denied that the word ἐμβατεύων in this verse, if we take it in its simple and natural sense, “setting foot on,” or in any derivative sense that is well attested, has an awkward effect. It does not seem to suit the context, but is inharmonious with its surroundings.
Taking some fresh discoveries as to the ceremonial of the Mysteries, I hope to show that Paul knew enough about their rites to employ in this verse of Colossians a technical Mystic term in such a way that the force of his reference can be best given by putting the word within inverted commas. That is the reason of the apparent awkwardness of the term in this context, it seems incongruous and unsuitable, like a fish out of water. But, if we read the words of Paul in this new way, we see that the paragraphs which he devotes to the subject express uncompromising condemnation of the Mysteries and of all attempt to adulterate Christ’s gospel by intermingling with it ideas, or forms, or rites derived from the Mysteries. The discoveries which threw new light on the nature and words of the Mysteries as they were celebrated in Asia Minor must first be described briefly. The excavations conducted by the Asia Minor Exploration Fund at Pisidian Antioch in 1912 have illuminated Roman affairs in the East and the religion of Phrygia. We cleared completely both the central Sanctuary and a large building near, but outside it. This building which is oriented so as to lie symmetrically with the south-western wall of the Sanctuary at a distance of about 30 feet from it, was apparently used as a hall for initiation and the celebration of the Mysteries. It was constructed for that purpose, and, in spite of dilapidation, it yields some valuable information. It was destroyed as thoroughly as the principal religious centre, and doubtless along with it, towards A.D. 400 (about which time various pagan temples were sacked by the Christians with the permission of the Imperial Government).
Further, the excavations conducted by Makridi Bey for the Turkish Imperial Museum at Notion (which I should identify as the Roman Colophon) have been most fruitful; and one discovery, which alone I shall mention, bears on our subject. This year on January 16th, while waiting in a friend’s rooms at Christ Church for his return, I chanced to take up the last number of the Vienna Jahreshefte, and to read the article published there by Makridi Bey. Among a series of very interesting inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Apollo of Klaros was one which instantly arrested attention: it contained the verb “entered” (ἐνεβάτευσεν), describing the performance of some act or rite in the mystic ritual. This word is the same that has caused so much difficulty in Colossians 2:18. A few days later, in the Athenæum of January 25th, p. 106 f., I published a short article on the “Ancient Mysteries and their Relation to St. Paul,” stating briefly the bearing of this discovery. The Clarian inscriptions, as a rule, are records of visits paid by delegates from foreign cities and countries to Apollo’s oracle. These delegates were one or, generally, more in number; and they were frequently accompanied by a chorus, which sang a hymn in honour of the god. Laodiceia on the Lycus, the Laodiceia of St. Paul (Colossians 4:16), happens to have sent several such delegations; and in one case it was the “prophet” of Pythian Apollo at Laodiceia who represented his city at Klaros. The delegations came to seek an oracle; they were “questioners of the god” (theopropoi); and when they returned home, the oracle was recorded in a public dedication. (Of these we possess several: one at Troketta in Lydia (best in Keil and Premerstein, Rehe in Lydien, p. 8); one in North Phrygia (see my Studies in the Eastern Roman Provinces, p. 128).) At Klaros, also, inscriptions recorded the names of the delegates and the chorus of hymn-singers (hymnodoi, both youths and maidens, koroi and korai, or eitheoi and parthenoi), and stated what they had done at the sanctuary. In several cases the delegate or delegates received initiation in the Mysteries; and these are the cases which interest us at present. The record of the initiation varies. Sometimes the delegate “performed also the mystic ritual (in addition to consulting the god)”. From such a record we learn nothing regarding the rites. Two cases, however, are more instructive. In one it is stated that two inquirers, “having been initiated, entered” (μυηθέντες ἐνεβάτευσαν). The other case is specially interesting: an inquirer “having received the mysteria, entered” (παραλαβὼν τὰ μυστήρια ἐνεβάτευσαν). The general term in the one case, “being initiated,” is defined in the other case more particularly, “receiving the mystic things (from the hierophant, the officiating priest)”. The correlative term, viz., that “(the hierophant) handed over the mystic things,” is also a technical expression. The two terms both indicate the initiation ritual as a whole (as M. Ch. Lecrivain (See the art. “Mysteria” in Darmberg and Saglio, Diet, des Antiquités, iii., p. 2142 A, note 6.) points out): both terms include the showing of the mystic objects, the performance of the mystic actions, and the utterance of the mystic words (δεικνύμενα δρώμενα λεγόμενα). Accordingly, the “tradition” or the “reception of the mysteria” includes the whole ceremony, all that is given or received, words, enlightenment, etc. The word “entered,” or “set foot on,” was evidently also technical for some act in the ritual. This act was not part of the initiation; it followed after the initiatory rites were completed: “having been initiated, they set foot on”. An examination of the evidence (such as is given in the Annual of Brit. School at Athens, 1913, p. 46 f.) would show that the thought of stepping into a “New Life” was natural and familiar in Asia Minor. It would be quite in accordance with the philosophic thought which (as I think) underlay the Mysteries, that the same idea should find symbolic expression in them. The term as used in both the Clarian inscriptions, evidently indicates the climax or final act in the mystic ceremonial; “being initiated,” or “receiving the mystic things and words,” they performed the act called ἐμβατέυων, symbolising that they had entered on a new life, and intended to continue therein. The nature of this act is not defined. What did they set foot on? The want of definition shows that the term was familiar and technical, and therefore there was no need to define what it was that they entered into. An act of entering, or setting foot on, took place as a climax or result of the initiation. Now the idea expressed by this verb is that of beginning, not conclusion. The climax of initiation, therefore, is an act of entrance or beginning. The initiated person, as the conclusion of his initiation, “makes entrance,” or “sets foot on”. In the ritual, of course, the action was performed in some apparent fashion, and this performance of the action was the prelude to another stage of the ritual. In Asia Minor, therefore, as at Eleusis, there must have been two stages, a lower and a higher, in the initiation. The lower stage was the initiation proper (μύησις): after it the mystês entered on the higher stage (called at Eleusis the Epoptika). The act of entrance on this higher stage at Klaros was called “entering”; and evidently the same term, ἐμβατεύειν, was used to designate the entire higher stage in those two Clarian inscriptions which imply a common popular usage.
Now the arrangements in the hall of initiation at the Antiochian sanctuary have been destroyed so thoroughly that at first they presented an almost hopeless problem. From the first, however, we could not doubt that there is in the centre of the hall a shallow quadrangular pool, or lacus, like the impluvium in a Roman atrium, and that some sort of baptismal or purificatory rite must have taken place there, in which the ministering priest stood on a stone. This rite was performed in the presence of the god, whose marble throne (with a late dedicatory inscription about A.D. 300) stands overlooking the pool. This throne of the god is a feature of primitive Anatolian religion: many such archaic thrones are known, the most impressive being a tall pinnacle of the Kara Dagh carved into the semblance of a throne, and covered with inscriptions in Hittite hieroglyphics. (This throne, about fifty miles south-east from Konia, is published in The Thousand and One Churches by Miss Gertrude Bell and the present writer, p. 507 f., and Figs. 371 A and B, 372, 374 f.) The importance of such thrones in Anatolian religion was first pointed out by Dr. Reichel in an interesting article, which, however, contained some inferences that seem incorrect. His premature death took place before he had been gladdened by the discovery of many such “thrones,” whose religious purpose is unmistakable, proving the essential truth of his theory (which was very severely criticised at the time by a German writer).
Away in the extreme corner of the hall on the god’s right hand as he looked over the lacus is a set of stone foundations, one part of which is labelled “Bed” in the plan which I made at the time in my notebook. This title, given as a mere distinguishing description, is probably true to the original intention. The key to the interpretation of these arrangements is furnished by the Clarian inscriptions. The mystês, who came into the initiation hall by the only door on the south, found on his left a series of arrangements; these belong to the initiation proper (μύησις). (A full description with plans and photographs is published in the Anmial of the British School at Athens, 1913.) To his right are the central lacus and the throne of the god, and away beyond them the stone foundations above mentioned. These form a group distinguished from those on the left, and are evidently intended to serve for the second stage of the Mysteries. The remarkable feature is that the second stage takes place in the presence of the god, whereas the first stage of initiation was evidently separate and apart. The first stage, which is still obscure, does not here concern us: the second stage is in part clear.
After the initiation of the first stage (which took place on the left, i.e. west, side of the hall), the mystês was brought towards the centre of the hall, where he passed through a second series of rites (his progress, as before, was in the direction south to north). (Strictly speaking, the wall which I call south, faces a little east of south: the west wall south of west.) Before him was a door or entrance-way between two upright slabs of stone, 3 ft. high and 4 ft. 6 in. long: some cutting on the front edge of the slabs imparted a slightly architectual look to the entranceway, which Isaiah 2 ft. 8 in. broad and 4 ft. 6 in. long. Outside the entrance on the left side, there stands close to the slab a very large, thick, shallow bowl of stone. The mystês would pass the bowl, as he came forward towards the end of the entrance-way after finishing the first stage of the rites: possibly it may have held water for lustration. The entrance-way leads up to the central pool, and ends I ft. 4 in. from the pool. Perhaps the way was originally higher than the present 3-foot blocks: it is evident that hangings or screens of some kind were used in other parts of the ritual. When the mystês “set foot on” the entranceway, the act constituted the embateuein; and he emerged from the entrance-way into the presence of the god on his throne. The mortal, fresh from the initiation, had thus entered on a new life, which he now was to live in the divine company.
Whether the throne was empty to the eye and only filled by the unseen god, or was occupied by the priest as representative of the god on earth, is uncertain; but the latter alternative is probable. In the next rite, the active part was played by a subordinate priest; and the chief priest (who certainly was present) could have no more suitable place than the throne of the god, whose place he filled, and whose part he played on earth in this ritual. The promise to the mystês was: “Happy and blessed, thou shalt be god instead of mortal”. Identification with the deity was the goal of human life, a goal attained at blissful death (as many Phrygian epitaphs (See my Studies in the Eastern Provinces, p. 273 f.) show), or as the result of initiation. In the ceremony which makes the initiated equal to the god, the only suitable place for the chief priest was the god’s throne. In the central pool took place the rite described by Demosthenes in his oration On the Crown. Æschines, against whom that speech was delivered, was the son of a strolling priestess — one of those persons, despised by the educated but revered by the superstitious, who carried the ritual of Phrygian Cybele through Attica in the fourth century B.C. — and he had acted as his mother’s assistant in performing the ceremonies of the cult. Demosthenes paints in sarcastic and contemptuous invective the humiliating character of the life and acts of such a ministering subordinate. Regarding this part of the ceremonial, he says: “When you grew to man’s estate, you assisted your mother as she performed the ritual: you recited from the books the words of the formulae, and assisted her in the rest of the foolery. At night you used to put the fawnskin on, and pour water from the crater over, and perform the purification for, those whom she was initiating; and you used to scrub them with mud and bran, and make them stand up (In this scene the mystês crouched on his heels, until at the word of the ministrant, he stood up, pure and qualified to go on to the next stage.) after the cleansing, and bid them say, ‘I have escaped the evil: I have found the better’ (ἔφθγον κακόν· εὖρον ἄμεινον).” This scene took place in the darkness of night, as Demosthenes says. The illumination seems to have been by a very large torch. Reliefs found near Antioch show the torch-bearing priest, the Dadouchos; and an inscription speaks of the equipping of a cave or closed chamber and of “the torch” (as a familiar object). (These are described in the Annual of the British School at Athens, 1913, pp. 40, 70, 73; Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1912. Mr. Anderson and I confirmed this difficult text in 1912.) From the purification the mystês was led on, perhaps through several stages, to the perfect scene of human life, the representation of that fundamental fact in society, the Holy Marriage of the god and goddess. The divine life is the model and guarantee of human action. The gods teach men what to do in their relation to each other and to the gods, in society and in cult. Religious reliefs show the god doing in heaven what his worshipper does on earth beneath. (An example is figured in my Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 63.) Hence the marriage of the divine pair is the type and symbol for the imitation of men. The priest and priestess played the part of the divine pair, probably; and the Christian writers rebuke the impropriety of this scene, which was enacted within the holy Pastos, or nuptial chamber. In the Athenian marriage rite the .same formula was spoken that has just been quoted from the Mystic ritual. “I have escaped the evil: I have found the better.” The Athenian rite, therefore, is derived from the mystic rite; the marriage was apparently a performance of the Holy Marriage with the bride and bridegroom playing the part of the god and goddess; and the priestess taught them (as is recorded). It is stated by an ancient authority that “the marriage pair celebrate the sacred marriage in honour of Zeus and Hera”. (Lex Rhetor., p. 670 Person, p. 345 Nauck: see Usenet, Ital. Mythen in Rh. Mils., 30:p. 227, who says that the quotation refers to the Athenian rite (which may be regarded as certain).) I have shown elsewhere that the rite in Asia Minor was similar in character to the Athenian. (Histor. Commentary on Galatians, pp. 88-91.)
Dieterich maintains that the marriage scene in the Mysteries was the marriage of the god to the mystês (regarded always as female). It is in accordance with the spirit of the Mysteries that the mystês should be regarded as united to the deity; but the mystic ritual was the religion of the Mother-goddess, not of the god (who was originally a subsidiary and secondary figure), and Dieterich’s conception can only belong to a late form of the cult, in which the deity is conceived as distinctively male, while the Mother recedes into the background. That was so at Antioch, where Men was pre-eminent, and the goddess had only a small chapel in a corner of his sanctuary and a small temple outside; yet all that we have as yet been able to learn or guess about the Antiochian religion suggests that the old forms were carefully preserved. Drinking from the holy vessel formed part of the mystic ritual and of the marriage rite. But this origin of a religious marriage in the Phrygian religion is a large subject. The Anatolian religion imposed on devout women a service at the sanctuary, antipathetic to marriage; and the character of some scenes in the Mysteries suggests that human life was presented to the mystæ as a progress from savagery to civilisation under divine guidance. The union of the sexes was depicted at first as an act of violence, and the Holy Marriage then came in as the new and higher law given of God, and taught by the god and goddess to men. The servants of the goddess had to pass through the same fortunes and the same stages as the goddess herself, and thus gradually learn the higher rule of marriage. On this hypothesis the testimony of ancient authorities about the purifying and elevating influence of the Mysteries becomes intelligible, while the testimony of Christian foes about the hideous nature of certain parts which they select out of the ritual must equally be regarded as true to fact, though incomplete as a picture, and untrue to the general effect of the Mysteries. At the corner of the Antiochian hall, on the right hand of the god on his throne, are a series of flat supporting stones, on which, as I suppose, rested the Pastos; and inside it are the marks of three of the four feet on which rested the holy bed. The formula is quoted by Clement: “I have eaten from the tympanon: I have drunk from the cymbal: I have carried the kernos: I have gone into the Pastos”. The divine acts were imitated by the mystai; but this imitation does not imply that Dieterich’s theory is correct. They see what the gods do, and learn to do likewise.
Probably the word “enter,” or “set foot on,” while strictly denoting the first step in the higher ritual, was commonly used to indicate the whole of the advanced stage. When the Clarian inscription stated that an inquirer, after being initiated, “set foot on ,” this implies that he performed the entire series of the rites. One who “entered” did not stop, but continued to the end. The act of embateuein implied the whole epoptika; such is the force of the Clarian formula: the delegates, “having been initiated, performed the higher stage of the ritual”. No crux in the letters of Paul has been more frequently discussed than that in Colossians 2:18, and none seemed more desperate: μηδεὶς ὑμᾶς καταβραβευέτω θέλων ἐν ταπεινοφροσύνῃ καὶ θρησκείᾳ τῶν ἀγγέλων, ἃ ἑόρακεν ἐμβατεύων, εἰκῇ φυσιούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ νοὸς τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ οὐ κρατῶν τὴν κεφαλήν κτλ. The varieties of text in the MSS. may be neglected: the omission of ἐν is unimportant: the insertion of μή or οὐκ, before ἑόρακεν, have found hardly any defenders, (Rev. Dr. Maclellan has defendedμήin the Expositor, May, 1910, p. 393 f. His arguments do not convince me. See also Dr. Burgon on the Revised Version, p. 355.) and the new evidence shows clearly that the insertion is merely an alteration arising from misunderstanding of the true text. The Colossians are warned by Paul against some one, probably a known individual, who is cheating them of the prize of Christian life. Such a one could not be an outward enemy, misleading or harassing them. He is evidently a person that endangers the success of their Christian life by spreading false teaching among them as one of their own number; he had a wrong conception of the nature of the Christianity which he professed, being swayed by his older religious ideas and philosophic theories; and his influence was leading astray the minds of others. Whether there was any individual who acted as leader in this movement is of no consequence. My point would be equally telling if the movement was a general one, without a single definite leader. I assume, however, that there was one guiding spirit. The force of Colossians 2:18 is conditioned by its relation to Colossians 2:8 and Colossians 2:16. The whole passage, Colossians 2:8-19, consists of three connected and parallel warnings: Colossians 2:8, “See that there shall be no one who takes you captive by philosophy and empty illusion after the tradition of men, after the elemental powers or rulers of the world, and not after Christ . . .”. [Here follows a statement of the triumphant supremacy of Christ, the Head, over those elemental powers.] Colossians 2:16, “Let no one, then, make himself a judge [or critic] of you in meat and drink, or in respect of festival days: (No one should make your action in respect of meat, etc., a ground for judging or criticising you: such matters should be left to the individual conscience and judgment, as in1 Corinthians 8:1-8. It is only in respect of the really fundamental things that mutual criticism is allowable.) which are a shadow of things future, but the body that casts the shadow is Christ’s”. Colossians 2:18, “Let no one cozen you of the prize of your life-race, finding satisfaction in self-humiliation and worshipping of angels, ‘taking his stand on’ what he has seen (in the Mysteries), vainly puffed up by his unspiritual mind, and not keeping firm hold on [Christ] the Head”. In Colossians 2:8 the life of the Christian is metaphorically regarded as a battle, and in Colossians 2:18 as an athletic contest: both metaphors are frequent in Paul’s letters. The use in Colossians 2:16 of “judge” in respect of the relation between one member of the Church and the others is so frequent in Paul and so characteristic of him that one would almost be surprised if it had been absent from this passage, and would have looked for some explanation of the absence (as, for example, one does in the Pastoral Epistles, where it never (In 2 Timothy 4 it has another sense, equally Pauline. InTitus 3:12, it means “I have decided” (resolved).) occurs). Everything points to a member of the Church misleading his fellows: first, by his false philosophy he takes them captive; secondly, by finding fault with their omission he induces them to observe an order of ritual (largely Jewish); thirdly, by teaching them to practise a ceremonial of humiliation, and to pay homage to angels or powers intermediate between God and man, he defrauds them of the prize offered to the true Christians, as he” takes his stand upon” (“entering on”) the (non-spiritual) things that he has seen, leading his followers away with him out of the true course. In Colossians 2:18 the force of “entering on” is got only when we regard it as a quoted word. It is a sarcastic reference to a solemn act, by which once on a time the leader of the movement had symbolically expressed his deliberate choice (θέλων) of a “New Life”. This “New Life,” however, was not spiritual, but was hedged within a world of sensuous and external actions, and rites, and things. The word was familiar to the Colossians; they knew it in the Mysteries; they had probably heard it used by this teacher, who spoke of the entrance which they should make on a new life, as a higher course of asceticism, and self-denial, and humiliation. As a quoted word, it causes a certain awkwardness in the logical sequence; but when we take it as quoted and put it within inverted commas, we understand that it is like a brick imbedded in the living wall of Paul’s words. The movement in the Colossian Church (A movement of similar general type was, apparently, widespread in the province of Asia, where the contact of Greek philosophic thought on its religious side with Jewish thought in a popular superstitious form favoured it (Acts 19:13). The “philosophy and vain deceit” ofColossians 2:8is the “knowledge (gnosis) which is falsely so called” of1 Timothy 6:20.) was made under the impulse of a certain teaching in which elements of the popular religion of Phrygia were mingled. Phrygia was “the home of some of the most extraordinary forms of heathen superstition, and the people seemed imbued with the taste for excitement and mystery, which was partly the outcome of temperament and partly of centuries of association”. (Rev. G. Currie Martin.) This is so evident as to be almost universally accepted; and Dr. Moffatt speaks of “elements rife within the popular religion of Phrygia” as indubitably present in that “local phase of some syncretistic theosophy “against which Paul wrote in this letter. These quotations are given as fairly stating the general views of scholars. The term, “setting foot on,” is a striking word in itself It is of the sensuous, not the spiritual world; and is in accordance with the fault which Paul finds in the teaching of this unsafe Colossian guide. The great Cambridge school of divines in the nineteenth century proposed to eliminate the word and to replace it conjecturally by an even more markedly sensuous term, which is not religious and does not occur in Greek (though a cognate and more correct form is found); but conjecture has now no place here. The word which St. Paul used was technical. He used it because it was technical. His effect depends on the fact that it was a religious term familiar to his Phrygian readers. They caught the sarcastic innuendo that the person who is alluded to had formerly “entered” (ἐνεβάτευσεν). A leader in the congregation, prominent in teaching a certain new theosophic and mystic form of Christianity, was introducing ideas which he had brought over from his old belief in the Mysteries. I have elsewhere (Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 165.) tried to show that Ignatius had been initiated into some type of Mysteries, and to explain from this early experience some of the remarkable and almost startling passages in his letters.
These popular Mysteries were in the Roman period to a large degree assimilated by contamination throughout the Eastern Roman provinces, so that each took over new elements from others and approximated to a common type. The original character of the Mysteries was probably not essentially different in different places, and therefore the common type was easily produced. Probably what are called the Phrygian Mysteries give the best means of studying the others. While considerable modifications took place in the Mysteries during the Roman period, the change probably was almost always in the way of addition. The original ritual remained as the nucleus of an elaborated and lengthened ceremonial. In the later third century, perhaps even earlier, the additions sometimes were modelled on Christian rites, with the idea of showing that the old religion could do those things and meet the devotees’ needs much better than the new teaching.
Since “emendations” to eliminate ἐμβατεύων are done away with, along with it ἄ ἑώρακεν must stand safe in the text. This theosophist has disturbed the Church at Colossai by introducing the fleshly, non-spiritual ideas, the things (and words) of the Mysteries; i.e., what he has seen (and handled, receiving them from the Hierophant). And so Paul hurls forth his warning, “handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to perish with the using) after the precepts and doctrines of men. Which things, through their asceticism in voluntary ritual and humility, have indeed a show of wisdom, but are not of any real value against the indulgence of the flesh.” Every word here is specially telling and appropriate, if a converted mystês is the teacher whom Paul opposes. On the “humility,” self-imposed and voluntary, of the mystai, one may consult Foucart’s vivid account, based on Demosthenes and Clement, in his Associations Réligieuses chez les Grecs, pp. 68-84, and elsewhere. The language of Paul throughout the whole passage shows not only disapproval and condemnation of this mystic theosophy, but also a certain tone of scorn, or at least of lofty and absolute superiority. The man who could think and write in this strain moves on a plane of thought infinitely above the level of that philosophy, or (perhaps one should rather say) pseudo-philosophy. Both taught the Way of Salvation, or simply “the Way” (Acts 19:9, Acts 19:23, etc.); but in the Mysteries the Way was a literal path marked by a white poplar tree and other signs, which the soul learned through the esoteric and mystic lore, whereas in the Gospel it was an idea, making itself into a driving force in the conduct of life: it was the intense, overpowering belief in a spiritual fact. Both in Paulinism and in the Mystery-religion there was taught the means of escaping out of servitude to the seven daemonic rulers (Archontes), who preside over the seven planets and control the fate of men. The belief in this influence has its early stages (we should not say its roots, for we cannot penetrate historically to the roots) in old Egyptian and Chaldæan or Babylonian doctrines. The influence is evil, crushing the individual development under a hard and dreadful servitude; and it was organised in a sort of hierarchy of bad powers, “angels and principalities and powers” (Romans 8:38) under “the ruler (Archon) of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). To escape from this slavery man must be enabled to enter into communion and fellowship with still higher powers. This was “the Way,” as taught in the Mystery-religion: prayers, rites, incantations, magic arts, purifications, were called in to aid the struggling soul; but these were all earthly, fleshly, sensuous, and non-spiritual. These elemental powers of the air and the heavens, “angels” intermediate between God and man, were real powers according to the general belief: in Paul’s opinion they were “the weak and beggarly elements” which he mentions with so much contempt in Galatians 4:9. Paul’s means of escape from this enslavement of the human spirit was spiritual, and not ritual. The Gnosis which he denounced was a knowledge of fleshly means. At the same time, Paul’s tone is not that of thorough denunciation and abhorrence, such as appears in his attitude to the base and vulgar forms of idolatry. As Lightfoot, in his note on Colossians 2:8, justly says, “Clement (Strom., 6:8, p. 771) had a right to contend that Paul does not here condemn ‘philosophy’ absolutely”. Philosophy is here disparaged as erroneous groping after truth, somewhat in the style of Acts 17:22 ff. This philosophy is deception without any real meaning or content, κένη ἀπάτη, purely verbal and external, never penetrating below the surface to the hidden nature of God, taking shadow for truth, and putting the material in place of the spiritual; but it is, after all, an effort, well-intentioned but misdirected, in search of truth and good and God. The passage, Colossians 2:8-19, as thus interpreted of the Mysteries, is a profoundly significant piece of evidence. In the first place, it shows Paul was no absolute enemy of philosophy, though he easily lost patience with the philosophers as he knew them. (1 Corinthians 1:19f.;Acts 17:23.) In the second place, it proves that he regarded the Mysteries and their ritual as having a certain philosophical side, and appealing to a certain religious feeling in mankind: this justifies by unprejudiced contemporary authority a general tendency among modern students to regard the Mysteries as a veiling of philosophic thought in outward ceremonial. (There was no doctrine expounded in the Mysteries, there were only acts and some brief cryptic verbal formulæ.) In the third place, and most important of all, it shows that Paul in the last resort was an uncompromising enemy of the religious ideas and thoughts embodied in the Mysteries. While making allowance for good intention, he has to condemn them finally as absolutely wrong in their methods and views. The importance of this is in reference to the above-mentioned recent speculations about the influence exercised on Paul’s views by the Mysteries. We now have his clear, explicit, and thorough condemnation of the attempt to introduce into the teaching of Christianity any element, or idea, or rite, or method that was characteristic of those pagan Mysteries, and a convincing statement of his reason for condemning them: the religion of Jesus is spiritual, the ritual of the Mysteries is external and non-spiritual. To understand this statement of Paul’s, to understand the difference between his doctrine and the “Way” of the Mysteries, one must be able to comprehend the difference between prescribed ritual and the really spiritual; and it is painfully evident in the writings of the school whose views we are discussing, that they are so habituated to consider ritual the only way, as to miss the essential character of the Pauline “Way”.
He that has understood Paul can understand the pitying contempt which the Jew of Tarsus felt. He that has sympathy with the spirit of Hellenism can understand the indignant contempt with which Demosthenes describes the perpetration of such antics in Athens. Yet this does not exhaust the situation. There were minds which could see a deeper meaning in these rites; and “it is easy to imagine the answer that the neo-Platonic philosophers who admired the Mysteries would make to their assailants. Religion places men face to face with the actual facts of life: when the mind is exalted and ennobled by intense religious enthusiasm it is able to look with pure insight at phenomena of life in which the vulgar unpurified mind sees nothing but gross materialism. The language of religion is plainer and more direct than the language of common (modern) life. Symbolism can be looked at with gross eyes or with idealised eyes.” The Aphrodite of Praxiteles was refined from a rude Asiatic prototype. This is a totally different, and absolutely anti-Pauline view, which must not be ignored; and I state it in these words which I used as the conclusion of the article on Mysteries in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica. (That article was written in Asia Minor, relying largely on notes and memory. For the later edition I suggested that it should be cancelled, and the subject entrusted to a younger scholar, who has made a special study of the literature.)
