The Background of Christianity

HOW far had the atmosphere of the Mystery Religions penetrated Palestine? That is a question which it is exceedingly difficult to answer. It is often suggested, e.g. by Buchanan Gray, ¹ that if there was but little sacramentalism to be found among the Chosen People during Old Testament times, there was at the period when Christianity arose none at all. Even Oesterley, ² who is ready to allow that with the Israelites, as with the reformer John, the rite of baptism had a sacramental significance, will allow it no such meaning among the later Jews. Bousset ³ admits that this is curious, as the Mysteries all had sacraments, but contends that the Pharisaic washings had become mere legal obligations without significance, and that even the proselyte baptism was not held to produce any inner change, and concludes that ‘the Jewish Church on the whole knows no sacrament.’ The reason for this is summarized by Fairweather, ⁴ who explains that the restoration of the cultus after the return from exile was not a reversion to heathen practice, because the rites were ‘denaturalized and transformed into commemorative institutions of supernatural religion,’ worship thus becoming a matter of simple obedience to Divine law. Instead of being a bridge between Jews and heathen as it had been before the exile, the cultus now became an effectual barrier. In short, it is held that the later religion of the elect people was denuded of all sacramental significance.