David in NJ
Well-Known Member
'Both religious were particularly popular with the lower classes. Both offered magnificently solemn rituals that the believers could participate in. There may have been Isiac influence also on Christian iconography. For example, in art, Isis was frequently portrayed in a maternal pose, wearing a crown and holding lovingly in her arms her divine child, Horus. The Virgin Mary, haloed, is widely presented in catacomb frescoes holding her divine child Jesus."7. Do you see some common ground between Christianity and religion in ancient Egypt?
If one chose to, he or she could find some common characteristics between early Christianity and the cult of Isis.
Although in the Pauline view of Christianity, God was a male and Isis was a female, both religions worshiped a redeemer, a savior divinity. Isis was a savior goddess. Jesus was the Christian savior. Another conspicuous similarity between the two faiths is that both offered a one-on-one relationship with a deity, regardless of the background or status of the devotee. In both cults, penitents sought the cleansing of the guilt of their sins.
Both religious were particularly popular with the lower classes. Both offered magnificently solemn rituals that the believers could participate in. There may have been Isiac influence also on Christian iconography. For example, in art, Isis was frequently portrayed in a maternal pose, wearing a crown and holding lovingly in her arms her divine child, Horus. The Virgin Mary, haloed, is widely presented in catacomb frescoes holding her divine child Jesus.
The Egyptian religions erected imposing temples to their gods. The Egyptian cults were banished by Tiberius but publicly welcomed back to the Roman world by Caligula. And the Temple of Isis in Rome which was destroyed by fire in A.D. 80 was rebuilt by order of Domitian with a luxury and splendor still testified to in our day by two obelisks that once flanked the temple entrance and now serve as centerpieces for Roman piazzas, one in the square fronting the Pantheon, the other just a short distance away in Piazza Minerva.
As for the Christians, architecturally speaking, they had to wait for the liberating Edict of Milan by Constantine to erect such imposing temples as St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and great Romanesque churches.
Of course, after all this, it must be said that there were many extreme dissimilarities between the two religions, as well. For example, the Isian religion, in most un-Christian fashion, was one of Mystery initiation. In the mid-second century A.D. the African barrister Lucivs Apuleius, himself an initiate of the Mysteries of Isis, wrote The Golden Ass, an entertaining allegorical tale of one man’s conversion from materialistic desire symbolized by his metamorphosis into an ass and accompanying bawdy adventures to the state of pure service of the sublime Goddess. The simple sacrament of Baptism admitted an aspirant into the Christian faith.
Why do you suppose this is?