History Online - Chronology

In conclusion, we shall briefly discuss the situation of the history of religions. It is assumed traditionally that each chronological epoch has had its own religious cults separated by centuries and millennia. At the same time, the 19th-century historians and ethnographers did the enormous job of comparatively studying the world religions and cults. They found that the religions traditionally believed to be separated by hundreds and thousands of years admit an extraordinary large number of "parallels" (sometimes even identical coincidences). This fact engendered numerous theories of influence, borrowing, infiltration, and so forth. However, they all rest on traditional chronology and are generated only by it. A change of chronology will make the scientists revise the prior point of view. Since we do not have the space here, we only indicate some typical examples:

A so-called Celtic monument found in 1771 is regarded as the traditional representation of the pagan pre-Christian forest-god of the Gauls [37]. However, the inscription ESUS carved out over the divinity's head could be seen explicitly. Nevertheless, traditional chronology makes the historians believe that this is the pre-Christian "God Jesus". The well-known historian and specialist in comparative religion A. Drews wrote that he considered mythological parallels between Christianity and paganism very important. Those who do not see the generally known relation of the Gospel's paschal history to the myths and cults of the religion venerating Attis-Adonis-Osiris, and others, those who affirm that the myths of Attis and Adonis say nothing of Sunday burials, who hope to prove that Jesus' death was different from the deaths of his relatives in Asia Minor, who cannot recognize the Virgin Mary in the numerous Indian, Anatolian, and Egyptian mother-goddesses Maia, Mariamma, the mother of the "Messiah" Cyrus, weeping Semiramis, Myrrha, and Mera, should be left out of the discussion of questions of religion and history. Drews lists a great many parallels identifying the Christian "holy family" with other "holy families" of the Anatolian and Egyptian gods allegedly separated from the turn of the millennium by many centuries. Rejecting the traditional approach, we see that all the parallels simply point to the simultaneity of these cults, which are different only in national character because of their origin.