The Reality of Christianity's Impact on Paganism
This blog looks at the reality of Christianity's impact on paganism. It discusses how much of what we assume about paganism is based on assumptions from Christianity, and how Christianity has so thoroughly destroyed its polytheistic competition.
Chris Riedel
Medieval history professor. Researches religious reform c.1000CE. A greyhound named Malibu. Nerdy things. Personal acct, opinions mine not anyone else’s. he/him
-
Honestly, I would love for all the Eostre “pagan connections” with Easter to be true, because it would be cooler than the reality that Christianity so thoroughly destroyed its polytheistic competition that even the surviving scraps likely wildly misrepresent the lived experience.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023 -
What really gets me is how much we assume about paganism fundamentally reflecrs assumptions drawn from Christianity. For instance, even that there was a singular form of paganism, an orthodox way of belief that all used the exact same versions of a coherent set of myths.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023 -
That’s a very particular kind of religion largely restricted to monotheisms, which tend to insist on streamlining their spirituality in a way synchretic polytheists found completely alien to their basic principles.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023 -
Basically every germanic village seems to have had its own spin on Thor, Odin & Ragnarok (if the last was even a common belief). These could contradict each other without issue. What survives to us is a unique post-Christian synthetic version & a handful of other references.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023 -
If a Greek or Roman heard these stories they would just say “huh, that’s a weird way to worship Zeus & Mercury, but that’s barbarians for you.” The assumption was the same gods were worshipped in different ways under different names. Synchretism is great that way.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023 -
Some Greeks did get bothered by the inconsistencies with Egyptian beliefs about the shared gods, but the thing was it didn’t really matter. As long as your way of worshipping the gods was perceived as old then it clearly made the gods happy since they hadn’t destroyed you for it.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023 -
The problem Rome had with Christians was they refused to worship the gods & did some newfangled thing instead. That was a danger to everybody, since Zeus tends not to aim his lightning bolts carefully.
— Chris😷Riedel (@medievalhistory) April 10, 2023
Also not worshipping the imperial cult was seen as basically insurrection.