With the absorption of the old pagan faiths within the texture of Christianity in the latter first and early second century, it was then that a secure Christian hierarchy began an intensive campaign to outlaw rival pagan religions. However, in a move to placate the remaining pagans and win them over to Christianity, the hierarchy often rededicated pagan temples and shrines, which essentially allowed former pagans to continue their worship virtually uninterrupted. This is why one can still find pre-Christian pagan idols of a mother-g-ddess holding her infant savior-son still surviving in a number of Christian churches—the only exception being that they now have the Christian names of Mary and Jesus.
The Christian Church cannot escape the origins of their services, as The Catholic Encyclopedia bluntly admits: "In this age of Pan-Babylonianism it is not at all surprising that the germinal ideas of the Christian Communion should be located in Babylon, where in the Adapa myth mention has been found of 'wafer of life' and 'food of life."' (Volume X, p. 12.) The editors of this article go on to quote the famous religious historian Franz Cumont's Mysterien desMithra, in which he documents the origin of the Mass to the Roman sun-g-d Mithra. They also note that even the ancient Catholic historian Tertullian was so angry when he found the tremendous similarities of Catholicism to Mithraism that he ". . . ascribed this mimicking of Christian rites to the 'devil."' (Ibid., p. 13.)
Few know but Tertullian, an early Church Father, often questioned the legitimacy of his own faith. One should only ask himself: "What did Tertullian find that so upset him?" I want you to pay particular attention to his reply. "The origin of your g-ds is derived from figures molded on a cross. All those rows of images on your standards are the appendages of crosses; those hanging on your standards and banners are robes of crosses" (Egyptian Belief, p. 217).
The priests of Mithraism celebrated Mass by using holy water, bells, candles, and offered communion on Sunday, which all took place in one of their elaborate idol-bedecked cathedrals. (The Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed. 1938, Volume 15, p. 621.) Another example is found in ancient Tibet and Nepal, where the worship of their crucified savior-g-d was found to be very close to the Christian Jesus. "In Tibet was found the pope, or head of the religion, whom they called the 'Dalai Lama,' they use holy water, they celebrate a sacrifice with bread and wine; they give extreme unction, pray for the sick; they have monasteries, and convents for women; they chant in their service, have fasts; they worship one g-d in a trinity, believe in a hell, heaven, and a half-way place or purgatory; they make prayers and sacrifices for the dead, have confession, adore the cross; have...strings of beads to count their prayers..." Doane, Bible Myths, p. 400.)
Historian Arthur Wigall writes that, "When Christian saints triumphed, these paintings and figures became those of Madonna and child without any break in continuity: No archaeologist, in fact, can now tell whether some of these objects represent the one or the other" (Wigall, The Paganism In Our Christianity, p. 129). E.J. Waggoner comments that when Christianity prevailed over paganism, "It worshipped in the same temples; it performed, to a certain extent, the same rites; it actually abrogated the local worship of one of the multitudinous deities of paganism". Noted mythologist S.C. Wake writes: "The 'Black Virgins' of the French cathedrals prove, when examined critically, to be basalt figures of the g-ddess Isis. The Virgin Mary succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and ceremonies . . . It is astonishing how much of the Egyptian and the second-hand Indian symbolism passed over into the usages of the following times. The high cap and hooked staff of the g-d became the bishop's miter and crosier" (Westropp, Hodder M., Wake Staniland C. Ancient Symbol Worship, Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity, p. 97).
"It is well known that when paganism was superseded by Christianity, the older religion was by no means obliterated", writes George H McKnight in his book, St. Nicholas. He continues: "In Greece the pagan temples often were converted into Christian churches. At Athens, the Parthenon, a temple of the Virgin Pallas, became a church of the Virgin Mary, the temple of Theseus [Zeus] became a church devoted to . . . St. George . . . In many of the churches of Rome may be seen beautiful classical columns taken from the earlier pagan structures." He notes that at Syracuse in Sicily, one can find that ". . . the older classical temple of Minerva has been transformed into a renaissance cathedral [the church was renamed, appropriately, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, or Holy Mary over the shrine of Minerva]" (Westropp, Hodder M., Wake Staniland C. Ancient Symbol Worship, Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity, p. 125).
A pagan temple in Rome, sacred to the "Bona Dea" (the good g-ddess), was rededicated to the Virgin Mary. Another temple sacred to Apollo was demolished and rebuilt—using the materials from the older temple—in honor of St. Apollinaris. The temple of Mars is now the church of St. Martine, and the temple holy to Caelestis Dea, or the heavenly g-ddess, was converted into a Catholic church at Carthage. What is interesting in this instance is that the last pagan high priest of this temple, whose name was Aurelius, disappeared from history (in AD 390) at exactly the same time a new Christian Bishop of Carthage appears—whose name, coincidentally, was also Aurelius.
Answer for yourself: Did you catch that?
The church of St. Reparatae in Florence was originally dedicated to the great g-ddess Nutria. The church of St. Stephen in Bologna was built from the temple of Isis. In Rome, the temple dedicated to the g-d Romulus was made over to a St. Theodore. Quite revealing is that the old custom of women bringing their sick children to the temple to be healed by the pagan g-d Romulus continues to this day, the only difference being that the present-day faithful now evoke the name of St. Theodore (Doane, Bible Myths, pp. 396-397).
The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome was built over the sacred cave of the Magna Mater. The Church of St. Clemente in Rome has beneath its altar a vault where there is a beautifully carved shrine and altar to the sun-g-d Mithras. Atop the altar is the sun-g-d wearing his radiant crown. The temple of the Roman mother-g-ddess, complete with the g-d Mithra's phallus standing on top, once stood on the site of the present Vatican. Actually it is still there buried under the artificial hill that was constructed to form the court of St. Peter's." And the memory of the ancient mother g-ddess accounts for the name of St. Mary's Rotunda, which is so important to the Vatican complex.
In addition to the rededication of the great pagan temples, throughout Europe and the British isles local parish churches are usually built on the tops of hills where a former pagan holy site was once located. This is why many of the old phallic stones of the pre-Christian religion can still be found standing in the church yards of the present Christian churches.
At any rate, such is the history of Christian tradition. But all these changes were simply a prelude to accomplishing the overall objective of enforcing Christianity on the whole of the Roman Empire. Understand such a plan was carried out by merging Jewish beliefs with prior pagan beliefs. Such a mixture assured acceptance by the non-Jews by bringing to them another g-d fashioned already in the image of those that they already revered.
Answer for yourself: To a polytheist what is another g-d? These amalgamation of beliefs were first fashioned in oral traditions and later recorded in a document called the New Testament. You have already read the testimony of early Church Fathers to the guilt of the Church in doing such. Now comes the next step in Rome's overall plan…the destruction of as much as possible existing documents which exposed their religious duplicity.
The next and most important step involved a centuries-long campaign of horrendous destruction of anything which revealed the plagiarism by the Catholic Christian Church which took the majority of its "dogmas and doctrines" from prior pagan mystery religions to which they and their "missionary targets" were already familiar. Only in this way would they be able later to hold sway over the masses and none would have "proof" any longer of the Church's copy-cat "theology". This would ensure that Rome could not only claim a "Divine Revelation" since all proof of their plagiarism of pagan mystery religions would be destroyed, but they could then continue without fear of exposure teaching pagan lies and myths as "Divine Truths" which were intended to secure the allegiance and finances of the masses who would depend on such religious establishments for their very "salvation" for soon the Catholic Church would teach that there "was no salvation outside the Catholic Church and its doctrines". Is was only a short step from teaching such pagan lies and myths to recording these pagan myths in a "Divine Document" latter called the New Testament. Without previous references to their dishonesty, the path was cleared for global conversion, for if you remember, they were taking the same stories and myths and only changing the name of the characters. And we read the New Testament most of our lives as if it were "inspired, infallible, and inerrant" never once knowing that most of the accounts in the New Testament had been told before for thousands of years by the people the God of the Old Testament would tell Israel to stay apart from and to whose religion they were not to adopt!
Answer for yourself: What impact would it have if it could be shown that the core teachings of Christianity, a religion espoused as given by God from Heaven, were nothing more than the retelling of pagan mythology as applied to a Jewish Rabbi named Yeshua.
More to follow.