Another informative piece by Joshua J. Mark (one of my sources for "Women in the Ancient World"). Also, ever wonder where #Christianity got some of their ideas about the #afterlife? Pretty much, they took what they wanted (or what was popular), then banned the Rites.
"The #RitesOfEleusis, or the Eleusinian Mysteries, were the secret rituals of the mystery school of #Eleusis and were observed regularly from c. 1600 BCE - 392 CE. Exactly what this mystic ritual was no one knows; but why the ancient Greeks participated in it can be understood by the testimonials of the initiated.
"The Eleusinian Mysteries, held each year at Eleusis, Greece, fourteen miles northwest of Athens, were so important to the Greeks that, until the arrival of the Romans, The Sacred Way (the road from Athens to Eleusis) was the only road, not a goat path, in all of central Greece. The mysteries celebrated the story of Demeter and #Persephone but, as the initiated were sworn to secrecy on pain of death as to the details of the ritual, we do not know what form these rituals took. We do know, though, that those who participated in the mysteries were forever changed for the better and that they no longer feared death.
"The rituals were based on a symbolic reading of the story of Demeter and Persephone and provided initiates with a vision of the afterlife so powerful that it changed the way they saw the world and their place in it. Participants were freed from a fear of death through the recognition that they were immortal souls temporarily in mortal bodies. In the same way that Persephone went down to the land of the dead and returned to that of the living each year, so would every human being die only to live again on another plane of existence or in another body."
A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know
Thousands of people die every year from floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes and typhoons. Yet compared to what the Earth endured in prehistoric times-lethal volcanic winters, deadly asteroid collisions-our civilization has developed against a backdrop of relative geological calm. Will this calm last?
"Jesus himself said, before he ascended into heaven, that he was simply going to prepare a place for his followers, implying that he would be back and that it was not going to take long. So when John, an exiled follower of Jesus, sent a letter to a church, his writing that Jesus said he was coming “quickly” would not have been an odd statement.
But it has been over 2000 years, and maybe it is safe to say that either Jesus is not coming back “quickly” or that his definition of “quickly” is vastly different from our own. Here is the problem with that second line of reasoning, though. The people who hold that God is outside of time and so when God says “quickly”, they mean quickly for them, are the same people who believe that when the Bible says everything was created in six days it means six literal 24-hour days. In other words, they are being inconsistent at best with the way they handle their Scriptures." #religion#eschatology#endtimes
Christian ethics need to be tied to our eschatology.
Ask, is there any place for this behavior in the kingdom of God?
If the kingdom of God in its fullness - Christian eschatology, that is, the good world God dreams and destines for his creation when all is finally made right - excludes violence and shame-making and cruelty, then there is no place for violence and shame-making and cruelty in the bringing about of the Kingdom.
If it doesn't belong in the world as it shall be, it doesn't belong in the world as it is today.