their masters and so on. All sexual prohibitions were lifted and erotic dancing in public was commonplace. The giving and receiving of presents was another feature (small dolls were a popular gift, although for an unpleasant reason, as they commemorated a myth that Saturn ate all his male children at birth to fulfill a pledge that he would die without heirs). All businesses were closed and the only vocations permitted to work were those of bakers and cooks. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the Lord of Misrule. Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in binge eating and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the original festival’s conclusion, December 23, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman. This violent ending became less common with the passage of time and the influence of Greek customs and practice, so that by the New Testament era the festival had become more light-hearted. The Lord of Misrule was selected by the drawing of lots and adopted the role of a mock king in charge of all the revelry, who was expected to order outlandish and scandalous actions to be performed by himself and others.
In the fourth century AD, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Church leaders in the west succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians. As the church historian Philip Schaff noted, had the syncretism of winter festivals with the birth of Christ arisen during a period of Christian persecution by pagans, then everything pagan would have been abhorred and the idea of mixing the two, undoubtedly refuted. However, as the idea occurred “in the Nicene age, this rigidness of opposition between the church and the world was in a great measure softened by the general conversion of the heathen.”5 The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. The weeks around December 25 coincided with a wide range of celebrations in earlier cultures, including the Midwinter Solstice (which at that time according to the Julian calendar fell on December 25), North European Yule, Celtic Samhain, Roman Saturnalia, and the Roman Birthday of Sol Invictus (or Invincible Sun), the official sun god of the Roman Empire, celebrating the rebirth of the winter-sun unconquered by the rigors of the season. In the third century AD this birthday was deemed to be December 25.
Excursus on Mithraism
The first empire after the Flood was that of Babylon (c. 2200 BC) under Nimrod, Noah’s descendent via Ham and Cush (Gen 10:8–10). Ezekiel, prophesying to the Jewish captives in their Babylonian exile around 600 BC, condemns the worship of Tammuz (Ezek 8:13–18) the mythological son of Nimrod mothered by Semiramis, believed by pagans to have been born miraculously at the winter solstice. Numerous Babylonian monuments show the goddess-mother Semiramis with her son in her arms.
From Babylon this mystery religion spread to all the surrounding nations as the years went on and the world was populated by the descendants of Noah. Everywhere the symbols were the same and everywhere the cult of the mother and child became the basis of the ancient pagan religion’s popular system. Their worship was celebrated with immoral practices and the image of the queen of heaven with the babe in her arms was seen everywhere, though the names might differ as languages differed. It became the mystery religion of Phoenicia and by the Phoenicians was carried to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the mother and child were worshipped as Isis and Osiris or Horus; in India as Isi and Iswara; in China, Japan, and Tibet, as the mother goddess Shing-moo with child (Jesuit missionaries to the East were astonished to find the counterpart of the Madonna and child as devoutly worshiped as they were in Rome); in Greece as Ceres or Irene and Plutus; in Rome as Fortuna and Jupitor-puer, or Venus and Adurnis; and in Scandinavia as Frigga and Balder. When Caesar invaded Britain, he discovered the Druid priests worshiping the “mother of god” as Virgo-Patitura.
The mother and child were worshiped in Babylon as Ishtar and Tammuz, and in Phoenicia as Ashtoreth and Baal. When Belshazzar was slain (Dan 5:30) and the Persians came to power under Cyrus and later Darius, the worship spread west into Anatolia which eventually by the first century BC, became the Roman province of Asia. As Imperial Rome was tied to Egypt by conquest and by necessity (the fertile lands around the Nile providing a major source of food for Rome), it is not surprising to discover that the Isis cult became fully integrated into Roman life. Ancient Egyptian depictions of Isis and Horus became replicated in Roman coinage of the third century AD.
Semiramis was worshiped in Ephesus as the pagan fertility goddess Diana, who represented the generative powers of nature. She was referred to as a fertility goddess because she mothered all the numerous pagan gods representing the god-incarnate Tammuz.
Diana was pictured with numerous teats so that she could nurse all the pagan gods, and she wore a tower-shaped crown symbolizing the Babylonian tower of Babel.
Sun worship is very central to Buddhism and Hinduism in which some of the doctrines are as follows: as the sun god (Nimrod) plunged into the waters of the Euphrates River, so the reincarnated son plunged into the waters of the womb to be worshiped as the savior; the cycle of the sun represents the sun rising (Brahma), the sun at the meridian (Siva), and the sun setting (Vishnu); at night, the sun rests in the womb of the ocean in the darkness of the underworld, representing the death and suffering of the sun god. As god of the ocean (Poseidon, Neptune), he was also worshipped as the fish god Dagon, who had plunged into the waters of the womb to be reborn. The most prominent form of worship in Babylon was dedicated to Dagon, later known as Ichthys, or the fish (Judg 16:23; 1 Chr 10:10; 1 Sam 5). Another name for sun worship is Mithraism. The Encyclopaedia Britannica calls Mithra “the Iranian god of the sun, justice, contract, and war” and states that this pagan deity (originating in Indo-Persia during Moses’ era c. 1500 BC) was referred to as “Mithras” in the Roman Empire during the early centuries after Christ’s death.6 (It should be noted that from the eighteenth century onwards in the rise of modern human secularism, much has been published that emphasizes similarities between Mithraism and Christianity, arguing that the latter is but an imitation of the former. However, on closer scrutiny, these claims are spurious and are void of any tangible evidence from the extant records of Mithraism.)
According to the Roman historian Plutarch (c. 46–120 AD), Mithraism began to be absorbed by the Romans during Pompey’s military campaign against Cilician pirates around 70 BC. The religion eventually migrated from Asia Minor through the soldiers, many of whom had been citizens of the region, into Rome and the far reaches of the empire. Syrian merchants brought Mithraism to the major cities, such as Alexandria, Rome, and Carthage, while captives carried it to the countryside. By the third century AD Mithraism and its mysteries permeated the Roman Empire and extended from India to Scotland, with abundant monuments in numerous countries amounting to over 420 Mithraic sites so far discovered. The worship of the sun remained very prominent in Roman society and toward the end of the third century AD, the Lord Jesus was being referred to as the “Sun of Justice.” There was without much doubt, a syncretism of the worship of the sun and the worship of the Son of God!
This Roman coin from
