Just going to point out:
- 1st century Christians and Jews were Hellenic; they all spoke Greek primarily, including liturgically
- This is why it is Greek philosophical concepts that shape Christian and Jewish theology in large part, lot of Platonic thought in both Christology and Jewish traditions like Kabbalah
- Easter is not Easter in any other language that isn’t Anglo-Germanic sphere. Most of us have a derivation of Hebrew Pesach via the Greek Pascha (via Latin Pascal); already stated this but bears repeating evidently
- Skipping over Jews in Christian history is very weird
- Babylonian stuff was not in profoudn, regular contact with 1st century Judaism and Christianity, and there are theories Judaism was born out of Zoroastrianism because of where Abraham was from in the first place, but its still a theory and Jews don’t exactly appreciate it. Most we got is “Three Magi” in the Bible.
- Christians definitely did not grow out of Zoroastrianism because timeline and spread doesn’t allow for it (Mediterranean spread, with main centers being Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and Constantinople, ergo the Pentarchy established after), and additionally erasing Jews is weird
- It was the Sol Invictus cult that was state-supported cult in Imperial Rome at the time, alongside the usual Religio Romanum (Polytheism, Cult of State, Emperor Worship, etc), the Cult of Mithras was a minority cult simply due to archaeological comparison and was “popular” (in the “masses” sense) and survived after the Church became the Imperial Religion
- It makes more sense for the Cult of Mithras to have been born out of a syncretism between early Christianity and popular Hellenic/Roman Paganism; the Jews themselves retained the Zoroastrian Zodiac, and by then the Hellenic world generally otherwise also adopted the Zodiac
- Pascua (as it is in Spanish, my tongue) is always the same date as Jewish Pesach/Passover
- The December 25th date was adopting the Sol Invictus date and to balance out the liturgical calendar, but early Christians BEFORE the adoption as an Imperial Religion were already using the December 25th date for Christ, BEFORE the Roman Empire revived the Sol Invictus cult in the 3rd century as we have Patristics naming the date; it is certainly possible that the Palestinian Hellenized Pagans that became early Christians after the Council of Jerusalem “remembered” the original form of the Sol Invictus cult and thus it became a thing.
- Christians in the West do care about “pagan origins”, but only when it’s Not Europe. Christmas evergreen trees and “Easter” rabbits? That’s fine to them. But as we saw during the “Catholic Pachamama Scandal” and recently when US Black Catholics were given a spotlight and they were accused of voodoo, there is still deep racism and colonial mentalities from the Western Church, even though we outnumber the Anglo-Germanic Catholics many times over.
Anywho back on topic:
I made a thread on my WoW Twitter recently breaking down why Tauren characterization sucks deeply and relies so much on racist tropes, and I realized that the white-washing of Camp Taurajo wasn’t in the questline itself, but in Christie Golden’s book Jaina: Tides of Vengeance.
Thought it was very curious.