Orphic Christianity 1
In medieval christianity an interpretatio christiana of the orpheus myth occurs. eurydice is humanity that fell & died as a result of the original sin committed by Eve. Orpheus is Christ who descended into the realm of death to bring her back to life. Now this allegorical interpretation misses the point on the aspect of the 2nd death of eurydice.
What happened after Good Friday? This is the core myth of Christianity. Jesus rose from death and his followers from then on participated in his victory over death. From this perspective stems the christian interpretation of orpheus. What happened?
After Jesus died, his followers were overcome with grief. Some may have believed he was a prophet. The least they thought was that he warned the people of his time like the OT prophets did. Now after his death they did not loose faith, instead of following Jesus they became followers of his teachings. By remaining true to these teachings they would be able to participate in his final victory over death.
In those days the belief in a world going up in flames was widespread -Armagedon. In Jewish circles this was combined with a belief in a promised Son of Man. This Son of Man would appear as an eschatological judge. At the end of times he would judge mankind by measuring their truthfulness to God’s law. The first Christians made up an image of Christ by blending Jesus and the Son of Man. This belief was very actual. The first Christians believed they would witness the return of Christ. They would not die until they see the victorious coming of the Lord. However, as we know, this appeared not to be the case.
And as more and more of the initial followers died the Christians started accepting they would not live to see the coming of the Lord. Did this lead to a fall from belief? Indeed not! It led to a transformation of doctrine. The coming of the Lord was postponed to an indefinite future, while his physical resurrection was projected back to shortly after his death. To be more precise, on the third day after his death.
This is the original orphic christianity. Overcome with grief the first christians could not accept the death of their leader. Therefore they staged the resurrection of their Lord. When it turned out it did not go as planned they altered the initial image, they did not abandon it. Orpheus/Christians descended into Hades and they sung their beloved teacher Jesus/Eurydice back to life. Their songs? The dogma’s of physical resurrection, the double nature of Christ and diverse trinitary formula’s. And the singing did not stop. The Christians have sung for ages as some still do today. For centuries and centuries the have been ascending from Hades to bring their beloved leader back to life.
Until … the next post.