What ways did Christianity embrace paganism?

Answer 1

This is one opinion:

Christianity has never truly embraced paganism. Far from it. In fact, what Christianity did was mutilate the system of paganism and make it into a patriarchal cult. By definition, Christianity is indeed a cult. A cult is a group of followers who all glorify one individual, and who are bound by a strict set of rules called a dogma.

Christianity in fact, desecrated the gods and goddesses by making them merely saints and lessening their divinity. This may be seen as embracing if you look at it from a certain perspective, but most see it as simple bigotry. They yanked the feminine aspects of god out of the system of beliefs entirely, and anyone who was caught worshipping the divine mother was burned as a heretic.

However, that is not to say that the people themselves did not secretly embrace paganism after the advent of Christianity. In designing chapels and such, Michelangelo incorporated many obscure pagan messages with his works, such as facing the statue of Mary in such a way as she would receive the light of only the rising sun and setting sun. The monastery dwelling monks were often involved in what was deemed mysticism, but incorporated pagan beliefs. Rasputin is called to mind.

Tarot cards were developed and used as a well disguised way to predict the future, and were often carried by gypsies, who were travelling across the Middle East and Europe at the time of the Advent of Christianity.

As I said before, the Christian Church has never and will never embrace paganism. It is against their beliefs to do such a thing. Below is a list of bible verses to prove that the Christians abhor paganism:

Micah 5:12 - The Lord says .."And I will cut off witchcraft out of thine hand..."

Leviticus 20:6 - "And the soul that tumeth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, 1 will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people."

1 Samuel 15:23 - "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft...."

Answer 2

The concept of a god or god-man born from a virgin was common among pagans in ancient times, so it is not surprising that the authors of Matthew and Luke both described Mary as a virgin when Jesus was born, although when looked at carefully their nativity stories are irreconcilably different. Matthew was aware of the Zoroastrian religion, since he described the Zoroastrian priests (magi) as coming to worship Jesus, so he was probably also aware that the Zoroastrian Saoshyant was to be born of a virgin. Bishop Spong says that Matthew was clearly writing Christian midrash. Pictures of the virgin Mary and child are reminiscent of similar pictures of Isis the Egyptian Divine Mother and Horus the Divine Offspring.

Dennis R MacDonald (The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark) says that much of the gospel story in Mark, subsequently copied into the other gospels, was actually based on the Homeric epics - Iliad and Odyssey. He provides numerous convincing examples of parallels between Mark and Homer, showing that the gospels absorbed much from the Greek pagan 'Bible'.

While not strictly 'pagan', since it originated with Greek philosophers, the Logos or Word was adopted by the author of John's Gospel to explain the pre-existence of Jesus.

The word 'Easter' is based on the name of the fertility goddess, Oestre. Fertility symbols in Christian culture, if not in Christian doctrine, include the Easter rabbit and Easter eggs.

Until the fourth century, no one had really given any though to when Jesus was born. At a time when Christians were trying to eradicate pagan symbolism, December 25th was adopted as the birthday of Jesus because that was the birthdate of the sun god. The celebration of the birth of Jesus was meant to overshadow celebrations of the birth of the sun god.