As a way of encouraging learning from others, this chapter seeks to demonstrate the various ways in which the development of Judaism and Christianity alike displayed profound debts to the wider culture of pagan belief and practice. The story is first told in respect of the way in which archaeological research has transformed our understanding of Judaism. It also argues that it would be quite wrong to have a low view of the religious practice and belief of the ancient Middle East and Egypt. The second half of the chapter turns to consider two significant influences from classical culture on Christianity, the mystery cults and pagan philosophy. In the latter case attention is drawn to more recent evaluations of later Neo-Platonism and theurgy. The chapter ends with a discussion of polytheism.

The chapter aims to show that Plato’s engagement with mystery cults – the Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic cults in particular – can illuminate centrally important topics of Plato’s philosophy, including his conception of the philosophical life, its relation to the human good, the role of memory in the knowledge of the Forms, and the soul’s kinship to the divine. It explores why and how Plato presents philosophy as the true initiation which can fulfil the promise of the mystery cults to offer the best human life and afterlife. It analyses why and how Plato describes the knowledge of the Forms on the model of the direct encounter with the divine at the culmination of a mystery ritual. It further suggests that the ‘birth’ announced at the highest point of the Eleusinian mysteries can shed new light on the role of ‘giving birth’ at the culmination of the philosophical life in the Symposium. Finally, it shows how Pythagorean and Orphic focus on memory offered Plato a framework to develop his account of the relationship between the soul and the divine Forms, reincarnation, and the fate of our soul in the afterlife.

This chapter examines divine regeneration within its Jewish and early Christian contexts in order to appreciate how the author used Jewish traditions of divine begetting and Christian traditions of regeneration for his own theological purpose. After an introduction (§4.1), this chapter examines two discrete bodies of evidence gathered from Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity: first, the use of regeneration language, namely, ἀναγεννάω and παλιγγενεσία (§4.2), and second, the theme of God as begetter in Jewish and early Christian literature (§4.3). Finally, this chapter examines 1 Peter 1:3-5 and 1:23 in light of these insights (§4.4). The insights of §4.2-3 provide the information necessary to perform the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) in §4.4.