objective, simple,
nonmystical.[2026] The Syrian cult of Tammuz (Adonis), which was adopted
by Hebrews in the sixth century B.C. (Ezek. viii, 14), was an old
folk-ceremony, not a mystery; it is allied to the Attis ceremonies of
Asia Minor and to the mourning ceremony mentioned in Judges xi, 40
(mourning for a dead deity, but there referred to Jephthah's daughter).

+1101+. The Greek mysteries, then, derived their orgiastic side partly
from Thrace, partly from Asia Minor. They chiefly attracted the lower
classes and particularly slaves, for they offered individual
independence in religion, freedom from the sense of social inferiority,
and hope for the life to come. Thus they did not appeal to the Hellenic
spirit, and did not, as organizations, survive the political decadence
of the Greek States. But it is probable that their effects survived in
the recognition of the possibility of religious worship apart from the
traditional cults, and, more generally, in contributing to the
establishment of the principle of individualism in religion. An
historical connection between the Greek mysteries and the later
individualistic cults is, indeed, not probable. Cumont believes that
Mithraism did not imitate the organization of the Greek secret
societies.[2027] The New Testament use of the term 'mystery' in the
sense of 'esoteric doctrine'[2028] may have come from the Asian cult;
the Mithraic worship was practiced in Tarsus, the native city of the
Apostle Paul, in the first century of our era. However this may be, it
seems probable that the conception of a church existed in the
Graeco-Roman world before the beginning of our era, and that its
existence was due in part to the Greek mysteries, whose members were
scattered throughout the empire of Alexander.

+1102+. The _philosophical systems_ that arose in Asia and Europe
concurrently with the Greek mysteries did not found ecclesiastical
organizations. The disciples of philosophers formed schools, and the
adherents of each school constituted a group the members of which were
united one with another by the bond of a common intellectual aim and a
common conception of life and of the world; and there was also a
scientific union between the various groups, the fundamental methods of
investigation and lines of thought being the same everywhere. But the
object of thought was the discovery of truth by human reason, not the
quest of salvation by worship of the divine. The emotional element
e