Hidden agenda

“Both the growth in historical analysis of early Christianity, as exemplified by David Friedrich Strauss’s (1808–1874) influential Das Leben Jesu, and the secularising trend in late nineteenth-century Germany had translated into attempts to derive early Christianity from its pagan surroundings. In other words, there was a hidden agenda here that was looking for support from antiquity for its own abandonment of the Christian Faith. That is why the more adventurous theologians, members of and sympathisers with the so-called Religionsgeschichtliche Schule of Göttingen, started to derive the apostle Paul’s theology from a Mithras cult in Tarsus, his birthplace, even though no Mystery cult of Mithras is attested in Tarsus nor is any Mithras Mystery found anywhere before the end of the first century (Ch. V.2).”—Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World, page 167

<idle musing>
Please don't confuse them with the facts! Christianity can't be real—that would mean they would have to change their way of life! Impossible! Man is the measure of all things. If the facts don't fit, then we'll make them fit!
</idle musing>