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Today. Episode 12, First Century A.D. Religion Part 2, the mystery religions.

Welcome back to the History of the Papacy podcast.

I'm Steve, your host for this podcast about the history of the popes of Rome.

In the previous episode, we discussed some aspects of the state religion of the Roman Empire and the household religion.

We saw there were some conflicts with early Christianity, especially with the household religion. We saw there were some conflicts with early Christianity,

especially with the state religion. That continued for some time. Now we're going to take a look at a pretty fascinating religious experience of the ancient world called mystery cults or mystery

religions. It's kind of difficult to define exactly what a mystery cult is. There

were many of them. They existed over the course of about a millennium, and they originated from

several different cultures. I will use the term mystery cult and mystery religion interchangeably,

depending on the mood that strikes me.

The only real difference between the two terms is that the word cult carries a certain connotation,

but here it really only means that these are different religious movements that were separate

from the mainstream state religion.

One thread that connects all the mystery cults or religions is that they were mysterious.

People were initiated into them, and the members of these religions kept the details of the

religion a strict secret.

...