The Church and Paganism

I'm reading an interesting book right now, The DaVinci Hoax, written by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel, two Catholics as a response to The DaVinci Code. What I find most interesting are the apologetics concerning the relationship between the pagan Roman religions and Christianity prior to the council at Nicea. I, along with other Protestant Christians I assume, have believed that the rituals of the Catholic Church seemed strange, at best, and I assumed that the accusations (again, coming from fellow Christians) that those rituals were adopted from paganism, and therefore maybe not quite Christian and possibly syncretic.

Well, shame on me for accepting those accusations. This book is a very good apologetic work, well researched and written. The authors address the texts which Dan Brown borrowed from very heavily. (I think he's been sued by one of those authors for quoting verbatim from their text without attribution or restitution.) The authors ding Marcus Borg on one point, seemingly because of his prior relationship with the Jesus Seminar. (I'm still not clear on why they are so reviled among conservative Christians.)

I'm learning a lot about the political and religious environment in which the early Christians lived during the first three centuries following the resurrection. While I don't agree with their assessment of Borg (I think Borg has since distanced himself from the Jesus Seminar, and the quote that appears in the book doesn't fully explain Borg's position on the historical Jesus), the book is worth reading especially if you've read The DaVinci Code.