From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics

by Louis A. Markos

Eleusis they tended the shrine of Demeter, and it is believed that part of their ceremony included the viewing of a ripe ear of corn or grain. At the heart, therefore, of the Eleusinian mysteries was a faith in the rebirth of spring, a firm hope that life could spring out of death and that we, perhaps, could share in that new life. If I am right and the Greeks of John's Gospel were members of this ancient cult-a cult well known throughout the Near East-then Jesus' reply would have carried special significance for them. This mini-parable of the grain of wheat is a unique one in the Gospels; it has no parallel in Christ's other parables or in his predictions of his death and resurrection. To me it is clear that Jesus constructed this brief but provocative parable specifically for these Greeks as an attempt to communicate with them directly, to build a bridge from myth to doctrine. It is possible that Jesus is doing here the same thing Paul does in his speech before the Areopagus: proclaiming himself as the embodiment of what they have until now worshiped in ignorance. By means of their own rational and emotional yearnings, these Greeks, along with the other initiates of Eleusis, had achieved a higher spiritual understanding: namely, that life can come only through death and that salvation consists somehow in sharing this divine surrendering and recapturing of life. Having come this far, the Greeks needed only to be nudged by Jesus into a saving knowledge of the one who is mo...