ACADEMIA Letters

Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B.

Muraresku’s Immortality Key
Nathan Nadeau

In Brian Muraresku’s, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No
Name,[1] one finds claims of disclosing the “real meaning” of the Greek New Testament and
early Christian history. Its thesis is provocative: the “Greater Mysteries” of the Eleusinian
rites culminate in a psychedelic experience of spiked beer; this is representative of a “religion
with no name” (the power of psychedelic experiences via spiked drinks) stretching millennia
before Eleusis across different cultures, and after, becoming integral to the “paleo-Christian”
eucharistic experience.[2]
Here I present a critical report on the book concerned specifically with some claims about
the Greek of the New Testament as well as about early Christianity in the Hellenistic world;
this should be a contribution to further discussion which seeks to follow Muraresku.

Four Criticisms
Criticism #1. TheDraper-White thesis is still wrong
The Draper-White thesis is a thesis of intrinsic conflict between science and religion, and that
the latter has enacted great and violent hostility towards the former.[3] The thesis is imbibed
at not-uncritical points by Muraresku as a way of ostensibly bolstering his main argument
that an oppressive force of established religion snuffed out the anti-establishment practices of
those who experienced ta mystēria.[4]
The Draper-White thesis been roundly rejected and debunked, however, as have specific
old myths of religious conflict crucial to it, for example vis-à-vis the Library of Alexandria,

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.

1
Giordano Bruno, and Galileo Galilei.[5] Muraresku’s main source in this regard, the popular-
level work of Catherine Nixey (The Darkening Age), does not reflect up-to-date scholarship
on the subject. This is not the major argument of Muraresku’s book, but to the degree that it
is important background for his appeal (it is), it is important to represent it rightly.

Criticism #2. Hellenistic Thesis: Yes, Pagan Continuity Theory: No

Much of Muraresku’s claims are made on the basis of a presumption that Christianity is one
of a number of mystery religions which spring up from purely Greco-Roman contexts (the
“pagan continuity hypothesis” being a slightly tamer version of this). This is a reflection of
critical scholarship from the nineteenth century particularly among German and Dutch critical
scholars.[6] While the context of the Hellenistic world for the understanding of late second-
temple Judaism and early Christianity might well be underemphasized at times, Muraresku’s
appeals to the pagan continuity thesis is oversimplified.[7] Not only does the current consensus
grate against it, but (consensus be damned) better scholarship on the Greek nature of Judaism
and Christianity supersedes it.[8]

Criticism #3: Linguistic Fallacies

Muraresku fixates on individual words to the problematic degree that a number of word-study
fallacies are committed. Selectively:

• The Root Fallacy: presupposes that a word actually has a meaning essentially bound up
with its shape or its components (etymology over usage).[9]

This error is committed in a particularly problematic way. The Greek name Iēsous (Je-
sus) certainly does have an important meaning (as some names do) bound up in the root of
the Hb word of which it is a transliteration. Muraresku’s fallacy here is in his (and Ruck’s)
supposition of a blatantly false root for Jesus’s Greek name.See Muraresku’s take on Iēsous:
“the true origin of Jesus’s Greek name is the root for ‘drug’ or ‘poison’ (ios), which supplies
the Greek words for ‘doctor’ or iatros. Ruck says the ‘drug man.’ Either way, it’s unlikely
a Greek speaker of the first century AD would have heard the name Iēsous and not thought
of Ieso or Iaso, the Greek goddess of healing and the daughter of Asclepius, who was taught
the art of drugs, incantations, and love potions by the centaur Chiron” (p. 229).[10] Aside
from the false root (!), is it really the case that a Greek speaker in the first century would
have thought of the daughter of Asclepius when they heard Iēsous? While Greeks may well
have associated Jesus with Asclepius in non-trivial ways, Iēsous was a common name among
Palestinian Jews in the Hellenistic era (the sixth most common name in fact), which would

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.

2
have elicited associations with Joshua, the Israelite general; the name is also attested in the
broader Hellenistic world.[11] Less of anything like this would be a good idea!

• Semantic Anachronism: occurs when a late use of a word is read back into earlier liter-
ature.[12]

Consider the following: “Ignatius unambiguously refers to the Eucharist as the “Drug
of Immortality” (pharmakon athanasias)—an “antidote” or “remedy” (antidotos) for death,
capable of generating eternal life. . . if Greek wine was an actual pharmakon, does that mean
Christian wine was an actual pharmakon as well? Or was Ignatius just using a little poetic
license?” (p. 177)
Muraresku’s answer to his first rhetorical question is a rhetorical “yes”—the “drug of im-
mortality” not only becoming the name of that chapter title, but used in key places subsequent
to the quotation (along with its transliterated Greek form, p. 198, 217, 238-9, 292, 341, 368,
384). But whatever was meant by the Christian bishop who died approx. one-hundred years
after Christ (an intriguing question indeed), pharmakos, pharmakon, and pharmakeia, are
routinely used negatively in canonical Christian literature (cf. the Louw-Nida lexicon, which
is based on semantic domain theory and defines words on the basis of their use in context in a
corpus; 1:544); the word-group belongs to a wider semantic domain of terms used with such
a negative light. Muraresku (1) anachronistically utilizes one example of Christian usage, (2)
assumes it corresponds to his own understanding of the word from elsewhere, and then (3)
uses what is very likely a misunderstanding with respect to Ignatius to shed light on a whole
earlier context of related ideas in the New Testament, in which corpus the word is always used
in demonstrably different ways.
Muraresku’s discussion on p. 234 and following of the verb trōgō in John’s Gospel is an
example of a related linguistic fallacy, that of Semantic Obsolescence (the reverse of semantic
anachronism). He cites Dennis MacDonald[13] to support that the use of this term, among
others, in the Greek of John points obviously to “Dionysian cult imagery.” Trōgō is not used
with this precise, cultic sense of “munching” in the New Testament or the literature contem-
poraneous to it, nor does the context of John’s eucharist betray a special meaning over against
the synoptics (context and corpus usage being best ways to identify a semantic domain);[14]
it belongs to a semantic domain with other verbs such as geuomai, and bibrōskō, which are
used in the NT and lit of that time to simply mean “to eat” or “eating” (see the Louw-Nida
lexicon, 1:249; cf esp. the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, 2:1400 and definition 3 for its use in
the NT and Polybius of simply “eating”). Comparison between the cult of Dionysus and the
rise of Christianity repays study, but this is too tenuous a claim to make any headway in a
worthwhile direction.

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.

3
 The rest of the relevant section in Muraresku forms an argument (the “crux of the pagan
continuity hypothesis” centering on the Gospel of John) that falls afoul of a number of other
word-study fallacies: careless appeal to background material, verbal paralellomania, and fail-
ure to make the sense-reference distinction.[15]

Criticism #4: A Curious Oversight

A critical point for Muraresku is the matrix of Johannine eucharist and early Christianity,
yet Muraresku has not considered some evidence which may be a major obstacle for his
psychedelic-rite thesis: the potential tradition that the eucharist was a water-Eucharist (i.e.,
sans wine) for a not insignificant group of early Christians chiefly appealing to John’s Gospel.
In a 2007 article entitled “Water in the Eucharistic Cup,”[16] Margaret M. Daly-Denton
makes just this argument. Cyprian’s Epistula LXIII (A.D. 253)—the only ante-Nicene docu-
ment that focuses completely on the Eucharist—is seen as potentially indicating that a major
stream of eucharistic tradition flowing out of water-language in John’s Gospel was to not use
wine, but only water, in the Eucharist. It is corroborated by Justin, who calls Christians “water
drinkers,” and furthermore, the whole point concerning is substantiated in a major academic
work Daly-Denton cites (Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists, Oxford: 1999).[17] A case
as strong as any Muraresku makes (perhaps stronger, but not without challenges) can be made
for the early widespread drinking of water in the eucharistic cup—and that by appeal to John’s
Gospel no less.
The only document from the time Muraresku is interested in (the ante-Nicene period;
his “paleo-Christianity”) on the subject he is chiefly interested in (the eucharist), from the
Christian text he sees as crucial for his thesis (John’s Gospel), would presumably be very
important for him to be aware of. This is a major potential issue which is unaddressed by
Muraresku, and which he would do well to address in future discussion of the subject matter.

Conclusion
Other critiques are besides my point in this report. I have here only sought to highlight some
problems particular to the subject matter of New Testament Greek and early Christianity in
its world.
Muraresku’s book is sweeping, and has many provocative and potentially important points
to make with respect to classical history and the contemporary religious landscape and the use
of psychedelics today. Indeed, Ruck et al.’s work may be getting a well-deserved second-look
by many because of Muraresku’s book. Yet, for the hundred directions further discussion

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.

4
could go, one direction must be to get early Christian history and the Greek of the New Testa-
ment right, whatever the consequences for Muraresku’s thesis; as far as the above presentation
is concerned, Muraresku must make modifications.

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.

5
References
[1] Brian C. Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No
Name (New York: St. Martin’s, 2020).

[2] Muraresku mainly popularizes the work of Carl P. Ruck and others; see R. Gordon Wasson,
Albert Hoffman, and Carl A. P. Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secrets of the
Mysteries. Repr. (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2007); cf. Carl A. P. Ruck, Blaise
Daniel Staples, and Clark Heinrich, The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries
of the Eucharist (Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 2001). He is also
variously influenced by Graham Hancock’s work, and channels, if I may say so, a little bit
of Dan Brown, and Donna Tartt.

[3] See John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New
York: D. Appleton, 1874) x–xi.

[4] On the destruction of the Library in Alexandria see Muraresku, Immortality Key, 28–30,
56–7. On Galileo and Bruno see ibid., 336–8.

[5] On the Draper-White thesis see Russel and Ferngren, Science and Religion: A Historical
Introduction, 7. For Alexandria, Bruno, and Galileo myths being debunked, see Ronald
L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) 8–18, 59–67, and 68–78, respectively.

[6] Passim in much of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule literature.

[7] See especially Muraresku, Immortality Key, 226–90.

[8] On his precise subject: Jan Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World
(Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2014); on Hellenism and Christianity, Martin Hengel, Ju-
daism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic
Period (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974). On the subject of Greek, Roman, and Mediter-
ranean beliefs (specifically about resurrection) and their importance as contexts for un-
derstanding Christianity, see John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis.
WUNT 410 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017).

[9] Carson, D. A. Exegetical Fallacies, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 28. Carson is
accessible, but ideally one will reference James Barr, Semantics of Biblical Language.

[10] Iēsous is in fact a Greek transliteration of the Hb Jeshua (Joshua); any standard lexicon

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.

6
 will do: BDAG, 471–72.

[11] It should be common, it is simply the Greek transliteration of the Hb. for Joshua/Yahweh
saves. On its Palestinian attestation, see Baukham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. 2nd ed.
(Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2017) 85 and following; on wider Hellenistic attestation, see the
Lexicon of Greek Personal Names online under a search for Iēsous (in Greek characters)

[12] Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 33.

[13] Dennis R. Macdonald, The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides (Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 2017) 65.

[14] See Louw-Nida 1:248, and the Bauer lexicon, BDAG, 1019.

[15] Compare especially Muraresku, Immortality Key, 226–52 with Carson, Exegetical Fal-
lacies, 27–64.

[16] Margaret M. Daly-Denton, “Water in the Eucharistic Cup: A Feature of the Eucharist in
Johannine Trajectories through Early Christianity” ITC 72(2007) 356–70.

[17] McGowan’s work is a much more substantial piece of research which should be con-
sulted. See Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian
Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).

Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Nathan Nadeau, nadeaun@mcmaster.ca

Citation: Nadeau, N. (2021). Eleusinian Mysteries, Eucharistic Myths: Problems for B. Muraresku’s
Immortality Key. Academia Letters, Article 4213. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4213.