What did the Babylonian Mystery Religion look like during Jesus' time? There are claims that this religion has led to the corruption of the faith, for example, Catholicism. This all came from the tower of Babel and mystery school. I just would like backing to know if this is biblical and if so, was it still around during Jesus' time on earth? Thank you!
Simply put, the idea of a "Babylonian Mystery Religion" isn't a thing that ever existed, it's based upon the imaginative claims of Alexander Hislop in the 19th century. Hislop didn't base his ideas on anything factual or historic, he made them up by pulling them out of his own head.
Actual Babylonian religion was similar to other forms of religion from Mesopotamia, and shared their pantheon with other Mesopotamian empires and kingdoms, such as Sumeria and Akkad. The patron god of Babylon was Marduk; powerful cities in the ancient near east often had patron deities and Babylon was no different.
When the coalition of Medes and Persians conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire they introduced a system of religious tolerance, though the Persians were Zoroastrians. It was under this system of religious tolerance that Cyrus gave his edict which allowed the Jews to return to Judea and had Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple rebuilt under the satrap Zerubbabel (a satrap was a Persian governor). Under Persian toleration people continued to worship the various gods they had before, even though Zoroastrianism was effectively the state religion, or at least it was the religion of those in power.
Some of the old Mesopotamian and Levantine traditions continued among Pagans; and even would eventually receive a some kind of Hellenization initially after the conquests of Alexander the Great who expanded his empire from Macedon to the doorstep of India.* So a blend of Hellenization, Persian, and Mesopotamian religious traditions were practiced throughout the Middle East, and those ideas which did filter west among the Greeks also became part of the fabric of Roman life when Rome conquered the eastern Mediterranean. This is how the Indo-Iranian god Mitra became the Roman Mithras.
In Jesus' time there were Greco-Roman mystery religions, cults of devotion to various (and often "exotic", at least by Greek and Roman perspectives) gods. Roman opinion of these "mystery religions" varied, but there was a tendency to view them as dangerous--Rome was generally pretty open to anyone worshiping whatever god(s) they wanted, but what Rome really wanted was allegiance to Rome, and the public participation in Roman religious life. The mystery cults by their very nature as being somewhat secretive made Rome suspicious. It was precisely this kind of suspicion that often made Christians targets of Roman persecution, because early Christians were seen as suspicious and dangerous, Christians refused to acknowledge the Roman gods, refused to offer incense to Caesar, didn't participate in ordinary Roman public activities (such as the Roman Games), and were thus seen as traitorous and seditious. The usual charge Rome made against Christians was that they were "atheists" and "haters of mankind", these were the charges that usually were used to justify the imprisonment and execution of Christians.
But as far as some kind of "Babylonian Mystery Religion" there was no such thing. The mystery religions that did exist were Greco-Roman ones, cults of devotion dedicated to specific gods, such as Dionysus, Mithras, and Cybelle.
Which is further why the whole claim that Catholicism has some sort of "Babylonian" anything is pure unfiltered hokum; as I said in the beginning of my post it's based on the false claims of a single guy who had precisely zero evidence to back anything he said up.
He made it up.
-CryptoLutheran
*This is mostly speculation and inference I'm making here. I don't know enough to make a strong case, but I speculate and infer that, given the blending of cultures that happened that there would have been a highly diverse and cosmopolitan religious environment.
