But this whole thing is a pretty big stretch, you can’t tell if it’s a tree or a mushroom then maybe it’s just the artist wasn’t the greatest and trying to shoehorn psychedelics into it isn’t at all a worthwhile way to spend your time.

That's highly debatable. See The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity[1] for a good, detailed counterexample. The reformation and counter-reformation have been likened to a re-Judaization of Christianity with good reason. Based on my reading, though, the pagan roots of Christianity run much deeper; for example, the concept of three gods, separate yet one, is completely alien to Judaism, but integral to Indo-European religion. It's not found in the Bible, but was made use of to explain the relationship between the three divinities found in the New Testament.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Germanization-Early-Medieval-Christia...

edit: I misunderstood you. The statement I thought I was responding to was that christianity absorbed pagan practices but not beliefs.

The Genesis story is much older than that and rooted in Babylonian creation myths.

We don't know that much about the early Christians. But we do know that there was a lot of competing branches of Christianity and cross-pollination between Jewish traditions, Hellenistic traditions, and pagan traditions. The branch that Constantine favored was the one that won out and suppressed all other branches. It's not beyond the pale to speculate about early Christians mixing "standard" Christianity and rites from fertility cults and using psychedelics. Although there is zero evidence.

Alternatively, some scholars have argued that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is just another name for the tree of life.

There is no evidence of roman paganism being the origin of either holiday. Easter and Christmas were celebrated before the romanization of Christianity. The only thing that was added were pagan symbology to the existing feast days, which is typical, as the church is happy to incorporate pagan traditions. The issue here is that in America we see a myopic view of Christianity from Europe. We note that during Easter, many European pagan symbols are incorporated, and mistakenly apply that to all Easter celebrations.

In reality, Christianity is not a european religion. In other centers of christianity, like Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India, European pagan symbology for easter was not adopted until recently. For most of history, there would either have been local rituals incorporated, or none at all.

This does not contradict the fundamental idea of Easter or Christmas though, because the Church explicitly desires that local rituals be incorporated. Catholic missionaries are happy to include anything non-contradictory with the Christian religion into Catholic practice. For example, it is the official policy of the church, after much deliberation, and much back and forth, that Chinese Catholics who desire to do their ancestor veneration rites are allowed to do so, with certain changes made to ensure that the rites fit the Catholic understanding of prayers to ancestors. But for the most part, Catholic Chinese are allowed to partake in these confucian rituals, and can even do so in the context of Catholicism. There is no contradiction.

To support my claims, here is an article on a traditional Syro-Malabar (Indian) Catholic celebration of easter. The Syro-Malabar Church has existed for 2000 years since the times of Thomas. If easter was a European pagan incorporation, we'd expect to see lots of European pagan symbology, like Easter bunnies, eggs, etc. Except we don't. The traditional syro-malabarese feast is a celebration of passover, but with Indian food instead of the middle eastern stuff.

https://homegrown.co.in/article/802431/a-traditional-easter-...

That is not to say that European traditions haven't been incorporated (american cultural hegemony is an unstoppable force), but the rituals that are traditional are nothing close to them.

I can speak to this myself, as an Indian Catholic. I didn't know what the Easter bunny did (apparently he brings candy to little American boys and girls? -- I was clearly short-changed and am still somewhat bitter haha) until middle school. Although my family mentioned the Easter bunny in passing, it was not part of our celebrations at all. Although we dyed eggs with other people in our church because that's what they did, we didn't really do it at home. It was just a social thing.

But the fresco the article is about is from the 13th Century. Christians at that time or even earlier might have re-interpreted the Genesis story in light of psychedelic experiences.

However, on the subject of psychedelic use in early Judaism, there is an interesting article titled "Strange Fires Weird Smokes and Psychoactive Combustibles Entheogens and Incense in Ancient Traditions"[1]:

"The incense cults of Israel have been the subject of a wide variety of theological and academic treatments. Researchers have speculated on the use of entheogens of a variety of species in the Bible (Shanon 2008; Merkur 2000; Allegro 1 970) as well as linking a shared entheogenic heritage with Persia in such crucial texts as the Book of Ezra, which sheds much light on foreign influences on Jewish cultic practices (Dobroruka 2006). A number of scholars have discussed the psychoactive incense used in the temple with various theories as to ingredients (Ruck, Staples & Heinrich 200 I ) and cannabis has been suggested as the kaneh bosom (appearing throughout the Old Testament with the first mention in Exodus) that eludes -- along with the other ingredients of the holy incense -- positive or at least complete identification (Benet 1976). ...

...

The exact recipe of the Old Testament incenses (Levitical and foreign), if there ever was an official recipe that persisted with exact continuity, will likely never be known. Some of the ingredients may be deduced from other examples in the ancient world of incense cults and their psychoactive aromatics. A starting point would logically be Egypt, from which the Israelites made their Exodus, and their various temple incenses and magico-medical fumigants, which included benzoin, cannabis, Hyoscyamus, bitumen and arsenic sulphide (Shehata 2006). Psychopharmacologists link Egyptian plants found in the various Greek writings and Egyptian medical papyri with the soma/haoma of the ancient world and Peganum harmala, which is still used as a magical incense to this day. Linked with the nybt of the Papyrus Ebers (Flattery & Schwartz 1 989) Peg anum is also mentioned by Dioscorides as being used by ancient Syrians as besasa, or "Plant of Bes" and that it was burned in Egypt before the statue of Bes. The ancient kyphi has been speculated by some scholars to have contained cannabis as well as other psychoactive plants such as Acarus calamus and from sixteen to fifty other ingredients, many of which are unidentified."

[1] - https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Just thought this contradiction was amusing.

This is silly. Its shared by a number of religions since abrahamic religions generally have a common root.