Trying to deny the intertwining of paganism and Christianity is a fool’s errand. The evidence is everywhere, including St. Peter’s Basilica.
Take the Scavi Tour at the Vatican. It’s not easy to get a ticket, but you can take a 360 degree virtual tour at the Vatican website.
The tour is of the second level below the main floor of the Basilica. There are many interesting things on this level, including pagan mausoleums complete with receptacles for animal blood sacrifice as well as the grave of St. Peter.
The Church itself accepts the connection, no reason to have hysteria over it. The evidence below St. Peter’s was found in the 1950’s when one of the pillars of the main altar sank and repairs were attempted from below. At first the wonders were covered up. But Pope Pious XII ordered the entire level excavated and it is now open for 12 person tours, always with a guide/lecturer. The tour is most informative and educational.
Yes—St. Peter’s is built over an old burial site which includes not only St. Peter’s tomb but the tombs of others as well. Many of these people were pagan. But it is not as if St. Peter’s location was selected for the purpose of being over pagan tombs and treating St. Peter’s as one among many. Yes, the Church burial place was in the same general area as pagan burial places. However, unless by “intertwined” you mean “existed at the same time and place,” (which is quite a stretch for the word), Christianity and paganism are not shown to be intertwined by your example.
This is not an intertwining of Christian and pagan beliefs.
It show how Christianity took over the GROUND formerly occupied by pagan religion.
The so-called Pagan influences on Christianity are, in most cases, just the opposite: the Church deliberately plopped down her own Holy Days on pagan holy days IN ORDER TO OBLITERATE THE LATTER.
How does one take over, convert, Christianize a culture? By eliminating its deeply embedded practices and beliefs.
How best to do that? Put your own beliefs in their place.
How do post-Christian, secular, Church-haters seek to destroy the cultural embeddedness of Christianity? By plopping down their neo-pagan, post-Christian, anti-Christian practices and holidays and beliefs over the top of Christian practices, holidays and beliefs.
The French revolutionaries did this. The Bolsheviks did it. The Kwanza-cranks tried it. The secular Power-Worshiping chattering-class elitists are doing it right now.
This book is part of the effort to eliminate Christian culture and it does so by turning on its head what actually happened back then.
Christianity pushed pagan culture aside. Not forever. Weakened by the state take-over of the Church in Protestant Europe of the 1500s, we are now being pushed to the side.
Bu they can’t and won’t obliterate us. Force us underground, yes, obliterate us, no.
I’ve taken the Scavi Tour and it is clear that the pagan cemetary was emptied of bodies by the pagans BEFORE IT WAS HANDED OVER TO CHRISTIANS. Christians then seized the tombs, buried their dead, and all of the area was buried. After all that, the first basilica was constructed on top of it. In other words, the place was Christianized BEFORE the basilica was constructed. Did you conveniently forget that part of the tour?