History Main / HijackedByJesus

->'''Edward''': "Hear how they talk to us? (laughs) The Gods. Listen pal, back in the day we were worshipped by millions."
->'''Dean''': "Times have changed."
->'''Edward''': "Tell me about it. All of a sudden this Jesus character is the hot new thing in town. All of the sudden our altars are burned down and we are being hunted down like common monsters."

* The god Endovelicus from the UsefulNotes/LusitanianMythology, originally a quite well-loved god of health and [[LightEmUp light]] and eventually incorporated into the [[ClassicalMythology Roman Pantheon]], became identified as Lucifer once Christianity settled in. This is quite weird, considering most people back then had the LightIsGood trope taken very seriously, and yet the [[LightIsNotGood opposite]] was what was implied, as both Lucifer and Endovelicus were firmly light aligned (Lucifer means "light wielder"). Note that the god Neto from the same pantheon followed LightIsNotGood more closely, though.

* Origins of various words meaning Christian God in different languages predate Christianity. Theos, Deus, Devas, God, Allah, etc.

* Origins of various words meaning Christian God in different languages predate Christianity. Theos, Deus, God, Allah, etc.

->'''Edward''': "Tell me about it. All of a sudden this Jesus character is the hot new thing in town. All of the sudden our altars are been burned down and we are being hunted down like common monsters."

* In ''Film/GungaDin,'' the villains are worshipers of Kali, who is described as "The goddess of blood," who smiles at warfare, torture, and human sacrifice. Her cult is a ReligionOfEvil that murders indiscriminately, as many as thirty thousand people per year! To rub in the salt, the movie is prefaced with a line saying that the depiction of her and her worship is "based on historical fact." While Kali ''does'' have a terrifying aspect (a necklace of skulls and hands full of weapons, granted, is pretty alarming), she is just another aspect of a greater feminine deity, and her realm is time and natural change as much as righteous destruction.

** Christian missionaries in Southeast Asia also Christianized Islamic terms. Many Southeast Asian Catholics in Malaysia and Indonesia refer to God as Allah, despite the term being foreign to this region (so do Christian Arabs, but, to them, the word Allah is their own native language that has been used for centuries even before the rise of Islam, not an imported term). This was due to efforts by the 16th century Jesuit missionaries who deliberately used the term Allah to refer to the Christian concept of God. This became controversial in Malaysia at various times when the government sought to forbid use of the term Allah by non-Muslims.

** Christian missionaries in Southeast Asia also Christianized Islamic terms. Many Southeast Asian Catholics in Malaysia and Indonesia refer to God as Allah, despite the term being foreign to this region (so do Christian Arabs, but, to them, the word Allah is their own native language, not an imported term). This was due to efforts by the 16th century Jesuits who deliberately used the term Allah. This became controversial in Malaysia at various times when the government sought to forbid use of the term Allah by non-Muslims.

* The god Endovelicus from the LusitanianMythology, originally a quite well-loved god of health and [[LightEmUp light]] and eventually incorporated into the [[ClassicalMythology Roman Pantheon]], became identified as Lucifer once Christianity settled in. This is quite weird, considering most people back then had the LightIsGood trope taken very seriously, and yet the [[LightIsNotGood opposite]] was what was implied, as both Lucifer and Endovelicus were firmly light aligned (Lucifer means "light wielder"). Note that the god Neto from the same pantheon followed LightIsNotGood more closely, though.

It should be noted that [[RealLife this has happened]] a number of times historically. As proselytizing sects spread into new regions, they often incorporate existing beliefs into their canon, in order to make the new religion more palatable to others. For example, the medieval story of the hermit Josaphat (not to be mistaken with the King Jehoshaphat of Judea, or the 17th-century martyr St. Josaphat) was a Christianized version of the life of Gautama Buddha. Often, polytheistic cultures "converted" to Christianity simply transferred the worship of individual gods to the ''saints'' that most resembled them.

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom'' is based on films from the 1930s, which commonly reduced various foreign cultures into caricature. In the film, the complex and sophisticated religion of Hinduism is reduced to nice people worshiping Shiva and murderous Thuggees worshiping Kali. The Thuggees behave like stereotypical Satanic cultists. The real Thugs, those who practiced Thuggee, did worship Kali, but no more so than the Ku Klux Klan worshipped Jesus. While they did tend to ritually murder people, it was by strangulation via a yellow scarf, not ripping hearts out of someone's chest. It wasn't just the British who worked on eradicating them. And, incidentally, Kali herself is ''Shiva's wife''. Not the estranged kind, either.[[note]]Technically, Parvati is Shiva's wife, and Kali is the darker aspect of her, who awakens to strike down Evil when needed. In Indy's defense, though, he does briefly note that the Thuggees are a heretical sect. To clarify it, Kali is a good goddess, but there is a demon ACTUALLY worshiped by Satanists called Kali. Note that there is ''no relation between the two entities''. The confusion exists because, English not having the level of vowel representation Indian languages do, the names of both the demon and the Goddess are written with the same spelling. For those interested, the approximate pronunciations are as follows: the Goddess's name is "Kah-lee", whereas the demon is "Kully". The proper transcriptions are Kālī and Kali.[[/note]]
* Most mummy movies, including those of ''Film/TheMummyTrilogy'', portray gods such as Anubis and Seth as {{Expy}}s of Satan. In reality, Anubis was a protector and judge of the dead and all round cool guy when compared to some of his sibling gods, while Seth was originally god of the deserts of lower Egypt, the legends of his scheming and murder of Osiris a later myth. In fact, the statues found next to Tutankhamun, called Shabts, would be more appropriate. Of course, while it's true that Anubis was considered a kindly protector whose main concern was making sure souls made it safely to the afterlife, he's ''also'' the guy who checked if your soul was worthy of the next life and tossed it to Ammut as a snack on if it wasn't... In this way, he is more like the Christian God than Satan, as on Judgement Day, he is supposed to throw all sinners into the Lake of Fire.

* In ''Film/GungaDin,'' the villains are worshippers of Kali, who is described as "The goddess of blood," who smiles at warfare, torture, and human sacrifice. Her cult is a ReligionOfEvil that murders indiscriminately, as many as thirty thousand people per year! To rub in the salt, the movie is prefaced with a line saying that the depiction of her and her worship is "based on historical fact." When in fact, Kali has a terrifying aspect (a necklace of skulls and hands full of weapons, I'll grant you, pretty alarming), but she is just another aspect of a greater feminine deity, and her realm is time and natural change as much as righteous destruction.

* Inverted in ''Jericho Moon'', in which the Hebrews' Yahweh is suggested to be the Canaanite pagan god El on a monomaniacal ego trip. Yahweh's angels, when their forms are revealed, [[spoiler:turn out to be indistinguishable from the amorphous demons of Egyptian paganism seen in the previous novel]].
* Subverted in ''The Lightning Thief'', the first novel of ''PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians''. When Zeus' master lightning bolt is stolen, the first suspect is Hades. Hades is believed to have stolen the master bolt in order to start a rebellion. As it turns out, the thief was actually [[spoiler:the lead character's camp counselor, Luke]].

* Part of the final plan in Literature/PastwatchTheRedemptionOfChristopherColumbus involves influencing the pre-existing Mesoamerican religion in order to 1) eliminate the practice of human sacrifice, and 2) prevent religious conflict when they come in contact with Renaissance Christianity. The basic gist of how they pull it off is to introduce a new prophet that tells the natives to look for a people across the sea who have discovered a divine figure whose blood-sacrifice permanently sates the requirement for human sacrifice.
* When dealing in Ancient Greece in The Knight's Tale, [[TheCanterburyTales Chaucer]] is mostly accommodating of the fact that they were pre-Christian, but does have some small slips like having them observe Sundays.

*** Possibly justified, in that the Goa'uld were arrogant enough to have ''added'' those traits to their claims on godhood after adopting the names and personas of pagan figures.
** In one episode, SG-1 come upon a small population of people who had developed from ancient norsemen (Vikings, if you will) into what was basically a 17th century society. Instead of retaining their original pantheon, they had developed a cult centering solely on Freyr who, [[spoiler:in reality, was of course the SufficientlyAdvancedAlien responsible for bringing them there in the first place]]. Notable features of this cult included gathering in a suspiciously church-like building at regular intervals, branding Freyr their "saviour", and the complete and total resignation to the will of their deity. All in all, it reads more like an attempt by the writers to use an "uncooperative, xenophobic, holier-than-thou, super-religious rural Christian" stereotype without running the risk of offending any Christians.
*** Interestingly, the people of the previous Norse planet worshipped only Thor.

** The show has also inverted this on occasion; the episode on Zeus draws parallels between Zeus being seen as the highest, most powerful god and the rise of monotheism, basically saying that Zeus was the source of most people's idea of the Abrahamic God

** The Roman winter solistice festival (birthday of Mithras) and the Celtic/Norse Yule are taken over/merged by Christmas.

* In some sense, a large chunk of Islam is this to Christianity. Indeed, Jesus is himself a great prophet of Islam and the Gospels (called Injil in Islam) are considered an Islamic Holy Book (which is, incidentally, why it would not make sense for a good Muslim to burn a Bible in response were a fanatical Christian to burn the Koran--because the Bible is also holy in Islam). The Islamic interpretation is that Christianity is based on misinterpretation of Jesus' teachings, who was really preaching about (to oversimplify) another, greater prophet to come (in the person of Mohammed).
** Among others, Islamic eschatology holds that, in end times, it will specifically be Jesus Christ who will be returning to judge the living and the dead!
** Christian missionaries in Southeast Asia also Christianized Islamic terms. Many Southeast Asian Catholics in Malaysia and Indonesia refer to God as Allah, despite the term being foreign to this region (So do Christian Arabs, but, to them, the word Allah is their own native language, not an imported term). This was due to efforts by the 16th century Jesuits who deliberately used the term Allah. This became controversial in Malaysia at various times when the government sought to forbid use of the term Allah by non-Muslims.

* The myth that St Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland is dodgy as history, as Ireland has never had native snakes. However, an old Celtic God, of death and afterlife, was Cromm-Cruach, usually described as serpentine. The legend is probably a dramatisation of Christianity's victory over the old religion, symbolised by the serpent-god who is defeated and banished by the Bleesed Patrick.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism Syncretism]], in general, is a fairly common phenomenon, specially when a new religion tries to expand in a new area and portrays itself as not really rupturist with but some "improved" or "accurate" version of whatever religions existed there previously. The Ancient Greeks and Romans immediately drew parallelisms between their gods and those of the peoples they conquered, and it's been pointed out that part of the iconography of the Virgin Mary in the Mediterranean area is drawn from classical fertility godesses, mostly Isis. In Mexico, the Spanish missionaries drew deliberate paralellisms between Jesus and Quetzalcoatl, the "good god" of the Mesoamerican pantheon who abhorred human sacrifice (while obviously preaching against those who were all for it).

* The movie ''Film/{{Constantine}}'' converts John Constantine of ''ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}}'' from a shifty, almost amoral magic user into a freelance exorcist, removing all non-Christian (and for the most part non-Catholic) mythical elements. In the comics' canon, John does have a certain "relationship" with Heaven and Hell, namely that they both get up his arse. The fact that Hell in particular wants his soul in a bad way comes up on a constant basis. Of course, all kinds of other entities exist in comic canon as well. In fact, in the ''ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}}'' canon, God is distant and (probably) uncaring and Hell is ruled by three deific beings. Rather than sacrificing himself and being cured by Satan, Constantine [[MagnificentBastard cures his own lung cancer]] [[CrazyAwesome ON PURPOSE]] by selling his soul to all three of the kings of hell, for rewards, one after the other, and then killing himself. They can't take him without starting a war and they can't give him to Heaven because of the suicide clause, so they heal him up and start planning revenge.

* ''Videogame/FinalFantasyTactics'' seems to do this with the suspiciously-[[AnimeCatholicism Catholic-like]] church in Glabados concerned with the worship of Saint Ajora. As the plot progresses, however, [[spoiler:the idea becomes the target of {{Deconstruction}}, starting with Queklain as a SinisterMinister, and is ultimately [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] at the end of the game, when the [[VillainWithGoodPublicity nature of St. Ajora]] herself is revealed. Then it becomes either a PathOfInspiration or a CorruptChurch, depending on the individual closeness to the SecretCircleOfSecrets of any given member of the church.]] It should be noted that this is not a Western work, but also that the Glabados church -is- the only game in town, so their brand of monotheism appears to be the norm.

* It has been claimed that the story of the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny are likely Christianized versions of older myths. For example, the Fisher King is '''Bran the Blessed!'''

* LloydAlexander's ''Chronicles of Prydain'' novels, set in a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture fantastic version]] of Wales, used Arawn, the Celtic god of the underworld, as an evil force similar to Tolkien's Sauron. The existence of an ultimate force of ''good'', on the other hand, isn't really mentioned.

* Creator/WilliamShakespeare's ''Winter's Tale'' nominally takes place in pagan countries, where they consult oracles. The veil is thin enough that at one point they have a discussion of the doctrine of original sin.

* The new ''Film/ClashOfTheTitans'': Hades is the bad guy in the remake. However, at least the writers tried to provide some form of justification in that in this version of events, he was tricked into taking control of the underworld by Zeus. The blow is further softened by virtue of the fact that the rest of the gods are generally portrayed as all around dicks, particularly since the story of Medusa's origin is told as the "Poseidon raped her and Athena punished her for it" variant. On the other hand, it then turns Zeus into Jesus by [[spoiler:having him bring Io back from the dead, despite the fact that ''only Hades can raise the dead''.]] To make matters worse, it essentially makes Zeus an {{Expy}} of the Abrahamic God by having him be the creator of mankind, when in reality -- or mythology, really -- it was a Titan called Prometheus who created man from clay. This is where the subtitle of Mary Shelley's {{Frankenstein}} comes from.

->''"Your kind is always looking for villains. So much better to have something, someone to fight than face the reality of it."''
-->-- '''Fredrick 'Freddy' Beaumont'''/[[spoiler:Loki]], ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld''

* Many Christian converts were originally named after pagan gods, especially in the early church and in newly-Christianized lands--[[TheBible Acts of the Apostles]] records Christian converts named Apollos and Dionysius (known to Westerners as "Saint Denis"), and there are also saints named for the Greek goddess Demeter (St. Demetrius) and the Celtic Brighid (St. Brigid). Naturally, this was useful for converting those regions, as people could go by easy stages from "worshiping Apollo" to "venerating St. Apollos".

* St Denis, a patron saint of France, was originally Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, brought to Gaul by the Romans. How apt, some might say.
** Actually, he gets confused with a Greek martyr...who was named Dionysus.

* Interestingly (and related to the syncretism point above), Christianity itself was, to some extend, hijacked by pagan mythologies (a mutual hijacking?). Many current ideas of Christianity come from paganism, such as the image of Satan which is basically an evil satyr. The idea of Satan being the ruler of Hell was influenced by pagan gods of death such as Hades. There are pagan elements in Easter and Christmas celebrations. There is the worship of saints as already mentioned. And probably more.

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom'' is based on films from the 1930s, which commonly reduced various foreign cultures into caricature. In the film, the complex and sophisticated religion of Hinduism is reduced to nice people worshiping Shiva and murderous Thuggees worshiping Kali. The Thuggees behave like stereotypical Satanic cultists. The real Thugs, those who practiced Thuggee, did worship Kali, but no more so than the Ku Klux Klan worshipped Jesus. While they did tend to ritually murder people, it was by strangulation via a yellow scarf, not ripping hearts out of someone's chest. It wasn't just the British who worked on eradicating them. And, incidentally, Kali herself is ''Shiva's wife''. Not the estranged kind, either.[[note]]Technically, Parvati is Shiva's wife, and Kali is the darker aspect of her, who awakens to strike down Evil when needed. In Indy's defense, though, he does briefly note that the Thuggees are a heretical sect. To clarify it, Kali is a good goddess, but there is a demon ACTUALLY worshiped by Satanists called Kali. Note that there is ''no relation between the two entities''. The confusion exists because, English not having the level of vowel representation Indian languages do, the names of both the demon and the Goddess are written with the same spelling. [[note]]For those interested, the approximate pronunciations are as follows: the Goddess's name is "Kah-lee", whereas the demon is "Kully". The proper transcriptions are Kālī and Kali.[[/note]]

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom'' is based on films from the 1930s, which commonly reduced various foreign cultures into caricature. In the film, the complex and sophisticated religion of Hinduism is reduced to nice people worshiping Shiva and murderous Thuggees worshiping Kali. The Thuggees behave like stereotypical Satanic cultists. The real Thugs, those who practiced Thuggee, did worship Kali, but no more so than the Ku Klux Klan worshipped Jesus. While they did tend to ritually murder people, it was by strangulation via a yellow scarf, not ripping hearts out of someone's chest. It wasn't just the British who worked on eradicating them. And, incidentally, Kali herself is ''Shiva's wife''. Not the estranged kind, either.[[note]]Technically, Parvati is Shiva's wife, and Kali is the darker aspect of her, who awakens to strike down Evil when needed.[[/note]] In Indy's defense, though, he does briefly note that the Thuggees are a heretical sect.
** To clarify it, Kali is a good goddess, but there is a demon ACTUALLY worshiped by Satanists called Kali. Note that there is ''no relation between the two entities''. The confusion exists because, English not having the level of vowel representation Indian languages do, the names of both the demon and the Goddess are written with the same spelling. [[note]]For those interested, the approximate pronunciations are as follows: the Goddess's name is "Kah-lee", whereas the demon is "Kully". The proper transcriptions are Kālī and Kali.[[/note]]

* [[Disney/{{Hercules}} Disney's adaptation]] of ''[[GreekMythology Hercules]]'', featuring Hades as {{Satan}}, Zeus as {{God}} (and a BumblingDad), Hercules as Jesus, and the other Olympians as angels. [[{{Bowdlerise}} To protect family values]], Zeus's "special relationship" with mortal women was ignored, making Hercules a son of ''Hera'', and poisoned (by Hades, of course) with mortality. This moves Hera out of her original ClingyJealousGirl and BigBad roles in the original myths. Interestingly enough, the movie does nothing to rectify Hera's status as Zeus's [[BrotherSisterIncest sister]], however, outside of just not mentioning it. Hades was one of the few Greek Gods who ''didn't'' routinely screw with mortals or curse them, and could even be convinced to help them (Orpheus). Granted, kidnapping Persephone wasn't very nice, but that's probably the worst thing he ever did. And he ''was'' genuinely in love with her, at least. And it was a deal with Zeus as a way of compensating for him getting the short end of the deal (being in charge of the Underworld instead of Sky or Sea). The guy was just misunderstood!

* Disney did it again in ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}''. Despite taking place in a Middle Eastern setting that should have been Islamic all the way (in fact, the sultan mentions Allah in the first movie, albeit as part of a throwaway line about stubborn daughters), in ''Aladdin and the King of Thieves'', the wedding of Aladdin and Jasmine is [[ChristianityIsCatholic suspiciously Catholic-looking]].