Q - Funny, how that's a site for apologetics. Interesting how a majority of the sites regarding comparisons between Mithras and Christ were apologetics as well, including mine... Iaison - http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn43/bornchristmas.htm I will concede that there are no scriptural documentations B.C.E concerning Mithraic rituals, primarily because it was a Mystery Religion, which meant that rituals and such were kept secret except to members and were most likely transmitted orally. Somehow, I've never heard of the Mithras-Christ connection until now, though you must be older, since you remember it being brought up in previous years.
I said in 3 lines what was said in your entire article.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I thought you didn't read it, that's why I posted the wiki link instead of the same thing from your article.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Actually the Romans shrouded their practice of Mithraism in mystery and the cult was largely underground, still it appears that they borrowed the Christian concepts and incorporated them into their pagan gods, rather than the other way around. The earliest material evidence for Roman Mithraism dates from around 80 AD though the practice is suspected to have originated around 1 AD. And it wasn't until Franz Cumont published his work Texts and Illustrated Monuments Relating to the Mysteries of Mithra in 1894 that the practices of Mithraism were revealed to the world.
SamCDKey: The encorporation of Christian symbolism would be discreditted by the antiquity of the non-Roman cults of Mithra. Moreover, Christianity as a cult was not very popular in the first century. It was not until the 2nd and 3rd when Christianity would have inflitrated the military society enough to warrant a military cult having developed.
Mithra appears in the Vedas and in the Avesta. These books predate Roman civilization by 1,500 years at least, if not more ancient.
I never claimed that the myths of Mithra did not develop throughout their time. Indeed, practically every Indo-European deity sees such a development, specifically when one considers that the Hindu, Persian, Greco-Roman, Celtic, and Germanic pantheons are descended from one religion. However, the fact that there is a connection with the Mithra of the Persians is undoubted. That is to say, whereas we might have seen a significant revolution of the concepts considered part of Mithra worship, we nonetheless have a connection, albeit somewhat disconnected, with the Persian myth. Moreover, I'd strongly suggest referencing Q's link, considering the referencing of "care bears" and "pokemon" in it. If nothing else, it is a very unconvincing article due to such things as the above.
Present day scholars of Mithraism do not believe there is a connection Huh? Where did you get those references?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra - Presents a good representation of the Mithra cult in Indo-Iranian conceptions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism#Similarities_to_Christianity - The words of Justin Martyr and Tertullian are telling.
Ayodhya: The religion no longer exists, but it is called Proto-Indo-European Religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion SamCDKey: Might you cite some sources aside from this Christian website that Q pointed to? I'd be intrigued to read any you have off hand. http://tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html "The first remaining record of a god named Mithra appears as a deity invoked in a treaty dated 1400 BC [Hinn.MS, ix]; thereafter he is one of several Indo-Iranian gods, and he is known for giving orders, assembling people, and marshalling them -- perhaps with some militaristic overtones. He also appears as one who represents the concept of fidelity -- one of many such abstractions and personifications of virtues in the ancient East, such as Bhaga the god of sharing and Aryaman the god of hospitality (think of them as divine-level Care Bears, if you will" "Think of how popular Pokemon is these days, and then think of the church as the one doing the Digimon ripoff -- although one can't really bellow about borrowing in this case, for this happened in an age when art usually was imitative -- it was a sort of one-upsmanship designed as a competition, and the church was not the only one doing it. Furthermore, it didn't involve an exchange or theft of ideology."
Justin Martyr and Tertullian are not Cumont, SamCDKey. These are Church Fathers which admit of striking similarities between pagan and Christian conceptions, which are exactly the things being charged by supporters of pagan sycreticism in the Early Church.
