I have been trying to do some research on some of the ancient religions that either share a similar era to early Christianity (like gnosticism and Mithras Mystery Cult) or others that people have caused to be linked to early Christianity (like Krishna).
In this series of articles, I am responding to the claim that the story of Jesus is merely a recapitulation from a different ancient myth. All that I am doing in these is giving a report on the traits and narrative of these myths with very little comment. I leave it to the reader to determine if, in fact, these stories are mirrored in the account of Jesus Christ. If you are unfamiliar with the account of Jesus Christ, I recommend any or all of the 4 gospels accounts – Matthew, Mark, Luke and/or John.
A common candidate is the Roman Mithras Cult.
I have found scholarly work incredibly hard to come by… and original documents nonexistent.
Every person who writes on this (and there are thousands online) seem
to quite literally copy and paste one another without any citation at all. As a researcher, I am dubious of this, though I admit there are probably times I make that same mistake.
I am still working on the Krishna page, but I think I have found a serious, factual and incredibly scholarly (if that is an appropriate adjective for scholarly) article about Mithras.
Anyone interested in the Roman Mithras Mystery Cult should go and check out this link: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=main
The author also has a page with comments on the connections of http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=Mithras_and_Jesus if that is of particular interest to anyone.
Hi, Chris. Thanks for talking to me last Sunday for as long as you did. My hope is that our exchanges will lead to truth. I love the church and if I can come across this information (truth or not) that could damage someone’s faith, then others can too. I hope that, by working through this and coming out on the other side of this trial, it will make it easier for others because someone has already addressed their concerns on this subject.
I read through the article from the first link in the post. However, I couldn’t get the second lnk to bring up anything.
The article you linked to has information that conflicts with another one I just finished at http://www.truthbeknown.com/mithra.htm .
Some of the differences in you article versus the one in the link above are listed below respectively.
1) Timing of the Mithraeic cult: Late 1st century A.D. versus mid-3rd century B.C.
2) Connection to Persia and more Eastern nations: Weak Persian connection versus Romans beliving that Mithraism was founded by Zoroaster (Persian).
3) The link I shared states that being born of a rock (Roman Mithraic Cult) was anologous to being born in a cave…similar to possibility that Jesus was also. The rock could also represent incorruptability pointing to a virgin. The article also states the Persian Mithra was born of a virgin named Nahid Ahanita.
Other similarities are listed in the article.
Anyway, I hope this finds you well and thanks for defending the faith. I look forward to any new information you could bring to the table.
yeah, as I understand it in my research, the scholarship has come to the conclusion that there is in fact, no relationship between the Zoroaster version of Mitra and the Roman Cult. There seemed to be a strong agreement on this, even though the research it was based on was fairly recent. I wish I still had citations for that, but I had already written the Zoraster version and it is even less similar to the story of Jesus Christ than the Roman one.
The kind of links like: Jesus was born in a cave (which pretty much everyone now knows He was not, btw) and Mithras was “born of a rock.” Making the leap to connect those two is just that – a leap. If Jesus was a recapitulation, why didn’t the early Christians say that Jesus was “born of a rock?” Regardless, it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in a cave – and the gospel writers would have known that.
as a scholar, maybe one of the most interesting things to me is the source of the information. We have nothing written about Mithras that dates older than about AD 1000! Anything from before that is based entirely on the stone altars and statues found which give almost none of this information that creates even the flimsy links we read about. We know the cult’s history changed over time – so it would be much more likely that the later versions incorporated Christology (a claim made by early Christians, btw), which would have not been offensive to them, rather than believe that early Christians (mostly Jews) would have incorporated into their new understandings a pagan cult (which they hated) which was an extension of the Romans (who they hated). I was super impressed by the first hand experience of the website I cited – something I have found almost none of anywhere else – most of the citations on the website you sourced are at least secondary sources. Where are the primary sources?
That’s a good point you made about the sources. I’ll have to make note of that in my future studies.
Cool stuff! Did you know they have found a Mithraeum at Caesarea Maritima? I poked my head in there last time I was there and it’s nothing special, but certainly interesting to think about its existence there alongside the Christian movement.
i would love to see that!
do you know from which era that Mithraeum was?