With respect, Mithra predates Christianity by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. He as a deity that was integral to Zorastrianism in Persia. Granted, the Mithra Cult did not start gaining traction in much of the Empire until after the birth of Christ, but that is neither here nor there.
Hey Bill, the Persian Mithra worship was very different from the Roman Mithra cult, which was a copy of Christianity, and again, there’s no evidence of it until several decades after Christ was born. And its very relevant because while there were other pagan festivals at winter solstice, AFAIK, only the Mithraists celebrated the birthday of their god on December 25. And I might add that this Mithraism was started by Roman soldiers, who were the ones most familiar with Jesus Christ.
Wikipedia: “Mithraism began to attract attention in Rome around the end of the first century. Statius mentions the typical Mithraic relief in his Thebaid (Book i. 719,720), around 80 A.D. The earliest material evidence for the Roman worship of Mithras dates from that period… If the Roman religion was an outgrowth of an Iranian one, there would have to be evidence of Mithraic-like practices attested in Greater Iran. However, that is not the case”
The important detail here is that December 25th was actually a rather popular day amongst many pagan cults. Before the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, the actual Date of the Solstice was not as precisely defined as it is now. However, by the 25th of December it had clearly passed and the first evidence of days starting to get longer would have been apparent to astrologers and astronomers of the time (Back then there wasn’t much difference). Therefore, many pagan feasts would be dedicated to the return of the Sun. If I remember correctly, Sol Invictus (The invincible sun) was a popular Roman feast at the time.
I’ve heard that said many times but I have yet to see any evidence that December 25 was a pagan feast day before Christ was born.
Wikipedia: “Sol Invictus (“Unconquered Sun”) was the Roman state-supported sun god created by the emperor Aurelian in 274… It is possible that he created the festival called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, “birthday of the undefeated Sun”, which is recorded in 354 (in the Chronography of 354) as celebrated on the 25th December;[8] but no earlier reference to it exists.”
If we are going to take the Gospels seriously, we have to reject 1 BC as the date of Jesus’s birth. All current evidence suggests that Herod the Great was dead for several years by 1 BC. Jesus’s birth probably occurred at least a couple of years before the death of Herod in 4 BC. Otherwise, Herod probably would not have been healthy enough to worry about Jesus.
What evidence is that? Actually, the 4 BC date for Herod’s death comes from Josephus. And to make matters worse, its based on a scribal error! The correct manuscripts put his death in 1 BC, but even then Josephus contradicts himself saying that Herod began rebuilding the Temple in the 15th year of his reign in one place, and the 18th year in another place. And if this is another 3 year discrepancy that could put Herod’s death in 3 AD (there is no 0 AD), which is about the time he actually died - if we take the tradition of the Catholic Church seriously.
As for December 25th, even in the Middle Ages, some theologians clearly understood that it was not meant to be the historical date of Jesus’s birth. A common theory in the Middle Ages was that Jesus’s birth day was actually the same as the Month and Day of his crucifixion.
No, they understood our Lord’s
Conception to be on the same day as His death - March 25, which is what Julius Africanus said in 221 AD, as I mentioned before. And there is a Jewish tradition that the Prophets die on the same day as their conception.
If you or anybody knows of any evidence that anything I’ve said is wrong, please let me know. I’ve spent a lot of time studying these things, and I want to make sure I have it all correct. God bless.
