What Do You Think About Mithra?

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Iloveu2

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I am a believer in Jesus the Christ and I always will be.
I am curious as to what people believe about Mithra?
There is lots about Mithras and other gods on the net as you know.

Quotes from the net:

Tischendorf’s conclusion also supports Professor Bordeaux’s Vatican findings that reveal the allegory of Jesus Christ derived from the fable of Mithra, the divine son of God (Ahura Mazda) and messiah of the first kings of the Persian Empire around 400 BC. His birth in a grotto was attended by magi who followed a star from the East. They brought “gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (as in Matt. 2:11) and the newborn baby was adored by shepherds. He came into the world wearing the Mithraic cap, which popes imitated in various designs until well into the 15th century.
Mithra, one of a trinity, stood on a rock, the emblem of the foundation of his religion, and was anointed with honey. After a last supper with Helios and 11 other companions, Mithra was crucified on a cross, bound in linen, placed in a rock tomb and rose on the third day or around 25 March (the full moon at the spring equinox, a time now called Easter after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar). The fiery destruction of the universe was a major doctrine of Mithraism-a time in which Mithra promised to return in person to Earth and save deserving souls. Devotees of Mithra partook in a sacred communion banquet of bread and wine, a ceremony that paralleled the Christian Eucharist and preceded it by more than four centuries.
Christianity is an adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees, some Egyptian elements (the pre-Christian Book of Revelation was originally called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis), Greek philosophy and various aspects of Hinduism.
nexusmagazine.com/articles/NewTestament.html

There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a “fable” (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters…, op. cit.).
 
Except that:
  1. There were no years of silence.
  2. The Mithraic tradition exised in two very fundamentally different phases, one Persian and one Roman.
  3. The Persian version:D developed during the captivity of the Jews by the Persians, and the Jews had already prophesied the events of the life of Christ many generations before the captivity.
  4. The Roman version, which bore a scant superficial resemblance and a deep phoilosophical/cosmological difference from the original, developed long after the early church did and well into the age of Roman persecution of Christians.
  5. Christians would have no reason at all to jeapordize their souls and everything they had by joining a Roman military cult
  6. The Mithraic cult, purely military in Roman times, was secret and left few records, and was the last thing the Christians, who considered Roman soldiers their worst enemy, would have been interested in.
  7. The Roman army, on the other hand, would have studied the beliefs of the Christians well in order to know how to ferret them out and attack them.
    A lot of little problems like that.
    :rolleyes:
 
The cult of Mithra was one that many of the soldiers of the Roman legions followed. I don’t doubt that you found the info on the net but I don’t know that it is accurate.
 
Thanks for your replies.
I’m not here to argue.
There are 1,100,000 entries on google about Mithra.
Of course google probably has recorded every article
with the name of Mithra in it.
I didn’t read the articles. I’ve no time at the present.
I presume there are pros and cons, many differing opinions.
 
Iloveu2 said:
There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a “fable” (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters…, op. cit.).
Click to expand...
This is from an anti-Catholic play, not reality–yet Protestants and atheists alike cite it as if it were historical fact…
 
Iloveu2 said:
I am a believer in Jesus the Christ and I always will be.
I am curious as to what people believe about Mithra?
There is lots about Mithras and other gods on the net as you know.

Quotes from the net:

Tischendorf’s conclusion also supports Professor Bordeaux’s Vatican findings that reveal the allegory of Jesus Christ derived from the fable of Mithra, the divine son of God (Ahura Mazda) and messiah of the first kings of the Persian Empire around 400 BC. His birth in a grotto was attended by magi who followed a star from the East. They brought “gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (as in Matt. 2:11) and the newborn baby was adored by shepherds. He came into the world wearing the Mithraic cap, which popes imitated in various designs until well into the 15th century.
Mithra, one of a trinity, stood on a rock, the emblem of the foundation of his religion, and was anointed with honey. After a last supper with Helios and 11 other companions, Mithra was crucified on a cross, bound in linen, placed in a rock tomb and rose on the third day or around 25 March (the full moon at the spring equinox, a time now called Easter after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar). The fiery destruction of the universe was a major doctrine of Mithraism-a time in which Mithra promised to return in person to Earth and save deserving souls. Devotees of Mithra partook in a sacred communion banquet of bread and wine, a ceremony that paralleled the Christian Eucharist and preceded it by more than four centuries.
Christianity is an adaptation of Mithraism welded with the Druidic principles of the Culdees, some Egyptian elements (the pre-Christian Book of Revelation was originally called The Mysteries of Osiris and Isis), Greek philosophy and various aspects of Hinduism.
nexusmagazine.com/articles/NewTestament.html

There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a “fable” (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters…, op. cit.).
Click to expand...
This is an example of pre-dating legends without valid historical documentation to back them up. Take a close look at the person who authored these statements, and the exclusively modern references he cites.

Obviously a cult of Mithras did exist. We know little or nothing about it. The details you relate come from documents that date to a time significantly AFTER Christianity, if they can be verified at all. They were composed in an attempt to discredit Christ.

The nice thing about Christianity is that our written historical records can be dated and accurately verified to within a few decades of Christ’s resurrection. The same can not be said about most other records, particularly the ones cited here.
 
There are many Myths surrounding Mithra there are a few mentioned in your post that do not hold much water…for example there is no evidence of Mithra being born in a grotto or being a newborn worshipped by magi . According to scholars of Mithra; he was born out of solid rock, and also born a grown-up! Anyhow there is lots of false info regarding similiarites of Mithra and Christ. Checkout JP Holdings site you may find it interesting.
tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html
Holdings information is quite reliable and he backs up his findings with scholarly documentation .
 
anthony022071 said:
Just so you know – Holding is a liberal,relativist,sola scriptura Christian.
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And he needs na editor and a little patience IMHO, too, but his sources are often good to look into. He is a good resource for direction to useful materials fro those who know how to read it and judge it for themselves.
 
anthony022071 said:
Just so you know – Holding is a liberal,relativist,sola scriptura Christian.
Click to expand...
I wasn’t sure if this was directed to me or a general FYI.
Yes, I know he is not a Catholic but his work and research on Jesus Myths and copycat theories is quite good:thumbsup: .
 
The Emporer Aurelian institutionalized the cult of Mirtha in Rome around 270,and made December 25 the birthday of Mithra.
 
Most of the online information about Mithra is written by scholars,pagans and atheists who assume that Christianity is derived from the Mithra cult,so it is difficult to find trustworthy information about when the similarities to Christianity originated,or to determine the nature of the similarities.
Did the stories surrounding Mithra – ,the virgin birth,the shepherds,the last supper,the ascention into heaven – and other similarities originate in pre-Christian Persia,or in A.D. Rome?
It’s hard to tell because the writers of the articles conflate the Persian cult with the Roman cult.

In any case,no-one should let their faith in Christianity be undermined by this. Christianity is totally different in essence,because it is about love and is grounded in realism and history,whereas the cult of Mithra is entirely mythical and is like gnosticism or Freemasonry. Once you look past the external similarities with Christianity,the rest of the Mithraic beliefs are absurd.

newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm
 
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’ll check out the links.
I’ve been reading lots about the older religions as a matter of interest. I am interested in the beliefs,gods, or religion of the pagans so to speak at the time of Jesus. These are some of the people Jesus is addressing when gentiles are referred to in the New T.
What did they believe? Who were their gods before many of them accepted Jesus? I believe Mithra was one of the religions they believed in.
Here’s a source of where info. on Mithra has come from. I quote:

However, although our literary sources for Mithraism are extremely sparse, an abundance of material evidence for the cult exists in the many Mithraic temples and artifacts that archaeologists have found scattered throughout the Roman empire, from England in the north and west to Palestine in the south and east. The temples, called mithraea by scholars, were usually built underground in imitation of caves. These subterranean temples were filled with an extremely elaborate iconography: carved reliefs, statues, and paintings, depicting a variety of enigmatic figures and scenes. This iconography is our primary source of knowledge about Mithraic beliefs, but because we do not have any written accounts of its meaning the ideas that it expresses have proven extraordinarily difficult to decipher.
There were many hundreds-- perhaps thousands-- of Mithraic temples in the Roman empire. The greatest concentrations have been found in the city of Rome itself, and in those places in the empire (often in the most distant frontiers) where Roman soldiers-- who made up a major segment of the cult’s membership-- were stationed.

Our earliest evidence for the Mithraic mysteries places their appearance in the middle of the first century B.C.: the historian Plutarch says that in 67 B.C. a large band of pirates based in Cilicia (a province on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor) were practicing “secret rites” of Mithras. The earliest physical remains of the cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism reached its height of popularity in the third century. In addition to soldiers, the cult’s membership included significant numbers of bureaucrats and merchants. Women were excluded. Mithraism declined with the rise to power of Christianity, until the beginning of the fifth century, when Christianity became strong enough to exterminate by force rival religions such as Mithraism.

Here in the end we may sense a profound kinship between Mithraism and Christianity. For early Christianity also contained at its core an ideology of cosmic transcendence. Nowhere is this better expressed than in the opening of the earliest gospel, Mark. There, at the beginning of the foundation story of Christianity, we find Jesus, at the moment of his baptism, having a vision of “the heavens torn open.” Just as Mithras is revealed as a being from beyond the universe capable of altering the cosmic spheres, so here we find Jesus linked with a rupture of the heavens, an opening into the numinous realms beyond the furthest cosmic boundaries. Perhaps, then, the figures of Jesus and Mithras are to some extent both manifestations of a single deep longing in the human spirit for a sense of contact with the ultimate mystery.

well.com/~davidu/mithras.html
 
Iloveu2 said:
well.com/~davidu/mithras.html

< Here in the end we may sense a profound kinship between Mithraism and Christianity. For early Christianity also contained at its core an ideology of cosmic transcendence. >

Christianity is not an ideology of cosmic transcendence. Christ is the one who was to come in the Jewish prophecy. Christ taught the commandments of God which he himself had spoken through the prophets. He taught obedience to the will of God – the God of Abraham,Issac and Jacob. He did not teach cosmological mysticism or a philosophy of self-sufficiency.

< Nowhere is this better expressed than in the opening of the earliest gospel, Mark. There, at the beginning of the foundation story of Christianity, we find Jesus, at the moment of his baptism, having a vision of “the heavens torn open.” >

The Gospel of Mark doesn’t say that Jesus had a vision,but that the heavens* were* torn open.

< Just as Mithras is revealed as a being from beyond the universe capable of altering the cosmic spheres, so here we find Jesus linked with a rupture of the heavens, an opening into the numinous realms beyond the furthest cosmic boundaries. >

Jesus was sent from the God of the Jews,who had been known for thousands of years by the Jews to be the creator of heaven and earth.

< Perhaps, then, the figures of Jesus and Mithras are to some extent both manifestations of a single deep longing in the human spirit for a sense of contact with the ultimate mystery. >

The figure of Mithras is a manifestation of the longing of humans for a sense of contact with the ultimate mystery.

The humans person of Jesus is the manifestation of God’s longing to communicate with humans and to bring them into his own eternity.
Click to expand...
 
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