God Fearing Atheist

I frequently encounter claims that Mithraists practiced "blood baptism." Acharya S, for example, writes that "the sacrifice of the bull was reenacted in the Mithraic baptism, a mystery rite in which the initiates were splattered with the blood."

After a good bit of reading, i've concluded that this is wrong in just about every possible way. I do have one question, though, and wondered if anyone had any additional information.

On page 230 of his "The Three Phases of the Taurobolium," Rutter writes that there exists a single known dedication of a taurobolium to Mithras (CIL 6.736), but that this is "almost certainly spurious." Not having access to CIL, i'm wondering, first of all, what the inscription reads, and second, what reasons Rutter might have for calling it "spurious" (or indeed if there are any reasons apart from it's appearent isolation).

Anyone?

Amaleq13

You might want to PM Roger Pearse about this thread as he's a good source on Mithraism though, IIUC, primarily on how mythicists, etc. abuse the crap out it.

The only post I could find in which he mentions "taurobolium", however, is this one.

Chris Weimer

The CIL used to be available online...I cannot find it anymore, though. It appears the website - http://www.archeologhia.com/ - removed it, or changed, or something...

Roger Pearse

The only literary account to describe a taurobolium is that in Prudentius Crowns of martyrdom 10.1001-50. There is also an inscription (CIL XIII.1751; ILS 4131, on an inscribed altar from Lyons dated 160 AD) which gives a couple of details incidentally. This tells us that the rite was part of the cult of the Magna Mater, not of Mithras.

These details and references I borrow from Mary Beard &c, Religions of Rome vol. 2, pp16-162, which has further reading. The same volume contains much of interest on Mithras, all very well illustrated.

Part of the confusion may be due to the 4th century pagan revival led by Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (d. 384) who had a temple of the Magna Mater, the Phyrgianum, on the Vatican hill. This contained multiple altars, since the senators in question were few and so became priests in many cults. Praetextatus was pater patrum in the cult of Mithras, for instance, as an inscription shows (CIL V 420; VI 1779).

The idea of 'reborn in eternity' (in aeternitas renatum) is present in the taurobolium at this period (CIL VI 510).

These details from Manfred Clauss in The Roman cult of Mithras.

Older scholarship was unclear on whether the taurobolium was associated with Mithras (remember the syncretism endemic in imperial-period paganism), and I believe that material from that period, enlarged and exaggerated, is probably the source of the occasional claims one sees in atheist literature.

I hope that helps. I never really paid much attention to the taurobolium, you see, so there is probably information not to hand which might be interesting.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I never knew that the CIL was online. Are you sure about this, Chris? Do you have a URL to a page (vanished or not)?

I have found in the past claimed CIL references that in fact were bogus when I went to look them up. The difficulty of access means that such are checked even less often than references online normally are. Indeed it's rather like the transmission of numerals in ancient texts; uncheckable, hence easily corrupted.

adren@line

funny how a cult that is based off of proto-Indo-Iranian beliefs (basically an early, early form of Hinduism) came to influence Christianity.

youngalexander

Preceding the quote below from M. Cross pg 30;
One of these senators was Rufius Caeionius Sabinus, who in 377 dedicated an alter ...
...the verse text inscribed on the alter, which may be translated:

High-born descendent of an ancient house, ... , Chaldaean priest of the temple of Persian Mithras, and at the same time leader of the mysteries of the mighty, holy taurobolium.(44)

Also from Britannica: Encyclopedia of World Religions 2006
Taurobolium:
bull sacrifice practised from about 160 CE in the Mediterranean cult of the Great Mother of Gods, Cybele....

At the beginning the ceremony apparently resembled similar sacrifices performed in the cults of other deities, such as Mithras. By about 300, however, it had changed drastically. The person dedicating the sacrifice lay in a pit with a perforated board placed over the pit's opening. A bull was slaughtered above him, and the person in the pit bathed in the blood streaming down. Thus the ceremony, perhaps influenced by Christianity, gradually took on the elements of moral purification and seems to have been reserved for higher initiates.

Roger Pearse

Which cult was that? The cult of Mithras has no such origins, at any event. Nor did Christians adopt teachings from paganism.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

God Fearing Atheist

This isn't an example of a Mithraic taurobolium, but of a Mithraist involved in multiple cults.

Without primary sources, this is no better than my Achry quote from the OP.

God Fearing Atheist

I did find the CIL website (here), but unless I have no idea what i'm doing, the extent of the information available on that particular inscription is it's location, Rome.