GakuseiDon

Were they worried about associating Jesus with the sun gods, in your opinion? Or is it reasonable to conclude that they thought that the imagery surrounding Jesus at that time wasn't associated with sun gods?

PhilVaz

Dave31 << The winter solstice / Christmas type celebrations were already popular BCE. The fact that it is a well known festival for the sun god along with the fact that that is still the date commonly used today for Christianity demonstrates the connection. This is old news. If that wasn't the birth date for Jesus then why use it? The church could've picked 364 other dates to choose from yet, they chose that one. >>

The confrontational posture which Christianity adopted toward paganism is found behind the feast of Christmas. A celebration of the birth of Christ would fortify the Church against heretics like the Gnostics, who denied that Jesus was a historical, embodied personage. The problem, though, was that the exact day of Christ's birth was unknown, so a date on which to celebrate it had to be chosen arbitrarily. Now the pagans already had a fixed festal schedule, so any day of the year the Church chose to celebrate a feast would be a day of some pagan celebration. Here was an opportunity for the Church to confront paganism. The day chosen was December 25, when everyone celebrated the pagan feast of the dies natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun."

December 25 arrives around the time of the winter solstice, when the days get shorter and the sun seems to be "dying." It was also the "birthday" of the Persian sun-god known as Mithras ("born" from a rock, he is known as the "rock-born god"), originally one of the lesser demigods of the Zoroastrian religion. Christians, for their part, called Christ the "Sun of Righteousness" from the prophecy of the Resurrection in Malachi 4:2-3: "But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things, says the Lord Almighty."

By the second half of the third century AD, the cults of the classical gods were on the wane and paganism sought an infusion of new life from the Oriental cults. Thus Emperor Aurelian officially established worship of a Roman version of a sun god, under the name of Sol Invictus, as the principal cult of the empire on December 25, 274 AD, after his victory over Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. He built a huge temple for Sol Invictus on the Campus Martius in Rome and made December 25 a national holiday.

The battle for religious supremacy was not to be won overnight, especially in the rural areas where paganism was most entrenched. In the first half of the fourth century AD the worship of the Sol Invictus was the last great pagan cult the Church had to conquer, and it did so in part with the establishment of Christmas, which proclaimed that "when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4). At the head of the Deposition Martyrum of the so-called Roman Chronograph of 354 AD (the Philocalian Calendar) there is listed the natus Christus in Betleem Judaeae ("the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea") as being celebrated on December 25. The Deposition was originally composed in 336 AD, so Christmas dates back at least that far.



Santa or Satan: Reply to a Funny Fundy

The Antichrist at the Manger

Phil P

Dave31

Toto, you have the ZG Companion guide to part 1, right? Have you read that section titled, "The Virgin Isis-Mery"? What were your thoughts on that?

There will be about 30 more pages just on that subject alone in the book.

Roger Pearse

I was wondering what primary evidence specifically supports this. I went through a volume of Roman calendars; the first to have a festival on 25 Dec is the Philocalian calendar in the Chronography of 354 AD. But that volume had a large gap between the first and fourth centuries.

True. This is first mentioned in 354 AD, as I remarked. Note that natalis may mean here 'anniversay of foundation of temple', not 'birthday', its usually meaning.

This is wrong. The title was certainly free-floating; but Aurelian created a state cult named Sol Invictus. There is no evidence of association of this in the manner described. with the long defunct cult of El-gabal, nor with Mithras.

It is highly questionable that Mithras has any real connection with Persia.

There is no evidence of this.

Nor this. The idea that the Natalis Invicti was established by Aurelian is a deduction from the entry in the Chronography of 354, reading natalis as 'anniversary of foundation of temple', which took place under Aurelian, and so would logically commence with him.

Not according to Julian the Apostate, who in his Hymn to King Helios indicates that the solstice occurred earlier than the 'Heliaea', but that this was the point at which the days getting longer was first visible.

Whatever this means, it certainly does not mean that Christians worshipped the sun.

Which primary sources record this?

No, it doesn't.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

However I was unable to locate a single piece of ancient evidence connecting Roman Mithras (the link to Persia is probably bogus, since there are no Mithraea in Persia) to 25 Dec. I looked hard! Cumont suggests it, but he can be pretty sloppy about references.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Dave31

Roger did you give these a going over?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus

PhilVaz

Roger << However I was unable to locate a single piece of ancient evidence connecting Roman Mithras (the link to Persia is probably bogus, since there are no Mithraea in Persia) to 25 Dec. I looked hard! >>

I simply assumed this was the case (the Dec 25 date with regard to Mithras). I didn't see it as a big deal to research since the point that Christian apologists (like myself) normally point out is that the Roman Mithras cult didn't really get going fully until the end of the 1st century AD. This is too late to be influencing first-century AD Christianity (i.e. when most of the New Testament was composed) or the time Jesus and His apostles lived.

In addition, the Dec 25th date is used by the Church as a celebration of the birth of Christ around the 4th century AD, so this would be a later liturgical adoption. Not a problem to me. "At the head of the Deposition Martyrum of the so-called Roman Chronograph of 354 AD (the Philocalian Calendar) there is listed the natus Christus in Betleem Judaeae ("the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea") as being celebrated on December 25. The Deposition was originally composed in 336 AD, so Christmas dates back at least that far." (my article on Santa/Satan, borrowed from "Antichrist at the Manger" above)

I haven't specifically tried to verify the Dec 25th with regard to the Roman Mithras. My sources for my Mithras article are those books available to me at Univ of South FL:

The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire by Roger Beck (Oxford Univ Press, 2006)
The Roman Cult of Mithras: the god and his mysteries by Manfred Clauss (Routledge, 2000)
The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries by David Clansey (Oxford Univ Press, 1989)
The "Mithras Liturgy" by Marvin W. Meyer (Scholars Press for SBL, 1976)

Plus the articles on Mithras/Mithraism in the "Encyclopedia of Religion" (1987, 2005 2nd edition) and "New Catholic Encyclopedia" (2003 2nd edition).

I really appreciate you checking this stuff out, since many people do not.

There is evidence for the earlier Persian Mithras who was one of the major deities of ancient Iran (Persia) along with Ahura Mazda and Anahita. In the Avesta and Zoroastrian literature Mithra turns up frequently. He is known from many sources: inscriptions of the Achaemenids beginning with Artaxerxes II (404 - 359 BC); on coins of the Kushan empire he is named as Mioro and depicted as a solar deity; in Parthian and Sogdian Manichaeism he is the tertius legatus or "messenger"; in Persian Manichaeism he appears as the spiritus vivens ("spirit of life"). The testimony of Plutarch in Life of Pompey is important in understanding the religion's development in Rome. (a short summary of info from the "Encyclopedia of Religion" article edited by Mircea Eliade).

Phil P

Roger Pearse

I know... we've all taken the same view. But it seems to be fiction.

Those are good references, and I've seen most of them myself. Likewise I appreciate you doing these compilations of facts about common modern myths. I tend to get interested in small points of detail!

This is the view of Cumont, and I think Beck holds the same view. Unfortunately the archaeology points in a different direction, as Clauss points out: if Roman Mithras is the same as Persian Mitra, then why are the very characteristic temples of Mithras only found in Roman territory? Why does the archaeology all point to an origin in Rome? Clauss suggests that the passage in Plutarch could be a second-century mistake for Perseus.

I don't claim to know, but these points must be suggestive. Cumont presumed identity of Mithras and Mitra on the basis that they have the same name. But of course that is not necessarily so.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

I hadn't read it in a while, but I went back and reread it.

I think that the identification of Mary with various mother goddesses is the least controversial part of the book, and not much of an aid in untangling Christian origins. I doubt that Mary was either historical, or that important in early Christianity; I think that many Protestants would agree that the Catholic Church elevated Mary into a quasi-goddess, which they regard as a pagan accretion.

It does appear that Acharya S has found a virgin mother for Horus - the goddess Neith. But this goddess is a virgin because she was a primal force, "self-begotten and self produced." This seems almost a polar opposite from a teen aged girl impregnated bt the Holy Spirit.

But it is an interesting idea to explore.

Dave31

That's right Toto. Thanks for giving that another going over.

I don't see Isis as a polar opposite to the biblical Mary, though. The concept of a virgin mother goddess giving birth to the sun has been around for several thousand years. It should come as no surprise that the story would be altered over the centuries. Especially by Christians trying to usurp pagan religions and attempting to make the biblical Jesus seem as historical as possible.

Acharya has always maintained that nobody came along and scratched out the name of Neith or Isis and replaced it with Mary. That doesn't always go over very well when trying to usurp a competing religion. There's usually more to it than just that.

The point is that the concepts that went into the creation Christianity were popular and well known.