lycanthrope

i am currently reading the Jesus Mysteries by Freke and Gandy, while the book links christianity and paganism the skeptic in me tells me to test their claims and i came across this website which claims no linkage between the main pagan religion and christianity

now i am not a historian so i would like some help to see if this website sufficiently counters the claim in JM.

http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html

Clivedurdle

Just looked at wiki to see if there was an article about jpholding - well he is attempting to keep xianity together a bit like all the kings horses and all the kings men, and was linked to this...

http://www.aboutus.org/1001Errors.com

Amaleq13

I don't know about that website but this website has done a pretty good job of trying to dispell many of the false claims circulating online. Regular BC&H contributor Roger Pearse has done the bulk of the heavy lifting on this subject.

Mithraism and Christianity

Mithraism split from Similarities between Jesus and Pagans and sources for mysteries

Xtianity=Mithraism?

The bottom line is that the crap far outweighs the legitimate material and one is better off not relying entirely upon F&G for one's understanding.

aa5874

Based on Justin Martyr's First Apology chapter 66, Christianity and Mithraism did have in common at least one mystic rite.

First Apology 66

Roger Pearse

The rhetoric at JP's site tends to make his pages somewhat difficult to read unless you share his views (sometimes even if you do), although I understand why he does it. But if we can get past that, the article contains a great deal of very sound comment on the claims of F&G and Archaya S about Mithras. It's a valuable corrective to the nonsense on Mithras that has circulated unchecked for some years and which probably annoys every educated person who sees it for what seems like the billionth time. The number of times I have seen the "12 disciples, great travelling teacher..." stuff makes me want to scream sometimes. But of course it's always posted in good faith by people who have heard it and supposed it true.

JP is a little harsh on Cumont. Cumont started the whole field by collecting all the extant data ca. 1905 in Textes et Monumentes. No-one before him had any real knowledge of the data. (Not that this had stopped Ernest Renan from starting an early version of the myth). He was misled by the similar sounding names of Mit(h)ra and Mithras, and the statements in the sources, into supposing that Roman Mithras was an importation of the Persian cult. And why not?

50 years of archaeology and research of course added much more data, but Cumont naturally stayed with the ideas of his youth, and his prestige helped to conceal the fact that the data was now moving away from what it had once suggested. Cumont himself could be sloppy about backing up general assertions; he could make a statement of the widest consequence without a footnote sometimes; because he came from a generation of scholars who were not as rigid about it as we are today.

After his death, there was a re-evaluation, and a general move away from his ideas. But they are not without supporters even now, since the data is quite scanty. I think that Roger Beck holds the view of a Persian origin, for instance, although probably in a modified form. As far as I can determine, Ulansey's views are fringe; his statements are based on imagination of what could have happened, rather than arising naturally from the data.

But others will doubtless correct me on this if I am wrong.

GakuseiDon

Stephen Fry, on the British infotainment gameshow "QI" repeats the Mithras story on this clip from Youtube (goes for 2 min 40 sec):
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=MSm7YPMQOSo

He says that Mithras was born of a virgin on Dec 25, died for our sins, and brought back to life on a Sunday, had 12 disciples, and devotees consumed his body and blood, etc. He says, "A lot of Christian scholars have since been very angry at some of this research which came out in 1983 about Mithras, and they claim it's nonsense."

Toto

Fry is a humorist. What's the point?

Roger Pearse

Well, he's not telling that as a joke, and as host of that quiz-show, a lot of people will suppose he knows what he's talking about. Thus do rumours go round.

GakuseiDon

Take a guess! Christopher Hitchens also promotes the idea that Mithras and other gods (like Horus) were virgin-born. Even Genghis Khan. There was a clip on Youtube where he discusses this, though it's now been removed. Pretty much the same point.

(ETA) Some of these claims of virgin births by Hitchens can be found via Google books, on p. 26:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...esult#PPA31,M1

lycanthrope

juz a question: why is it that each side makes such outrageous claims? its so hard to pinpoint 'truth' in history.

for those well versed in history, how do historians actually determine things? they cannot be both correct...

getting confused