Freethought & Rationalism Archive

andrewcriddle · 09-27-2008, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Justin Martyr wrote that the ritual of the Last Supper by Christians was similar to a ritual in Mithraism.

I blogged here sacraments-in-mithraism
about Justin and Mithraism.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874 · 09-27-2008, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

The first imperative in ancient history is to assemble the data base on which any statements must be based. Get all of the statements about Mithras in the ancient literature -- a couple of dozen is usually all we have on most things -- in front of you. Get all the inscriptional, archaeological, numismatic evidence in front of you. Don't theorise a bit until you know what this stuff -- the historical record -- actually says.

This is not necessary, just get an encyclopedia and research "Mithraism", "Zoroastrianism", "ancient Persia", "sun gods" and "Sunday".

jbarntt · 09-27-2008, 12:19 PM

Hi aa5874,

Quote:

Now tell me what you know as facts about your Jesus?

<edit> I am not religious, and to make it very clear to you I am not a Christian. I assume you understand the implications of that statement.

You do understand that Jesus may have existed, yet did none of the things you require him to have done in order to have been a real person ?

It may have escaped your limited intellect that Jesus may have been a real person and that the supernatural aspects of His life were later accretions.

aa5874 · 09-27-2008, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbarntt

Hi aa5874,

Quote:

Now tell me what you know as facts about your Jesus?

<edit> I am not religious, and to make it very clear to you I am not a Christian. I assume you understand the implications of that statement.

You MUST be smart and intelligent enough to realise that it is not necessary to be a Christian to believe that there were persons called Jesus in the 1st century, only an idiot would think you must be a Christian.

<edit>

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbarntt

You do understand that Jesus may have existed, yet did none of the things you require him to have done in order to have been a real person ?

Well, I just showed why I regard the Jesus of the NT was a non-existent fictitious character, I am waiting on the facts from you to show that your Jesus did exist, that is, the Jesus you say may have existed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbarntt

It may have escaped your limited intellect that Jesus may have been a real person and that the supernatural aspects of His life were later accretions.

It may have escaped your AWESOME and UNLIMITED intellect that Jesus of the NT may NOT have existed, and that the supernatural aspects were ALL of his mythical life.

Roger Pearse · 09-27-2008, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

It has been argued that there is some evidence that Pompey settled people (perhaps including captured pirates) in Italy, and so that the cult might have developed from there. I dislike the lack of evidence for that one, but it's a possibility.

Not according to Arrain and Plutarch who are our porimary sources for the history of Pompey and the Cilician Pirates. Arrian tells us that "Those pirates who had evidently fallen into this way of life not from wickedness, but from poverty consequent upon the war, Pompey settled in Mallus, Adana, and Epiphanea, or any other uninhabited or thinly peopled town in Rough Cilicia". Plutarch also mentions Soli as a place of resettlement.

Interesting, and thank you. I think that I knew he had settled some of them back home, but I never knew what the data was for that.

The quote is from Appian, Mithradatic Wars (finger trouble affects us all...).

Plutarch, Life of Pompey, 24 ff:

"The war was therefore brought to an end and all piracy driven from the sea in less than three months, and besides many other ships, Pompey received in surrender ninety which had brazen beaks. The men themselves, who were more than twenty thousand in number, he did not once think of putting to death; and yet to let them go and suffer them to disperse or band together again, poor, warlike, and numerous as they were, he thought was not well. 3 Reflecting, therefore, that by nature man neither is nor becomes a wild or an unsocial creature, but is transformed by the unnatural practice of vice, whereas he may be softened by new customs and a change of place and life; also that even wild beasts put off their fierce and savage ways when they partake of a gentler mode of life, he determined to transfer the men from the sea to land, and let them have a taste of gentle life by being accustomed to dwell in cities and to till the ground. 4 Some of them, therefore, were received and incorporated into the small and half-deserted cities of Cilicia, which acquired additional territory; and after restoring the city of Soli, which had lately been devastated by Tigranes, the king of Armenia, Pompey settled many there. To most of them, however, he gave as residence Dyme in Achaea, which was then bereft of men and had much good land."

The Soli reference is in 28; the Mithras in 24:

"They also offered strange sacrifices of their own at Olympus, and celebrated there certain secret rites, among which those of Mithras continue to the present time, having been first instituted by them."

Someone told me something about Pompey settling people in Italy -- his veterans I imagine -- but linked it with Cilicia somehow. Sorry, but the old memory is playing up. It was in this forum, I think; anyone remember?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Jeffrey Gibson · 09-27-2008, 01:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Someone told me something about Pompey settling people in Italy -- his veterans I imagine -- but linked it with Cilicia somehow. Sorry, but the old memory is playing up. It was in this forum, I think; anyone remember?

If memory serves, it was Neville Lindsay on the Jesus Mysteries List, on the basis of "information" he gleaned from a Jesus is Mthras web page that was full of errors in its claims about what Plutarch said and which he did not bother to check against what was actually in Plutarch, probably because it confirmed what he wanted to believe.

But Andrew also spoke of it here -- but far more hesitantly.
Jeffrey

Clivedurdle · 09-27-2008, 03:14 PM

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religi.../mithraism.htm

By Roger Beck

Quote:

For most of the twentieth century the major problem addressed by scholarship on both Roman Mithraism and the Iranian god Mithra was the question of continuity. Did Mithra-worship migrate from Iran to the Roman Empire in some institutional form or was Mithraism invented in the West (with a few Iranian trappings) as a new institution altogether?

At the start of the twenty first century, this issue appears to be less central to the concerns of scholarship on Western Mithraism, but it remains important nevertheless, and obviously it must be the lens through which Mithraism is examined in this article. The first task, though, is to describe the Mithras cult as it did in fact develop in the West, and in so far as we can reconstruct it objectively from its material remains. Reconstruction is not easy, since no ancient literary works about Mithraism and no substantial sacred texts from Mithraism have survived.

Western Mithraism described
The term "Mithraism" is of course a modern coinage. In antiquity the cult was known as "the mysteries of Mithras"; alternatively, as "the mysteries of the Persians." The latter designation is significant. The Mithraists, who were manifestly not Persians in any ethnic sense, thought of themselves as cultic "Persians." Moreover, whatever moderns might think, the ancient Roman Mithraists themselves were convinced that their cult was founded by none other than Zoroaster, who "dedicated to Mithras, the creator and father of all, a cave in the mountains bordering Persia," an idyllic setting "abounding in flowers and springs of water" (Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 6).
Persia (or Parthia) in those times was Rome's great rival and frequently at war with her. Nonetheless, there is no indication that this antagonism was ever problematic for the Mithraists socially or politically. Clearly, their cultic "Persian" identity, which they made no attempt to hide, was acceptable to the authorities and their fellow citizens.

...

Please read on.

Jeffrey Gibson · 09-27-2008, 03:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religi.../mithraism.htm

By Roger Beck

Quote:

For most of the twentieth century the major problem addressed by scholarship on both Roman Mithraism and the Iranian god Mithra was the question of continuity. Did Mithra-worship migrate from Iran to the Roman Empire in some institutional form or was Mithraism invented in the West (with a few Iranian trappings) as a new institution altogether?

At the start of the twenty first century, this issue appears to be less central to the concerns of scholarship on Western Mithraism, but it remains important nevertheless, and obviously it must be the lens through which Mithraism is examined in this article. The first task, though, is to describe the Mithras cult as it did in fact develop in the West, and in so far as we can reconstruct it objectively from its material remains. Reconstruction is not easy, since no ancient literary works about Mithraism and no substantial sacred texts from Mithraism have survived.

Western Mithraism described
The term "Mithraism" is of course a modern coinage. In antiquity the cult was known as "the mysteries of Mithras"; alternatively, as "the mysteries of the Persians." The latter designation is significant. The Mithraists, who were manifestly not Persians in any ethnic sense, thought of themselves as cultic "Persians." Moreover, whatever moderns might think, the ancient Roman Mithraists themselves were convinced that their cult was founded by none other than Zoroaster, who "dedicated to Mithras, the creator and father of all, a cave in the mountains bordering Persia," an idyllic setting "abounding in flowers and springs of water" (Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 6).
Persia (or Parthia) in those times was Rome's great rival and frequently at war with her. Nonetheless, there is no indication that this antagonism was ever problematic for the Mithraists socially or politically. Clearly, their cultic "Persian" identity, which they made no attempt to hide, was acceptable to the authorities and their fellow citizens.

...

Please read on.

I wonder if you'll take your own advise, and, if you do, whether you'll aviod your demonstrable habit of reading into and out of what you adduce, things that are not there.

Jeffrey

Clivedurdle · 09-27-2008, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Unlike other organisms that tend to pass their genes on to the next generation of their own species, bacteria often exchange genetic material with totally unrelated species a process called lateral gene transfer.

Researchers did not believe that they could work out the evolutionary history of bacteria. But now, thanks to the availability of sequenced genomes for groups of related bacteria, and a new analytical approach, researchers at have been able to demonstrate that constructing a bacterial family tree is indeed possible.

http://scienceandevolution.blogspot....-revealed.html

Is a serious problem with these discussions that a model of direct transfer - ie mithras to xianity - is used, when the reality with these oriental cults is the equivalent of bacterial lateral gene transfer? Ideas from one place are mixed together in a glorious centuries old marinade as people travel, trade, misunderstand, chinese whisper and conquer each other?

lycanthrope · 09-28-2008, 10:41 PM

thanks yall

going thru the links will take awhile..

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09-28-2008, 10:41 PM	#30
lycanthrope Regular Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 335	thanks yall going thru the links will take awhile..

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