Kapyong

Greetings ziffel,

Indeed, there is no one solid example, but some of the themes of the story MAY have been drawn from these earlier pagan figures.

I am not claiming a collection - merely naming figures that may have been relevant - more obvious is the connections of the Jesus story to the Jewish scriptures, see Vork's excellent work here :
http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark_index.html


You may want to consider the Gnostic scriptures as well - an early variant form of Christianity
http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/library.html

Also see Dennis R. Macdonald "The Homertic Epics and the Gospel of Mark" argues for Jesus being dependant on Homer :
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...erandmark.html


Iasion

Spanky

Why did you say I beg your pardon? I just didn't understand your post. Nor did I know how to write in a meaningful way a question to ask you what you meant.
I understand that you say there are untruthful remarks, gossip, and such online. What I don't undersand exactly is what this "gossip"
is, but I like to learn. Thus, I asked you what you meant in that paragraph.

Do you agree with this online summary: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/Mithraism.html ?

All I want to know if the these statements are true and if true, were they beliefs that preceded the supposed life/time of christ?
This is all I want to know. I don't know what you meant by "Franz Cumont in the conclusions section of Textes et Monumentes" or "any statement about Mithras-as-image-of-Christ made online is nonsense unless it gives a specific reference to the ancient source on which it is based."
When you said this to me you are saying that all the stuff I have read about Mithras and the Mithras-as-image-of-Christ stuff is not true. I would just like to know the truth. It does not effect my beliefs in any way!

Mods, I hope this isn't a derail. I am just interested in this Mithras thing and Roger arroused some of those curiosities.

Roger Pearse

To refer to a 'theology of Mithraism' is itself misleading. We might legitimately use the term 'mythology' to describe a series of stories more or less important to paganism.

How do we know this? No ancient text says this. And 'dying/rising'? This too is unevidenced.

Mithras *is* referred to as 'rock-born'. This "virgin dawn" is unknown to antiquity.

Speculation, not data.

No evidence of this relating to Mithras is known.

Nothing to do with Roman Mithras. Persian myths are something else.

This statement is not found in antiquity.

The allegation that he did is made today, but is unknown in ancient times.

Speculation.

Mithras had no 'theology'. Pagans didn't do that. There was no set of statements whereby the Greeks agreed to believe in Zeus, for instance; nor in Mithras.

Nope. This is a confusion caused by looking at an inscription (of the Zodiac!) and getting confused.

Nope. No idea where this nonsense comes from.

All rubbish.

If this is so -- and I do not know that Mithras *had* a 'holy day', and I don't believe the author of this knew either -- nevertheless I wonder why Mithras is called simply a 'sun god' when he appears in reliefs accompanied by Helios.

All nonsense.

All nonsense.

All nonsense.

And more nonsense.

There might be the odd stray bit of fact in there, but few sets of statements contain more downright, insistent, lying than the ones above.

Always ask for evidence. If Mithras was unknown in 50 AD, what do you think? If the evidence is only dated to the pagan revival of Julian (for example), again, what do you think?

I realise that this is all unnuanced -- you asked for a very blunt and simple response. I would in general query the whole thing.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Spanky

Thank you

Amaleq13

I believe you should understand it literally (ie an apology).

Ted Hoffman

Read Michael Turton's Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark - it is online.
1. Having Mark telling us what Jesus was doing when Jesus was alone is a patent indication that Mark is fictionalizing the narrative.
2. Markan intercalations (literary constructions) are fictional.
3. Narrating events that are linguistically and plotwise modelled on OT events, like the temple ruckus, is evidence that such events are fictional.
4. Narrations that are implausible are fictional - like the temple ruckus and events leading to Jesus' crucifiction - like a bloodthirsty crowd mocking, laughing at and dressing up somoene they want to kill.
5. Miraculous events, like the heavens opening and a voice booming from them, are fictional.
6. Events that are inconsistent with geography, like pigs running down a slope that is miles long to drown are fictional.

There are several more, but in summary, a literary analysis of GMark shows that it was a work of fiction. Familiarize yourself with Turton's negative criteria.

Ted Hoffman

You are right. My bad.
Could you provide the sources for the following features about Iasius:

1. He is the Son of God (the highest God)
2. His mother is a mortal virgin, known for her purity
3. He is a healer
4. He brought divine revelation to mankind
5. He died tragically
6. Yet he rose again, and ascended to be with God

It would be very helpful.

Kapyong

Greetings Ted,

Most of Iasius's story is found in Diodorus from Sicily.


1. He is the Son of God (the highest God)

"And while the Samothracians were living under a government of this kind, they say that there were born in that land to Zeus and Electra, who was one of the Atlantids, Dardanus and Iasion and Harmonia. "
Diodorus Siculus, Book 5, Ch47, 3

Zeus being the highest God (i.e. not some lame figure like Hephaistos. *)


2. His mother is a mortal virgin, known for her purity

Apparently "E-lektra" meant "not-bedded" in Attic. (Steichorus, 5th C. BCE) I have no access to Steichorus, sorry.

".. the Atlantides .. distinguished for their chastity"
Diodorus Siculus, Book 3, Ch60, 4

Later, Arnobius claimed Zeus robbed Electra of her virginity : " Jupiter is said to be the cause of the fault. Danae could not keep her virginity; the theft is said to have been Jupiter's. Europa hastened to the name of woman; he is again declared to have been the assailant of her chastity. Alcmena, Electra, Latona, Laodamia, a thousand other virgins, and a thousand matrons, and with them the boy Catamitus, were robbed of their honour and chastity"
Against the Heathen, 22

The other Electra (daughter of Agamemnon) also retained her virginity because the commoner did not consumate the marriage (designed to ruin her chastity.)

It is fairly clear that Electra was considered a chaste and pure virgin (we could argue about specific words I guess - honour, chaste, pure, chastity.)

Now,
consider this episode from the Protoevangelium :
"And the priest said: Call to me the undefiled virgins of the family of David. And the officers went away, and sought, and found seven virgins. And the priest remembered the child Mary, that she was of the family of David, and undefiled before God. And the officers went away and brought her. And they brought them into the temple of the Lord. And the priest said: Choose for me by lot who shall spin the gold, and the white, and the fine linen, and the silk, and the blue, and the scarlet, and the true purple. And the true purple and the scarlet fell to the lot of Mary," Prot. of James, 10

Here we see the Christian Mary divinely chosen from 7 virgins.

So,
this story has no precedent in the OT,
but a mortal virgin woman as ONE of SEVEN virgins,
was obviously a well known story (even today, most people have heard of the 7 sisters or Pleides, especially Subaru drivers. :-)

Iasius - son-of-highest-God, born from 1 of 7 mortal virgins
Iesous - son-of-highest-God, born from 1 of 7 mortal virgins

This could be a clue - a later Christian writer, crafting a new Jesus episode, seems to have lifted a detail from Greek myth.


3. He is a healer

Iaso is a female Greek healing goddess,
Iasius has the same root (AFAIK.)
This is clearly a WEAK connection.


4. He brought divine revelation to mankind

"But Zeus desired that the other of his two sons [ie Iasius] might also attain to honor, and so he instructed him in the initiatory rite of the mysteries"
Diodorus Siculus Book 5, Ch47, 3

Here Iasius is implied as the the first instructed in the (early Samothracian) mysteries (where Jason, Heracles, Orpheus, and Castor and Polydeuces were initiated) - it is assumed that Iasius then passed it on, thru Corybas :

"[T]he Mother of the Gods, well pleased with the island [Samothrace], settled in it certain other people, and also her own sons, who are known by the name Corybantes - who their father was is handed down in their rites as a matter not to be divulged."
Diodorus Siculus, Book 3, Ch 55, 9

"Iasion married Kybele and begat Korybas…and Korybas gave the name of Korybantes to all who, in celebrating the rites of his mother, acted like men possessed.."
Diodorus Siculus, Book 5, Ch 49, 2-3

(You may also be interested to check the mysterious Cabiri.)


5. He died tragically

' Calypso trembled with rage…"You gods…are always jealous…when Ceres fell in love with Iasion, and yielded to him in a thrice-ploughed fallow field, Jove…killed Iasion with his thunderbolt ' Hesiod Theogony 970


6. Yet he rose again, and ascended to be with God

"And after Iasion had been removed into the circle of the gods, Dardanus and Kybele and Korybas conveyed to Asia the sacred rites of the Mother of the Gods and removed with them to Phrygia. "
Diodorus Siculus, Book 5, Ch 49, 2

"I envy Endymion. May my sleep be as sound as his. Sweet girl, I envy Iasion bound on the journey that unillumined ones may not take."
Theocritus, The Idylls, Lovesong 6

This journey is rising from death into the realm of the Gods (because only the initiated escaped the lower realms after death.)

"Aurora wept because her husband had white hair; and Ceres then bewailed the age of her Iasion, grey and stricken old; "
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 9.68

Iasius got to live on and grow old.


I thought Iasius was an interesting clue in the formation of the Jesus myth,
but few others do :-)


Iasion

* Always wanted to crack a "lame" joke about Heffy ;-)

jjramsey

Then she's not a virgin mother, unless you want to interpret "virgin" so broadly as to make it meaningless.

Maybe, but judging from the article on the Pleiades in Encyclopedia Mythica, they weren't mortal, though they were virgin companions of Artemis.

You really have only two points of contact here: the name "Iasion" sounding similar to "Iesous" and the number seven. "Seven" is a "stock" number, that is, it is frequently reused, so it's a dubious point of contact. "Virgin" is not a serious point of contact, as that is the expected state of unmarried daughters and Electra ceased to be virgin after Zeus had his way with her. Also, Zeus had his choice of far more than the seven sisters of Pleiades, which again makes this a weak parallel.

This looks like a combination of the law of large numbers and ambiguity.

This is a classic example of stretching Christian language to describe completely foreign things. Here you are paralleling rituals divulged to a few and meant to be secret with ethical instruction meant for wide distribution.

Again, stretching Christian language to describe completely foreign things. Iasion is incinerated for having sex with Ceres (a.k.a. Demeter), while Jesus is put to a tortuous death for supposedly claiming to be King of the Jews.

Offhand, it looks like the fate of Iasion varies somewhat across myths, and at most, his fate looks more similar to Hercules, whose spirit rose to Olympus, than to the purported fate of Jesus, who got to rise in the middle of history instead of at the end in the general resurrection. Again, there is stretching of Christian language to describe things in different categories.

Steven Avery

I really liked "5. He died tragically". That is elastic enough to encompass everything from Abe Lincoln to pagan mythos to Mozart and Alexander the Great and a huge swath of folks. And if "he died tragically" didn't work, it could be replaced with "he died painfully" or "he died unjustly" or "he died peacefully". There must be a latin term for this type of category-mining.

Shalom,
Steven Avery