Toto

Split from Why Didn't Jesus Write Anything?

IamMoose

Sorry, Eazy, but saying that you won't believe a thing until you see the source of its source is REALLY disingenuous. We are to take everything you say as 'gospel' but you won't accept anything WE say eh? Figures.

You want me to be less condescending? then stop trying to pretend black is white.

GakuseiDon

Is that accurate? I've always believed that they were interchangeable. "Mitra" was the Indian god, so different, but "Mithra" and "Mithras" referred to the same person.

DaninGraniteCity

http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/pa...s_mithras.html
Rome
Plutarch (Pompey, 24, 7) and
Servilius (Georgics, 4, 127) say Pompey imported Mithraism into Rome after defeating the Cilician pirates around 70 BC.

Rome
Plutarch (Pompey, 24, 7) and
Servilius (Georgics, 4, 127) say Pompey imported Mithraism into Rome after defeating the Cilician pirates around 70 BC.

Mithras appears epigraphically in the circles of the Roman emperor in the first century AD -- around the time the canonical Christian Gospels were written (Corpus Incscriptionum Latinarum, 6, 732),

Statues of the God were present by 101 AD (Corpus Incscriptionum Latinarum, 6, 718).

Rick Sumner

Plutarch says nothing of the sort. What he says is that 1) The pirates worshipped Mithra, and 2) The practice continues to this day. Getting that to "Plutarch says that it was imported to Rome at this time" is quite the jump.

And the Georgics are by Virgil, not Servilius, unless there's another one I haven't heard of.

Plutarch, Pompeius, 24:7 reads as follows:

"They themselves offered strange sacrifices upon Mount Olympus, and performed certain secret rites or religious mysteries, among which those of Mithras have been preserved to our own time having received their previous institution from them."

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

It's accurate. They may or may not refer to the same God (the Romans may have borrowed the name), they emphatically do not refer to the same religion. There is no tauroctony for Persian Mithra. A Persian deity who slays no bull cannot be Roman Mithra. CX has previously provided a number of interesting cites on the matter, but even a cursory inspection of Roman Mithraism points to the same conclusion, which is overwhelmingly held by Mithraic scholars--has been since the Mithraic Conference in 1971.

Yet another of many a blunder attributable to Franz Cumont.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

Hit submit too quickly, I meant to get to this earlier.

That we find two inscriptions at the end of the first century CE is not evidence of ubiquity, it's evidence of two inscriptions. Mithraism seems to have begun to catch on in the early second century, and then fairly exploded.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

This is false.

Those are actually Roman Mithraeums, though I'd delight in a shred of evidence indicating otherwise.

The presence of the tauroctony in those Mithraeums is fairly the nail in the coffin to any contrary suggestion. Persian Mithra slew no bull.

What does that have to do with whether or not it's Persian or Roman?

That would be Roman Mithras.

Persian Mithra slew no bull. Whoops.

The cap in question actually comes from Attis, and was later assimilated by Mithraists. And what does this have to do with Jesus? Mithra hadn't even borrowed the cap in the first century--that was much, much later. You might as well try and tell me that Christianity is based on the Muppet Show if we're going to arbitrarily anachronize like that. I'm sure I could come up with some salvific motifs in Fozzy Bear to start us off.

To try and stick to the topic you're responding to, rather than thrones of St. Peter or Mithraeums in the Vatican, are you aware of a shred of evidence that Persian Mithra ever slew a bull? I would be fascinated to see it--even Cumont, who popularized the idea that Persian Mithra and Roman Mithras were one and the same couldn't come up with any. That might have something to do with the fact that the conclusion has all but entirely fallen off the academic landscape. In fact, it could well be the primary reason. We can even take that one further--it is the primary reason.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

You don't suppose the twelve tribes of Israel had anything to do with it, do you? Given that Matt.19:28//Lk.22:30 state explicitly that they do, that the restoration of the tribes was a part of the very apocalyptic eschatology that characterizes the four gospels and Jesus' role as "king," it seems rather absurd to suggest otherwise.

Just for some useless trivia, Mithras' torch bearers do have names: Cautes and Cautopates.

Just for some more, 25 December, so far as I know, was never Mithras' birthday. It was the birthday of Sol Invictus. Mithra just borrowed the feast day, as the cults were closely "related."

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Biff the unclean

Gee Rick all this hand waving and "iffy" scholarship and all you have managed to do is add another Pagan God that the Jesus character was based on, instead of making the one we are talking about go away.