vid

I found this floating around:

I found some talk of that here, but it's bit too lengthy and somewhat complicated for me to read now. Would anyone be so kind to sum up results we have on this so far?

arnoldo

The following article gives a good summary of this.

Toto

Why are you citing this unauthoritative student essay?

Toto

In short:

The Persian Mithras may or may not be related to the mystery religion of the Roman Empire known as Mithraism. The Roman Mithras was born of a rock, not a virgin goddess. (You will find a lot of those goddesses described as virgins without regard to what we understand as a virgin.)

There are many parallels and presumed influences between the mystery religions and Christianity, but there is more speculation than actual knowledge.

Most of what you read on the internet on the subject is urban legend. Cumont is generally considered to be outdated.

The wiki article on Mithras appears to be fairly good.

arnoldo

The article was good, not great, and there appeared to be no major errors in that essay. Besides the article provides links to Roger Pearse's site for those seeking more in depth scholarly information.

Toto

arnoldo: do you believe

Aside from Christ and Mithras, there were plenty of other deities (such as Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Balder, Attis, and Dionysus) said to have died and resurrected.

If you believe that this is true, please discuss and support this idea.

Virtually every pagan religious practice and festivity that couldn't be suppressed or driven underground was eventually incorporated into the rites of Christianity as it spread across Europe and throughout the world.

Is this true? Please discuss.

Roger Pearse

You should regard every word of this as bunk.

Until a couple of years ago, all sorts of tripe was routinely ascribed online to Mithras. Then a few of us started looking in the original sources, and the tripe-posters had to beat a retreat. But so far few people know anything about Persian Mitra, so they're at their old game, with a new location.

Firstly, bear in mind that Roman Mithras and Persian Mitra are entirely distinct, as far as we can tell. There is probably some kind of very tenuous connection -- more of images and words than of anything concrete. But the evidence for Roman Mithras is of a cult invented in Rome ca. 50 AD.

Now the above article refers to a "Mithraeum" in Persia. There are NO Mithraea in Persia -- it is one of the things that shows the cults are distinct. The Mithraeum is a very distinctive thing, a subterranean temple always of the same pattern. What they mean, I imagine, is some form of Zoroastrian temple which does NOT have these features.

Note also the reference; not to any kind of specialist scholarly source, but to some guy who sounds Persian in some general book. Unfortunately there is so much tripe around, that it inflects general books as well. Much of this derives from the work of the great Franz Cumont ca. 1900. He was the first to collect all the evidence on Mithras. He believed -- for what seemed sound reasons -- that Mithras and Mitra were the same. But the archaeology that emerged over the next 50 years was against this, and ca. 1971 scholars basically revolted and took a different view.

Persian nationalists like the idea that Mithras was derived from old Persian religion. They like the idea that Christianity -- they're all Moslems, remember -- is based on paganism as in Mithras. Consequently they can be found pushing the theories of Cumont even now. There are no Persian scholars who specialise in Mithras.

On to Anahita. Note the very Christian-sounding (even Catholic sounding) nomenclature -- almost certainly a sign of fakery. Note the LACK of an ancient source given for this. Treat it as bunk until the source appears.

I did look a little at some stuff that appears in Armenian. I wish I could remember more. Somebody Vardapet? Elias Vardapet? Hmmm...

All the best,

Roger Pearse

UPDATE: This post on my blog has the Elisaeus Vardapet stuff on the mother of Mihr. Note the comments, some of them rather interesting; and this post on this very issue (which I had forgotten until now).

God Fearing Atheist

This is the first time i've seen any sort of source cited to support that claim. I'm gonna ILL myself a copy and check it out, but like all the others, it's probably more horseshit.

arnoldo

Roman Catholicism has many pagan influences.

God Fearing Atheist

So here are the relevant sections from "Iran: Elements of Destiny (or via: amazon.co.uk)," page 37:

A bit further on the same page:

No sources, of course.