Clivedurdle

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/gen...E5ODE0MDg5NA==

Saw this in British Museum this afternoon. Has it been commented on by Biblical scholars - in the introduction he states that when Origen writes Persians he is using shorthand for followers of Mithras, and elsewhere notes Sol Invictus - Constantine's god - is Mithras.

He argues the doctrinal formality of xianity may also be a Mithraic import - their buildings were designed to incorporate their beliefs.

What is this new cognitive science of religion? And it is fascinating seeing a Classics professor use anthropology of religion ideas - I suppose it won't be long before xian studies folk catch up.

And what happened to Robin Lane Fox?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pagans-Chris.../dp/0140159894

Xianity really does look like a pagan off shoot.

Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire, Reviewed by Peter Edwell

Toto

The book is searchable on Amazon US and Google Books seems to have the entire text.

The review states that Beck draws comparisons between Mithraism and Christianity in terms of structure and function, but I don't see anything indicating that Christianity was derived from Mithraism.

Mizled

Christianity and Mithraism
Jesus and Mithra

Roger Pearse

I'm afraid that there is a great deal of nonsense online about this subject. Since the cult of Mithras only dates from the mid-first century, according to Manfred Clauss' volume, and the fathers rejection of paganism is something that they were required to die for, the very idea is malevolent nonsense.

(Chris Weimer has pointed out this post in this forum, which gives a lot of specifics).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

From link above. What is this sneering tone in so much xian biased writing about?

The wiki article seems to predate the Beck book I refer to, which explicitly notes Mithras and Sol Invictus are alternate titles - like Jesus and Christ.

There does feel to be a huge amount of propaganda and misinformation from xians in this area - why is it that Churches face East, what exactly happened to Constantine at a certain battle? Didn't he see Jesus in the sun?

What is this continuous refrain about "mystery cults" as if they are eccentric oddities? Mithras worships the sun - Zoroastrainism has fire as a central concept.

Is not catholicism an extremely eccentric - but large and powerful - mystery cult?

Julian as part of his attempt to reinstate the old gods undergoes the Mithraic initiation. It was not just a soldier cult or an imperial cult but a core part of a whole nexus of pagan belief. Xianity grew in this soil and logically looks like a pagan offshoot - methinks the xians protest too much in attempting to differentiate themselves from their obvious pagan and astrological roots.

It is a bit like a pigeon claiming it is not descended from Dinosaurs but mammals!

Solitary Man

Wow, where have we seen this before? Can't properly deal with scholarship, you resort to ad hominem. Walter M. Shandruk, if you actually read the thread, is not at all a Christian. But then again, you have your own theories, why the fuck would you care if you spread these false rumors or not? You're so anti-Christian that you resort to the very tactics of the fundies that you denigrate.

Irony? No, just fucking incompetency.

spin

However, Antiochus I of Commagene was a Mithras worshipper and you can still see a statue of Mithras on top of his mountain (now Nemrut Dag in eastern Turkey). Next door in Cilicia, there were pirates who when taken back to Rome introduced a form of Mithraism. In mid to late 1st c., Mithraea were starting to be built in military camps, such as Caesarea Maritima. Obviously, the mid-first century dating is far too conservative. There is a nice simple trajectory from Parthia to Commagene to Cilicia, the home of Paul, and on to Rome to be disseminated throughout the Roman empire.

Roger, your over-easy dismissal of Mithraism doesn't have much weight. Yes, there's a lot of crap on Mithras on the web, but there are other sources, books and articles.


spin

Roger Pearse

No, he was not. Please keep clear in your mind the difference between Mithras and Mitra.

You then go on to repeat (without reference) some hearsay:

No evidence for this exists. That the Cilician pirates worshipped Mithras relies on a statement of Plutarch that dates to the 2nd century and that Clauss rejects, since the archaeology shows no such thing.

There is no Mithras archaeology from the mid-first century.

Indeed. The only problem is that it isn't true and there is no evidence for it.

I'm afraid that I prefer evidence to "other sources, books and articles."

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

The difficulty with this is that it isn't true. The Sol Invictus cult comes into being in 274 and is a state cult. The Mithras cult originates in Rome in the mid first century and always remains a private mystery religion. The two have no connection.

Note that the *words* sol invictus get used as a title for a range of deities, well before the establishment of the Sol Invictus cult. The list includes Elgabal, Apollo, and Mithras, and probably others. This causes some people serious confusion, when the same words get used for different things. Halsberghe in his dreadful monograph "The cult of Sol Invictus" was thus led to suppose that Elgabal and the cult founded by Aurelian were connected; although the evidence he deployed clearly showed otherwise. Some stupid people read "Mithras Sol Invictus" on an inscription, and, knowing nothing about either, imagine syncretism. Paganism was syncretic, indeed, but not like that.

I've not seen Beck's book, but if he asserts that Mithras was the same as Sol Invictus then it would be most interesting to see the ancient text that supports him.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

What is the difference you can demonstrate?

The problem is that we have both a geographical connection and a time connection provided by the literature. The only reason to doubt the Plutarch report which had no apparent ulterior motive for reproduction is because of the obvious connection it provides.

So the mithraeum at Caesarea Maritima apparently founded during the Jewish war was an archaeological fraud? (See The Mysteries of Mithras: A new account of their genesis, Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 115-28, esp. p.118) (Keep an eye for Beck's book -- from his faculty page.)

For those who don't want to look at the evidence available. It is scanty, but it is not -- as you would like it -- non-existent.

Oh, that's crap, Roger. You just don't want to know about it.

We have to deal with the fact that Mithraism was being disseminated out of Rome by the time of the Jewish war. (Evidence in Germany is from about 80 CE onwards.) That means it needed to take hold a sufficient amount of time before then, making Plutarch's report tenable for time and eminently suitable geographically.


spin