Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Jayhawker Soule · 01-23-2002, 06:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Anunnaki:
2.) Mithraism copied Christianity?
This is just nut`s and I`m going to have to bite my tongue here before I say what we are probably all thinking.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]

Maybe not so nuts. I can find an inordinant number of sites asserting a Mithraic souces for some/much of Christianity, but I find zero scholarship backing up these assertions. As an atheist, I truly wish that this was not the case, and I would be delighted to be proven wrong ...

Quote:

"The only dated Mithraic inscriptions from the pre-Christian period are the texts of Antiochus I of Commagene (69-34 B.C.) in eastern Asia Minor. After that there is one text possibly from the first century A.D., from Cappadocia, one from Phrygia dated to A.D. 77-78, and one from Rome dated to Trajan's reign (A.D. 98-117). All other dated Mithraic inscriptions and monuments belong to the second century (after A.D. 140), the third, and the fourth century A.D. (M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae, 1956)."
- Edwin M. Yamauchid, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?"

Quote:

"The flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything that appears in the New Testament. Moreover, no monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100, and even this dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions. Chronological difficulties, then, make the possibility of a Mithraic influence on early Christianity extremely improbable. Certainly, there remains no credible evidence for such an influence."
- Dr. Ronald H. Nash, "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"

I also found the following (rather long) link worth reading ...

<a href="http://www.webcom.com/ctt/copycat.html" target="_blank">Good question......was Jesus Christ just a CopyCat Savior Myth?</a>

Asha'man · 01-23-2002, 06:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Metacrock: 
That is among the basic facts never deneied or changed in houndreds of documents.

Consistency of the Christian story is not convincing to me at all. What year was Mark written in, somewhere around 60 or so? All the scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke had read Mark. Everything else was written after the story of Mark had been circulating. Do they all agree on some issues? Sure, they are all just copies and retellings and embellishments of the same story. If you copy a document a thousand times, I would expect it to say the same thing a thousand times.

The problem is that the author of Mark could have altered or invented the story. Not a lot of people knew the story at that time, and time had dulled the memory of the few who had heard rumors. The people who knew the real story could be discredited or coerced into following the new party line.

There are no known writings earlier than Mark that support his story. Paul didn�t seem to know the details of the story, or at least didn�t write them down. The few statements he did make are vague at best, and a plain reading of the �whom ye slew and hung in a tree� verse sounds more like a Jewish stoning than a Roman crucifixion.

The motivation to change the story is crystal clear: Crucifixion sells better. If you are preaching to gentiles, they don�t really care about some poor bastard that the Sanhedrin dealt with. On the other hand, every gentile in the land lived with some fear of crucifixion, and might show sympathy for someone killed in this manner. Look at who was using this story: evangelical preachers. Do you think they didn�t know what messages worked with their audience? Do you think they were too scrupulously honest to change the story to one that worked better? Have you ever listened to the nonsense spouted by a modern evangelical preacher when he gets really lathered up?

Jayhawker Soule · 01-23-2002, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by turtonm:

There is no real evidence for a Persian Cult of Mirthras. The cultic and mystery aspect did not exist until after the Roman period, second century to fourth. This means that any similarities to Christianity probably come from Christiantiy as the Soldiers learned of it during their tours in Palestine. The Great historian of religions, Franz Cumont was able to prove that the earliest datable evidence for the cult came from the Military Garrison at Carnuntum, on the Danube River (moern Hungary). The largest Cache of Mithric artifacts comes form the area between the Danube and Ostia in Italy. (Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1903), 87ff.)

Quoting Cumont from 1903 is not really a good strategy. We know that Mithraism predates Christianity.

From David Ulansey's wonderful article
<a href="http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html" target="_blank">http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html</a>
"For most of the twentieth century it has been assumed that Mithraism was imported from Iran, and that Mithraic iconography must therefore represent ideas drawn from ancient Iranian mythology. The reason for this is that the name of the god worshipped in the cult, Mithras, is a Greek and Latin form of the name of an ancient Iranian god, Mithra; in addition, Roman authors themselves expressed a belief that the cult was Iranian in origin. At the end of the nineteenth century Franz Cumont, the great Belgian historian of ancient religion, published a magisterial two- volume work on the Mithraic mysteries based on the assumption of the Iranian origins of the cult. Cumont's work immediately became accepted as the definitive study of the cult, and remained virtually unchallenged for over seventy years."

Ulansey says that the oldest physical remains are late first century, which, combined with Pliny's clear attribution of the cult to the first century BCE, shows that mithraism predates Christianity.

Michael

To be somewhat less selective, it might be worthwhile to quote the following, also from "David Ulansey's wonderful article" ...

Quote:

There were, however, a number of serious problems with Cumont's assumption that the Mithraic mysteries derived from ancient Iranian religion. Most significant among these is that there is no parallel in ancient Iran to the iconography which is the primary fact of the Roman Mithraic cult. For example, as already mentioned, by far the most important icon in the Roman cult was the tauroctony. This scene shows Mithras in the act of killing a bull, accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, and a scorpion; the scene is depicted as taking place inside a cave like the mithraeum itself. This icon was located in the most important place in every mithraeum, and therefore must have been an expression of the central myth of the Roman cult. Thus, if the god Mithras of the Roman religion was actually the Iranian god Mithra, we should expect to find in Iranian mythology a story in which Mithra kills a bull. However, the fact is that no such Iranian myth exists: in no known Iranian text does Mithra have anything to do with killing a bull.

Asha'man · 01-23-2002, 06:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Metacrock: 
Meta =>Right so just in that one little space when Jesus lived the Jews did all their own exicusions and before and after that time they didn't?

One little space in time? Maybe you had better look at your sources again. The Sanhedrin had been carrying out executions for as long as they existed. Stoning and hanging the corpse on a tree was long established as a form of execution. Check out Joshua 8:29 and Esther 2:23.

Josephus documents an incident in the year 48BCE. Herod, then governor of Galilee, executed some bandits without giving them a fair trial before the Sanhedrin. The Jews raised a really big stink, and called for Herod to stand trial for murder. (Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIV, 9:3-5.) Clearly, the Jews had the right to enforce capital punishment, and were very protective of that right, even when under Roman authority.

I�m being very careful to provide references for you, Metacrock. As a historian with access to a good library, please check them out. Don�t just dismiss them because you think they are absurd.

Anunnaki · 01-23-2002, 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt:


I also found the following (rather long) link worth reading ...

<a href="http://www.webcom.com/ctt/copycat.html" target="_blank">Good question......was Jesus Christ just a CopyCat Savior Myth?</a>

I don`t trust anything that states "When one glups together the diverse characteristics of a dozen deities, one is bound to come up with overlap with the true God!". Theres a few other things on that page that stink of apologetics not to mention the site itself is called Christian Thinktank.
It looks just like the kind of stuff that gets pulled up using metacrocks Jesus powered search engine.

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]

GunnerJ · 01-23-2002, 07:45 AM

Quote:

Duh, really? Kind of like the Christ mythers themselves hu?

Um, no. This is yet another weak straw man. Sorry, Meta, but 19 points on a 22-point scale don't count as "taking a few points and ignoring the ones that don't fit."

However, taking the 3 out of 22 that JFK got and proping them up like some kind of refutation is.

Quote:

I don't care! You see how I reduced their stupid list, most of the things on it didn't apply anyway. You get the general idea.

Actually, most of your "reductions" were as ham-handed as your JFK straw man. The "general idea" I get is that you are a dishonest pseudo-scholar using any misdirections you can to score rhetorical points.

Jayhawker Soule · 01-23-2002, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Anunnaki:


Theres a few other things on that page that stink of apologetics not to mention the site itself is called Christian Thinktank.
It looks just like the kind of stuff that gets pulled up using metacrocks Jesus powered search engine.

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]

Those bastards! How dare the Christians have a Thinktank.

As for "using metacrocks Jesus powered search engine", I was actually using Google.

Now that we have all of that stuff out of the way, I would still like to know what current scholarship asserts a Mithraic source for elements of Christianity. Feel free to use an atheist-powered search engine if you have one. If not, I've always found Google to be pretty good (unless, of course, you now consider it tainted).

GunnerJ · 01-23-2002, 07:50 AM

ReasonableDoubt- When you say that you don't think Mithra was the prototype for Christ, is this because it wasn't popular in Rome before the formation of the Gospels, or because it didn't exist at all before then?

Jayhawker Soule · 01-23-2002, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
ReasonableDoubt- When you say that you don't think Mithra was the prototype for Christ, is this because it wasn't popular in Rome before the formation of the Gospels, or because it didn't exist at all before then?

I never said that. I've simple indicated that, in my opinion, those who do assert that Mithra was the prototype for Christ as if it were a well established fact need to do a better job establishing it as factual.

GunnerJ · 01-23-2002, 08:50 AM

Quote:

I never said that. I've simple indicated that, in my opinion, those who do assert that Mithra was the prototype for Christ as if it were a well established fact need to do a better job establishing it as factual.

OK, sorry for getting the wrong impression. But do you know when the Mithraic religion started, and where, off hand? I'm just interested is all.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

01-23-2002, 07:50 AM	#98
GunnerJ Banned Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: a place where i can list whatever location i want Posts: 4,871	ReasonableDoubt- When you say that you don't think Mithra was the prototype for Christ, is this because it wasn't popular in Rome before the formation of the Gospels, or because it didn't exist at all before then?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.