I can’t recall seeing this as a thread anywhere, though I feel it surely has come up at some point, so if it has, I apologize for the redundancy.
Having said that, I’m in search of some folks who know a thing or two about Mithraism. Specifically, I’ve been looking for any primary sources pertaining to Mithra’s relation to Christianity. I quite often hear how its an academic fact that Christians stole certain key tenants from the religion of Mithra, or the Mysteries of Mithra as it is sometime referred, and yet for all the research I’ve done, I haven’t found this to be the case; for instance, with hundreds claiming a virgin birth, I am only ever finding how Mithra was birthed from a rock. Just so no one has to play Sherlock Holmes–yes, I am a Christian. However, the purpose of this thread is moreso for informative desires as opposed to simply opening a broad discussion–though I suppose it might be naive to expect anything less when posting on good ol’ straight dope–but I digress…
So as stated, I’m looking for primary sources. Every site I manage to find that has something to say about comparison between the two religions is extremely lacking in anything of the sort. I’m hoping to avoid more of the same, debate points that simply state that Jesus’ story was jacked from Mithraism. In any way you can, (in a historical manner) prove it to me.
This book talks about it some, in particular its relation to Zoroastrianism.
Also I have to give my regular plug for the history of Rome podcast, which discusses some of the later Roman emperors Mithraism. In particular Elagabalus and Diocletian. He makes the point that many Romans were effectively monotheistic long before Christianity became widespread.
I don’t know much about Mithraism and there’s not much to know. It was a mystery religion and there simply aren’t a lot of primary sources for it.
I don’t think any scholar would say that Christians stole from Mithraism. They might say that they were both born of the same cultural millieu, that they both show some signs of similarities and that sort of thing.
As to Mithra in particular, as I said, I don’t know. I am aware that there were other religions that had “virgin” births, so-to-speak, in that “God” got a woman pregnant and the result was a demigod. Justin Martyr talks about this with regard to Perseus in his dialogue with Trypho (IIRC). Trypho is critical about Christianity because they mistranslated a word, leading to ‘virgin’ instead of ‘young lady’.
You are probably not going to find what you are looking for. Ancient religions may have shared common themes, but outright plagarism seems very rare.
Still, this is a good resource and has plenty of primary material (not necessarily helping your copy-cat thesis).
There’s a lot we don’t know about Mithraism (partly because it was a mystery cult that didn’t write stuff down. The first rule of Mithraism and all that. . .), but one book that I’ve heard is a good overview is Manfred Clauss’s “The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries”, and for a more in depth look, Roger Beek’s “The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire”.
But basically, I don’t think there are many academics any more who think that there are close ties between Mithraism and Christianity, other than that they both developed around the same time.
As you can see, it’s not directly plagarized nor is it a one-to-one copy. In fact, IIRC, the whole ‘cure the blind with spit’ motif goes back to ancient Egypt.
I’ve heard plenty of theories regarding Christianity borrowing from other religions, but not Mithrasism. Mithrasism took off contemporaneously with Christianity, and as a mystery religion catering to soldiers and the higher classes, I doubt there would be a lot of opportunity for much cross-pollination in the early days of Christianity. And as others have said, even if Christianity did copy Mitrasism, we probably wouldn’t know about it, since we don’t know much about the ancient religion other then his killing bulls was a big deal.
I think the OP is getting Mithrasism confused with statements about other ancient religions.
Broad answer: in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were some honest scholars who took seriously the idea that the gospels accounts were heavily ripped off from myths of various Pagan deities, of whom Mithras was only one. Today you’d be hard-pressed to find any real scholar in the fields of Bible study, mythology, or ancient history who takes those claims seriously. There are still plenty of internet sites promoting the thesis, but, as it seems you’ve already found, they can’t back it up with real and up-to-date scholarship.
In most cases, it simply turned out that the scholars promoting the copycat hypothesis had stretched the facts in order to make the pagan myths appear more like the gospels than they actually were. For example, the common web version claims that Mithras had twelve disciples. In fact, there’s no record that Mithras had any disciples; the notion originated from a relief in a Mithraic Temple showing Mithras surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, and how we’re supposed to get from there to twelve disciples is not clear.
Of course, there’s also Frazier and Campbell who disagree with your apologetic’s erroneous claims. I think it’s safe to dismiss tektonics as anything close to serious research. It’s just plain witnessing.
I can’t comment on whether Tektonics as a site is crap or not, but I will say that, while both Frazer and Campbell are pretty widely respected, a lot of their theories are maybe out of date and not necessarily in the current mainstream when it comes to anthropological studies of myth.
I would say that Tektonics is not the best source to go to - JP Holding isn’t a serious scholar.
That said, I do agree with you with respect to Frazer and Campbell. I also would say that, broadly speaking, the whole copy cat Christ thing is not the consensus of scholars.
I say go to the primary sources and draw your own conclusions. I linked to the “Pagan Origins of Christ” which is a good starting point because the author links/quotes from respected scholars AND primary material. Use it to figure out the material and then draw your own conclusions, basically…
Not quite. A main drive I had to post this was because today is the second time I’ve heard a tenured professor make the claim that Mithras was born of a virgin, died, and was resurrected after three days, had twelve disciples, etc. etc.
But many thanks to any and all posters, the info is always appreciated.
As far as I know, the consensus among scholars about the origin story of Mithras is that he sprang out of a rock. I think the only thing we’re really sure of with the Roman legend is that he was born from a rock, had two torchbearers named Cautes and Cautopates, shot a rock with a bow and arrow and made water come out of it, hunted, rode, and then killed a bull with the help of a raven, a dog, a snake, a scorpion and some wheat, then shared the bull with the Sun, then went to heaven in a chariot.