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religion · Shared topic · Revision 0

What Was Mithraism, and Did It Influence Christianity?

What Was Mithraism, and Did It Influence Christianity?

Starting explanation, not independently reviewed

The current answer

A bull-slaying god in underground temples, and the December-25 myth that won't die.

What remains uncertain

This starting summary presents the original essay’s position. It has not received independent topic review. Its citations have been imported, not checked. Competing explanations and important objections may still be missing.

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Claims & evidence

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Roman Mithraism appears suddenly in the archaeological record in the late 1st century CE and spread along the empire's frontiers: especially among soldiers, freedmen, and officials.

Imported citation, not independently checked: M. Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras (2000)

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The cult was male-only and secretive; its "scripture," such as it was, may have been the imagery itself, a system Beck reads as a coded star-map.

Imported citation, not independently checked: R. Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire (2006)

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No ancient source records any birthday for Mithras, let alone December 25.

Imported citation, not independently checked: M. Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras (2000)

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Christianity and Mithraism were contemporaries competing in the same Roman religious marketplace, and the resemblances are mostly the shared furniture of late antiquity, not a chain of copying.

Imported citation, not independently checked: M. Clauss (2000); B. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God (2014)

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