religion · Shared topic · Revision 0

What Was Mithraism, and Did It Influence Christianity?

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The current answer

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

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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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