Institutional abuse was "endemic".. - MERGED

philologos

I read your post, it has nothing to do with textual evidence to back up what exactly the beliefs of Mithraists were, but only to do with the dating of buildings. There was also a difference between Persian Mithraism and the Mithraism of Rome. I.E It had been changed.

Saying that there were 700 Mithraea existed in Rome is about as similar as telling me that there were 700 synagogues, or 700 mosques. This isn't evidence for plagiarism.

patrickthomas

I have to say something here right now. I do not want to punish the people who commited these atrocities. I do not want to know who they are, and certainly never meet them.

I want to see them removed from any possibility of ever commiting any crime again.

And I do not mean prison. That will just cost us, the taxpayer more and it has been well documented that there is no rehabilitation for this type of offender. The church has several orders that are isolated and solitary, and they would be better off there, an island comes to mind! that is if they ever joined the church for any religious inclination whatsoever (I do not know)

I want to see them apologise personally to the people they tortured and abused for their crimes, they are the people that there must be restitution made to.
The financial restitution is merely symbolic of what has happened to these people and in no way removes the pain of the crimes that have been commited.

And to be able to walk by a church or any other religious run institution and see kids going in and not have that terrible fear that any one of them could be subjected to psycho-sexual torture and physical abuse ever.

The last is the single most important point,we may elect the wrong leaders, buy into a building cash bubble, but for gods sake can we please be judged as civilised.

I do not have all the answers, but this is not a question of a theological nature as some posters are suggesting, this is a question of a criminal and social nature and of what sort of a people we are.

It sullies theology to bring it into this debate, The Ryan report reads like a Stephen King novel except they are real people and these were real events. We have all met them, sometimes broken and destroyed by drink and drugs, sometimes people we did not like at all, angry at a society that buried them and ignored their pain.

This must change.........................NOW

Sonderval

Have you actually gone off and done any research on the subject, Jakkass, or are you merely mouthing apologists claims? I said check the papers, not my post.

My post was an anthropological and social critique on numbers and probable influence relative to the nascent christians. As part of the thread, it was referencing the size of the Mithraic cult versus the much smaller christian presence at that time.

Looking for textual evidence here is going to be a non-starter, since there is no known textual first hand accounts apart from some possible hymnal in the 4th century.

philologos

Sonderval: If you would link the material so that I could read it for myself it might be a help

Looking for textual evidence here is going to be a non-starter, since there is no known textual first hand accounts apart from some possible hymnal in the 4th century.

That's the problem we have. That's why it is an assumption to assume that Christianity plagiarised from Mithraism rather than the other way around.

Textual evidence is the only way to prove that Christianity plagiarised from Mithraism. The fact that the texts postdate the New Testament renders them effectively useless.