Comparitive Religions

Tzetze · 13-09-2007 8:39pm #1

I've been looking into the similarities between earlier religions/gods and christianity/Jesus. Horus and Mithra were already mentioned, so I looked at Attis and came across a copy of The Golden Bough online.

bartleby.com wrote:

A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.

Wiki goes on to list much modern literature and film that makes reference to this book, including Yeats, Jim Morrisson, T.S. Eliot, Stephen King, Apocalypse Now, etc. I've not come across it before and am looking forward to getting stuck into it. Anyone read it? What were your thoughts on it?

Scofflaw · 13-09-2007 10:11pm

Tzetze wrote:

I've been looking into the similarities between earlier religions/gods and christianity/Jesus. Horus and Mithra were already mentioned, so I looked at Attis and came across a copy of The Golden Bough online.

Wiki goes on to list much modern literature and film that makes reference to this book, including Yeats, Jim Morrisson, T.S. Eliot, Stephen King, Apocalypse Now, etc. I've not come across it before and am looking forward to getting stuck into it. Anyone read it? What were your thoughts on it?

The critical judgement of it is that it is a very fine work of poetry, and a very poor work of scholarship - the Bible of New Agers, if you like. However, it is well worth reading, and is, in any case, a sort of rite of passage in comparative religion.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Sapien · 14-09-2007 4:07am

Tzetze wrote:

I've been looking into the similarities between earlier religions/gods and christianity/Jesus. Horus and Mithra were already mentioned, so I looked at Attis and came across a copy of The Golden Bough online.

Wiki goes on to list much modern literature and film that makes reference to this book, including Yeats, Jim Morrisson, T.S. Eliot, Stephen King, Apocalypse Now, etc. I've not come across it before and am looking forward to getting stuck into it. Anyone read it? What were your thoughts on it?

So, is this a thread about Frazer's Golden Bough, the discipline of comparative religions, or the thematic antecedents of Christianity?

In the case of the first - as Scofflaw says, it is a flawed but inspired work. In the second case - a great deal more is to be learned from studying that which religions share than from any religion individually. In the case of the third - Sol Invictus is deeply wounding to the idea that Christianity is unique or authentic, and there is not a single aspect of Christianity that was not thoroughly gazumped by an older religion or philosophical school.

PDN · 14-09-2007 12:53pm

Sapien wrote:

Sol Invictus is deeply wounding to the idea that Christianity is unique or authentic

How so?

My understanding is that the Roman cult of Sol Invictus did not fully develop until the second or third centuries after Christ.

Sol Invictus developed from Mithraism. Here is a quote from Wikipedia (not infallible, I admit):

In every Mithraic temple, the place of honor was occupied by a representation of Mithras killing a sacred bull which was associated with spring, called a tauroctony. In the depiction, Mithras, wearing a Phrygian cap and pants, slays the bull from above while (usually) looking away. A serpent that symbolizes the earth and a dog seems to drink from the bull's open wound (which often spills blood but occasionally grain), and a scorpion (sign for autumn) attacks the bull's testicles sapping the bull for strength. Sometimes, a raven or crow is also present, and sometimes also a goblet and small lion. Cautes and Cautopates, the celestial twins of light and darkness, are torch-bearers, standing on either side with their legs crossed, Cautes with his brand pointing up and Cautopates with his turned down. Above Mithras, the symbols for Sol and Luna are present in the starry night sky.

The scene seems to be astrological in nature. It has been proposed by David Ulansey that the tauroctony is a symbolic representation of the constellations rather than an originally Iranian animal sacrifice scene with Iranian precedents.[4] The bull is Taurus, the snake Hydra, the dog Canis Major or Minor, the crow or raven Corvus, the goblet Crater, the lion Leo, and the wheat-blood for the star Spica. The torch-bearers may represent the two equinoxes, although this is less clear. Mithras himself could also be associated with Perseus, whose constellation is above that of the bull.

Yes, I can how damaging this is to Christianity's claims of uniqueness. I am shocked and disillusioned. I had always thought that the statue that stands in the foyer of my church, portraying a scorpion savaging a bull's nuts, was an authentic Christian symbol handed to us by Jesus Christ himself :rolleyes:

Wikipedia wrote:

That (worship of) Mithras had a direct influence on Roman Christianity is an occasionally postulated but academically unsupported notion

Scofflaw · 14-09-2007 1:28pm

In any case, similarities between religions can never disprove religion to a believer. The believer knows that their religion, their story, is a Truth - to find echoes of it, distorted and incomplete, in other religions is therefore hardly surprising, and constitutes further evidence of the correctness of their faith.

Of course, religions, and parts of religion, that contain no reflection of one's own preferred religion are clearly delusions and lies...

cordially,
Scofflaw

robindch · 14-09-2007 1:44pm

pdn wrote:

My understanding is that the Roman cult of Sol Invictus did not fully develop until the second or third centuries after Christ.

Nobody's quite sure when exactly it developed, since it was mystic cult, depending upon mouth-to-mouth transmission rather than documentation. What little was produced was reduced still further by the christian suppression of Mithraism and other false religions. It seems to be generally accepted that Mithraism was flourishing by the first century, and attained its greatest popularity during the 3rd and 4th centuries during which, amongst others, Constantine was Chief High Priest of the cult. As Sol Invictus acquired characteristics from Mithraism, so too it seems did Mithraism acquire many of the characteristics of Zoroastraism, as did christianity.

The article on the Catholic Encyclopedia -- the Conservapedia of its day, one assumes -- has an interesting section on Mithraism and its relation to christianity here:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm

...which is interesting for its failure to address the matter of the topic. And the CE writer can't help himself but slip in a quiveringly self-righteous rant when he's discussing exactly how bogus is the Mithraic liturgy:

Catholic Encyclopedia wrote:

If, however, Dieterich's Mithras's liturgy be really a liturgy of this sect, as he ably maintains, its liturgy can only strike us as a mixture of bombast and charlatanism in which the mystes has to hold his sides, and roar to the utmost of his power till he is exhausted, to whistle, smack his lips, and pronounce barbaric agglomerations of syllables as the different mystic signs for the heavens and the constellations are unveiled to him.

Great stuff!

Tzetze · 14-09-2007 2:28pm

Scofflaw wrote:

The critical judgement of it is that it is a very fine work of poetry, and a very poor work of scholarship - the Bible of New Agers, if you like. However, it is well worth reading, and is, in any case, a sort of rite of passage in comparative religion.

Thankyou Scofflaw, your comment has piqued my interest even more.

Sapien wrote:

So, is this a thread about Frazer's Golden Bough, the discipline of comparative religions, or the thematic antecedents of Christianity?

In the case of the first - as Scofflaw says, it is a flawed but inspired work. In the second case - a great deal more is to be learned from studying that which religions share than from any religion individually. In the case of the third - Sol Invictus is deeply wounding to the idea that Christianity is unique or authentic, and there is not a single aspect of Christianity that was not thoroughly gazumped by an older religion or philosophical school.

Initially, the post wasn't a thread at all, but was as a reply to your post in the other thread concerning Mithra and Sol Invictus. Perhaps ‘reply’ is too strong a word, which would be why someone (BC?) deemed it worth of it's own thread, but it was intended as an addition to the antecedents of Christianity. So yes, I agree from what I've read of other religions so far, to the casual observer Christianity appears to be a hodgepodge of many earlier religions and concepts of solar deity worship. Couldn't agree more with you on your second point either.

PDN wrote:

Yes, I can how damaging this is to Christianity's claims of uniqueness. I am shocked and disillusioned. I had always thought that the statue that stands in the foyer of my church, portraying a scorpion savaging a bull's nuts, was an authentic Christian symbol handed to us by Jesus Christ himself

‘Payam Nabarz, a Persian-born Sufi and practicing Dervish, holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University and is carrying out postdoctoral research there on genetics and cancer.’

Payam Nabaraz, Originally published at Lughnasa 1999 wrote:

Roman Mithras was perhaps the greatest rival to early Christianity for many reasons. As well as being a popular pagan religion practised by the Roman Army, Mithraism had many similarities to Christianity. Mithras was born of a virgin, remained celibate, his worship involving baptism, the partaking of bread marked with a cross and wine as sacrificial blood, held Sundays sacred and Mithras was born on 25th of December. Mithraist called themselves 'brother' and were led by a priest called 'father' (Pater). The symbol of the father were a staff, a hooked sword, a ring and hat.

These similarities frightened the early Christian leaders - that almost 500 years before arrival of Christ all of the Christian mysteries were already known. To combat this, Christian witters said that the Devil knew of the coming of Christ in advance and had imitated them before they existed in order to denigrate them. As Christianity gained strength and became the formal religion of the Roman Empire, the 'Cult of Mithras' was one of the first pagan cults to come under attack in the fifth century; Temples of Mithras, like most other pagan Temples, were destroyed and Churches build on them.

link to above quote source

Talliesin · 14-09-2007 3:01pm

Tzetze wrote:

The Golden Bough

Want to read an interesting theory? Read the Golden Bough.

Want to read a respected anthropological theory? Don't read the Golden Bough.

Frazer is of considerable historical importance to the field of anthropology but his actual findings are not considered seriously and haven't been for a long time.

Richard Dawkins seemed to take it seriously in his last book; another reason for his fellow Atheists to be embarrassed by him (esp. after the number of times Atheists have over-played the respect it has by some Pagans to brush all Pagans as therefore credulous), but what do you expect if you put theology in the hands of a geneticist*?

Still, it does remain an interesting and inspiring book, but not to be taken literally.

* Though Darwin and Mendel both trained in theology, so I suppose there's an ironic value in this happening if nothing else.

Zombrex · 14-09-2007 3:05pm

People seem to be ignoring the fact that Christianity "ripped off" Judaism. Christianity isn't a unique religion, not by a long shot.

Its kinda like me writing a 8th Harry Potter book and everyone trying to prove that I ripped off Enid Blyton, ignoring the point that I'm obviously blatantly ripping off J.K Rowling.

Some Jews can get quite worked up about this subject, as they see Christianity as a rather poor, albeit successful, attempt of hijacking their religion (the Jews say that Christians have a lot of the prophecy stuff wrong, saying that Jesus didn't even do what the messiah was supposed to do)

Sapien · 14-09-2007 3:51pm

PDN wrote:

How so?

My understanding is that the Roman cult of Sol Invictus did not fully develop until the second or third centuries after Christ.

That depends on when, and indeed if, Christ lived. I am not inclined to accept that it is at all certain he did, and I certainly see no reason to believe he existed in the time-frame convention has arrived at.

There were in fact a number of versions of Sol Invictus, only the later of these revering Mithras - though, as robin says, Mithraism had been flourishing in Rome for some centuries.

PDN wrote:

Sol Invictus developed from Mithraism. Here is a quote from Wikipedia (not infallible, I admit):
[...]
Yes, I can how damaging this is to Christianity's claims of uniqueness. I am shocked and disillusioned. I had always thought that the statue that stands in the foyer of my church, portraying a scorpion savaging a bull's nuts, was an authentic Christian symbol handed to us by Jesus Christ himself :rolleyes:

Let me show you how it appears from an objective, non-religious point of view. I'll stick purely to facts for now, and look at it on the scale of an Empire and its prevalent religions.

Mithraism begins to flourish among the poor and soldiering families of the Roman Empire around the beginning of the first century CE, in one of a long succession of deistic fads and cultic imports into the Roman Empire from its outer territories. In this case it was Syrian Mithraic sun worship - the religion of kings in Anatolia for centuries - a mature religion rooted in Zoroastrianism, and Vedic myth before that.

Mithras of old is the only son, by virgin birth, of the benign, all-powerful creator God. He was born in a cave on the 25th December, when he was attended by shepherds. He was called the Logos, and, like the Sun he represented, he died and was reborn for the sake of mankind. Sunday was his holy day.

His initiates were promised eternal life, and celebrated a eucharistic "last supper", eating bread and wine representing his flesh and blood. These were officiated by "fathers", and the chief of fathers, the Pater Patratus, lived in Rome, where he celebrated the highest sacrament of the faith on the Vatican Hill.

By the time of Constantine, Mithraic Sol Invictus was the largest cult in Rome. It was not a state religion, but the Emperor was High Priest, and virtually all soldiers were followers. Around this time an apocalyptic sect worshipping a divine Jewish Messiah was growing in popularity, since persecution of it had been illegalised. It had developed surreptitiously amidst the other cults of the day, including Mithraism, but also the Cybele cult who worshipped the Phrygian resurrection god, Attis, and had by this time absorbed a lot of customs and doctrines from them.

Constantine, High Priest of Sol Invictus, probably quietly Christian since childhood, publicly announces his favour a short time after persecution of Christianity had been prohibited, and begins the process of establishing Christianity as the Imperial religion. However, the changes the people of Rome are expected to make aren't as drastic as one might expect. In fact, one might hardly have noticed. The same rituals, the same feasts, the same holy day, the same buildings, and a mythology which, to the unstudied adherent, would seem, well, the same. Had Constantine decided to establish Sol Invictus as the state religion, the results would be different in very few ways.

Now inference.

It seems obvious that the sojourn of Christianity in Rome had seen a great deal of syncretistic drift and cross-pollination of ideas. And, more importantly, the syncretistic synthesis of Christianity and Mithraism in the person and attitudes of Constantine seems to have been significant. Mithraism per se was denounced in Constantine's lifetime, and persecuted later, but Sol Invictus itself seems simply to have vanished, or rather, been resurfaced.

The resulting religion could be said to have two layers. One, scholarly and theological, its evolution can be traced through the scriptures, epistles, councils and heresies of early Christians since Christianity appeared in Palestine in the mid first century. The other, public and quotidian, concerning the involvement of the ordinary follower and the ouward ritualistic manifestations of the faith, can also be traced back, but not to Christianity.

PDN · 14-09-2007 8:10pm

I'm interested that 2 posters have mentioned the 25th of December. Indeed Payan Nabaraz, in a shocking anachronism, cites this as a similarity that disturbed early Christians. (Which causes me to have doubts about the accuracy of much else that he says)

The early Christians would never have entertained the notion of Christ being born on the 25th of December. They knew fine well that he was born in October. The idea of Christ being born in December has never been part of Christian doctrine. Anyone with the slightest smattering of knowledge of Church History knows that this was one of the pagan traditions adapted by the church when western Christianity was hijacked by Constantine.

Zombrex · 14-09-2007 9:00pm

PDN wrote:

I'm interested that 2 posters have mentioned the 25th of December. Indeed Payan Nabaraz, in a shocking anachronism, cites this as a similarity that disturbed early Christians. (Which causes me to have doubts about the accuracy of much else that he says)

The early Christians would never have entertained the notion of Christ being born on the 25th of December. They knew fine well that he was born in October. The idea of Christ being born in December has never been part of Christian doctrine. Anyone with the slightest smattering of knowledge of Church History knows that this was one of the pagan traditions adapted by the church when western Christianity was hijacked by Constantine.

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is that early Christians told potential converts, particularly Romans, that Jesus' birth was to be celebrated on Jan 6th (different than saying he was born then) as a way of impressing them as to his significance, since that date was already associated with supernatural power. When the church was adopted by the Empire this date was moved to the 25th Dec, but some churches held stead fast to the original date.

Of course a lot of other early Christians refused to celebrate the birth at all, believing birthdays to be something that pagans did for their Gods, and that Christians should not lower themselves to celebrating an arbitrary date. This still seems to be common with the more traditionalist Protestant churches, that see Christmas as have little significance at all.

Asiaprod · 15-09-2007 3:36am

This is a really interesting thread, particularly enjoyed Sapiens post.
I was just wondering. I know that there are a hundred things that we can point to in Christianity that we can say originated/were taken from other comparative paths, but is there anything in Christianity that is totally original and not to be found anywhere else.

robindch · 15-09-2007 9:57am

AsiaProd wrote:

is there anything in Christianity that is totally original and not to be found anywhere else.

Within the well-written parts of the NT, I believe the first bit of John's gospel, the "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with god and the Word was god" bit, is original with christianity. The idea is that "Logos" ("word") was an integral part of the deity, but it's "Logos" within the specific Greek philosophical sense of reason, or knowledge. See the exhaustive and exhausting entry IV.1 in Liddell and Scott here (it takes a while to load):

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2363773

The original Greek tries to anchor the deity within a rational framework and as the source of rational reasoning and knowledge -- a useful and honest deity which fits into the Greek philosophical world that was current at the time when John was writing and with which John was clearly familiar. This rational deity existed in contradistinction to the capricious and irrational deity of the OT and fits rather better with those parts of the gospels which promote the idea of a god of love. The common English translation of "logos" as "word" is inaccurate to the point of being completely misleading -- the "word of god" is not the text of the bible, at least, not in the original Greek.

I'm sure there are plenty of original ideas, or at least images, in the other John's Revelation, but these are so rambling and incoherent that it's really impossible to establish exactly what he was talking about at all (though it's quite easy to take a post-hoc view and anchor it convincingly on what John wrote).

.

PDN · 15-09-2007 1:39pm

Wicknight wrote:

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is that early Christians told potential converts, particularly Romans, that Jesus' birth was to be celebrated on Jan 6th (different than saying he was born then) as a way of impressing them as to his significance, since that date was already associated with supernatural power. When the church was adopted by the Empire this date was moved to the 25th Dec, but some churches held stead fast to the original date.

Can you quote any source to support your view that 6th Jan was associated with supernatural power before Christianity?

PDN · 15-09-2007 2:41pm

Sapien wrote:

Let me show you how it appears from an objective, non-religious point of view. I'll stick purely to facts for now, and look at it on the scale of an Empire and its prevalent religions.

Mithraism begins to flourish among the poor and soldiering families of the Roman Empire around the beginning of the first century CE, in one of a long succession of deistic fads and cultic imports into the Roman Empire from its outer territories. In this case it was Syrian Mithraic sun worship - the religion of kings in Anatolia for centuries - a mature religion rooted in Zoroastrianism, and Vedic myth before that.

Mithras of old is the only son, by virgin birth, of the benign, all-powerful creator God. He was born in a cave on the 25th December, when he was attended by shepherds. He was called the Logos, and, like the Sun he represented, he died and was reborn for the sake of mankind. Sunday was his holy day.

His initiates were promised eternal life, and celebrated a eucharistic "last supper", eating bread and wine representing his flesh and blood. These were officiated by "fathers", and the chief of fathers, the Pater Patratus, lived in Rome, where he celebrated the highest sacrament of the faith on the Vatican Hill.

Hmmm, 'objective' & 'sticking purely to the facts' but leaving out anything that does not suit your argument. Also, the 'facts' you present are pretty skewed, so hardly objective. Let's look at these facts:

Mithras of old is the only son, by virgin birth, of the benign, all-powerful creator God.

If, by 'virgin birth' you mean that he had no father, then this would be a fact. Unfortunately, as most of us use the English language, the phrase 'virgin birth' means born of a woman who was a virgin. Mithras had neither a mother nor a father. In fact he emerged as a fully formed adult from a large rock. So, to assert that Mithras was born 'by virgin birth', as if this constitutes some kind of parallel with Jesus, is neither objective nor sticking to the facts.

He was born in a cave on the 25th December

As I have already stated in a previous post, this is no parallel with Christianity as Christianity has never pretended that Jesus was born on 25th December. This was indeed adopted from Sol Invictus by Constantine in the 4th Century. While it made a convenient date on which to celebrate Christ's birth, it has never been part of Christian belief.

he was attended by shepherds.

Really? Yet Mithra emerged from the rock prior to the creation of the first humans. The first known reference to these shepherds occurs 100 years after the Gospels were written. Therefore any competent historian would conclude that it is far more likely that Mithraism borrowed the shepherds from Christianity rather than vice versa.

He was called the Logos

Again, there is no reference to this in any Mithraist material until after the rise of Christianity.

like the Sun he represented, he died and was reborn for the sake of mankind.

No he didn't. He killed a great bull for the cause of world peace. Historians have thoroughly debunked the notion that Mithraists believed Mithra himself to be that great bull.

Sunday was his holy day.

Not in the Iranian version of Mithraism it wasn't. Only in the Roman version, and that only after the rise of Christianity.

His initiates were promised eternal life, and celebrated a eucharistic "last supper", eating bread and wine representing his flesh and blood.

The closest thing that Mithraism had to a "Last Supper" was the taking of staples (bread, water, wine and meat) by the Mithraic initiates, which was perhaps a celebration of the meal that Mithra had with the sun deity after slaying the bull. However, the meal of the initiates is usually seen as no more than a general fellowship meal of the sort that was practiced by groups all over the Roman world - from religious groups to funereal societies. The earliest reference to a Mithraist eucharistic meal occurs in medieval times!

These were officiated by "fathers", and the chief of fathers, the Pater Patratus, lived in Rome, where he celebrated the highest sacrament of the faith on the Vatican Hill

This would indicate a parallel with Roman Catholicism, hardly suprising to the rest of us in other forms of Christianity.

It's fun sticking purely to the facts and being objective, isn't it?

The Mad Hatter · 15-09-2007 3:31pm

PDN wrote:

Can you quote any source to support your view that 6th Jan was associated with supernatural power before Christianity?

I know Wikipedia isn't much of a source, but

Zvaigznes ("day of star") or Pagānu Svētdiena ("holy day of pagans") was a festival held on January 6. Three pointed apple cakes were eaten. If a dog was heard barking, the direction was said to also be that person's future spouse. Weaving and wood-cutting was bad luck. A sunny enough day (warmed up the horse's backs) signified a year without war. After Christianization, Zvaigznes Diena became Trīs Kungu Diena ("three king's day"). The three kings refer to Caspar, Melchioru and Belceru. The initials "KMB" were carved on doors so that they would bless the house. Gypsies painted six-cornered stars on their foreheads. A clear night signified a good season.

That's just in Latvian mythology, by the way, but I'm sure someone could find more if they looked a bit harder than I did.

Tzetze · 15-09-2007 3:59pm

PDN wrote:

If, by 'virgin birth' you mean that he had no father, then this would be a fact. Unfortunately, as most of us use the English language, the phrase 'virgin birth' means born of a woman who was a virgin. Mithras had neither a mother nor a father. In fact he emerged as a fully formed adult from a large rock. So, to assert that Mithras was born 'by virgin birth', as if this constitutes some kind of parallel with Jesus, is neither objective nor sticking to the facts.

Mithras and Mithraism

According to Persian traditions, the god Mithras was actually incarnated into the human form of the Saviour expected by Zarathustra. Mithras was born of Anahita, an immaculate virgin mother once worshipped as a fertility goddess before the hierarchical reformation. Anahita was said to have conceived the Saviour from the seed of Zarathustra preserved in the waters of Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan. Mithra's ascension to heaven was said to have occurred in 208 B.C., 64 years after his birth. This birth took place in a cave or grotto, where shepherds attended him and regaled him with gifts, at the winter solstice. This is based on a older myth about birth of Mithra, that his magical birth at the dawn of time was from a rock from which he formed himself using his Will. He holds in his hand a dagger and a torch. A statue from Housesteads shows Mithras being born from the rock while the twelve signs of the zodiac surround him, showing his image as a stellar god who rules the cosmos even at his birth. A serpent sometimes shown to be coiled around of the Mithras or birth stone/egg.

Although the virgin birth myth is based around the earlier self-willed rock myth, it shows the ‘immaculate’ conception and birth to date around 272 B.C., which would predate that of Jesus. I guess what's still needed here is evidence of the earliest mentioning of either virgin birth story before we really know whether the chicken or the egg actually came first.

Sapien · 15-09-2007 6:38pm

PDN wrote:

If, by 'virgin birth' you mean that he had no father, then this would be a fact. Unfortunately, as most of us use the English language, the phrase 'virgin birth' means born of a woman who was a virgin. Mithras had neither a mother nor a father. In fact he emerged as a fully formed adult from a large rock. So, to assert that Mithras was born 'by virgin birth', as if this constitutes some kind of parallel with Jesus, is neither objective nor sticking to the facts.

Now who's being selective with facts? Yes, there are versions of the Mithra birth story that describe him springing autochthonously from cave rock. However, in Iran - from whence the Sol Invictus Mithraism came - the preferred idea was that he was born of virginal woman. And, before you attempt to switch causality, there are references to Mithra's virgin mother from at least 200 BCE.

PDN wrote:

As I have already stated in a previous post, this is no parallel with Christianity as Christianity has never pretended that Jesus was born on 25th December. This was indeed adopted from Sol Invictus by Constantine in the 4th Century. While it made a convenient date on which to celebrate Christ's birth, it has never been part of Christian belief.

Hmm. It has never been part of your Christian belief. I think many a Christian would be rather unsettled to learn the origin of their favourite feast.

PDN wrote:

Therefore any competent historian would conclude that it is far more likely that Mithraism borrowed the shepherds from Christianity rather than vice versa.

Perhaps. I suppose there's no hope of you getting the real point behind that. Syncretism goes both ways. Are we to suppose that Christianity inspired aspects of other mythologies, and not vice versa?

PDN wrote:

Again, there is no reference to this in any Mithraist material until after the rise of Christianity.

Mithraism doesn't enjoy the vast wealth of surviving documentary evidence that Christianity does. There were two religions in Rome in second century CE whose central deity was the Logos. One of these was rampantly popular and endorsed by the Empire, the other was punishable by death. Which is a more credible disseminator of ideas?

PDN wrote:

No he didn't. He killed a great bull for the cause of world peace. Historians have thoroughly debunked the notion that Mithraists believed Mithra himself to be that great bull.

Mithra was a sun god. All sun gods have an association with death and rebirth. Most, like Mithra, were believed to pass below into the world of darkness, defeat death, and return to the world of men bringing with them new life. Either way, it can hardly be denied that resurrection gods were ten-a-penny since the dawn of myth.

PDN wrote:

Not in the Iranian version of Mithraism it wasn't. Only in the Roman version, and that only after the rise of Christianity.

It may be true that we have no direct evidence that Sunday was revered in Iran, but it is a safer bet to say that a possible Iranian custom inspired Sol Invictus than some completely hypothetical custom of a beleaguered and ridiculed underground sect. When did Christianity adopt Sunday as its holy day?

PDN wrote:

The closest thing that Mithraism had to a "Last Supper" was the taking of staples (bread, water, wine and meat) by the Mithraic initiates, which was perhaps a celebration of the meal that Mithra had with the sun deity after slaying the bull.

Ah. I see where you're getting your information from. I've read it, by the way. This Holding chap, his agenda aside, limits his sources quite a bit. He seems to be unaware that a great deal of information academia depends upon for its understanding of ancient religions is archaeological, not just textual (statuary inscriptions and temple dedications). Also, like you, given the who-influenced-whom question, he is happy not to think too much about it.

PDN wrote:

However, the meal of the initiates is usually seen as no more than a general fellowship meal of the sort that was practiced by groups all over the Roman world - from religious groups to funereal societies. The earliest reference to a Mithraist eucharistic meal occurs in medieval times!

You will read elsewhere that Mithra's supper was indeed a Last supper, as it immediately preceded his ascension. That his followers would emulate it ritualistically suggests that it was more than simply a commonplace Roman practice to them.

PDN wrote:

This would indicate a parallel with Roman Catholicism, hardly suprising to the rest of us in other forms of Christianity.

A parallel? I would say, rather, an identity. At very least Christianity absorbed its institutional make-up from the Sol Invictus that had existed minutes earlier. I would be inclined to believe that the Sol Invictus infrastructure was kept under a new name.

PDN wrote:

It's fun sticking purely to the facts and being objective, isn't it?

Oh yes. You should try it. You may need to look outside of Building Blocks of Christian Faith Dot Com, however.

PDN · 15-09-2007 7:47pm

The Mad Hatter wrote:

That's just in Latvian mythology, by the way, but I'm sure someone could find more if they looked a bit harder than I did.

So Wicknight is proposing a thesis that early Christians invented a birthdate for Jesus on the offchance that some Romans might be familiar with Latvian mythology and so be impressed enough to become Christians? Even by his standards this one sounds particularly bizarre.

Of course his original post proposed that early Christians falsely claimed 25th December as Christ's birthdate "since that date was already associated with supernatural power". He later edited that out, obviously realising that such a claim was historical nonsense. I would like to see what evidence he has for asserting that 6th Jan was, among the Romans, associated with spiritual power.

Talliesin · 15-09-2007 10:40pm

Sapien wrote:

I think many a Christian would be rather unsettled to learn the origin of their favourite feast.

Oh come on. Children singing "Away in a Manger" for baby Jesus' birthday maybe, but most Christians know perfectly well that there has never been a claim that Christmas was the actual anniversary of the nativity.

On the more general issue of just what it was competing with, frankly we don't know. It's ironic in a way, since this is one of the clearest cases of the Christians choosing a date from a competing religious holiday and quite openly saying they did so (see Syrus and St. Chrysostom) and yet it was a time in the mainstream Roman religious calendar of a quiet introspection rather between the feasts of Saturnalia and the calends of January. Whatever rites Syrus and St. Chrysostom were referring to were almost definitely those of other outside cults - and it's not surprising since the outside cults were probably in greater competition with each other than with the state religion and Christianity had to win that missionary competition first.
I think most likely it wasn't a single religion, but a few different ones. Early differences in the date of the Nativity being celebrated could be because different competing faiths had different holidays around that time with similar mythic themes of sun-gods being born

Zombrex · 16-09-2007 1:15am

PDN wrote:

So Wicknight is proposing a thesis that early Christians invented a birthdate for Jesus on the offchance that some Romans might be familiar with Latvian mythology and so be impressed enough to become Christians? Even by his standards this one sounds particularly bizarre.

No PDN, I'm "proposing" the thesis that early Christians decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus on the 6th of January because this was a common Roman holiday. They most likely knew this wasn't the actual day he was born.

The 6th January is still held as a Christian holiday known as the "Epiphany," which has greater significance in Orthodox churches. You do get the peculiar phenomena of the "Armenian Christmas" which is still held on the 6th because the Armenian church was not influenced by the change from the 6th to the 25th carried out by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century.

I'm not quite sure why this idea offends you. Did you honestly believe that Christians invented these holidays? The early Christians were in no position to invent any holidays since their numbers were small and their power in Roman world weak. It makes perfect sense that they would decide to celebrate around feasts that everyone else was celebrating

PDN · 16-09-2007 3:50am

Wicknight wrote:

I'm not quite sure why this idea offends you. Did you honestly believe that Christians invented these holidays? The early Christians were in no position to invent any holidays since their numbers were small and their power in Roman world weak. It makes perfect sense that they would decide to celebrate around feasts that everyone else was celebrating

The idea doesn't offend me in the slightest. You began by asserting that Christians lied by falsely claiming that Christ was born on the 25th December in order to impress Romans who already saw that date as supernaturally significant.

You then edited that out since such an assertion is indefensible historically. You changed it to say that Christians celebrated Christ's birth on the 6th of January, but left in the sentence about the date being supernaturally significant. All I am doing is asking for one citation or source to support that statement. It seems to me that there are 3 possibllities here:

1. The 6th of January was indeed viewed by Romans (not Latvians) as supernaturally significant, in which case there should be no shortage of sources attesting to such a fact.

2. Sloppy editing (something we should all, if we have sufficient humility, own up to occasionally).

3. You make this stuff up as you go along.

I just wondered which it was, therefore I asked for a source.

I certainly agree that it makes sense for Christians to celebrate at a time when an existing holiday takes place. That's why some churches worship on a Friday in Muslim countries.

BTW, I am well aware of what Epiphany is.

Zombrex · 16-09-2007 10:03am

PDN wrote:

The idea doesn't offend me in the slightest. You began by asserting that Christians lied by falsely claiming that Christ was born on the 25th December in order to impress Romans who already saw that date as supernaturally significant.

You then edited that out since such an assertion is indefensible historically.

Well yes, I tend to do that when I'm wrong (though I wouldn't put the original post as you have). There isn't much point posting inaccurate information, the Christians around here get very testy if one does.

It was also edited 6 minutes after the original post, as soon as I went back to it, so your implication that this was misleading readers or that I attempted to go back and change it after it has been responded to is rather groundless. But you do seem to have a bee in your bonnet over this one

PDN wrote:

All I am doing is asking for one citation or source to support that statement.

Well you seem to be doing that in a rather aggressive way (you have twice suggested that I'm lying), which seems rather bizarre. If I was going to lie about this subject do you not think I that my lie would be a bit more dramatic than saying the early Christians knew perfectly well that Jesus wasn't born on this day but decided to celebrate it anyway. Or for that matter I wouldn't bother putting "I could be wrong..." at the start of my post. I mean what exactly does this lie do, shake your religion to the core?

But since it seems to mean a lot to you PDN I will trying and find a source to support the original statement. I read it some where and hopefully that somewhere will be replicated on the Internet

If not, or if someone says "That is incorrect Wicknight" I will happily withdraw the post. After all I said "I could be wrong..."

It does happen from time to time

Zombrex · 16-09-2007 11:28am

After a quick Google I came across this

http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/ds17.html
Kore's festival in Alexandria fell on 6th January, an important date in the Early Christian calendar.

http://www.oremus.org/liturgy/etc/ktf/intro.html
In the East a slightly different calendar was followed, and the winter solstice was 6th January. It is suggested that in Egypt there was on this date an ancient festival of water, and in Alexandria, the celebration of the virgin birth of Aion from Kore

Kore was another name for Persephone, which people here might be more familar with.

I would point out that these aren't the sources I original came across when reading about this

I would hope though PDN that it would be enough to convince you that I'm not making this stuff up and lying about it :rolleyes:

Scofflaw · 16-09-2007 11:54am

PDN wrote:

The 6th of January was indeed viewed by Romans (not Latvians) as supernaturally significant, in which case there should be no shortage of sources attesting to such a fact.

Possibly the rebirth of Osiris-Aion, Roman Egypt (although the sources are tendentious and probably confused) - or the “Festival of the Immersion” in the Nile, or more definitely the Koreion in Alexandria.

I'm still puzzled as to why anyone thinks any of this proves anything, interesting as it all is. The borrowing of pagan festivals by the Church is well-attested, and even were that not the case, a mere coincidence in dates proves nothing but that humanity had many pre-Christian religions, also a well-known fact.

Certainly it's interesting to piece together the origin of various bits of Christian mythology, but I suspect it's primarily of interest to those already persuaded of the mythological nature of much of the Christ story - atheists and Protestants, in other words...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Tzetze · 16-09-2007 2:01pm

An interesting point I came across while looking at the 6th of January and 25th of December in the Egyptian Festival calendar is that although the Egyptians knew the year length to be 365.25 days long, they stuck rigidly to 365 days and didn't use a leap year. This meant that all their festivals crept backwards through the years at the rate of a 1/4 day per year, making it rather difficult to associate any one festival on their calendar with any festival on ours. In fact, it takes 1460 years for the dates to move full circle around the calendar year and fall on the original days again.

I did notice something interesting, however. The birth of Horus is celebrated on the 10th day of Melchir and, 12 days later, the feast of Horus is celebrated on the 22nd day of Melchir. On the year when Horus' birth coincides with the 25th December, his feast day lands on the 6th January.

Fanny Cradock · 16-09-2007 2:12pm

Tzetze wrote:

I did notice something interesting, however. The birth of Horus is celebrated on the 10th day of Melchir and, 12 days later, the feast of Horus is celebrated on the 22nd day of Melchir. On the year when Horus' birth coincides with the 25th December, his feast day lands on the 6th January.

What is the significance of this?

Tzetze · 16-09-2007 2:26pm

Fanny Cradock wrote:

What is the significance of this?

I said it was interesting, not significant. Perhaps you're looking for relevance?

Fanny Cradock · 16-09-2007 2:47pm

Yes, I was looking for some relevance. That's fair enough. There was no accusatory intent in my question.

Talliesin · 17-09-2007 9:34pm

Scofflaw wrote:

Certainly it's interesting to piece together the origin of various bits of Christian mythology, but I suspect it's primarily of interest to those already persuaded of the mythological nature of much of the Christ story - atheists and Protestants, in other words...

Come again? It's some Protestants (Fundamentalists) and some atheists (those who argue along literal lines) that don't treat the story as mythology but as a literal history (disagreeing as to whether it's a true literal history or an untrue one) and without mythological value (a myth being a story which "happens" now as well as happening in the past).

Scofflaw · 17-09-2007 11:18pm

Talliesin wrote:

Come again? It's some Protestants (Fundamentalists) and some atheists (those who argue along literal lines) that don't treat the story as mythology but as a literal history (disagreeing as to whether it's a true literal history or an untrue one) and without mythological value (a myth being a story which "happens" now as well as happening in the past).

Ah, no - not all Protestants are Creationists, but all Protestants are persuaded that the Catholic Church is laden with mythological bits and pieces from pagan religions. Atheists, of course, tend to see the whole thing as mythological.

The Protestants are therefore concerned to identify those festivals and practices of the Catholic Church which are borrowings from pagan religions (to eliminate them), whereas the atheists are interested in identifying those elements both in the festivals/practice and in Scripture. The more educated and intelligent Protestants, like PDN, might even go so far as to admit that possibly certain elements of the Apostolic record are a little fanciful (such as the genealogies), while holding the position that the primary record is intended to be both factual and historical.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Comparitive Religions

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