Mithraism- The First Edition of Universal religion

Mithraism –

First Edition of the Universal Religion
Sources:Malachi Martin, The Decline & Fall of the Roman Church (Secker & Warburg, 1981)Kevin Butcher, Roman Syria & the Near East (British Museum, 2003)Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew (Harper Collins,1992)Michael Parenti, History as Mystery (City Lights, 1999)Leslie Houlden (Ed.), Judaism & Christianity (Routledge, 1988)Alan Hall, History of the Papacy (PRC, 1998)Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History (Morning Star & Lark, 1995)Peter De Rosa, Vicars of Christ (Bantam Press, 1988)John G. Jackson, Christianity Before Christ (American Atheist Press, 1985)S. Angus, The Mystery Religions (Kessinger Publishing, 2003)Antonia Tripolitis, Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age (Eerdmans,2002)David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (OUP, 1991)Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 2003)
email the author –Kenneth Humphreys
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22.01.06
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Variegated
"As far as we can tell, cults such as Mithraism had no equivalent of the Council of Nicaea to determine their orthodoxy. The same deity might be subject of different, contradictory myths or the focus of different types of ritual at different shrines or cities."
– K. Butcher, Roman Syria, p336


Mithras killing his bull, encircled by the signs of the zodiac (c. 150 AD – Mithraeum, London)

A long way from Persia – Mithraeum, London


Syncretic Weakness
"The Mithraic cult ... was the most syncretistic of all the cults and religions ... This caused it to lose its strength, definiteness, and cohesion."
– Antonia Tripolitis (Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age, p59)



Altar for the 'Invincible Sun' (Invicto Soli).
Note the nimbus (arc of the sun) about his head – copied by the Christians for their own sun god



Helios the sun-god from the time of Aurelian (270 -275). Compare to "JC in the Sky" from the same period.



"The Seven Deadly Sins, which Christians appropriated both iconographically and geographically in their own views of Hell, were a Mithraic formulation which looked back to Zoroastrianism, which gave mystic significance to the number seven.
Mithra also gave us … the Chi-Rho sign which Christians appropriated."
– Alice Turner (The History of Hell, p36)



Priest of Mithras(Dura-Europus, mid-3rd century)

Priest of Christ (4th century)





'Alcimus, slave-bailiff of Tiberius Claudius Livianus, gave the gift to the sun-god Mithras in fulfillment of a vow.'
(Rome 2nd century)


An original wall painting from Wadi Sarga, Egypt, gets transformed into a Coptic story of "3 martyrs in a fiery furnace" and a chorus of Christian saints.
(British Museum)

Bull Slayer
Eclipsed as it was in later centuries by the faith of Christ, Mithraism – or rather, its Romanised form Sol Invictus – was the first ‘universal religion’ of the Greco-Roman world.
Mithraism anticipated Christianity in all major respects bar one, and enjoyed a ‘reign’ of at least five centuries. It peaked around the year 300 AD when it became the official religion of the empire. At that time, in every town and city, in every military garrison and outpost from Syria to the Scottish frontier, was to be found a Mithraeum and officiating priests of the cult.
Mithraism was the ‘religion of choice’ of fishermen, merchants, and in particular, the military who adopted Mithras rather like latter-day soldiers would adopt St. Michael or St. George – Mithras slew bulls, St George slew dragons! Mithraism waged – and lost – a two-hundred year battle with the upstart religion of Christ, into which much of its ritual, and many of its practitioners, were subsumed.
Fatally, Mithraism had excluded women entirely, causing well-heeled Roman matrons with a pious frame of mind to explore first Judaism, and then Christianity. Also, unlike Christianity, it made no special overtures towards the uneducated, downtrodden and marginal elements of society. It was a religion chosen by emperors, not slaves.

Mithras Goes to Rome
The cult of Mithras was actually of very ancient lineage, traceable in one form or another through at least two thousand years. In origin it was the primordial sun-worship – the father of all religion. Iconography showed Mithras, in Phrygian cap and cloak, riding his fiery chariot across the sky. But it was also an eastern religion, reaching the Roman world from India via Persia. Traditional hostility with Persia did not favour Rome adopting a religion of its enemies. This changed however in the 60s BC when Pompey’s legions first entered Syria. Mithraism had so well established itself in the Commagene, Armenia and eastern Anatolia that whole dynasties of kings had called themselves ‘Mithradates’ (‘justice of Mithra’).
Rome’s troops took to the ‘machismo’ faith, with its ceremonies of male-bonding and triumph over death, of self-control and resistance to sensuality. Acolytes were required to descend into a pit, which was then covered by boards filled with holes, and the blood of a sacrificial bull above would shower onto them. Thus sanctified they could re-emerge from the pit ‘reborn’ in Mithras. This sacrament, the ‘taurobolia,’ was the Mithraic forerunner of the Christian baptism. Mithras’ rock tomb (and place of re-birth) – the ‘petra’ – was central to each Mithraeum. The rock connection was later re-worked into the legend of Saint Peter.
Legionaries took the cult with them into Palestine and back to Rome itself. Several hundred Mithraic monuments have been found in Rome (Coarelli, 1979). Adapted for Roman taste, the most popular Romanised form of Mithraism was Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, whose re-birth was celebrated as the climax of the mid-winter Saturnalia, on 25th December (Celsus tells us that in the Mithraic mysteries the soul moved through seven heavenly spheres, beginning with the leaden Saturn and ending with the golden Sun).
Mithras (right) with his friend 'Sol'.
Looks a little familiar ..?(Dura-Europus)

Egypt – raised hands for sun-worship.
Ahura-Mazda/ Mithras
On his tomb at Nimrud Dag king Antiochus I of Commagene (northern Syria/eastern Turkey) greets a god from Persia .
(1st century BC)
Precursor of Christianity
The theology of Mithraism was centred upon the dying/rising Mithra, emerging fully grown from the ‘virgin dawn’ or rock. The association of gods with rocks or stones is not surprising: fiery rocks falling from the sky (meteorites) and even sparks released by colliding stones would equally strike the simple mind as ‘evidence’ of a godly presence. Holy stones were anointed with oil. Mithra was fathered by the creator god Ahura-Mazda.
Miracle Birth
Roman silver token/coin showing birth of Mithras. He emerges fully formed from a rock.
On reverse Mithras is linked with creator god Ormzad and Egyptian sun god Re.
(Verulamium, England, 2nd-3rd century)
Mithras’s supposed creation had occurred in a ‘time before men’, a cosmic creation in a celestial heaven. At no time was it believed that he had lived as a mere mortal and trod the earth. Mithraism's failure to have anthropomorphised its god into a man – something which was to be accomplished so successfully by Christianity – weakened the cult's appeal to the uneducated and opened the door to the competition.
In all other major respects the theology of the two cults were all but identical.
Mithras had had twelve followers with whom he had shared a last sacramental meal. The evidence from a mithraeum at Dura Europus suggests members of the congregation and thiasos (sacred company) held a banquet in which eating, drinking and musical performances featured as well as religious ceremonial.
"A third-century account for the mithraeum at Dura Europus lists the prices of materials required for a ritual banquet:'Meat, 19 denarii; sauce, 1 denarius; paper, 1 obol; water, 1 denarius; wood, 1 denarius; jar of wine, 28 denarii 11 obols; total 51 denarii 11 obols.' "
– K. Butcher, Roman Syria, p213.

He had sacrificed himself to redeem mankind. Descending into the underworld, he had conquered death and had risen to life again on the third day. The holy day for this sun god was, of course, Sunday (Christians continued to follow the Jewish Sabbath until the fourth century). His many titles included ‘the Truth,’ ‘the Light,’ and ‘the Good Shepherd.’ For those who worshipped him, invoking the name of Mithras healed the sick and worked miracles. Mithras could dispense mercy and grant immortality; to his devotees he offered hope. By drinking his blood and eating his flesh (by proxy, from a slain bull) they too could conquer death. On a Day of Judgement those already dead would be raised back to life.

Popular Motifs
All this may surprise modern Christians but it was very familiar to the Church Fathers [See e.g. Justin, Origen, Tertullian], who filled their ‘Apologies’ with dubious rationales as to how Mithraism had anticipated the whole nine yards of Christianity centuries before the supposed arrival of Jesus – ‘diabolic mimicry by a prescient Satan’ being the standard explanation. Pagan critics were not slow to point to the truth: Christianity had simply copied the popular motifs of a competitive faith.
Mithras was proclaimed the principal patron of the empire by Aurelian in 274 AD (on December 25th he dedicated a temple to the sun-god in the Campus Martius). Mithraism was adopted by Diocletian in 307 AD and by Julian as late as 362 AD. The cult was driven from the scene over the next hundred years by furious and sustained attacks from Christianity.
Who would defend Mithras?
Mithraism lacked a professional clergy; it had no hierarchical organisation disciplined by common rules. Though popular throughout the empire, the cult's ceremonials had remained heavily dependent upon state patronage and support. When state funding was transferred to the Church by Constantine and his successors, Mithraism's fate was sealed.
Fatally, during the reign of Emperor Gratian (367-383 AD), its sanctuaries were sacked of their wealth and closed. Thirty years later, Theodosius made worship of Mithras punishable by death. The god had fallen – but the imagery and iconography of Mithras were expropriated wholesale by the more comprehensive and favoured cult of Christ. Onto Jesus’s head fell Mithras’s sun disc. Christian bishops assumed his headdress and mitre.
‘Today the Vatican stands where the last sacrament of the Phrygian taurobolium was celebrated.’ ( S. Angus, The Mystery Religions, p235)

The Magi attend the birth of Jesus. Their "Adoration" symbolizes the submission of Mithraism to triumphant Christianity.
(From 6th century Thessaly, British Museum)
Faint echoes of the fallen god were to be heard in later Manichaeism.
In the 4th century, ordinary Christians had not yet acquired the abject humility and submissive behaviour that would characterise the brethren of later centuries. In church, they sang, danced and clapped.
And when they prayed it was facing to the East, with hands held wide and with face held up, not down – to greet their sun-god!!

Early Christians pray to their god – the Sun!
Christian Sarcophagus – 3rd century, Rome.

Christian chapel – Roman villa , Lullingstone, Kent 4th century.


"I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting."– St Paul (1 Timothy 2,8)




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