Mithras

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[edit] Definition

Mithras is a pagan deity around whom a mystery religion, now called, Mithraism, was centered. He is known for being born from a rock, and for a sacrifice of a bull called the tauroctony. Mithraism had several grades of initiation, and was only open to men. Mithraic rituals took place in a temple called a mithraeum, which was typically underground.

[edit] Mithraism and Christianity

There are many misconceptions about the relationship about Mithraism and Christianity. Some of these are misinterpretations of real facts, and others are simply utterly wrong. Here are some of the more common outright falsehoods:

• Mithras was born of a virgin. Mithras was born out of a rock, often called the petra genetrix. He is often portrayed as already wearing a Phrygian cap and holding a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other. See Manfred Clauss' work The Roman Cult of Mithras, pp. 62-71.
• Mithras was attended by shepherds at his birth. This appears to come from Mithras being attended by two torchbearers, but these are not shepherds. Again, see Clauss, p. 68-69.
• Mithras had twelve disciples. This appears to be derived from some iconography in the mithraea where the twelve symbols of the zodiac are arrayed around the scene of Mithras killing the bull. The connection between twelve disciples and twelve signs of the zodiac is made in the book The Jesus Mysteries and by Acharya S (D.Murdock)[1].
• Mithras died and was resurrected. This appears to be derived from a brief mention by Tertullian, a second-century Christian apologist, who writes in his Prescription Against Heretics, chapter 40, that "if my memory still serves me, Mithra there, (in the kingdom of Satan, ) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown [2]." Tertullian's comment is unclear about what this "image of a resurrection" is supposed to mean, and it is not clear if indeed his memory does serve him. Claims that the mythology of Mithras actually included his death and resurrection are absent from work by Mithraic scholars such as Franz Cumont and Manfred Clauss, nor is it in the Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, and there is no evidence from the iconography of the mithraea that he even died. There is discussion in Cumont and the Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies of Mithraists sharing with the Zoroastrians a belief in the resurrection of the dead in the final judgment of the world, but not discussion of Mithras himself being resurrected. (It is quite possible that during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, "Zoroastrian thought from Persia was a contributing factor" to the idea of resurrection in Judaism [3], so if Mithraism and Christianity did share a belief in the resurrection, it is most likely by common ancestry, with Christianity getting this belief from Judaism.)

Associations between Mithraism and Christianity are also often made by misleading language. For example, in the chapter "Religious Illiteracy" in The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read, William Edelen writes that "The Christian 'Mass' was, and is, basically the old sacrament of the Mithraic 'taurobolia' (a symbol of divine sacrifice and of the saving effect of blood)." However, this parallel between the Mithraic taurobolium and Christian communion is based on hiding details and misleading use of ambiguous language. A taurobolium is a sacrifice of a bull, often involving the blood from the bull dripping over and covering the one being consecrated. This is probably an acting out of the tauroctony, the myth where Mithra kills a bull, and out of the bull comes grain and other agrarian goods. The language the chapter "Religious Illiteracy" uses to describe this parallel is highly obfuscatory. That the taurobolium is an animal sacrifice is left out completely. Its description as a "divine sacrifice" is further misleading, suggesting the Christian claim that God himself was killed as a sacrifice, when really the tauroctony was a divine sacrifice in the sense that a divinity (Mithras) kills something else (a bull).

[edit] References

• Clauss, Manfred. The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries. tr. Richard Gordon. New York: Routledge, 2001.
• Resurrection: A Symbol of Hope by Lloyd Geering. See Chapter 7, "Resurrection as the Hope for the End-Time".
• What Mithraism Isn't, a web page written by neo-Pagan Ceisiwr Serith.
• Mithraism, another web page and essay on ancient Rome by Alison Griffith.