GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - "Vote for insanity. You know it makes sense." -Lord Sutch

20-11-2004, 08:19 AM

(paghat) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Roger Pearse) wrote:

(paghat) wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Roger Pearse) wrote:

Larry Blanchard wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
A devottee of a single Christian sect remains so by being blind to &
rejecting the full range of belief. I do not claim to be an authority,
though, just have a deeper interest than dunderheads who blame their
prejudices & sillier observations on their religion, when they
obviously
learned only enough about faith to justify hating whatever they
already
hated.

Bring back Mithras! It's all a bunch of bull anyway :-).

Sorry, couldn't resist that one :-).

Glad to see someone else can see the possibilities. "Get rid of the
bull, with Mithras"

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Mithras is just another resurrected divinity like Tamuz and Jesus. A rose
by any other name is still just a fertility daemon worshipped as god. so
Mithras worship is still very much with us. Nothing wrong with that, only
whimsical that modern Mithras-Tamuz-Jesus worshippers think there's a
difference.

Your statements about the cult of Mithras are imaginary. Mithras was
not resurrected.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

You must have a corrupt perhaps christian reference book that doesn't like
to admit these savior-myths are all pretty much the same myth.

Actually I don't trust reference books on matters of controversy. I
always go to the ancient sources directly.

In fact I grew tired of vague statements about Mithras quite some time
ago, and wondered how to find out from primary sources what was known
about him, and what was modern imagination (I'm currently doing the
same for Sol Invictus). So what I did was search out every ancient
mention of him in ancient literature, compile them all onto a website,
and see what they said. I gather there are also a lot of
inscriptions, but these all say things like "Marcus dedicates this
shrine to Mithras".

The collected testimonies are at
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras.

If someone says something, and it isn't in that collection, and there
is no specific reference to an ancient source for the statement, then
it is fairly safe to presume it is bogus.

Some Christian references falsely state that Mithraism
post-dates Christianity,

I learn from Prof. Clauss' book on the subject that there is no
evidence, archaeological or literary, for the worship of Mithras
before around 80AD.

to explain the similarities; others leave out the resurrection myth in
order to cloud the similarities.

There is no ancient evidence of such a myth associated with Mithras,
as far as I know. If you know different, by all means provide the
literary source.

The Christian claims that their
"mysteries" predate Mithras started while Mithraism was still spreading
out of Persia along Roman roads,

The Roman cult of Mithras is not thought to be the same as the ancient
Persian worship of Mithra, not least because of all those subterranean
temples with the image of Mithras in them, the most characteristic
sign of Mithraism. But not a single one of these has been found in
Persia. Therefore it cannot be a cult originating in Persia! All the
earliest inscriptions show a connection with the city of Rome, he
says.

& continues to this day,

Interested that worship in subterranean Mithraea is extant today in
continuous line. But I don't know of this -- what is the source for
this unlikely-sounding idea?

So Plutarch's statement that Roman Mithraism was introduced by soldiers
returning from Persia

Plutarch does not state that Mithraism was introduced into Rome by
Pompey's soldiers:

"There were of these corsairs above one thousand sail, and they had
taken no less than four hundred cities, committing sacrilege upon the
temples of the gods, and enriching themselves with the spoils of many
never violated before, such as were those of Claros, Didyma, and
Samothrace; and the temple of the Earth in Hermione, and that of
Aesculapius in Epidaurus, those of Neptune at the Isthmus, at
Taenarus, and at Calauria; those of Apollo at Actium and Leucas, and
those of Juno in Samos, at Argos, and at Lacinium. They themselves
offered strange sacrifices upon Mount Olympus, and performed certain
secret rites or religious mysteries, among which those of Mithras have
been preserved to our own time having received their previous
institution from them." (Life of Pompey 24:5/632cd).

[long snip of assertions]

Pardon me if I don't comment in detail on these. You see, all the
assertions made are undocumented from ancient sources, and must
therefore be considered dubious.

May I ask what your source is for this? -- it sounds like something
you found in a book? Unfortunately on matters of this sort there are
authors out there who will exploit anti-Christian feeling by selling
fairy-stories of this sort to those who'd like to believe them. "The
Holy blood and the Holy Grail" comes to mind.

The only way to avoid these people is to check every statement and not
state as fact that which one has not checked for oneself. Luckily
more and more of the ancient sources are online in English, so it is
often easier to check than it has ever been. Not all of us have a
huge library on-hand and loads of spare time!

I hope that's helpful.

All the best,

Roger Pearse