Edward Jayne
by Edward Jayne
Both Mithraism and Christianity became popular in Rome during the second century, A.D. As a Persian religion, Mithraism was far older and more venerable at the time, having been practiced as early as 1500, B.C. during the Aryan migration into both Persia and India. This was when the early Vedic god Mitra, similar to Mithra, began to be worshipped in India. During the sixth century, B.C., the Persian mystic Zarathustra (Zoroaster, as described in Greece) subordinated the story of Mithra to a grand epic struggle between a god (Ahura Mazda) and a devil (Ahriman) that supposedly culminates in judgment day, when all souls can expect to be consigned either to heaven or hell. Whether perceived as the primary god in his own right or subordinated to Ahura Mazda, Mithra was worshipped across Asia from the Indus River to the Black Sea when his religion finally arrived in Rome in a version that first emerged perhaps a hundred years before Christ.
Rome's initial exposure to Mithraism was probably through Cilician "traders" (pirates from the coast of Turkey on the Mediterranean), and with sufficient curiosity value that the Emperor Nero (54-68) supposedly considered becoming a Mithraist. After expeditions to the eastern front by the Emperor Trajan and others in the mid-second century, Mithraism quickly spread to all frontiers of the Roman empire guarded by Roman legions transferred from the Near East. Mithraism was even practiced in Great Britain, where numerous Mithraic temples have been excavated.
Christianity, on the other hand, took at least a century to become a major religious movement competitive with others in the Roman Empire. Besides Mithraism, these included Manichaenism, Gnosticism, and the worship of Heracles, Cybele, Isis, Osiris, Dionysus Zagreus, and the god Serapis as a syncretistic fusion of Osiris and Dionysus--also the religions and mysteries of Jews, Stoics, Pythagoreans, Orphics, and Neoplatonists. The early history of Christian doctrine in the authorship of the Gospels may be charted as follows:
It is estimated that there were perhaps 10,000 Christians in 100 A.D., and in 200 A.D. not more than 200,000 altogether. It was in the third century that Christianity rapidly gained support despite persecutions under Decius (249-51) and Diocletian (303-5). Christians were punished and executed in large numbers at these times, though not to the extent that was later claimed, and, according to Joseph McCabe, without any of them having been fed to the lions. Unlike all other near-eastern religions with the exception of Judaism, Christian doctrine prohibited the worship of other gods and goddesses, including Roman emperors beginning with Augustus who demanded to be treated as deities. As a result Christianity was considered subversive by Roman authorities as well as intellectuals and the priests of other religions. As a result, Rome enjoyed total religious freedom except for Christianity, which was prohibited.
Both the Emperors Commodus (180-92) and Diocletian (284-305) took up the cause of Mithraism, with Diocletian as late as 307 having proclaimed Mithras to be the protector of the Roman empire. However, Christianity suddenly prevailed upon the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in 310, followed by his 313 Edict of Milan that guaranteed the freedom of worship for all religions, inclusive of Christianity. The Emperor Julian the Apostate (361-63) tried but failed in his effort to resurrect Mithraism, and the Emperor Theodosius (379-95) consolidated Christian dominance once and for all with his 380 decree, "We brand all the senseless followers of the other religions with the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles assuming the name of churches." A series of fourteen edicts followed, one per year, that both outlawed all pagan creeds in competition with Christianity and mandated the destruction of their temples. The most notorious of the measures against pagan religions imposed by Theodosius, in either 389 or 391, was the destruction of the Temple of Serapis located in Alexandria. The grand metal and bejeweled statue of Serapis was totally smashed, and the famous and irreplaceable library of Alexandria adjacent to the temple was also destroyed at the same time.
The countless shrines to Isis across the Mediterranean were likewise destroyed, and a successful effort was mounted to eradicate all traces of Mithraism. Nevertheless, there were striking resemblances between the two religions, Mithraism and Christianity, and, because the inception of Mithraism preceded that of both Judaism and Christianity by many centuries, one must assume that the latter two religions, but especially Christianity, adopted Mithraic myths and ceremonies to be able to recruit Mithraists to their own cause.
RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN MITHRAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
1. Both Mithras and Christ were portrayed as young and beardless; both sometimes appeared in the shepherd's role, and both saved mankind by performing sacrifical deeds.
2. Both Mithras and Christ had virgin births in the sense that they were conceived without any sexual union between man and woman. Christ's father was said to be God, while Mithras was said to have had no father or mother, having emerged as an adult from a large rock.
3. Both Mithraism and Christianity celebrated the birth of their god on the winter solstice, the 25th of December according to the Julian calendar. Both featured the sharing of presents, the use of Christmas trees with candles, and nativity scenes that included shepherds attracted by a sacred light. The special importance of this solstice ceremony to Mithraists would be indicated by the name Mithras, which derived from Meitras, which in Greek numerology refers to the number 365, the last day of the solar year at the winter solstice.
4. Both the Old Testament and Mithraic legend told of the first human couple having been created. Mithra supposedly kept a watchful eye over their descendents until Ahriman caused a draught that caused such thirst that they begged Mithra for water.
5. Both told of a major flood, in the case of Mithra through his having shot an arrow into a stone cliff to quench mankind's thirst. Unfortunately, the entire world's population was drowned in a flood produced by the water spout that gushed from the hole his arrow produced. One man alone (a Noah figure borrowed from the earlier Sumerian myth of Atrahasis) was warned in time and could therefore save himself and his cattle in an ark.
6. Both Mithraism and Christianity emphasized mankind's redemption resulting from a sacrificial death followed by the god's ascent to heaven. In the case of Christ, it was the god himself (or his son) who was sacrificed; in the case of Mithra, it was a sacred steer that Mithra sacrificed.
7. Both featured resurrection through sacrifice. Mithraism more obviously drew upon spring equinox fertility myths by depicting Mithra's sacrificial bull with a tail that consisted of sheaves of wheat that were supposedly scattered throughout the world once it was slaughtered. Also, the bull's blood formed the milky way, allowing human souls both to be born and to return to the heavens after death.
8. Both told of a Last Supper linked with the blood sacrifice whose symbolic recreation by eating bread and wine provided salvation for all worshippers. After Mithra killed the bull depicted in Mithraic art, he feasted upon it with the Sun God and other companions before ascending to the heavens in the sun god's chariot. The sequence was slightly different in the New Testament: Christ's Last Supper necessarily preceded his crucifixion rather than following it, after which he ascended to heaven.
9. Both emphasized purification through baptism, Mithraists by washing themselves in the blood of sacrificial oxen. While dying oxen bled to death on lattice floors built over their heads, initiates both drank and washed themselves with the blood that dripped on them.
10. Both featured secret temples located underground. For Christians it was a temporary expedient to avoid persecution, but for Mithraists it became a permanent institution, each small chapel, called a Mithraeum, having seated no more than fifty worshippers and having been constructed to point from east to west. Rounded ceilings were painted blue and imbedded with gemstones. There were no windows except for a few chapels in which tiny holes in the ceiling that had been bored to let in the light of certain stars at particular times of the year.
11. Both held Sunday to be sacred.
12. Both encouraged asceticism. Mithraists were expected to resist sensuality and to abstain from eating certain foods.
13. Both emphasized charity. Mithra was identified as the god of help who protected his worshippers, whatever their tribulations in life.
14. Last and probably least, both emphasized a rock, Mithra having been born from one and the Vatican having been built on one.
RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND ZOROASTRIANISM
Also important were similarities between Christianity and the sixth century eschatology of Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), which reduced Mithra's role to humanity's final judge after death:
15. Both Christianity and Zoroastrian eschatology emphasized the conflict between virtue and vice as a cosmic rivalry between a God and Satan figure. The Zoroastrian god was Ahura Mazda and the Satan figure was Ahriman. The world was filled with good and bad angels, the latter called devas, or devils.
16. Both emphasized the overriding importance of an immortal soul that survives the body.
17. Both anticipated a judgment day, when mankind would once and for all be divided into those accepted in heaven and those consigned to eternal punishment in hell. The Zoroastrian explanation was that all of humanity would be obliged to cross a sifting bridge. Sinners would lose their balance and tumble into hell; the virtuous would be able to cross without falling, after which they could ascend to heaven.
18. As opposed to other early religions, which consigned all the dead to an underworld, both Christianity and Zoroastrian dogma located hell in the underworld and heaven in the sky, where God was located.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MITHRAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
1. No sacred text comparable to the Bible has survived for the Mithraic faith, whose doctrine is best studied in its art. All that survives of Zoroastrian worship are the Avesta and Zend Avesta, both relatively brief texts.
2. Mithraism was restricted to male worshippers, since female worshippers were expected to worship either Cybele or Isis instead.
3. Mithraism was more archaic, having been rooted in animal sacrifice instead of the death and resurrection of a god such as Christ, or, in fact, the many sacrificial spring deities such as Dionysus, Adonis, Osiris, and Serapis.
4. Mithraism emphasized courage and generosity, whereas Christianity emphasized charity.
5. Mithraism was linked with Roman patriotism, whereas Christianity subordinated secular loyalty to a higher destiny.
6. Mithraism primarily recruited the military in outposts outside Italy, whereas Christianity thrived in Mediterranean cities, drawing into its cause large numbers of slaves, women, and impoverished citizens.
Why so many similarities between the two religions? By a process of diffusion that was practiced without constraint by today's standards, competititive near-eastern religions shared many of the stories and rituals that appealed to worshippers. As the youngest of all these religions, Christianity needed to be especially skillful in adopting for its own purposes those features of other religions that would enlarge its appeal. And of course it enjoyed the substantial advantage that its sacrificial god had been a genuine human being executed by Roman authority, that it offered a more accessible eschatology telling of an afterlife that guaranteed the appropriate punishment and rewards, that it promised salvation to all who could believe in Christ, not merely one particular sub-population, and that it was able to produce a sacred text that documented the life and sayings of Christ. Mithraism was less flexible, rendered its services to a smaller population (primarily soldiers), and was less popular with the urban population. It accordingly lost its position of leadership among eastern religions practiced in Rome to Christianity by the early fourth century.