Mithraism

98:6.1Prior to the com­ing of the mys­tery cults and Chris­tian­ity, per­sonal re­li­gion hardly de­vel­oped as an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion in the civ­i­lized lands of North Africa and Eu­rope; it was more of a fam­ily, city-state, po­lit­i­cal, and im­pe­rial af­fair. The Hel­lenic Greeks never evolved a cen­tral­ized wor­ship sys­tem; the rit­ual was lo­cal; they had no priest­hood and no “sa­cred book.” Much as the Ro­mans, their re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions lacked a pow­er­ful driv­ing agency for the preser­va­tion of higher moral and spir­i­tual val­ues. While it is true that the in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion has usu­ally de­tracted from its spir­i­tual qual­ity, it is also a fact that no re­li­gion has thus far suc­ceeded in sur­viv­ing with­out the aid of in­sti­tu­tional or­ga­ni­za­tion of some de­gree, greater or lesser.

98:6.2Oc­ci­den­tal re­li­gion thus lan­guished un­til the days of the Skep­tics, Cyn­ics, Epi­cure­ans, and Sto­ics, but most im­por­tant of all, un­til the times of the great con­test be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Paul’s new re­li­gion of Chris­tian­ity.

• M. similar in appearance and ritual to early Christianity

98:6.3Dur­ing the third cen­tury af­ter Christ, Mith­raic and Chris­tian churches were very sim­i­lar both in ap­pear­ance and in the char­ac­ter of their rit­ual. A ma­jor­ity of such places of wor­ship were un­der­ground, and both con­tained al­tars whose back­grounds var­i­ously de­picted the suf­fer­ings of the sav­ior who had brought sal­va­tion to a sin-cursed hu­man race.

98:6.4Al­ways had it been the prac­tice of Mith­raic wor­shipers, on en­ter­ing the tem­ple, to dip their fin­gers in holy wa­ter. And since in some dis­tricts there were those who at one time be­longed to both re­li­gions, they in­tro­duced this cus­tom into the ma­jor­ity of the Chris­tian churches in the vicin­ity of Rome. Both re­li­gions em­ployed bap­tism and par­took of the sacra­ment of bread and wine. The one great dif­fer­ence be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, aside from the char­ac­ters of Mithras and Je­sus, was that the one en­cour­aged mil­i­tarism while the other was ul­tra­pa­cific. Mith­ra­ism’s tol­er­ance for other re­li­gions (ex­cept later Chris­tian­ity) led to its fi­nal un­do­ing. But the de­cid­ing fac­tor in the strug­gle be­tween the two was the ad­mis­sion of women into the full fel­low­ship of the Chris­tian faith.

98:6.5In the end the nom­i­nal Chris­tian faith dom­i­nated the Oc­ci­dent. Greek phi­los­o­phy sup­plied the con­cepts of eth­i­cal value; Mith­ra­ism, the rit­ual of wor­ship ob­ser­vance; and Chris­tian­ity, as such, the tech­nique for the con­ser­va­tion of moral and so­cial val­ues.

98:7.74. The mys­tery cults, es­pe­cially Mith­ra­ism but also the wor­ship of the Great Mother in the Phry­gian cult. Even the leg­ends of the birth of Je­sus on Uran­tia be­came tainted with the Ro­man ver­sion of the mirac­u­lous birth of the Ira­nian sav­ior-hero, Mithras, whose ad­vent on earth was sup­posed to have been wit­nessed by only a hand­ful of gift-bear­ing shep­herds who had been in­formed of this im­pend­ing event by an­gels.

• M. was competitor of Paul’s Christianity

121:5.81. Some myth­i­cal leg­end, a mys­tery—whence their name. As a rule this mys­tery per­tained to the story of some god’s life and death and re­turn to life, as il­lus­trated by the teach­ings of Mith­ra­ism, which, for a time, were con­tem­po­rary with, and a com­peti­tor of, Paul’s ris­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

• Paul’s atonement doctrine derived from

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

• Roman Mithraic temple became Christian church

132:0.5The sig­nif­i­cance of this re­mark­able do­ing can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when we re­cord the fact that, out of this group of thirty-two Je­sus-taught re­li­gious lead­ers in Rome, only two were un­fruit­ful; the thirty be­came piv­otal in­di­vid­u­als in the es­tab­lish­ment of Chris­tian­ity in Rome, and cer­tain of them also aided in turn­ing the chief Mith­raic tem­ple into the first Chris­tian church of that city. We who view hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties from be­hind the scenes and in the light of nine­teen cen­turies of time rec­og­nize just three fac­tors of paramount value in the early set­ting of the stage for the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity through­out Eu­rope, and they are:

• Christian leaders compromised with M.

195:0.94. The Chris­tian lead­ers were will­ing to make such com­pro­mises with Mith­ra­ism that the bet­ter half of its ad­her­ents were won over to the An­ti­och cult.

• Christian leaders compromised with M.

195:0.11But the Chris­tians made a shrewd bar­gain with the pa­gans in that they adopted the rit­u­al­is­tic pageantry of the pa­gan while com­pelling the pa­gan to ac­cept the Hel­le­nized ver­sion of Pauline Chris­tian­ity. They made a bet­ter bar­gain with the pa­gans than they did with the Mith­raic cult, but even in that ear­lier com­pro­mise they came off more than con­querors in that they suc­ceeded in elim­i­nat­ing the gross im­moral­i­ties and also nu­mer­ous other rep­re­hen­si­ble prac­tices of the Per­sian mys­tery.

98:4.53. The Ira­nian cult of the wor­ship of Mithras as the sav­ior and re­deemer of sin­ful man­kind.

98:5.2The cult of Mithras arose in Iran and long per­sisted in its home­land de­spite the mil­i­tant op­po­si­tion of the fol­low­ers of Zoroaster. But by the time Mith­ra­ism reached Rome, it had be­come greatly im­proved by the ab­sorp­tion of many of Zoroaster’s teach­ings. It was chiefly through the Mith­raic cult that Zoroaster’s re­li­gion ex­erted an in­flu­ence upon later ap­pear­ing Chris­tian­ity.

98:7.63. The Zoroas­trian con­cep­tion of the strug­gle be­tween cos­mic good and evil, which had al­ready left its im­print on both Ju­daism and Mith­ra­ism. Through pro­longed con­tact at­ten­dant upon the strug­gles be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, the doc­trines of the Ira­nian prophet be­came a po­tent fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the the­o­logic and philo­sophic cast and struc­ture of the dog­mas, tenets, and cos­mol­ogy of the Hel­le­nized and La­tinized ver­sions of the teach­ings of Je­sus.

95:6.7Even the re­li­gion which suc­ceeded Zoroas­tri­an­ism in Per­sia was markedly in­flu­enced by it. When the Ira­nian priests sought to over­throw the teach­ings of Zoroaster, they res­ur­rected the an­cient wor­ship of Mithra. And Mith­ra­ism spread through­out the Lev­ant and Med­i­ter­ra­nean re­gions, be­ing for some time a con­tem­po­rary of both Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The teach­ings of Zoroaster thus came suc­ces­sively to im­press three great re­li­gions: Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity and, through them, Mo­hammedanism.

130:7.3At Carthage Je­sus had a long and mem­o­rable talk with a Mith­raic priest about im­mor­tal­ity, about time and eter­nity. This Per­sian had been ed­u­cated at Alexan­dria, and he re­ally de­sired to learn from Je­sus. Put into the words of to­day, in sub­stance Je­sus said in an­swer to his many ques­tions:

132:0.4Je­sus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valu­able of all the man­i­fold ex­pe­ri­ences of his six months’ so­journ in that city was his con­tact with, and in­flu­ence upon, the re­li­gious lead­ers of the em­pire’s cap­i­tal. Be­fore the end of the first week in Rome Je­sus had sought out, and had made the ac­quain­tance of, the worth-while lead­ers of the Cyn­ics, the Sto­ics, and the mys­tery cults, in par­tic­u­lar the Mith­raic group. Whether or not it was ap­par­ent to Je­sus that the Jews were go­ing to re­ject his mis­sion, he most cer­tainly fore­saw that his mes­sen­gers were pres­ently com­ing to Rome to pro­claim the king­dom of heaven; and he there­fore set about, in the most amaz­ing man­ner, to pre­pare the way for the bet­ter and more cer­tain re­cep­tion of their mes­sage. He se­lected five of the lead­ing Sto­ics, eleven of the Cyn­ics, and six­teen of the mys­tery-cult lead­ers and spent much of his spare time for al­most six months in in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with these re­li­gious teach­ers. And this was his method of in­struc­tion: Never once did he at­tack their er­rors or even men­tion the flaws in their teach­ings. In each case he would se­lect the truth in what they taught and then pro­ceed so to em­bel­lish and il­lu­mi­nate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this en­hance­ment of the truth ef­fec­tively crowded out the as­so­ci­ated er­ror; and thus were these Je­sus-taught men and women pre­pared for the sub­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of ad­di­tional and sim­i­lar truths in the teach­ings of the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. It was this early ac­cep­tance of the teach­ings of the gospel preach­ers which gave that pow­er­ful im­pe­tus to the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity in Rome and from there through­out the em­pire.

134:6.16As con­fu­sion in­creased in the fac­ulty, the three broth­ers with­drew their fi­nan­cial sup­port, and af­ter five years the school closed. Later it was re­opened as a Mith­raic tem­ple and even­tu­ally burned down in con­nec­tion with one of their or­gias­tic cel­e­bra­tions.

98:5.1The Phry­gian and Egyp­tian mys­ter­ies even­tu­ally gave way be­fore the great­est of all the mys­tery cults, the wor­ship of Mithras. The Mith­raic cult made its ap­peal to a wide range of hu­man na­ture and grad­u­ally sup­planted both of its pre­de­ces­sors. Mith­ra­ism spread over the Ro­man Em­pire through the pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of Ro­man le­gions re­cruited in the Lev­ant, where this re­li­gion was the vogue, for they car­ried this be­lief wher­ever they went. And this new re­li­gious rit­ual was a great im­prove­ment over the ear­lier mys­tery cults.

98:5.3The Mith­raic cult por­trayed a mil­i­tant god tak­ing ori­gin in a great rock, en­gag­ing in valiant ex­ploits, and caus­ing wa­ter to gush forth from a rock struck with his ar­rows. There was a flood from which one man es­caped in a spe­cially built boat and a last sup­per which Mithras cel­e­brated with the sun-god be­fore he as­cended into the heav­ens. This sun-god, or Sol In­vic­tus, was a de­gen­er­a­tion of the Ahura-Mazda de­ity con­cept of Zoroas­tri­an­ism. Mithras was con­ceived as the sur­viv­ing cham­pion of the sun-god in his strug­gle with the god of dark­ness. And in rec­og­ni­tion of his slay­ing the myth­i­cal sa­cred bull, Mithras was made im­mor­tal, be­ing ex­alted to the sta­tion of in­ter­ces­sor for the hu­man race among the gods on high.

85:5.2Moon wor­ship pre­ceded sun wor­ship. Ven­er­a­tion of the moon was at its height dur­ing the hunt­ing era, while sun wor­ship be­came the chief re­li­gious cer­e­mony of the sub­se­quent ag­ri­cul­tural ages. So­lar wor­ship first took ex­ten­sive root in In­dia, and there it per­sisted the longest. In Per­sia sun ven­er­a­tion gave rise to the later Mith­raic cult. Among many peo­ples the sun was re­garded as the an­ces­tor of their kings. The Chaldeans put the sun in the cen­ter of “the seven cir­cles of the uni­verse.” Later civ­i­liza­tions hon­ored the sun by giv­ing its name to the first day of the week.