Did Romans make christanity up?

Question

In some mystery religions of the past, there was a chief god which was the equivalent of the God of the monotheists and the other gods were what became the Angels that many today believe in. A most important of these gods was Mitras, the Sun God. Mitraism was the main religion of the Roman Empire before Christianity became the established religion of Rome.

There are many parallels between the life of Mitras and Jesus. Mitras was born on December 25 and had twelve disciples. He had a last supper before being crucified and resurrected. Ultimately he rose to heaven on a cloud. Given that Tarsus, the birthplace of Saul who later changed his name to Paul, was a center of Mitraism and that December 25, was chosen as the birth of Jesus many biblical scholars believe that some of the more mythological aspects of the New testament may be derived from the myth of Mitras and Mitraism.
Sure sounds like it to me. Those with blind faith need not reply.

Answer 1

I believe they did to hold a stable economy, make people fear the afterlife so they behave.

reply to last post--Pagan rome died off because they used lead piping for water. They died from lead poisoning, learn your history.

Answer 2

Interesting question and deserving of an answer

You're close on your dates but Mitraism started in the 1st BCE. So, yes it is in direct competition with Christianity.

Again, yes there are a few parallels but there are more difference than I care to write. In fairness of our debate, most of Mitraism is not known, it was a secret society.

It was followed by the Roman militia more as a right of passage and seems to stem from a neoplatonic concept that the 'running' of the sun from solstice to solstice is a parallel for the movement of the soul through the universe, from pre-existence, into the body, and then beyond the physical body into an afterlife. There were 7 stages of inlightment. I'll stop here...Wow, nothing like Christianity.

Jesus was not born on 25 December. The latest study states April 5. In truth, the date in not really known.

Constantine the first sought to blend Christian and pagan traditions to help unify his empire. At that time, there were two prominent pagan winter festivals.

The first, starting on December 17 and lasting seven days, honored Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.

The second, starting on December 25 and lasting through January 1, commemorated the birth of Mithras, the Persian god of light.

While who is to say what came first or who really did what. You and I can write novels on our view points.

What is not open to debate, is how fast Christianity moved throughout the world and Mitraism is left to the history books.

Great question! I had to go back and look up some Mitraism points from college.

Answer 3

While what you say about the evolution of faith is true (societies progress from naturalism to polytheism and then on to monotheism), it is highly unlikely that the roman society engineered the Christian faith. I say this for some predominantly scientific reasons, reasons which actually led to the downfall of rome to the Catholics.

Rome's sociobehavioral patterns centered on a polyamorous male reproductive strategy that discouraged the birthing of children, included sex as merely recreational rather than reproductive, and placed women in a position FAR inferior to men. Christianity, however, encouraged the monogomous female reproductive strategy with the purpose being towards reproduction (offspring) and placed women, while not equal to men, certainly much less disparagingly below men.

This had several effects... it brought women into the church first as primary converts. The pagan roman society, then, had a shortage of women and pagan males who wanted to secure their genetic line by children had to supplicate themselves to Christian women to find a mate. This placed the women in a position of power to demand either conversion of the male or at least that the children be raised catholic... and thus the reproductive power of the catholic church was it's greatest strength.

The plagues of the first couple centuries killed a large proportion of both the christian and pagan populations, but after the plagues the differing social beliefs of the Catholics allowed them to reproduce and rapidly replenish their lost population. Pagan rome, on the other hand, had already been losing numbers before the plague and never recovered it's population afterwards. When the barbarians finally invaded, pagan rome was so weakened that it was crushed, and yet again the social influence of Catholocism's monogomous birthing practice allowed them to assimilate the pagan invaders and grow even stronger.

The clincher to the deal is that, despite the fact that days like easter fall on/near pagan holidays, there is good reason to suspect that some of these are accurate days. For example, Easter falls on a day similar to that of a Pagan Roman holiday... but it also coordinates with the Jewish holiday of Passover, which predates pagan rome by hundreds of years. It's difficult to say that certain pagan ceremonies may not have copied themselves off of Jewish celebration days.

At any rate, the major Point I was getting at was that if pagan rome DID make christianity up, then it was the worst mistake they ever made since it led to their eventual downfall. However, granted that the moral behaviorisms of Catholicism and Pagan Rome (as well as views on the rights of women and polygamy) it is simply unlikely that the pagans would have invented something which was so "upsettingly" different from their traditional and respected culture.

Answer 4

No.They were converted to it.Emperor Constantine attended the first Ecumenical Council at Niceea,but since he was basically a military man and not at all a theologian he could not influence the outcome.He simply was not up to it.He was just trying to figure out what it was all about.Later he was baptised on his deathbed by an Arian bishop.

Answer 5

I just followed my parrents religious beliefs, like most others. I will have to read up on this Mitras, it sounds very interesting

Answer 6

Yes, they made it up, and then oppressed and killed the followers for almost 300 years so it would look like they hadn't made it up. Yeah, that makes sense.

Answer 7

wow awesome question and answers. I'll give this a star, because more should read this.