Mithra, Christianity were parallel religions almost identical, were they combined to form Christianity?

Question

These religions competed in the first three hundred years AD. They each had a virgin birth,son who died for man kind, killed and arose after three days had twelve apostiles and many other things in common. Sunday was their gods day as was the twenty fifth of Dec.his birthday. This was a Roman religion and it was male only! How is it possible that Yeshua/Jesus a Jew with Jewish followers ended up a Roman religion?

Answer 1

Doesn't the religion of Mithra prove that Christianity is false?



Some critics of Christianity teach that the Christian religion was not based upon divine revelation but that it borrowed from pagan sources, Mithra being one of them. They assert that the figure of Mithra has many commonalities with Jesus, too common to be coincidence.
Mithraism was one of the major religions of the Roman Empire which was derived from the ancient Persian god of light and wisdom. The cult of Mithraism was quite prominent in ancient Rome, especially among the military. Mithra was the god of war, battle, justice, faith, and contract. According to Mithraism, Mithra was called the son of God, was born of a virgin, had disciples, was crucified, rose from the dead on the third day, atoned for the sins of mankind, and returned to heaven. Therefore, the critics maintain that Christianity borrowed its concepts from the Mithra cult. But is this the case? Can it be demonstrated that Christianity borrowed from the cult of Mithra as it developed its theology?
First of all, Christianity does not need any outside influence to derive any of its doctrines. All the doctrines of Christianity exists in the Old Testament where we can see the prophetic teachings of Jesus as the son of God (Zech. 12:10), born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), was crucified (Psalm 22), the blood atonement (Lev. 17:11), rose from the dead (Psalm 16:10), and salvation by faith (Hab. 2:4). Also, the writers of the gospels were eyewitnesses (or directed by eyewitnesses as were Mark and Luke) who accurately represented the life of Christ. So, what they did was write what Jesus taught as well as record the events of His life, death, and resurrection. In other words, they recorded history, actual events and had no need of fabrication or borrowing.
There will undoubtedly be similarities in religious themes given the agrarian culture. Remember, an agriculturally based society, as was the people of the ancient Mediterranean area, will undoubtedly develop theological themes based upon observable events, i.e., the life, death, and seeming resurrection of life found in crops, in cattle, and in human life. It would only be natural for similar themes to unfold since they are observed in nature and since people created gods related to nature. But, any reading of the Old Testament results in observing the intrusion of God into Jewish history as is recorded in miracles and prophetic utterances. Add to that the incredible archaeological evidence verifying Old Testament cities and events and you have a document based on historical fact instead of mythical fabrication. Furthermore, it is from these Old Testament writings that the New Testament themes were developed.
As you can see, there is no need for any of the Christian writers to borrow from anything other than the Old Testament source in order to establish any Christian doctrine concerning Jesus. If the argument that pagan mythologies predated Christian teachings and therefore Christianity borrowed from them is true, then it must also be truth that the pagan religions borrowed from the Jewish religion because it is older than they are! Given that all of the Christian themes are found in the Old Testament and the Old Testament was begun around 2000 B.C. and completed around 400 B.C., we can then conclude that these pagan religions actually borrowed from Jewish ideas found in the Old Testament. Think about it, the idea of a blood sacrifice and a covering for sin is found in the first three chapters of Genesis when God covered Adam and Eve with animals skins and prophesied the coming of the Messiah.
Furthermore, those who wrote about Jesus in the New Testament were Jews (or under the instruction of Jews) who were devoted to the legitimacy and inspiration of the Old Testament scriptures and possessed a strong disdain for pagan religions. It would have been blasphemous for them to incorporate pagan sources into what they saw as the fulfillment of the sacred Old Testament scriptures concerning the Messiah. Also, since they were writing about Jesus, they were writing based upon what He taught: truth, love, honesty, integrity, etc. Why then would they lie and make up stories and suffer great persecution, hardships, ridicule, arrest, beatings, and death all for known lies and fabrications from paganism? It doesn't make sense.
At best, Mithraism only had some common themes with Christianity (and Judaism) which were recorded in both the Old and New Testaments. What is far more probable is that as Mithraism developed, it started to adopt Christian concepts.

"Allegations of an early Christian dependence on Mithraism have been rejected on many grounds. Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god and no place for any concept of rebirth -- at least during its early stages...During the early stages of the cult, the notion of rebirth would have been foreign to its basic outlook...Moreover, Mithraism was basically a military cult. Therefore, one must be skeptical about suggestions that it appealed to nonmilitary people like the early Christians."1

What is more probable is that with the explosive nature of the Christian church in the 1st and 2nd century, other cult groups started to adapt themselves to take advantage of some of the teachings found in Christianity.

"While there are several sources that suggest that Mithraism included a notion of rebirth, they are all post-Christian. The earliest...dates from the end of the second century A.D."2

Therefore, even though there are similarities between Christianity and Mithraism, it is up to the critics to prove that one borrowed from the other. But, considering that the writers of the New Testament were Jews who shunned pagan philosophies and that the Old Testament has all of the themes found in Christianity, it is far more probable that if any borrowing was done, it was done by the pagan religions that wanted to emulate the success of Christianity.

Answer 2

There are similarities between Mithracism and Christianity but they were not combined to form Christianity. Different regions had different reasons for developing belief systems that included a messiah or dying/resurrencting god. Mithracism evolved from Zorostrianism and there are subtleties in the belief system that I can't go into here (and are too sophisticated for the readership). It was related to the Osiris-Isis cult and even though the cult of Mithra was a men-only thing. The wives of Mithra initiates participated in Isis cults as the feminine counterpart of MIthraicism.

A belief in a Messiah became part of the Jewish zeitgeist in part because of the political oppression. The culture had its own wisdom traditions and its own prophets and people emerging who claimed to be a messiah (they also had lore in the Babylonian Talmud about a person named Yeshua who was spoken of in the worst terms as a bastard, a false prophet, and a mage, but basically sounds like ... Jesus. So then the Jesus cult and the Gospel stories emerged. The teaching, which had its basis in Gnosticism, lore about executed messiah types, and also lore ingrained in people's minds about dying/resurrecting god motifs all became conflated in early Christianity. The birth of Christ (whose birth has been related to a astronomical happening that "may" have occurred in September in 7 BC) began to be commemorated in December at about the time of the Winter Solstice because when the Roman Empire decided to adopt Christianity as the official state religion, the birth of Christ had to be commemorated instead of all those other solar deities and various gods who were commemorated during Winter Solstice.

Answer 3

Who copied from who? And are your examples valid. Read this thoroughly: http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html

Some similarities in paganism are to be expected, both because they corrupted certain practices God gave in the beginning, and truths which man knows innately from God.

And secondly, because the devil, whom God allowed to know much of His plans, is an imitator. As the devil's primary desire is to prevent people from worshiping/obeying the one true and living God (which is for our benefit), you would expect him to seek to create a idolatrous counterfeit after God's plan of salvation, which was revealed by God long before Jesus was actually born. If you look at any cult you will see the same technique today. But despite what pro-pagan theories purport, there are very critical differences between pagan myths and what the Bible reveals, and which disallow Christians from being the copy cats."

Answer 4

Brother IV where does the NT concept of a "soul" and an "afterlife" come from ?

Answer 5

Christianity has adopted many elements of past religions throughout the years. That is one of the reasons it has survived so long.

Answer 6

How can they have the same birth date when this calender wasn't even in use at that time.

Answer 7

Another victim of Zeitgeist.com...

Answer 8

I don't think so. There is so much confusion where there shouldn't be.