[From killing a sacred bull to the sacrifice of the prophet: crafting a modernized religion between mythicized astronomy and mythical narration; in the SWS selective review.] Peter Chrisp posits that the killing was of a "sacred bull" and that the "act [was] believed" to create the universe's life force and maintain it. (...) Ulansey argues that the Mithraic mysteries began in the Greco-Roman world as a religious response to the discovery by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus of the astronomical phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes – a discovery that amounted to discovering that the entire cosmos was moving in a hitherto unknown way. This new cosmic motion, he suggests, was seen by the founders of Mithraism as indicating the existence of a powerful new god capable of shifting the cosmic spheres and thereby controlling the universe. (...) Mithraism had backing from the Roman aristocracy during a time when their conservative values were seen as under attack during the rising tides of Christianity. (...) David Ulansey (...) does consider Mithraism "one of Christianity's major competitors in the Roman Empire". (...) Brodie, who previously had published academic works on the Hebrew prophets, argued that the gospels are essentially a rewriting of the stories of Elijah and Elisha when viewed as a unified account in the Books of Kings. (...) The "stranglehold of the workshop" meant that the first Christian artworks were heavily based on pagan art, and "a few alterations in costume and attitude transformed a pagan scene into a Christian picture". A series of scholars have since discussed possible similarities with Mithraic reliefs in medieval Romanesque art.
For the most part, mithraea tend to be small, externally undistinguished, and cheaply constructed; the cult generally preferring to create a new centre rather than expand an existing one. The mithraeum represented the cave to which Mithras carried and then killed the bull; and where stone vaulting could not be afforded, the effect would be imitated with lath and plaster. They are commonly located close to springs or streams; fresh water appears to have been required for some Mithraic rituals, and a basin is often incorporated into the structure. There is usually a narthex or ante-chamber at the entrance, and often other ancillary rooms for storage and the preparation of food. The extant mithraea present us with actual physical remains of the architectural structures of the sacred spaces of the Mithraic cult. Mithraeum is a modern coinage and mithraists referred to their sacred structures as speleum or antrum (cave), crypta (underground hallway or corridor), fanum (sacred or holy place), or even templum (a temple or a sacred space).
(...) There were seven grades of initiation into Mithraism, which are listed by St. Jerome. Manfred Clauss states that the number of grades, seven, must be connected to the planets.
(...) Activities of the most prominent deities in Mithraic scenes, Sol and Mithras, were imitated in rituals by the two most senior officers in the cult's hierarchy, the ["]Pater[" grade] and the ["]Heliodromus[" grade]. The initiates held a sacramental banquet, replicating the feast of Mithras and Sol.
(...) Consequently, it has been argued that most Mithraic rituals involved a re-enactment by the initiates of episodes in the Mithras narrative, a narrative whose main elements were: birth from the rock, striking water from stone with an arrow shot, the killing of the bull, Sol's submission to Mithras, Mithras and Sol feasting on the bull, the ascent of Mithras to heaven in a chariot.
(...) Soldiers were strongly represented amongst Mithraists, and also merchants, customs officials and minor bureaucrats. Few, if any, initiates came from leading aristocratic or senatorial families until the 'pagan revival' of the mid-4th century; but there were always considerable numbers of freedmen and slaves.
Clauss suggests that a statement by Porphyry, that people initiated into the ["]Lion["] grade must keep their hands pure from everything that brings pain and harm and is impure, means that moral demands were made upon members of congregations.
A passage in the Caesares of Julian the Apostate refers to "commandments of Mithras". Tertullian, in his treatise "On the Military Crown" records that Mithraists in the army were officially excused from wearing celebratory coronets on the basis of the Mithraic initiation ritual that included refusing a proffered crown, because "their only crown was Mithras".
(...) Archaeologist Lewis M. Hopfe notes that there are only three mithraea in Roman Syria, in contrast to further west. He writes: "Archaeology indicates that Roman Mithraism had its epicenter in Rome ... the fully developed religion known as Mithraism seems to have begun in Rome and been carried to Syria by soldiers and merchants."
Taking a different view from other modern scholars, Ulansey argues that the Mithraic mysteries began in the Greco-Roman world as a religious response to the discovery by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus of the astronomical phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes – a discovery that amounted to discovering that the entire cosmos was moving in a hitherto unknown way. This new cosmic motion, he suggests, was seen by the founders of Mithraism as indicating the existence of a powerful new god capable of shifting the cosmic spheres and thereby controlling the universe.
A. D. H. Bivar, L. A. Campbell, and G. Widengren have variously argued that Roman Mithraism represents a continuation of some form of Iranian Mithra worship. More recently, Parvaneh Pourshariati has made similar claims.
(...) But again, Meyer holds that the Mithras Liturgy reflects the world of Mithraism and may be a confirmation for Ulansey's theory of Mithras being held responsible for the precession of equinoxes.
Peter Chrisp posits that the killing was of a "sacred bull" and that the "act [was] believed" to create the universe's life force and maintain it.
(...) Ernest Renan suggested in 1882 that, under different circumstances, Mithraism might have risen to the prominence of modern-day Christianity. (...) Mithraism had backing from the Roman aristocracy during a time when their conservative values were seen as under attack during the rising tides of Christianity.
According to Mary Boyce, Mithraism was a potent enemy for Christianity in the West, though she is sceptical about its hold in the East. F. Coarelli (1979) has tabulated forty actual or possible Mithraea and estimated that Rome would have had "not less than 680–690" mithraea. L.M. Hopfe states that more than 400 Mithraic sites have been found. These sites are spread all over the Roman empire from places as far as Dura-Europos in the east, and England in the west. He, too, says that Mithraism may have been a rival of Christianity. David Ulansey thinks Renan's statement "somewhat exaggerated", but does consider Mithraism "one of Christianity's major competitors in the Roman Empire".
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mithraism&oldid=1283154694 (30 March 2025, at 19:23 (UTC))
Most scholars date Mithraism as existing prior to Christianity. Persian scholar and art historian, Abolala Soudavar, cites notable Greek thinker, Plutarch, whose writing represents the earliest account on this issue. In the year 67 BCE, pirates who had more than a thousand sails and had captured more than four hundred cities:
"offered strange rites of their own at Mount Olympus, and celebrated there, certain secret rites, among which those of Mithras continue to the present time, having been first instituted by them ..." — Plutarch
(...) Originator of the Christ myth theory, Charles-François Dupuis, set out to prove the Mithraic origins of Christianity. Dupuis points out the absence of non-Christian historical records pertaining to Jesus, as well as the shared narrative structure possessed by the biblical account of Jesus and other notable myths. Dupuis claims this as evidence that suggests the New Testament's story of Jesus was likely a mythological construct created as a means to control religious practices.
In 1882, Ernest Renan posited a case of two rival religions. He writes, "If the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic."
(...) Meanwhile, in modern-day Iran, the original homeland of Mithra, its religious followers celebrate a traditional feast of his birth. The present-day Iran Chamber Society's Ramona Shashaani claims that Christians borrowed the 25th December date from this 'Persian' (i.e. Parsee = Zoroastrian) tradition:
"While Christians around the world are preparing to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25th, the Persians are getting ready to tribute one of their most festive celebrations on Dec. 21st, the eve of winter solstice, the longest night and shortest day of the year. In Iran this night is called Shab-e Yaldaa, also known as Shab-e Chelleh, which refers to the birthday or rebirth of the sun.
(...) Yaldaa is chiefly related to Mehr Yazat; it is the night of the birth of the unconquerable sun, Mehr or Mithra, meaning love and sun, and has been celebrated by the followers of Mithraism as early as 5000 BC
(...) But in the [Roman-controlled areas] 4th century AD, because of some errors in counting the leap year, the birthday of Mithra shifted to 25th of December and was established as such."
(...) A painted text on the wall of the St. Prisca Mithraeum (c. 200 CE) in Rome contains the words:
et nos servasti (?) ... sanguine fuso (and you have saved us ... in the shed blood). The meaning of this text is unclear, although presumably it refers to the bull killed by Mithras, as no other source refers to a Mithraic salvation. (...)
Monuments in the Danube area depict Mithras shooting a bow at a rock in the presence of the torch-bearers, apparently to encourage water to come forth. Clauss states that, after the ritual meal, this "water-miracle offers the clearest parallel with Christianity".
Tertullian states that followers of Mithras were marked on their forehead in an unspecified manner. There is no indication that this mark was made in the form of a cross, or a branding, or a tattoo, or a permanent mark of any kind. The symbol of a circle with a diagonal cross inscribed within it is commonly found in Mithraea, especially in association with the Leontocephaline figure.
From the end of the 18th century some scholars have suggested that certain elements in medieval Christian art reflect images found in Mithraic reliefs. Franz Cumont was among these scholars. Cumont suggested that after the triumph of the Christian church over paganism, artists continued to make use of stock images originally devised for Mithras in order to depict the new and unfamiliar stories of the bible. The "stranglehold of the workshop" meant that the first Christian artworks were heavily based on pagan art, and "a few alterations in costume and attitude transformed a pagan scene into a Christian picture".
A series of scholars have since discussed possible similarities with Mithraic reliefs in medieval Romanesque art. Vermaseren (1963) stated that the only certain example of such influence was an image of Elijah drawn up to heaven in a chariot drawn by fiery horses. Deman (1971) claimed that a similarity of image does not tell us whether this implies an ideological influence, or merely a tradition of craftmanship. He then gave a list of medieval reliefs that parallel Mithraic images, but refused to draw conclusions from such parallels, despite volunteering this evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mithraism_in_comparison_with_other_belief_systems&oldid=1260236356 (29 November 2024, at 17:22 (UTC))
In 2012, the Irish Dominican priest and theologian Thomas L. Brodie (born 1943), holding a PhD from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a co-founder and former director of the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, published Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. In this book, Brodie, who previously had published academic works on the Hebrew prophets, argued that the gospels are essentially a rewriting of the stories of Elijah and Elisha when viewed as a unified account in the Books of Kings. This view led Brodie to the conclusion that Jesus is mythical. Brodie's argument builds on his previous work, in which he stated that rather than being separate and fragmented, the stories of Elijah and Elisha are united and that 1 Kings 16:29 – 2 Kings 13:25 is a natural extension of 1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 8 which have a coherence not generally observed by other biblical scholars. Brodie then views the Elijah–Elisha story as the underlying model for the gospel narratives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christ_myth_theory&oldid=1281363359 (9 March 2025, at 22:49 (UTC))
In 1 Kings 18, Elijah defended the worship of the Hebrew deity Yahweh over that of the Canaanite deity Baal. God also performed many miracles through Elijah, including resurrection, bringing fire down from the sky, and ascending to heaven alive. He is also portrayed as leading a school of prophets known as "the sons of the prophets." Following Elijah's ascension, his disciple and devoted assistant Elisha took over as leader of this school. The Book of Malachi prophesies Elijah's return "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD," making him a harbinger of the Messiah and of the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. References to Elijah appear in Sirach, the New Testament, the Mishnah and Talmud, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and Baháʼí writings. Scholars generally agree that a historical figure named Elijah existed in ancient Israel, though the biblical accounts of his life are considered more legendary and theologically reflective than historically accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elijah&oldid=1283233102 (31 March 2025, at 06:42 (UTC))
Support Hubzilla