From: Maru (marudubshinki@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Sep 25 2004 - 07:24:21 MDT
Mithraism still got stomped didn't it? I imagine it got absorbed to the same superficial extent Christianity absorbed any strong competing religion, and the demi-god idea, best I can tell comes from the Gospel of John. Whether that was written late enough to be influenced, or whether it drew on some other source, (Mithraism didn't form in a vacuum- neither did Christianity) I don't know. U think the absorption was partial, because Mithraism, stemming from Eastern and not Semitic mystery cults had a cyclical world-view, not an eschatological one, which makes a pretty big difference, and Chrisitanity drops the nine levels of intiation in favor of the damned/saved binary state.
~Maru
Thomas Buckner <tcbevolver@yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Maru wrote:
Alright, 'Mithras' is a name which obviously
> stems from the mystery cult Mithraism.
> Mithraism was fairly new at its time, but
> unforutunately got steamrollerd by the then
> nascent Christianity to the point where most of
> it is reconstructed from artifcats. Not a good
The way I hear it, Mithraism was a widespread
cult among the Roman army and Christianity
absorbed it; and that many of the more
'supernatural' ideas in Christianity (that Jesus
was a demigod, in essence) came from Mithraism.
Tom Buckner
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