Saturday 24 June 2023

Mithraic Instruction II

I asked here why Cynan wanted to convert to Mithraism but had already answered that question here! (OK. The complexity of fiction mirrors the complexity of life.)

Cynan commends Gratillonius for making the myths real but does not question their truth. What he wants is a vivid story.

When Our Lord Mithras was born, shepherds adored Him with offerings and He ate fruit from a fig tree yet:

"'This happened before there was life on earth. I don't understand that myself. But why should a man be able to understand the Eternal?'" (p. 306)

Don't understand it? It's a contradiction! Unless this is a way of saying that the story is not literally true but symbolically significant.

We notice the similarities to Christianity but also the differences. In Mithras' story, the flood is followed by a fire. Mithras ascends to heaven after a last supper but also fights both the Sun and the Bull. The Bull's blood becomes "'...the wine of the Mystery." (ibid.) Its body becomes life on earth. (So how were there shepherds and a fig tree before that?)

Judaism: God.
Christianity: God and Christ.

Zoroastrianism: Ahura-Mazda.
Mithraism: Ahura-Mazda and Mithras.

The Torah: God both speaks to Moses and hardens Pharaoh's heart.
Zoroastriansim: Ahura-Mazda is opposed by Ahriman.
Christianity: God is opposed by a rebel angel, not by a rival deity.

12 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I've also wondered if what looked like similarities to Christianity in Mithraism were simply copied from Christianity. After all, I think Mithraism only took form quite late, when Christianity already existed.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: It existed but wasn't widely known; Christians only became numerous, and known outside Jewish circles, in the 3rd century, after about 211 AD.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I don't entirely agree. I think Catholic Christians were becoming numerous by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, who died in AD 180.

And Christians were becoming known as distinct from Jews at least as early as the letter Pliny the Younger wrote to the Emperor Trajan (and his reply to Pliny), circa AD 111.

To say nothing, of course, of the literature being composed by Christians themselves: the Didache, 1 Clement, the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the works of Justin Martyr, etc., all by or before 150.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

I think that rabbis met in 100 AD to define and close their scriptural canon and to differentiate it from the growing Christian canon.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

IIRC, somewhat earlier, around AD 90 or even 80. These rabbis adopted the shorter OT canon, rejecting the deuterocanonical books found in the LXX.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: the latest estimate is that in the late 2nd century, Christians numbered no more than about a hundred thousand, almost all in urban centers and mostly in the east. The 3rd century was when they expanded, but in Constantine's time they were probably still outnumbered by the Jews.

I would recommend Peter Heather's CHRISTENDOM: THE TRIUMPH OF A RELIGION as a good recent synthesis.

He presents convincing evidence that as late as 300 CE, after a period of rapid growth, Christians were no more than 1%-3% of the total population of the Empire, and apart from a few small areas were almost entirely an urban phenomenon (and remained largely urban until after the fall of the Western Empire).

Eg., in 300 CE the towns and cities in the Roman Empire had no more than 12% of the total population, and the percentage was declining... and 2/3 of them had no evidence of organized Christian communities at all.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Actually, I mostly don't disagree with you, except a little bit about the timing, 20 or 30 years.

And I did know the Church was, for a long time, mostly concentrated in towns and cities. Christianity spread along the sea lanes and the roads connecting those cities.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: yup. To give an idea, in Marcus Aurelius' time Rome had one of the bigger Christian communities in the Empire. Best estimate for the early 3rd century is that there were a maximum of 20,000 Christians in the one-million population of the city.

S.M. Stirling said...

Incidentally, Heather points out that one implication of his analysis is that Constantine's conversion to Christianity was absolutely sincere.

Because there was no political advantage to him in taking it up. Quite the contrary.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Thanks! And I still think it's not impossible the Rome of Marcus Aurelius and your book TO TURN THE TIDE also had about 20,000 Christians.

What Heather said about Constantine makes a refreshing from what so many others have said, that his motives for converting were based on nothing but hypocrisy and crass calculation.

Some writers have noted how, as time passed, Christianity influenced how Constantine governed and legislated. E.g., the laws became somewhat less harsh and punishments for crimes somewhat less ferocious.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: true, though that had been a trend throughout the Imperial period.

Eg., laws about slaves reached their nadir of savagery in the late Republic.

By the reign of Claudius, there was considerable discontent about the one that mandated death by torture for every slave in the household of a master who was murdered by one of his slaves.

(Which could amount to hundreds of executions, btw., for a rich man.)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And I hope that law was soon repealed or drastically softened.

I did know of how strongly Augustus himself disapproved of the casual execution of slaves. E.g., the story of the broken glassware.

Ad astra! Sea