Jesus vs Mithra
Fred Thomas
Mithra (600 B.C.). The Orthodox Christian hierarchy is nearly identical to the
Mithraic version. Virtually all of the elements of Orthodox Christian rituals,
from miter, wafer, water baptism, alter, and doxology, were adopted from the
Mithra and earlier pagan mystery religions. The religion of Mithra preceded
Christianity by roughly six hundred years. Mithraic worship at one time covered
a large portion of the ancient world. It flourished as late as the second
century. The Messianic idea originated in ancient Persia and this is where the
Jewish and Christian concepts of a Savior came from. Mithra, as the sun god of
ancient Persia, had the following karmic similarities with Jesus:
Identical Life Experiences
(1)Mithra was born on December 25th as an offspring of the Sun. Next to the gods
Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, Mithra held the highest rank among the gods of ancient
Persia. He was represented as a beautiful youth and a Mediator. Reverend J. W.
Lake states: "Mithras is spiritual light contending with spiritual darkness, and
through his labors the kingdom of darkness shall be lit with heaven's own light;
the Eternal will receive all things back into his favor, the world will be
redeemed to God. The impure are to be purified, and the evil made good, through
the mediation of Mithras, the reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Mithras is the
Good, his name is Love. In relation to the Eternal he is the source of grace, in
relation to man he is the life-giver and mediator" (Plato, Philo, and Paul, p.
15).
(2)He was considered a great traveling teacher and masters. He had twelve
companions as Jesus had twelve disciples. Mithras also performed miracles.
(3)Mithra was called "the good shepherd," "the way, the truth and the light,"
"redeemer," "savior," "Messiah." He was identified with both the lion and the
lamb.
(4)The International Encyclopedia states: "Mithras seems to have owed his
prominence to the belief that he was the source of life, and could also redeem
the souls of the dead into the better world ... The ceremonies included a sort
of baptism to remove sins, anointing, and a sacred meal of bread and water,
while a consecrated wine, believed to possess wonderful power, played a
prominent part."
(5)Chambers Encyclopedia says: "The most important of his many festivals was his
birthday, celebrated on the 25th of December, the day subsequently fixed --
against all evidence -- as the birthday of Christ. The worship of Mithras early
found its way into Rome, and the mysteries of Mithras, which fell in the spring
equinox, were famous even among the many Roman festivals. The ceremonies
observed in the initiation to these mysteries -- symbolical of the struggle
between Ahriman and Ormuzd (the Good and the Evil) -- were of the most
extraordinary and to a certain degree even dangerous character. Baptism and the
partaking of a mystical liquid, consisting of flour and water, to be drunk with
the utterance of sacred formulas, were among the inauguration acts."
(6)Prof. Franz Cumont, of the University of Ghent, writes as follows concerning
the religion of Mithra and the religion of Christ: "The sectaries of the Persian
god, like the Christians', purified themselves by baptism, received by a species
of confirmation the power necessary to combat the spirit of evil; and expected
from a Lord's supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held
Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December....
They both preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as
meritorious and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence,
renunciation and self-control. Their conceptions of the world and of the destiny
of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by
beatified ones, situated in the upper regions, and of a Hell, peopled by demons,
situated in the bowels of the Earth. They both placed a flood at the beginning
of history; they both assigned as the source of their condition, a primitive
revelation; they both, finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a
last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final
conflagration of the universe" (The Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 190, 191).
(7)Reverend Charles Biggs stated: "The disciples of Mithra formed an organized
church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation,
Atonement, and a Savior, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but
a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other
curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of
Christ (The Christian Platonists, p. 240).
(8)In the catacombs at Rome was preserved a relic of the old Mithraic worship.
It was a picture of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother,
while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering
gifts.
(9)He was buried in a tomb and after three days he rose again. His resurrection
was celebrated every year.
(10)McClintock and Strong wrote: "In modern times Christian writers have been
induced to look favorably upon the assertion that some of our ecclesiastical
usages (e.g., the institution of the Christmas festival) originated in the
cultus of Mithraism. Some writers who refuse to accept the Christian religion as
of supernatural origin, have even gone so far as to institute a close comparison
with the founder of Christianity; and Dupuis and others, going even beyond this,
have not hesitated to pronounce the Gospel simply a branch of Mithraism" (Art.
"Mithra").
(11)Mithra had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at
which time he was resurrected. His sacred day was Sunday, "the Lord's Day." The
Mithra religion had a Eucharist or "Lord's Supper."
(12)The Christian Father Manes, founder of the heretical sect known as
Manicheans, believed that Christ and Mithra were one. His teaching, according to
Mosheim, was as follows: "Christ is that glorious intelligence which the
Persians called Mithras ... His residence is in the sun" (Ecclesiastical
History, 3rd century, Part 2, ch. 5).
"I am a star which goes with thee and shines out of the depths." - Mithraic
saying
"I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright morning star." -
Jesus, (Rev. 22:16)