So what's the deal with Mithras and Christmas?

[DireStrike]

When was Jesus born? Mithras? When was Mithras' birthday celebrated? How do we know?

I've seen lots of assertions but little evidence.

[aquart]

1. We don't know when Jesus was born.

Mithras' feast day was celebrated on December 25.

You figure it out.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. As I understand it,

Mithra's birthday was celebrated Dec. 25. Jesus's birthday was not even talked about before the 300s. I googled Mithras and found this website, which I'm going to explore:

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html

[gmoney]

3. You can't spell "Christmas" without "Mithras"

for what that's worth...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. In English at least, but English didn't exist in those days

At that time, the people of Britain spoke Celtic languages, and the Anglo-Saxons didn't arrive until much later.

But anyway, the usual story is that Christmas was placed where it is to compete with the Roman feast of Saturnalia.

The cult of Mithras was popular among Roman soldiers, but it wasn't a general Roman custom.

[InvisibleBallots]

5. where is the primary historical evidence for "Mithras"?

To find out, let's take a catalogue of primary historical evidence we have of "Mithras" and a "mithras" cult. Primary historical evidence would be, say, tomb engravings, a statue, a temple, or an ancient piece of writing. Primary historical evidence is not an essay, footnoted with other essays.

So, anyone know where the primary historical evidence of the "Mithras" cult is?

[RUDUing2]

6. this page gives some really good info about this

http://www.circlegame.com/live/feast.htm

[InvisibleBallots]

7. I looked, but I couldn't find any evidence on that link

Did I miss something? Do we know of any templtes to Mithras? Where were they? Do we know of any writings of the Mithras cult? When were they discovered, and when were they supposedly written? Anything?

This link provides references to no primary historical evidence of Mithras, instead only has some entries from Encyclopedia Americana and Brittanica. The do quote some primary historical evidence, of Judaism and Christianity though. The story about the Pilgrims is interesting - this is the time period when "ancient paganism" was being "rediscovered" (i.e., invented).

[RUDUing2]

8. try this one:

http://www.free-web-template.org/mi/mithraism.html

[InvisibleBallots]

10. eh, same problem with this, no evidence

What I'm looking for is an ancient mention of Mithraism? I assume that Tacitus, Seutonius, or even Thucydyes mentioned them? Anyone know which one? Then, we can look at the evidence and judge it. That's the scientific method.

Well, this part is promising:

Historical evidence supporting this view is scanty, as is mention of Mithraism itself. The Greek astronomer Hipparchus discovered and publicized the equinoctal precession. Whether it was known by Mithraists previously is unknown. The writer Porphyry recorded that the cave pictured in the tauroctony was intended to be "an image of the cosmos." The writer Plutarch wrote about pirates of Cilicia who practiced the Mithraic "secret rites" in the first century BC (about 67 B.C.). Since Cilicia was the name of an area near Turkey and Greece, the Mithras mentioned by Plutarch may have been worship of the Persian god Mithras, or may have been associated with this god who killed a bull.

Okay, so we have Mithras mentioned, by name, in Plutarch. That's a start.

[RUDUing2]

12. found another..

http://eawc.evansville.edu/essays/mithraism.htm

Mithras is the Roman name for the Indo-Iranian god Mitra, or Mithra, as he was called by the Persians. Mitra is part of the Hindu pantheon, and Mithra is one of several yazatas (minor deities) under Ahura-Mazda in the Zoroastrian pantheon. Mithra is the god of the airy light between heaven and earth, but he is also associated with the light of the sun, and with contracts and mediation. Neither in Hinduism nor in Zoroastrianism did Mitra/Mithra have his own cult. Mitra is mentioned in the Hindu Vedas, while Mithra is is the subject of Yashts (hymns) in the Zoroastrian Avesta, a text compiled during the Sassanian period (224-640 CE) to preserve a much older oral tradition......The archaeological evidence for Mithraism, consisting mostly of monuments, inscribed dedications, and the remains of mithraea, indicates that the cult was most popular among the legions stationed in frontier areas. The Danube and Rhine river frontier has the highest concentration of evidence, but a significant quantity of evidence amply demonstrates that Mithraism was also popular among the troops stationed in the province of Numidia in North Africa and along Hadrian's wall in England. The inscriptions on dedications found in all these areas support Cumont's assertion that Mithraism was most popular among legionaries (of all ranks), and the members of the more marginal social groups who were not Roman citizens: freedmen, slaves, and merchants from various provinces (see above).

The area where the concentration of evidence for Mithraism is the most dense is the capital, Rome, and her port city, Ostia. There are eight extant mithraea in Rome of as many as seven hundred (Coarelli 1979) and eighteen in Ostia. In addition to the actual mithraea, there are approximately three hundred other mithraic monuments from Rome and about one hundred from Ostia. This body of evidence reveals that Mithraism in Rome and Ostia originally appealed to the same social strata as it did in the frontier regions. The evidence also indicates that at least some inhabitants knew about Mithraism as early as the late first century CE, but that the cult did not enjoy a wide membership in either location until the middle of the second century CE.

[InvisibleBallots]

13. eh

According to the other link, the association with the man killing a bull/zodiac temples and the Mithra of ancient Persia was made by Cumont in the 1800s. Now, he may have been right, and he may have been wrong, but it looks like everyone is taking his speculation as gospel, need to be careful about that.

"Franz Cumont, a Belgian historian of some note in the 1800s, proposed that Mithraism came originally from Iran. While there is an Persian deity named Mithra, there is no known legend about that deity killing a bull with the assorted other animals, nor is there any known text detailing such a story. However, there is a story of Ahriman, the evil god in one persian religion, killing a bull."

Perhaps the ancient Persian name "Mithra" isn't quite the right name for this cult of imperial soldiers and marginal citizens of the empire. I wonder what other connections there are to the name Mithra other than above? I also wonder about the dating of these temples.

Anyone interested should look at the primary historical evidence that we have available, and treat the essays, second and third removed speculations - even when they come from good brand names like the Encyclopedia Britannica - with very large grains of salt. They don't really know much more than we do, and never forget the leading scientists of the previous era all believed the earth was flat.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. temples of Mithras

London

Rome

Solvenia

Hadrian's Wall

etc

[InvisibleBallots]

11. good link

"The oldest temple of Mithras in Rome's Danubian provinces was discovered in the western area of Roman Poetovio, which is in present-day Spodnja Hajdina. It was unearthed by the archaeologist Dr. Wilhelm Gurlitt in 1898/99 and a protective shed was erected over the temple immediately after its discovery. Votive inscriptions indicate that the temple was erected in the mid-2nd century by Illyrian customs officers who were based in Poetovio."

So, the temple was discovered in 1989, and it's been dated to the mid-2nd century on the basis of palentography, a reasonable speculation. It's identified with "Mithras" because of the names and inscription, or was the theme of a man fighting a bull enough? C14 dating of the site would make a good case that it's from the mid-2nd century.

This is primary historical evidence of the existence of this sort of cult. The dating I what I wonder about?