Looks like I won't have time to the complete refutation of the article. I'll do what I can:
First thing you need to notice here is that the author starts off by listing credible sources and benign information from each. He/she then goes on to list the following:
Uneducated Misinformation Artist said:
1) Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.
2) Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.c
3) According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.
4) After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.
5) Mithra had a celibate priesthood.
6) Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).
. . . with the intention of leading the reader to assume that this information was derived from equally credible sources. I like how the author pulls the information out of his ass and then says "And now as you can see," as if he's made a logical conclusion from the information provided. I don't see sources for that specific information at the bottom of the page there. Most of those bullet points were addressed in the thread I linked to, but for the sake of this discussion:
Point 1. There's no record of three wise men ever visiting mithras at his birth, nor are there any figures who offered him gifts at this point. Cautes and Cautopates are the names attributed to the TWO people present in almost all mithraic iconography, each one holding a single torch eother facing up or down. Neither are pictured as offering gifts. It also needs to be noted that Mithra was born from a
ROCK! Nowhere in any Mithraic temple, writings, or iconography is there a woman present at his birth from the rock.
Point 2. I'll quote directly from the previous thread: "The date is the birth of the Sun, Sol Invictus, who is NOT Mithras. Sol is the one who raised Mithras up to heaven for the feast. Thirdly, the feast day was most definitely NOT pre-christian! It came about by the declaration of Emporer Aurelian in 274 CE." Yes, it was a popular pagan feast day. Yes, Christianity declared that day to be the day of the Nativity to compete with tha pagans, this is in no way an example of Christianity "deriving many of it's essential elements from the ancient religion of Mithraism." The date has no bearing on Christian theology, so it is a moot point, and offers no aid to the author's argument.
Point 3. Mithra never died on a cross.
Mithra never died, period. Mithra never had twelve disciples. The signs of the zodiac were present on SOME Mithraic iconography, but this was a later developement, never were they interpreted as disciples or followers of Mithra. Not by Mithraic scholars, anyway.
4.
Mithra never died.
5. Moot.
6. There is absolutely no reference anywhere of the dates for specific events in Mithraism. December 25(December 21 in Iran) is the only one, and it was declared by an emporer, not by the faith.
Skip down to the notes at the bottom of the article.(I am only addressing the "relationship" between Christianity and Mithraism, the other information in the article is up for anyone else to debate)
Ignoramus said:
NOTE 1: Persian legends of Mithras says that He was born of the Sun God and a virgin mother, called "the Mother of God", on December 25th. They saw him as a symbol of justice, truth, and loyalty. He was considered the saviour of humankind, and stories abound of His healing the sick, raising the dead, and performing miracles (making the blind see and the lame walk). Throughout His lifetime, He was seen as a protector of human souls, a mediator between "heaven" and "earth" and was even associated with a "holy trinity". He remained celibate, until the ripe old age of 64, throughout his life and preached the virtues of ethics, moral behavior, and good will. Does this sound familiar? Sure sounds like Jesus.
NOTE 2: Ancient Persians believed in a "celestial heaven" and hell. They believed that they would be judged by their god and granted justice of" eternal salvation. On judgement day, the faithful dead would be resurrected and light would triumph over darkness.
NOTE 3: They took part in ritual purification or baptism, held Sundays sacred, drank wine and ate bread as a symbol of the body and blood and even took part in ritualistic purging (purification rites such as flagellation).
NOTE 4: In their legends, Mithras had an "earthly mission' to accomplish. He then was put to death on a cross and buried in a cave (some legends have Him held in a cave to be reborn once a year).
NOTE 5: He then "rose from the dead" and took part in a last supper with his 12 disciples (often associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac) and then ascended to the heavens to watch over His "flock" from above.
Most of Note 1 was previous addressed up top. Please remember that the date attributed to his birth was declared by a roman emporer and not a valid aspect of Mithraism. Neither was the "Virgin Mother" idea or her nicknames. The ONLY miracle attributed to Mithra was an occasion in which he fired an arrow at a stone and drew water from it.
That's it. The author's examples of miracles performed is ludicrous and unbased. The "Trinity" never appears in Mithraism, either. "Sounds like Jesus," my ass.
Note 2: Isn't this belief common enough in most religions as to have no bearing on the argument?
Note 3: Sundays? Nope. No dates in Mithraism. As for the baptism, I'd like to see some scholarly evidence concerning the truthfulness of that statement. The bread and wine part is accurate, yes, and go ahead and read the thread I linked to, to see how that applies.
Note 4: No crosses anywhere in Mithraism.
He never died. He was born from a rock, not "reborn."
Note 5: Can't rise from the dead if he didn't die.
The author keeps re-iterating and using previously made statements to support his continuing conclusions, building higher and higher on a foundation of...what? I listed a decent bibliography on Mithraism in the other thread, if you seriously feel like the information this author presents demands a re-evaluation of history and foundations built thereon then you owe it to yourself to verify the information he offers.
If you're not the type to go digging through libraries for old journals and books but still require some verification of information before integrating it, then check out the internet authority on the subject:
http://www.mithraeum.org
Likewise, do an internet search for "foundations of Mithraism" or any combination of Mithraism and Christianity. If you read books on the subject, try to pay attention to who published them. I personally wouldn't waste my time if it wasn't published by a university press, IE: Oxford. Though there are quite a few independant books out there on the subject, try to be intelligent about what you pick. And for the love of god, don't believe something just because someone posted it on the internet, evaluate the sources. By this same measure, don't believe anything I wrote here. Evaluate the evidence for yourself.
