From Mithras to Jesus: Exploring the Roots of Christianity by Anyalzying Art - Part 1

Note: This presentation may offend some because of its take on the history of Christianity. I want to make it clear that I am in no way attempting to degrade, insult, or make fun of the faith of others. I find these similarities striking and interesting, and I wanted to present them to you here. You may take away whatever you like from it, but I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed researching and presenting it. -George

The Son of God was born several thousand years ago on December 25. He was described thusly: He "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" (Plato, Philo, and Paul, p. 15). He was depicted as an infant on the lap of his mother in art, and one of these depictions can be found in the catacombs of Rome. As an adult, he was a traveling teacher and healer, and he had 12 disciples.

His birth was celebrated yearly on December 25, as was his resurrection, which happened 3 days after his death and entombment. His disciples "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).

This story sounds familiar to all of you, I'm sure. However, it's not the story of Jesus that I'm telling. It is the story of Mithras. Franz Cumont wrote The Mysteries of Mithra (Full Readable Version Here) in 1903. According to him, Mithraism came originally from Persia (basically modern-day Iran). It's not completely certain when Mithraism was primarily observed, but some scholars place it in the 1st century AD. Others say it could have started before then but was most popular during the first to fourth centuries A.D.

These similarities were no secret to early Christians, because they had to endure the mocking of their pagan neighbors who couldn't understand why they believed in the story of Jesus which was so much like their stories that the Christians discarded. Pagan philosopher Celsus asked this very question: "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians - and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God"


Tertullian, a church father, wrote "The Devil, whose business it is to pervert the truth, mimicks the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments, in the Mysteries of idols. He himself baptises some that is to say, his believers and followers; he promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras: thus he marks on the forehead his own soldiers: there he celebrates the oblation of bread: he brings in the symbol of the Resurrection, and wins the crown with the sword."

Tertullian and the early Christians, then, were so painfully aware that their beliefs were so similar to those of the Dionysus/Bacchus/Mithras followers that they came up with an explanation - Satan himself created these stories before Jesus was born in order to confuse those who might otherwise become Christians.

Many ancient Christian sites are built on top of pagan sites after the Christian religion took over in those places. Italy is no different, with Rome hosting many Christianized sites. St. Clement's Church, one of the oldest churches in Rome, was built on top of a Mithraeum, or Temple of Mithras. This is an image of ruins taken from the Mithraeum:



Another such Christianized site is St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Church. There are many tombs under the Basilica. These were discovered during a 1939 excavation. Some of the tombs found were non-Christian, and others were Pagan, but one bit of imagery found on one of the Christian tombs is interesting:

This image depicts Jesus, but he is depicted as a sun god or "Sol Invictus," a later form of Mithras.

Mithras is not the only pagan god who shares similarities with Jesus, however. Mithras as savior, son of god, born on December 25 and resurrected 3 days after his death is acting as another representation of the general god-man known to scholars as Osiris-Dionysus. Here you can find a chart comparing many dying and resurrecting god-men with Jesus.


This particular amulet, which supposedly depicts Dionysus/Bacchus, other Roman forms of the god-man, has been claimed a forgery by some, but evidence is inconclusive either way.

Another interesting similarity between pagan and Christian art is the use of pine cones in Dionysus imagery and Christian imagery, particularly in the Vatican and in Catholic dress.

Here, Dionysus carries a pine cone on a staff.


Here, Bacchus carries the pine cone staff.


This is the largest pine cone in the world at the Court of the Pine Cone, Vatican.


The Pope's pine cone staff.

Continue to Part 2

From Mithras to Jesus: Exploring the Roots of Christianity by Anyalzying Art - Part 2

The image of the infant god-man is an important one in Christianity, but it was no less so in pagan savior religions.


Madonna and infant Jesus.


This one is perhaps the most strikingly Jesus-like, and depicts the infant Dionysus. This is from the 4th century B.C.


From the Roman catacombs - Mother Isis with infant Horus.

Far more prevalent than any other symbol in Christianity is the cross or crucifix. This is said to represent the cross on which Jesus was crucified before rising from the grave 3 days later. However, in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says Jesus was "hung on a tree." St. Paul's letter to the Galatians says the same. The god-man Attis was also hung, on a pine tree (remember the pine cone imagery). The cross, according to Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy of The Jesus Mysteries was an important symbol in the ancient world. The four arms represented the four elements.
(The Jesus Mysteries, 50-52).


From The Jesus Mysteries: Dionysus as a child is given a cross as an omen of his fate - to be crucified.



Another symbol often used in Christianity is the Ichthys, or "Jesus Fish." The symbol was used by Christians to mark their secret meeting places or was used as a "secret handshake," or perhaps both. Christian reasons for the history of this symbol are that it represents Jesus' miracle of feeding 5,000 people with fish or that Jesus called his disciples "fishers of men." However, the symbol's history is much older and more complicated than that.

When Jesus helps catch a large number of fish in the Gospel of John, the gospel mentions that it was 153 fish. Pagan priest and mathematician Pythagoras and his followers regarded 153 as a sacred number, and the ratio of height to length of the shape is 153:265, which Archimedes called "the measure of the fish. When two circles of the same circumference are combined such that the edge of one touches the center of the other, we see the fish take form:



Final Analysis: The similarities between these pagan god-men and the symbols and art that were inspired by their stories, and Jesus Christ are interesting. They bring into question, in my mind, the very foundations of Christianity. Was the story of Jesus yet another story of a dying and resurrecting god-man combined with the prophecy of the Jewish savior? Was there ever a real "Jesus The Man?" These questions fall outside of the scope of this project, but the similarities are striking.

I hope you have all enjoyed the presentation. Thank you.

Irish Fairy Tales

What do the Irish fairytales tell you about the Irish view of space and time?

As I mention in a few of my responses here, the Irish view of space and time, if based on these fairy tales, is much different from other western views, especially American. In several of the tales, for instance, we see time stretched and contracted – sometimes both within the same short tale. In a few, situations and bits of the story are repeated several times, with 3 repeats seeming to be the most typical. This use of 3 is popular in many cultures, actually, and I suppose the Irish are no different. The most interesting use of time is in Usheen’s Return to Ireland, in which he stays in the Tir-Nan-Oge for many years and thinks it has only been one, then becomes old and frail when time catches up with him.

Much time is spent outside, so it seems that the Irish prefer, at least in these tales, to write about open areas and not closed-in ones. I suppose Irish Fairy Tale writers have some sort of cultural story claustrophobia? There is a very dream-like state to the stories, and in at least one, most of the story takes place in a dream.

The King of Ireland's Son

This is my first of this set of fairy tales, and I must admit, it's pretty strange. Fairy tales are always strange in some way, but the beginning and end are connected by a twisting middle full of details that make me wonder if I'm missing something. The King of Ireland's Son pays off the dead man's debt in the beginning. Then he meets the green man and the other men who travel with him. The green man is told that he can have the first kiss of the King's son's wife once he has her. When the young man is finally married, the green man discovers that the wife is "full up of snakes." He removes them, then tells the King's son that he is the man who was in the coffin, and that the other men are servants that God sent him. The son and his wife then "live happily ever after." A very, very strange story.

The thing I found really interesting was the grammar. I don't know if this was translated from Gaelic or is just Irish-English, but phrases like "lay your ear to the ground and try are they coming" and "you'll get that if the thing I have in my head succeeds with me" make it sort of fun to read. I suppose the language is a more Germanic version of English, far closer to modern English than middle-English but still a bit rearranged.

Dreams of Gold

This tale seems like another version of “the grass is always greener on the other side.” The man from Mayo has a dream that he’ll find treasure in Limerick, but the cobbler from Limerick dreams of treasure in the May man’s own garden. The Mayo man ends up finding treasure in his garden… but the man from Limerick doesn’t. Is there a geography lesson here that I’m missing, maybe?

The Birth of Finn MacCumhail

This story, we discover at the end, tells of the beginning of the Fenians of Erin, who followed the orders of Finn MacCumhail after he saved their lives. Finn is offered the hand of the King’s daughter if he can save the King’s dun, which is destroyed every night after it is rebuilt. I had to look it up, but the word dun “comes from the Brythonic Din and Gaelic Dun, meaning fort, and is now used as a general term for small stone built strongholds, enclosures or roundhouses in Scotland, as a sub-group of hill forts.” After killing the witch and her 3 sons who are responsible for burning it down every night, Finn spares the lives of the other failed champions instead of taking the hand of the King’s daughter. This, like the other tales, is very strange. It involves giants and more beheadings than a 1970s slasher flick, but the story is actually very entertaining. It’s probably not the kind of story I’d tell a kid before he went to bed, though.

Usheen’s Return to Ireland

“Usheen was the last of the Fianna and the greatest of them.” Curious again who the Fianna were, I discovered that they were a band of men from several tribes, sometimes 3000 strong, who protected the land from invaders in the first to third centuries. Usheen found himself in the Tir-Nan-Oge. The Tir-Nan-Oge is the land of Irish faeries, where they can feast and battle and always be resurrected. Usheen is there for a very long time, but thinks that it’s only a year. This story, like the others, may have a moral, but it’s lost on me if it does. Usheen gets off of his horse, even though he was told not to, and all of the time that passed in the outside world catches up with him, so he becomes very old.

The Man Who Had No Story

This one was interestingly layered. Brian goes to cut rods for a basket, but he ends up having to go to a house in the distance after a dense fog appears. He is asked to tell a fairy tale, but he says he hasn’t before and doesn’t know how. He goes out to get water and (apparently) dreams about being very successful in many things he doesn’t think he can do. When he awakes, he discovers that he can indeed tell a fairy tale. He goes to bed in the house but wakes outside with his head resting on his bundles of cut rods. This means that his dreams of success were actually part of the original dream about getting lost in the fog and not knowing how to tell a fairy tale.

Rumi

Blog – write a response to 3 of rumi’s poems

The drum of the realization of the promise is beating,
we are sweeping the road to the sky. Your joy is here today, what remains for tomorrow?
The armies of the day have chased the army of the night,
Heaven and earth are filled with purity and light.
Oh! joy for he who has escaped from this world of perfumes and color!
For beyond these colors and these perfumes, these are other colors in the heart and the soul.
Oh! joy for this soul and this heart who have escaped
the earth of water and clay,
Although this water and this clay contain the hearth of the
philosophical stone.

(Mystic Odes 473)

This poem gives us an idea of Rumi’s opinion of the physical world. The “world of perfumes and color,” of “water and clay.” It’s difficult to understand exactly what Rumi is saying here. In one sense, it seems that he’s promoting living for the day and living your physical life to its fullest. Then, in the same breath, he expresses joy for those who have escaped this world. That seems confusing to me.

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy _something,_ to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
Rumi, 'We Are Three', Mathnawi VI, 831-845

I like this poem, especially its last two lines. “It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.” This is something I had to learn early in life, because I was picked on quite a bit. I learned that those who act that way, those who judge you, are not worth your time. It’s people who accept you for who you are that you want to be friends with.

A Star Without a Name

When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.

Seeds feed awhile on ground,
then lift up into the sun.

So you should taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.

That's how you came here, like a star
without a name. Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights.

(Mathnawi III, 1284-1288)

I like the metaphor Rumi uses here. We as humans must grow past the infantile stage of our current view of the world and move onto spiritual adulthood. We must grasp our true place in the universe and its meaning without the filters we normally see through.