Can you state why you would still claim that Christianity parralles this Pagan Religion? #1?

Defining the truth about Christianity as a copy cat from Pagan Mystery Religions #1

Mithraism vs. Christianity

M = late Roman Mystrey Religion popular among soldiers and merchants. Rival to Christianity in 2nd century and later. Participants met in a cave like structure with a statue of Mithras stabbing a bull called tauroctony. Persian god attested as early as 14th century BC, HOWEVER, not brought to the west of Persia until very late, to late to have influenced Christianity. Brought by King of Armenia in approx. 66 AD, possibly even as late as 90 AD. The flowering of this belief did not come until after the close of the New Testament canon, to late to have influenced it.



Parrallels of Mithras and Jesus

Jesus = Born of a Virgin

Mithras = Born out of a rock (portray him emerging fully grown and naked except for a Phrygian cap, holding a dagger and torch - some variations show flames shooting out from rock or him holding a globe in his hand.



Where is the parrell?

Can you state why you would still claim that Christianity parralles this Pagan Religion? #1?
Greetings!



Sounds like a rant, but...



Much of Yamauchi's literary work has concentrated on historical questions of the interrelationship between ancient near eastern cultures and the biblical texts. This is reflected in his books on Greece, Babylon, Persia, and ancient Africa, as well as in various monographs on the archaeological discoveries related to biblical studies. Yamauchi has also contributed essays to various reference works in biblical studies and Christian history, and wrote commentaries on the books of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Expositor's Bible Commentary series that was edited by Frank Gaebelein. Yamauchi was the primary translator for three of the Persian period biblical books--Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther--on the 1986 New International Version translation committee.



Other areas where Yamauchi has written include the social and cultural history of first century Christianity, the relevance of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls for New Testament studies, the primary source value of Josephus' writings, and the role of the Magi in both ancient Persia and in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew.



Yamauchi is also noted for several books and essays on ancient gnosticism. He has been highly critical of scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, who have used third and fourth century AD Gnostic texts as primary evidence for the existence of pre-Christian gnosticism.



In the 1970s he was a prominent critic of the late Morton Smith's interpretation of an apocryphal text known as the Secret Gospel of Mark. Yamauchi revisited the corpus of Smith's writings on the topics of the lost gospels and Jesus as a magician-healer in his lengthy essay on magic and miracles (1986). Yamauchi faulted Smith's work on several points. One problem Yamauchi found was Smith's anachronistic use of third, fourth and fifth century AD Greek magical papyri sources in his reinterpretation of Christ as a magus-magician. He argued that Smith's "penchant for parallels with the life of Apollonius by Philostratus" was "historically anachronistic" ("Magic or Miracle?" in Gospel Perspectives, p. 96). Yamauchi also indicated that Smith had taken passages from the Greek magical papyri out of context to support his argument that Jesus and early Christians practiced magic.



Yamauchi formally retired from his duties as Professor of History in June 2005.





Personal Faith

Yamauchi was raised by his mother - his father died when he was four years old - in a nominal Buddhist context in Hawaii. He was sent to an Episcopalian school called Iolani in his seventh grade. In 1952 he shifted from a nominal church commitment to a personal, evangelical faith in Christ. In his senior high school year Yamauchi studied at a rural school and worked at a missionary farm known as the Christian Youth Center.



Yamauchi is a founding member of the Oxford Bible Fellowship church in Oxford, Ohio.



So, you`re following an Evangelical? Well, good for you. I live in America, where we can have Freedom of Religion, and, Freedom from Religion. As a Druid, I am free of the Lies that people who pretend to be Christian try to foist upon themselves and others. "parrell"? "parralles"? in rant #2, use a "spellcheck"!



/!\
Reply:I don't think Jesus and Mithras share too many parallels. However, Christianity did pick up many of its habits from pagan religions.



i.e. Jews and early Christians sacrificed animals to Yahweh/God, as pagans did.



i.e. Christmas was moved to December 25th to convert pagans celebrated the Yule holiday.



i.e. Many pagan stories have stories about virgin births (i.e. Plato, Julius Caesar, Romulus - founder of Rome, Alexander the Great), so Christianity likely added that in later to convert Roman pagans.



The list goes on. check out the below website to see how the majority of Jesus' miracles and stories were derived from pagan stories.
Reply:To some Everything about our faith has been 'stolen' from a earlier one. It is easy to believe what ever lies you want to believe. Just look at the good Germans how believed that the Jewish people were bad.
Reply:I am assuming you're referring to the Zeitgeist movie. Here is a rebuttal to its attack on Jesus Christ. An mp3 and a movie.
Reply:I have been looking into this issue myself. I found this Website where a scholarly review article is posted by an academic expert (David Ulasney) on Mithracism.



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



New data on the matter suggest that Mithracism was a kind of gnostic mystery religion that was somewhat unrelated to Christianity and its development.



Mystery religions bear resemblance to Christianity and some "saviors" of mystery religions bear similarities to the Biblical Jesus because of ideological trends giving rise to similar ideologies in the middle east and Mediterranean/Aegean Europe from around 300 BCE to 300 CE. A major difference, which radically changed history and religious belief patterns for nearly 1000 years, is that adherents of mystery and gnostic religions (who were generally private about their beliefs and practices) saw their god-forms as archetypes and related to them in a mystical way. Christians ultimately came to view--or were strongly impressed to view-- their god-forms and legends as history.
Reply:Christmas is Mithras's day.

You're conflating two arguments.





I'd never equate Christianity and Mithraicism. Mithraicism did nothing but good for the world.