Mithras, Mithraism and Christianity

Jul 4, 2011
Kevin Stoba

A Phrygian capped Mithras slaughtering a bull to spark the springtime regeneration of life in a famous tauroctony from the British Museum. - Tallis Keeton

In attempts to represent Christianity as a historical phenomenon, the relationship between it and Mithraism is often cited. How accurate is this connection?

The Roman cult of Mithras, an apparently Persian god whose communication to Roman worship and exact theological position remain shrouded in mystery, is an endlessly fascinating subject. Beginning in earnest in the late 1st century AD, and extending through the 2nd century across the whole empire before dying out to Christian pressures at the end of the 4th century, Mithraism left its marks on the Roman world from Dura-Europos to Merida, and from Alexandria to High Rochester.

The cult involved secret initiations, esoteric and highly symbolic iconography, personal and spiritual salvation, resurrection and rebirth, and complex ideological connections to contemporary and antecedent systems of thought. What, though, of its particular relationship with the most enduring of its contemporaries: the cult of Jesus Christ?

Christian evidence

The comparison between Mithraism and Christianity is one of the most interesting phenomena in classical antiquity, and, indeed, the study of Mithraism will forever be entwined with Christian history. Because of our reliance on Christian sources for information about the Mithraic cult, Christian ideology is totally inextricable from our knowledge of Mithraism itself, due to the overwhelmingly negative bias of the authors who dominate our literary information about the cult.

Many Christians were aggressive in their condemnation of Mithraism as Satanic, as evidenced by the several mithraea (Mithraic temples) destroyed by fanatics. One can also look to the probable attempt of Christians to pollute the Pons Savari mithraeum by placing a corpse within it, and the secret cache used by members of several sects including Mithraism to hide valuable religious artefacts (including two statues of Mithras) in Carthage. Saint Jerome (Letters 107.2) also specifically advocates the destruction of mithraea.

Imitation?

Some Christian authors, however, took it a step further and wrote that the cult of Mithraism explicitly thieved practices and ideologies from the cult of Jesus. Justin Martyr stated that Mithraists “imitated” the Eucharist and had a similar representative ritual involving bread and wine (First Apology 66), echoed by Tertullian who mentions other elements supposedly stolen by Mithraism such as an “image of resurrection” and the anointing of foreheads (Prescription Against Heretics 40).

Elsewhere, Tertullian implies that there was some kind of baptismal ceremony associated with Mithraism (On Baptism 5), again stolen from Christianity. Saint Augustine later said that Mithraist priests claimed their religion was synonymous with Christianity (Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to John 1.50). These accounts pose two questions: firstly, were there really Mithraic rituals fitting these descriptions? And secondly, if so, did Mithraism “imitate” them from Christianity, or vice versa, or were they independent?

Material similarities

The commonness of stone benches and the aforementioned banqueting scenes in mithraea (Mithraic temples) is indicative of ritual dining, while the grain often sprouting from the behind of the aforementioned tauroctony scene, combined with the use of the dog and snake to lap up the blood from the bull's wound, might suggest that bread and wine were indeed used in these rituals. Cups in banquet scenes also seem to be given prominence possibly reflecting ritual importance.

Tertullian's claims are more difficult to qualify. That he makes reference to another, more obscure, Mithraic ritual without direct parallel to a Christian ritual (the rejection of a crown in favour of Mithras, De Corona 15) suggests that he did have familiarity with the cult, and so his words cannot be ruled out. Speculatively, one might guess that his father, possibly a centurion in Carthage (Jerome Chronicle 2220), where there may have been a mithraeum, could have been an initiated Mithraist.

Christianity as a contemporary cult

If it is assumed that these elements were truly Mithraic, with which cult did they originate? The Christians strongly accuse Mithraism of thievery, but Christianity was by no means immune to the syncretism and borrowing of the sort of which it accused its adversaries. Saint Jerome himself records how the pagan god Sarapis was somehow twisted to fit within Christian religion by Christians in Egypt (Letters 107.2). There is also some evidence to show that high profile lay individuals such as Constantius, the father of Constantine I, maintained a limited Christian belief (Eusebius Life of Constantine 1.13, 2.49) alongside a henotheistic worship of the sun as was common at the time. Incidentally, this type of belief seems to have also been central within Mithraism.

Relationship between Christianity and Mithraism

It may seem, however, that, at least within Rome, Christianity and Mithraism had something of a special relationship. It is contended that the relative populations of Mithraists and Christians in early 4th century Rome were approximately the same size, and scholars point to the noticeable proximity of many mithraea to churches (e.g. Santa Prisca, San Clemente, Santa Maria, etc.) to the exclusion of other cults. What exactly does this special relationship mean? In the absence of further evidence, the nature of these two cults' exact interactions must remain shrouded in mystery.

Mithraism in popular culture

Despicable, though, are the unscholarly attempts to develop anti-Christian conspiracy theories around the influence of Mithraism, which are becoming increasingly common (especially online) and which distort history phenomenally, being based on outdated, disproved opinions or total fiction.

Barbara G. Walker, one guilty writer of many, repeats ridiculous claims about Mithras in a collection of essays published by Stellar House, the mouthpiece of ill-educated bandwagon-builder Acharya S., responsible for the pathetic Zeitgeist movie. Walker (2010: 131) insists that Mithras was born of a virgin, that his birth was witnessed by shepherds and wise men, that he had twelve disciples, and many other fallacious similarities to Christ. All of these things are utterly unverifiable - and not even hinted at by the available evidence.

Such nonsense not only detracts from the real overlaps between Christianity and Mithraism, but also totally pollutes the public perception of Mithras (for an example of this pollution in popular culture, see a segment on the god from Christmas special of BBC's excellent QI at http://richarddawkins.net/videos/441-merry-mithras). The real cross-over elements between Mithraism and other systems of thought are infinitely more interesting.