According to Sumerian cosmology, when Ea had created man he mixed the blood of a god (who was slaughtered for the purpose) in with the clay, so that humans would have a divine spirit. However, the blood was not the best material. “In one tradition, at least, he was the leader of the rebels, who had instigated a mutiny” (George, xl). Therefore men were both part divine, but also flawed and wayward. It is likely that the story of Gilgamesh was used as a framework for religious rites or cult practices, as copies have been found in temples; copying the text may have been part of the training process for temple-astrologers (George, xxvii).

If Gilgamesh ever existed as an actual king (as tradition claims), he would have flourished around 2750BC (George, xxxi). According to the myth, Gilgamesh was a city tyrant whose mother was a goddess. He was a cruel ruler, forcing his people into labor and freely exercising his kingly right to sleep with girls on their wedding day. The people prayed to gods to make an equal/rival for Gilgamesh, and they created Enkidu – a creature that was half bull, half human. Enkidu was an idyllic spirit, living in harmony with nature. Gilgamesh orders the harlot Shamhat to seduce him, which will weaken him by alienating him from nature. They coupled for seven days and seven nights. In language reminiscent of the biblical garden story, Enkidu finds himself a “changed but wiser creature” (Gordon 45).

Shamhat brings him to society, but he has trouble eating bread, drinking out of glasses, or wearing clothes (could Gilgamesh also be the root of the modern Tarzan story?) Enkidu challenges Gilgamesh and they fight, but recognize each other’s greatness and decide, rather than destroy each other, to work together and practice heroic virtue. Thus begins a series of their adventures and conquests. First, they destroy the dragon (or ogre) Humbaba in the cedar forest, preferring fame to security, a dedication that may call Achilles or Beowulf to mind.

In the next episode, Gilgamesh dresses so attractively that the goddess Ishtar (Ianna) wants to marry him, but he refuses her. In retribution, she asks permission from the great father god Anu to have the ‘Bull of Heaven’ at her disposal to slay Gilgamesh. At first he says no, but she (as a goddess of the underworld) threatens to bring up all the dead, so that they outnumber and consume the living. Anu gives her the bull, however, Gilgamesh and Enkidu overpower and butcher it. Enkidu cuts off the leg of the bull and throws it at Ishtar as a terrible insult. Ishtar, after mourning the death of the bull, has the gods convene to decide on a punishment; they choose to kill Enkidu. Gilgamesh tries to bring him back to life in vain. Enkidu’s death instills in him a terrible fear of death, and so he begins a quest for immortality.
Only one man he knew of had ever been immortal – the Babylonian Noah named Utnapishti, who, along with his wife, became immortal after the flood. Therefore, Gilgamesh determines to seek him out. First, he travels to the edge of the ocean that surrounds the world, where he encounters the wise Shiduri; she tells him he must find Ur-shanabi, the ferryman of Uta-napishti. Ur-shanabi takes him to finds him to Uta-napishti’s enchanted realm, and Gilgamesh hears the flood story.

The gods had decided to destroy mankind, but one god, Ea, was friendly with Utnapishtim and determined to save him. Speaking to him indirectly (he told Utnapishtim to go into a reed hut first), he told him to disregard his possessions and construct an ark according to exact specifications; and to gather the seed of all living creatures, his wife, adequate supplies and a crew. Rains came, and then receded. The ark landed on a mountain. Utnapishtim sent out first a dove, then a swallow, then a raven, and determined that the earth was dry. He then got out and sacrificed to the gods, who hover over the sweet-smelling sacrifice like flies (Yahweh does the same thing in the Genesis version; although later in the Bible he claims to have no need of such sacrifices). Utnapishtim and his wife became immortal.

They tell Gilgamesh to stay awake for seven days to see if he is worthy of becoming immortal as well, but he fails the test. Next, they groom him and give him a magical garment that won’t get dirty, and prepare him for his return journey. Utnapishtim’s wife discloses a secret mystery of the gods – a plant at the bottom of the sea that gives immortality – so he puts rocks on his feet and goes down to get it. Unforunately he decides to save the plant for later and a snake eats it; thus his hard work goes to the serpent. Although he loses physical immortality, later versions of the story have Gilgamesh become a deified ruler of the shades in the underworld, and “give verdicts” or judge the dead (George, li).

There are few overt similarities between Gilgamesh and Jesus Christ. His journey was not into the underworld (which was ruled by Dumuzi and Ianna), but instead to a land of the immortals across the sea. In the end his quest for immortality failed; he died – but later versions of the story have Gilgamesh become a deified ruler of the shades in the underworld, and “give verdicts” or judge the dead (George, li).

Although Jesus was said to have been raised in his physical body, he quickly ‘ascended into heaven’ and judges souls. He does this because, in the beginning of time, Adam and Eve sinned by eating the tree of knowledge and thus the tree of life was taken away from them (or rather, them from it). Their fall was initiated by the temptations of a snake – so in a way, their immortality was taken by the snake, as it was in the Gilgamesh epic.

Although it is difficult to separate the man from the myth, there are striking parallels between Jesus and Pythagoras; most likely due to the extensive influence Pythagoreanism seems to have had on the Greco-Roman world through other mystery cults, especially Orphism, and on Platonism. I’m not strictly concerned with comparing the actual, historical figures of Jesus and Pythagoras; I only wish to demonstrate that the myths which followers ascribed to them are similar and may have come from a common literature base.

For example, it is said that when Pythagoras arrived in Croton, he first appeared to the fishermen on the outskirts of the city and performed a certain miraculous sign; he told them exactly how many fish were in their nets, and he was right (they counted). News of the miracle spread into city and prepared the way for him (Hermann 43). In the gospels of Luke and John, Jesus later performs a similar miracle, although instead counting the fish, he causes the fisherman to catch a great quantity. In Luke, this happens at the beginning of his ministry (5:1-11); in John, it occurs after Jesus had resurrected. Interestingly, we are even given the precise number of fish caught: “Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore, full of big fish, one hundred and fifty-three of them” (John 21:1-14).

Although we are not given the exact number of fish in the Pythagorean story, the Pythagoreans regarded 153 as a sacred number due to its use in a mathematical ratio called “the measure of the fish,” which produces the mystical symbol of the Vesica Pisces – the intersection of two circles which yields a fish-like shape. The sign of the fish is still widely used today as a symbol of Christianity (Freke/Gandy, 39).

Pythagoreans believed (much like Orphics, and modern day Buddhists) in reincarnation, or a “wheel of rebirth”. Thus, they were vegetarians and also tried to cultivate purity. Although the soul was immortal, it had to be freed from the contaminating influences of the body. Only a ‘lover of wisdom’, leading the best of lives, could escape the prison of his body at the moment of death and break free of the cycle.

Tradition holds that Pythagoras gained his mystical knowledge because he’d spent 7 years in the underworld or land of the dead. Diogenes Laertius records the claim of Hieronymus, who said “that when he descended to the shades below, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound to a brazen pillar, and gnashing its teeth; and that of Homer suspended from a tree, and snakes around it, as a punishment for the things that they had said of the Gods” (Diogenes Laertius, XIX), and also mentions how Austophon says in his ‘Pythagorean’:

He said that when he did descend below
Among the shades in Hell, he there beheld
All men who e’er had died; and there he saw,
That the Pythagoreans differ’d much
From all the rest; for that with them alone
Did Pluto deign to eat, much honouring
Their pious habits. (XX)

Laertius further recounts a tale by Hermippus, about how when Pythagoras returned from the underworld, he was considered a God.

Pythagoras came up again after a certain time, lean, and reduced to a skeleton; and that he came into the public assembly, and said that he had arrived from the shades below, and then he recited to them all that had happened during his absence. And they, being charmed by what he told them, wept and lamented, and believed that Pythagoras was a divine being; so that they even entrusted their wives to him, as likely to learn some good from him; and that they too were called Pythagoreans. And this is the story of Hermippus. (XXI)

According to legend, in a past life Pythagoras had been a son of Hermes, named Aethalides. Hermes promised him any gift (except immortality), and Aethalides/Pythagoras wished to remember everything, even after death. Thus, Pythagoras remembered all of his previous lives – a proof of which is offered in another famous story. While staying at Argos, he saw a shield from the spoils of Troy nailed up to the wall. He began to weep, claiming that the shield had been his in a last life, when his name was Euphobus and that he had used it at the battle of Troy. He even offered proof: his previous name, Euphobus, was written on the inside. They took the shield down from the wall and found the name written as he had claimed (Newmann 25). In another story, he recognizes the reincarnation of an old friend in a stray dog.

And once, they say, when he passed by a dog which was being maltreated, he pitied the animal and said these words: “Stop! Don’t beat him! For he is the soul of a friend whom I recognized straight away when I heard his voice.” (Bremmer, 12)

Pythagoras also believed that the entire universe was musical: each planet made a certain vibrational frequency as it passed through the heavens, and everything on earth could be assigned to one of these seven frequencies. Thus, there are 7 notes, 7 colors of the rainbow, and 7 primarily organs of the body (in Eastern spirituality, there are also 7 Chakras).

According to a legend told by Iambilochos, when Pythagoras heard the different sound made by hammers in a forge, he realized that tones can be expressed in quantitative relationships, and hence in numerical values and geometrical measures. Using stringed instruments, he then discovered the connection between vibration frequencies and pitch. The whole world, according to Pythagoras’ theory, consisted of harmony and number. (Roob, 92)

Pythagoras taught that this life was a sentence (for a sin or evil done at the mythical level in pre-history). Therefore, we should do our time well and get out quickly, rather than avoiding our punishments and stretching the sentence out longer. Earth is not meant to be enjoyed: “Do not assist a man in laying a burden down; for it is not proper to be the cause of not laboring (also translated as ‘idleness’ or ‘lack of effort’); but assist him in taking it up” (Herman, 49). Of course Christianity has its parallels in monasticism, its valuation of the poor, the weak and the suffering, and its ascetic traditions. There are also passages like the following:

Then, speaking to all, he said, “if anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, will save it. What benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and forfeit or lose his very self.” (Luke 9:23-26)

Consequently, the life of a Pythagorean was “governed by strict rules and routines that covered a wide range of issues, everything from dietary restrictions to purification rites to religious taboos to the observance of decorous behavior, not to mention a host of magical practices” (Hermann 19).

Although the similarities between the actual life of Pythagoras and Jesus may be limited, it is interesting to notice the parallels between the two movements each figure left behind. As we shall see, it was the bureaucratic organization of the Christian movement, more than the originality of its beliefs or practices, which really ensured its survival; however this organization may have had its roots in Pythagoreanism. As Konstantine I. Boudouris says in The Pythagorean Community,

The Pythagorean organizations were unions of people, the members of which had accepted certain principles and doctrines, and who lived, thought, and acted collectively, and whose acts were dictated or related to the beliefs that they had accepted. Moreover, as all the sources testify, the chief characteristic of the Pythagorean movement was secrecy. Experience had taught Pythagoras that small but secretly and well-organized forces could have great results. (qtd. in Newmann 50)

While the overall tone of Pythagoras’ teaching appears concerned with morality, virtue, and religious piety, the mission of the secret group seems to have been the infiltration and takeover of the government. Thus, it functioned as a political conspiracy on the one hand, while on the other projecting the outward appearance of a bona fide political association. (Newmann, 51)

The speeches ascribed to Pythagoras that have been handed down to us are nothing particularly special; be good, honor your elders, refrain from evil, etc. There was certainly more to the movement than his words of wisdom (although there may have been much that was lost). The power of the movement was in its initiations and secrecy. Membership was extremely selective, and the initiation process not for the faint of heart. There was first a series of tests for candidates, followed by a background check involving the applicant’s personal life, relationships and behavior: “Did he talk too much or laugh on the wrong occasions? How did he get along with other students? What, for example, made him happy or sad?” (Newmann 53).

Finally there was a physical examination. If he passed these preliminaries, he was sent away for three years and totally ignored, but secretly watched. The 1999 movie Fight Club is an excellent example of the development of this sort of cult; although the three years of waiting was shortened to only three days.

If they were admitted, candidates had to turn over all of their belongings – money, properties and income – to a special board of trustees (Newmann 53, 54); and for the first 5 years, they took a vow of silence. If they were later rejected from the higher levels of initiation, they had their investments returned in double but were treated as if they were dead by members. Likewise, there is evidence that, in the earliest periods of Christianity, such socialist practices were also the rule, and strictly enforced. Luke has Jesus caution, “None of you can be my disciple without giving up all that he owns” (Luke 14:33), and according to the Acts of the Apostles, “And all who shared the faith owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and distributed the proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed” (Acts 2:44).

Acts also relates the curious incident of Ananias and Sapphira, new converts to Christianity who secretly held back some of their earnings rather than sharing it with the Church whose transgression was punished by a miraculous execution. First, an example is given of Jospeh/Barnabas, who sold some land and gave all the money, as expected, to the apostles. Next we are told of a couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who sold a piece of property but kept some of the money to themselves and lied to the apostles. Peter immediately knew they were lying, and when he accused them, they fell down dead at his feet.

Peter said, ‘Ananias, how can Satan have so possessed you that you should lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land?…You have been lying not to men, but to God.’ When he heard this Ananias fell down dead. And a great fear came upon everyone present. (Acts 4:32-5:11)

Like the Pythagorean cult, the early church had ‘administrators’ who were responsible for maintaining the wealth and finances of the community. This feature of early Christianity didn’t last (later converts were allowed to keep their property), but its presence and inclusion into the Bible suggests external influences. Although Judaism, especially during the decades surrounding the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, did have socialistic sects where Christianity may have found this feature, these sects were themselves almost more similar to Pythagoreanism than to traditional Judaic worship.

Consider, for example, the Essenic communities, such as at Qumran. According to Josephus, they also shared all of their property and wealth communally, had no personal possessions, did not sacrifice animals, and focused on cleansings and purity. After a three year probation, newly joining members would take an oath that included the commitment to practice piety towards “the Deity” and righteousness towards humanity, to maintain a pure life-style, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities, to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes and the names of the Angels (The Wars of the Jews. 2.137–142). They also believed in the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after death (Antiquities of the Jews, 18.18, The Wars of the Jews. 2.153–158).

Another source of commonality is the theme of secrecy, with truth being revealed only to an inner group.
The notion that Pythagoras founded a movement whose mission was the “education and enlightenment of the masses” is wonderfully romantic, yet the very sources who have sought to convey this impression have also persevered old sayings that paint a very different picture.” (Newmann 55)

The eventual fall of Pythagoreanism may have been due to the contradiction inherent in a selective, spiritual minority ruling the alienated majority. Although Jesus Christ is often heralded for his democratic inclusion of all people, there are also passages in the Bible which make it clear that not everybody would make it into the kingdom, but only the worthy, and characterize the Christian cult as a small, non-inclusive group of separatists. “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen” (Matthew 20:16). Moreover, Jesus frequently speaks in riddles and parables, which he later explains only to his disciples. At the same time, although in theory a community of brothers, it should not be forgotten that Christianity was managed by a select authoritarian group, which demanded absolute allegiance, complete surrender of personal property, and which quickly grew in wealth and power.

Finally, like Christians, Pythagoreans were taught to fight against sin and lawlessness. They even had a custom of confessing each day’s sins:

As soon as they got up in the morning, members were required to disclose to one another a detailed account of the activities and events of the previous day. Supposedly, this exercise had a twofold aim: to train a person’s memory and to teach him to assess his conduct, in order to, as Diodorus says, “gain knowledge and judgment in all matters. (Newmann 59)

Pythagoreans had a lot of pedantic rules, which inspired a contantly introspective lifestyle.
Tradition does mention, though, a great number of taboos and prescriptions, such as ‘Do not wear a ring’, ‘Do not step over a broom’, ‘don’t use cedar, laurel, myrtle, cypress or oak to cleanse your body or clean your teeth: they are for honouring the gods’. The observance of all these rules must have made the life of the Pythagorean an extremely self-conscious one, in which a moment of carelessness could be fatal. The inclusion among these rules of having to wear white linen. (Bremmer 13)

Some of these lifestyle choices, beliefs and practices will become nearly universal in the centuries before and after the coming of Jesus Christ; mostly in various mystery cults and religions. Their inclusion into Christianity is not surprising, and yet proved problematic for Christians, who constantly needed to differentiate themselves somehow from other groups who believed very similar things and practiced that belief with similar rituals and habits. The powerful figure of Pythagoras will grow to supernatural proportions; as we have seen, he was believed to have been born of a God (Hermes, in a previous life), descended into the underworld, and taught specific instructions about surviving after death. In the religious/political system that he created, Christianity had a ready template for its own organization.

Osiris was Egyptian god of the dead, but also a vegetation and resurrection god. Although the story of Osiris is already told in the Pyramid texts of ancient Egypt (2400BC), his popularity exploded when his cult (or rather, the cult of Isis, which included him and his son, Horus) was exported into the Greek and Roman empires. The main story of Osiris, which features his death and resurrection, as well as the magical healing powers of Isis and the birth of their son, Horus, is as follows.
Osiris was the great benefactor of humanity; he gave men laws, the institution of marriage, civil organization, taught them agriculture, and how to worship the gods. “He conquered the nations everywhere, but not with weapons, only music and eloquence” (Bullfinch 238). He ruled the land in peace with his consort (wife/sister) Isis. However, his brother Seth (earlier versions Typhon), was filled with envy and malice, and decided to kill him. Knowing that Osiris was more powerful, Seth designed a clever trap: he made a beautiful chest out of wood, exactly the size of Osiris, and promised it as a gift to whoever it fit. Everybody tried, but nobody could fit in the box. Finally, Osiris tried; but as soon as he lay down inside, Seth with his companions closed the lid, nailed it shut and threw the chest in the Nile river. Isis wept and mourned, tearing her hair and beating her breast. Dressed in black, with shorn hair, she wandered up and down the banks of the Nile, searching in vain for the body of Osiris. The chest had come to rest on the bank of the river, and the power inside was so great that a large tree blossomed; the chest became part of the tree trunk, which was then used as a column in a palace. Isis discovered the truth, and with a wave of her magic wand, split open the column, revealing the wooden coffin. She took the body of Osiris and hid it in a swamp. But Seth found it (as he was out hunting a wild boar) and tore it into 14 pieces. Nevertheless, Isis in her magnificent power found the pieces and put them together again (with the exception of the phallus, which was eaten by a fish.) She raised Osiris from the dead, at least enough to impregnate her, and he became the ruler of the underworld. Isis then fled with her infant son, Horus, into hiding, in fear of Seth. However, when Horus grows up and is strong enough, he will return to defeat Seth and avenge the death of his father.

On this founding myth was built a robust system of Egyptian religious belief and ritual, which included the suffering and burial of Osiris, the mourning of Isis, the birth of the divine child, and then the exhuberant celebration of his return (Witt 27).
The rejoicing of the triumph of Horus is the precise counterpart of the mourning over the death of Osiris. Both are extreme and all encompassing. Just as the death plunges the entire world into the depths of despair, so the triumph transports it into the heights of rapture. The two emotions belong together as a pair at the beginning and the end of the story that transpires between them. The entire land participated in the story in an annual cycle of festivals, and all who took part in them experienced them. (Assman 145)
Osiris is undoubtedly a vegetation god, sometimes associated corn or grain, but could also be a solar deity, “bringing light and food especially to those Yonder, the denizens of the netherworld, as he makes his nocturnal journey through their midst in his boat” (Witt 38).
When he was called ‘the Great Green’ he was the life-giving fresh water of the River and under this aspect even the salt water of the sea. As with other gods of Egypt he could be addressed as a bisexual being: ‘You are Father and Mother of men. They live from your breath and eat of the flesh of your body.’ (Witt 44)
At the same time, as ruler of the underworld, he was “the resident king of the dead, true of heart and voice, watching with an eye that was never at rest over the rewards of those who came into his realm” (Witt 38). The story of his resurrection had been used for millennia to justify the potential for life after death.
Osiris was the dying and rising god, the mythic precedent and guarantee that one could say to the deceased king, and later to every person, “Stand up!” The fact that he had risen invested these words with meaning. As is well known, this role of Osiris has led to his being classified with a series of “dying and rising” vegetation gods from western Asia: Tammuz, Attis, Adonis. This might be true to a certain extent. Without doubt, Osiris had a relationship with the agricultural cycle and other processes of death and rebirth in nature. (Assman 129)

Each person had a ba (soul) that survived death, left the body, and managed the posthumous journey into the divine realm. Each person became an Osiris and followed the mythic precendent of the god. (Assman 185)

According to Frazer, Egyptians were sometimes entombed with life sized effigies of Osiris, which were hallowed out; sealed inside in a water tight compartment were placed water, dirt and barley seed, which would ‘live forever’.

In laying their dead in the grave they committed them to his keeping who could raise them from the dust to life eternal, even as he caused the seed to spring from the ground. Of that faith the corn-stuffed effigies of Osiris found in Egyptian tombs furnish an eloquent and unequivocal testimony. They were at once an emblem and an instrument of resurrection. (441)

The annual commemoration of the Osiris story was an enormous cultural event; it retraced the passion, death and resurrection of the god, and was celebrated even in the Roman capital (the Egyptian cult was established in Rome around 50BC). The Iseum of Pompei was decorated with two paintings of the passion of Osiris (Bonnefoy 246). According to Witt, Isis would discover she was pregnant on the 3rd of October. She rose up the new god Horus in an egg. The search for Osiris’ body lasted until the 3rd of November, followed by the embalmment of the body. The mummified body is entombed on the 21st December, and two days later, on the 23rd, Isis brings forth her child, “23 December being in the Egyptian Calendar the date of the simultaneous burial and rebirth of the Sun God. Of cardinal importance for the chronology of the whole tale is the winter solstice” (Witt 213). This confirmed by Dowden:

For three days his dismemberment at the hands of his enemy Seth or Typhon is mourned; then he is found by Isis and reassembled… This is the experience which is shared in some way by those who have been initiated into the secrets of the religion, maybe the Melanephoroi (‘wearers of black’) whom inscriptions mention: it is a death and resurrection, despair and new hope story. (72)

Osiris had his own mysteries, and followers of the Egyptian cult believed that they could, like Osiris, find eternal life after death. Gordon claims that the idea of an afterlife, as either a reward or punishment based on the merits of each individual, is unique to Egypt:

Egyptian religion developed a kind of Passion Play concerning Osiris, the god of the dead, showing his suffering, death, and revival. Each dead person was identified with Osiris on the assumption that the deceased would undergo, but emerge triumphant like Osiris from, a trial full of vicissitudes to qualify for life eternal… This fully developed concept of personal judgment, whereby each man enters paradise if his character and life on earth warrant it, appears quite remarkable when we consider that centuries later there was still no such idea in Mesopotamia or Israel. (60)
The cult of Osiris, it seems, was deliberately altered to make it more accessible to Hellenized society, by merging Osiris with the Apis bull; thus, making an identification with other sacrificial bull-gods like Dionysus or Attis even easier. This new version of Osiris was renamed Sarapis.

Osiris’ son, Horus (known as Harpocrates by the Greeks), an infant god described in the Pyramid Texts as “the young one with his finger in his mouth,” was a favorite figure of paganism in the time of Christ (Witt 210). Even as a young child, he was given absolute power. “He shall rule over this earth…He will be your master, this god who is but an embryo.” (Witt 210)
The birth story of Horus (the massacre of infants, retreat into hiding, triumphant return), which is mostly based on solar worship, is very similar to that of Jesus Christ. Horus was reborn every year on January 6th (Witt, 211) – the date on which the birthday of Jesus was celebrated for centuries until 354AD, when the bishop of Rome ruled in favor of December 25th. Statues of Isis with the baby Horus in her lap are nearly indistinguishable from those of Mary and Jesus and were worshipped in Christian churches for centuries.
When the Egyptian cult was introduced to Greece and Rome, Horus became identified with Apollo and Heracles, Eros (god of love) and the sun.
The Beloved and indeed Only Begotten Son of the Father, the Omnipotent Child, he has under his control the circuit of the solar disk and so assumes the lotus which itself is the emblem of the rising Sun. (Witt 214)
Demonstrating the trend towards religious synthesis, Horus assimilated the roles and symbols of other gods. In the depictions of Horus found in Pompeii, “He can don the wings of Eros, anticipating the angel-iconography of Christianity, and in his left hand carry the cornucopia of Bacchus. He possesses the quiver of Apollo and the fawnskin of Dionysus” (Witt 215).
When Horus grows up, he defeats the dragon/crocodile Seth in a magnificient battle. This battle almost certainly influenced Christian iconography:

In the period during which Christianity was establishing itself as a world religion the figure of Horus/Harpocrates in conjunction with that of a crocodile typified the triumph of good over evil, exactly the same as the victory over the dragon by the saintly combatants Michael and George (…) Moreover, the dragon was pyrrhous in color: and Plutach thrice applies the same epithet to the complexion of Seth-Typhon. (Witt, 16)

It was Isis however, as great mother-goddess, who was the most powerful of the trilogy. Isis gives Horus his powers, and it was Isis who restored life to Osiris. She was a gifted healer – priests of her temples had to study six branches of medical science: anatomy, pathology, surgery, pharmacology, ophthalmology and gynaecology (Witt 92).
She was the great sorceress. The art of medicine was hers. Horus, the child born weak, is named ‘son of an echantress’. It is to Isis the divine sorceress that the great god Re is forced to reveal the secret of his name. Her magical nature renders her potentially hermaphrodite. So she is not bound by the normal law of sex. She can resuscitate the dead Osisris and by spells obtain the gift of a son. We learn that she discovered health-giving drugs and simples as well as the elixir of life. Like Apollo and Aslepius she was an expert in making men well when they betook themselves to her temples, where after incubation they could look forward in hope to gain a cure. Skilful as healer and discoverer of the mysteries of birth, life and death, she was the lady who saved. She resurrected. The gates of Hell, besides salvation, were in her hands. (Witt 22)
Isaic temples held mysteries of redemption involving ‘living water’, challenging initiation rites, and obedience.
Certainly, Isis gives her children the sure hope of eternal salvation: but in return she demands from them unquestioning, even blind obedience, just as she subjects them to the most grueling tests before they reach their haven of rest. (Witt 135)
She had the power to control ‘Demons’/elements, or ‘nature’/astrology (Witt 134). She loves sinners – according to Lucius, “Thou doest always bestow they dear love on wretched men in their mishaps” (qtd. Witt 134). She also made her mysteries available to rich and poor alike, “not just to the affluent citizen who made his fortune in shipping but even to the man of lowly birth and the down-trodden slave” (Witt 85). One inscription to her, found at the temple of Neith at Sais, says “I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my robe has never yet been uncovered by mortal men” (Witt 67).

Like Horus and Osiris/Sarapis, Isis increasingly usurped the roles, symbols and powers of other gods; she became all things to all people. After this with her untold wealth of titles she could take the one that pleased her best. She could assume the eagle of Zeus and the dolphin of Poseidon, the lyre of Apollo and tongs of Hephaestus, the wand of Hermes, the thyrsus of Bacchus and the club of Heracles. (Witt 129)
The similarities between the Egyptian cult and Christianity are many: the entire birth story, as well as the Christian iconography of the infant Jesus; the triumph of good over evil; the death and resurrection; the “Great Virgin” and “Mother of God” (Isis was called both before the Christian era). Most importantly the emotional catharsis involved, which is also to be found in most other mystery traditions, in mourning the death and then celebrating the return of the deity. Some researchers claim that the Egyptian myth is unique because it has two generations:

If we are somewhat reminded of the sorrow of Good Friday and the joy of Easter Sunday, it should again be stressed that in the myth of Osiris, we are dealing with two generations. The god who triumphs is a different one from the god who is killed. (Assman 145)

However, Horus grows up to become Osiris every year, and makes a new Horus; if you combine Horus and Osiris together into one figure, you’d create a figure much like Jesus Christ. Of course the story is very different; the details of Jesus’ life and personality so clearly presented in the gospels make him dissimilar to the Egyptian myth. But what is most relevant to the figure of Jesus Christ; the historical details that make him just an ordinary man, or his death and resurrection, role in salvation, and divinity?

According to Jan Bremmer in The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, Orpheus was a mythological figure developed as a mouthpiece for certain developing ideas: “Orphism was a product of Pythagorean influence on Bacchic mysteries in the first quarter of the fifth century…but Pythagoras belongs to history, and Orpheus to myth” (Bremmer, 24).

His story:

The most famous story about Orpheus concerns his wife, Eurydice (also known as Agriope). While she was escaping from Aristaeus (son of Apollo), she feel into a nest of vipers and was bitten on the heel. Orpheus mourned her with a song that was so touching that all the gods and nymphs wept. At their insistence, he traveled to the Underworld to try and save his wife, using his music to soften the hearts of Persephone and Hades (as well as Charon, the boatman of the river Styx, and Cerberus, the 3 headed dog). They allowed him to retrieve Eurydice from the dead, but on one condition: she was to follow behind him and he must refrain from turning around and checking on her. He was so anxious that he turned around too early, and she disappeared forever.

The descent to the Underworld of Orpheus is paralleled in other versions of a worldwide theme: the Japanese myth of Izanagi and Izanami, the Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, and Mayan myth of Ix Chel and Itzamna. The Nez Perce tell a story about the trickster figure, Coyote, that shares many similarities with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The mytheme of not looking back, an essential precaution in Jason’s raising of chthonic Brimo Hekate under Medea’s guidance, is reflected in the Biblical story of Lot’s wife when escaping from Sodom. The warning of not looking back is also found in the Grimms’ folk tale “Hansel and Gretel.” More directly, the story of Orpheus is similar to the ancient Greek tales of Persephone captured by Hades and similar stories of Adonis captive in the underworld. However, the developed form of the Orpheus myth was entwined with the Orphic mystery cults and, later in Rome, with the development of Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus)

Orpheus met his death at the hands of Thracian Maenads for failing to honor Dionysus (apparently, at the end of his life Orpheus worshiped only one god: Apollo). In another version, the Ciconian women, (also Dionysus’ followers), were angry at him for refusing their advances (he’d forsworn women after the death of Eurydice) and threw sticks and stones at him. At first, his beautiful music stopped the projectiles like a magic shield, but the enraged women tore him apart. (Just like Pentheus in Bacchae of Euripides). The Muses gathered up his pieces and buried them beneath Mount Olympus. His head floated to the island of Lesbos, where it prophesied until it was silenced by Apollo.

Orpheus the musician

The power of Orpheus’ music most likely has roots in the Pythagorean belief that the universe was made up of vibrations, as in a musical chord: different frequencies produced different states of matter, different colors, etc.

“Orpheus plays the same instrument as his father Apollo, symbolizing the music of the seven planets and the universal laws of septenary manifestation whose knowledge gives magical power over all created things. Orpheus could charm beasts, plants and even the denizens of the Underworld, i.e. he understood the laws of sympathy and harmony that link every level of creation, and was able to put them to use.” (Godwin, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, 146)

Guthrie suggests that his attribute was the root of Jesus’ similar power over nature: “The common representation of him sitting playing his lyre surrounded by beasts wild and tame who are lulled into amity by his music suggests naturally the picture of the lion and the lamb lying down together.” (Guthrie, W.K.C. Orpheus and Greek Religion, 23)

His music also allowed him to perform miraculous feats, without which Jason and the Argonauts could never have returned with the Golden Fleece (Orpheus muted out the Sirens’ seductive call with his own music, and, according to some accounts, also calmed the dragon to sleep so that Jason could retrieve the fleece.) (Guthrie, 28). (The snake, tree, golden fleece (ram/sheep) symbolism will be explored later).

The Mysteries

Orphism, a new religion that emerged around 600BCE, claims to have at its core the revelations given by the head of Orpheus in the cave of Lesbos, after it had been detached from his body. “The records – known as the Orphica – contain hymns, poetry, and commentaries.” (C. Scott Littleton, Gods, goddesses, and mythology, Volume 5, 1061).

Orphism developed an elaborate cosmogony (a theory explaining the creation of the universe) that focused on the killing and eating of Dionysus by the Titans and Zeus’s subsequent destruction of the Titans, from whose ashes arose the human race, part Dionysiac (divine and good) and part Titan (earthly and evil). Through initiation into the Orphic mysteries, and by living an ascetic life of abstention from meat, wine and sexual activity, individuals sought to suppress their earthly nature. Full liberation of the divine soul could be achieved only through a cycle of incarnations.”(C. Scott Littleton, Gods, goddesses, and mythology, Volume 5, 1061).

Further, Orpheus’ round-trip into the underworld opened up the possibility of rebirth and widened the mystery of death.

The secrets of Hades were in his possession. He could tell his followers what the fate of their souls would be, and how they should behave to make it the best possible. He had shown himself capable of melting the hearts of the powers below, and might be expected to intercede again on their own behalf if they lived the pure life according to his precepts. That was the important thing. The reason which once took him there was secondary. (Guthrie, 29)

Plato mentions traveling priests, from 400BC or earlier, selling spells and initiation rites into the ‘Orphic way of Life’. Initiates were taught to control their passions, have respect for all life and refrain from eating meat (because of their believe in reincarnation), in an attempt to free their souls from the cycle of incarnation – once freed they could ascend up to “ultimate bliss on the Isles of the Blessed or in the realm of the starry ether.”“(C. Scott Littleton, Gods, goddesses, and mythology, Volume 5, 1062). Jan Bremmer, in The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, argues that Christian ideas concerning the afterlife stem from this Orphic conception:

“It is in the fifth century, then, in Orphic-Pythagorean milieus that the contours of the later Christian distinction between heaven and hell first become visible” bremmer 5

Likewise, the term Orphics used to refer to the soul of the dead, “psyche”, was taken over by Jews and Christians. Revelations 20.4 authors sees the psychai of those beheaded in heaven. (Bremmer, 4).

Further, in Orphic teachings, “man is suddenly promoted to the climax of creation. Moreover, we can observe that the diversity of the Greek pantheon has been reduced to a virtually monotheistic rule by Zeus, although Dionysus, whose position in the normative Greek pantheon was more ‘eccentric’, is also indispensable” (Bremmer, 22).

Orphics dressed in white to demonstrate their aspirations to purity, and followed strict rules of propriety. Free will and personal responsibility were also essential and important parts of the Orphic code. (Guthrie, 183)

Similarities to Jesus

What distinguishes Orpheus from other pagan heroes is his meekness and humility:

The influence of Orpheus was always on the side of civilization and the arts of peace. In personal character he is never a hero in the modern sense. His outstanding quality is gentleness amounting at times to softness. (Guthrie, 40) (like Jesus)

Although Orpheus cannot be said to have resurrected or come back from the dead (at least not since the first time he did it, when rescuing Eurydice), we do of course have the curious prophecies of his disembodied talking head, which gave the bulk of his teachings after he’d been violently murdered.

Strikingly, Christianity has its own version of a miraculous talking head:

Herod’s stepdaughter, to whom the name Salome was later attributed, is said in Matthew 14:8 and Mark 6:25 to have asked him for John the Baptist’s head on a platter, and the presentation of his severed head often appears in art.

In medieval times it was rumored that The Knights Templar had possession of the talking head of St. John, and multiple records from their Inquisition in the early 1300s make reference to some form of head being worshiped by the Knights.

Most telling, of course, is the adoption of Orpheus by the Christians, which was only a continuation of a previous adoption by Jews.

It was easy to see in the characteristic picture of Orpheus not only a symbol of the Good Shepherd of the Christians (and we remember the Orphic bukoloi), but also parallels to the lore of the Old Testament. It too had, in the person of David, its magical musician playing among sheep and the wild beasts of the wilderness, and the resemblance did not pass unnoticed. (Guthrie, 264)

“As an allegory, the pagan story even found its way into early Christan iconography. In the catacombs of Jerusalem, for example, Jesus was depicted in the guise of Orpheus with the lyre. In some later Christian tombs, Orpheus is shown delivering the Sermon on the Mount or acting as “the Good Shepherd” (C. Scott Littleton, Gods, goddesses, and mythology, Volume 5, 1058)

The Christian apologists on the whole regard Orpheus with anger and contempt, as an imposter. They were certainly not willing pupils. He appears mostly as the champion of polytheism and superstition. Yet the passage of Justin, of which a part was quoted in the previous passage, shows that the similarity was noticed in his time between the myth of Dionysus and the story of the Christ sufficiently close to constitute a danger and necessitate a warnings against confusion between these two representations of a suffering son of God. (Apo.1;54 – Dionysus and Jesus) Guthrie266

Cyril against Julian “Of Orpheus son of Oiagros they say that he was the most superstitious of men, and that he anticipated the poetry of Homer, that is to say that he was older than him in time, and that he made up songs and hymns to the false gods and obtained no mean glory thereby; that then he condemned his own teaching, realizing that he had wellnigh left the highway and wandered from the true road, and turned to better things and chose truth instead of falsehood and spoke thus about God… (Shows what a serious threat Orpheus was…and how powerful to make him an ally)Guthrie 256

A final bit of interesting trivia is Orpheus’ personal antagonism towards women, and their resentment of it leading to his violent death, which was used to justify sexist cultural practices. Women were banned from Orphic mysteries (although apparently not from the rites of Dionysus…)

Similarly the practice of tattooing among Thracian women was said to be the punishment inflicted on them by their husbands for the murder of Orpheus. To Plutarch indeed it does occur to protract the punishment thus far shows a certain lack of proportion: ‘we can find no praise for the Thracians, that they brand their wives to this day to avenge Orpheus’. (Guthrie, 50)

Thus, we have women being blamed and punished for a mythological event; not unlike Christianity’s subordination of women – ‘the weaker sex’ – for Eve’s fall and the temptation of Adam. (To carry the theme further, we can argue a mythical parallel between Eve, falling into sin and Adam following after her – into Sin and Death – with Orpheus pursuit of Eurydice into the Underworld.

“The correspondence between Christianity and the other mystery religions of antiquity are perhaps more startling than the differences. Orpheus and Christ share attributes in the early centuries of our era; and of all the major ancient deities, Dionysus has most in common with the figure of Christ. It was the son of Apollo, however, Asclepius, the kindly healer and miracle worker, who posed the greatest threat to early Christianity.” (Classical Mythology, 8th Edition, 385)

“All the Greeks agreed that Asklepios was a mortal healer who had perished, struck by Zeus’ lightning bolt, for presuming to raise the dead. Yet by the Classical period, he was just as unequivocally consisdered a god, though subordinate to his father Apollo, from whom his healing power was derived.” (Ancient Greek Cults, Larson, 192)

“Who was this diety who, when the god of a new Gospel appeared, became perhaps his most significant and most powerful antagonist in the spiritual struggle that ensued between paganism and Christianity?” (Edelstein, 65)

It is perhaps telling that Ascelpius is so little known in modern society. While other most people are familiar with other Greek and Roman gods – Athena, Zeus, Aphrodite – and conspiricists and Christ- mythers talk passionately about the similarities between Mithras, Attis, Osiris and other dying and resurrecting gods, the name ‘Ascelpius’ has completely disappeared outside of academic references. Who was he and why was he such a threat to Christianity?

As we have seen, the historicity of Jesus, above all else, was crucial for distinguishing him from the beliefs of the pagans. All apparent similarities between Jesus and Pagan gods could be explained away with ‘diabolical mimicry’ and the assertion that, while other gods were mythological symbols, Jesus was a real, physical human being. However, apart from the tenacity of his followers, the PROOF that Jesus Christ was historical were his miracles – notably, his miraculous healings. Jesus restored sight to the blind, he raised the dead, he cured the sick, he cleansed lepers, and he healed paralytics. These healings are reported in the gospels as signs of his divinity; they are the proof that Jesus was the son of God.

However, long before the Christian movement, Asclepius was universally known as the God of medicine and healing. And he wasn’t just a myth: Asclepius was believed to have been a real man, who died a real death, but then came back. (Whether ‘resurrected’ or ‘ascended into heaven’ – the fact remains that after death he was physically present in his temples to effect miraculous healings.) Asclepius was widely believed to provide actual, physical healings, of which many people had direct experience.  It is not a case that  he was some folk hero of ancient times that no one knew about – he was a living god, prayed to and worshiped, intimately familiar to every greek and roman citizen of the pagan world. His healings, including the miraculous power over death, would have been the first thing people thought of when they heard of Jesus.

The temples of Aesculpius served as hospitals in ancient times. Priests went through rigorous medical training. People would come for incubation or a ’sleeping-cure’;  while they slept they would receive the god’s instructions in dream – or sometimes even experience some kind of psychic surgery, where they experienced the god cutting them open. When they woke up, if they were not already cured, the priests would interpret the dream and prescribe a remedy. The effects of these cures are collaborated by the hundreds of ex-voto offerings that were left at the site by the healed: “they were of terracotta, marble, bronze, silver or even gold, depending on the means of the faithful whose prayers had been granted, but chiefly of clay, the majority of the clientele of the island in the Tiber being of humble estate. There were feet, hands, breasts, intestines, viscera in an open torso, genital organs, eyes, ears, mouths… Above all, it was necessary to demonstrate gratitude by way of an inscribed tablet bearing the account of the miraculous treatment” (Turcan, 108). These very detailed descriptions of prescriptions and healings were further affirmed by being placed ‘in the presence of a crowd’ or having the healed ‘publicly gave thanks before the crowd.’

Moreover, he was not easily denounced or ridiculed: there was nothing in the Asclepius myth that was in the least reminiscent of other divine legends which ascribed to the deities

“all of the acts which are counted by men disgraceful and shameful, thieving, and wenching and dealing deceitfully one with another. Granted that the tradition is fragmentary, that stories may have been current which are not preserved, there can have been no stories of love affairs or of dissension, tales amoral in tone or character. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible that the Christian polemic, eager as it was to find fault with the outrageous behavior of the pagan gods, does not refer to any deragotary incident in the life of Asclepius, the most dangerous enemy of Christ”. (Edelstein, 74)

In the apocryphal work The Acts of Pilate, possibly written in the 4th century AD, Jesus is accused of being “a sorcerer and he casts out devils in the name of the Devil who rules the devils, and everything is obedient to him.” Pilate says, “it is not possible to cast out devils in the name of an impure spirit but rather in the name of the god Asclepius.” (Acta –Pilati, A, I, p216 T)

Homer sang of Asclepius as one of the fighters before Troy (T135).  According to Plato, Socrates’ last words were “Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it.” (Plato, Phaedo, 118)

Born as a man, died a mortal death and was resurrected (Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, Edelstein, 75)

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was produced without sexual union, and that He was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing new and different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter… Asclepius, who, though he was a great healer, was struck by a thunderbolt, and ascended to heaven (became a star…) 177 Justinus, Apologia 21, 1-2

STORY

His mother was Coronis, daughter of Phelgyas in Thessaly, (or Arsinoe, daughter of Leucipuus) and Apollo. Appollo loved her, but her father made her marry Ischys instead. Apollo cursed the raven who brought the tidings – made it black instead of white but killed Coronis. As she was burning, he took the baby from the pyre and brought it to Chiron, the Centaur,

“by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead; for he received from Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from her left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from her right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead. But Zeus, fearing the men might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote him with a thunderbolt. Angry on that account, Apollo slew the Cyclops who had fashioned the thunderbolt for Zeus.  (Edelstein, 9)

In another version of the story, Asclepius was the son of Phlegys (who came to Peloponnesus) and Apollo; she bore the child, but exposed him on a mountain. A goat gave him milk, a watchdog of the herd guarded him, and a a goatherd found him.

Still later, Priscus, contemporary of Cicero, says he was born of uncertain parents, exposed, nourished by a dog, found by some hunters, and turned over to Chiron for medical training. He lived at Epidaurus, but from was Messenian. Cicero says he was buried at Cynosura (Edelstein, 1617). These increasingly detailed reports are the result of an attempt to ‘classify’ or catalog mythology into a more sober historical account. Whether or not Asclepius actually lived as a historical person remains unclear.

Pindar, makes Apollo say,

If, then, the son of Coronis accomplished anything meet for a god; if he restored to the blind the sight which had slipped away from their eyes; if he bade the dead return to life; if, making the lame swift of food, he commanded them to go home rejoicing, then let him be enriched with our due admiration, too; if he was in high repute among some of the most feeble, let him, too, be praised as most nobly going about the task of his medical skill. Yes let him not dishonor the “understand thyself.” (Edelstein, 16)

In Aeshylus’ play, Agammenon (458 B.C.E), it is clear that Asclepius was chiefly known for his ability to raise the dead, and his subsequent punishement: “But man’s dark blood, once it hath flowed to the earth in death, who by chanting spells shall call it back? Even him who possessed the skill to raise from the dead – did not Zeus put a stop to him as a precaution?” (Agammenon 1019-24)

Justiny Martyr, who chose to draw attention to the similarities between Jesus and pagan saviors in order to give credibility to a struggling Christian movement, says:

When we say that He (Jesus) made well the lame and the paralytic and those who were feeble from birth and that he resurrected the dead, we shall seem to be mentioning deeds similar to and even identical with those which were said to have been performed by Asclepius. (Justin, Apology, 22,6)

And when he (the devil) brings forward Asclepius as the raiser of the dead and healer of the other diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? (Justin, Diologues, 69, 3)

Ascelpius was also, like Jesus, given the power to cast out demons: “Behold, some one excited by the impulse of the demon is out of his senses, raves, is mad: let us lead him into the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus; or since Jupiter knows not how to cure men, into the fane of Asclepius or Apollo. Let the priest of either, in the name of his god, command the wicked spirit to come out of the man: that can in no way come to pass.” ( Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones, IV, 27, 12, (Edelstein 176))

He was also given power over the elements, as testified by a passage from Aristides, “Now I have heard some people saying that, when they were at sea and in the midst of a storm, the god appeared to them and stretched forth his hand” (Aristides, Oratio XLII 1-15) (Edelstein, 162)

He was even cited as a muse for inspired writings: “And he not without the aid of the gods” says Homer, nor do you (acacias) write these words without the influence of Asclepius, for manifestly he joined with you in the writing. It is, of course, fitting for him, as the son of Apollo, to have some of the cultural talent of his father and to apportion it to whomever he desires. How then would it be possible for him not to assist you in these discourses concerning himself? (Libanius, Epistulae 695, 1-2., (Edelstein 338))

MUCH older: Chronicon Paschale, 79 In this year (1405 BC) Ilium was founded by Ilius, and Asclepius entered the profession of medicine. 64

MORE than healer

As Asclepius grew in power and popularity, he began to be viewed as a much more powerful force – equal to the philosophy of Christ as the Divine Logos:

He (Asclepius) is the one who guides and rules the universe, the savior of the whole and the guardian of the immortals, or if you wish to put it in the words of a tragic poet, “the steerer of government,” he who saves that which always exists and that which is in the state of becoming. But if we believe him to be the son of Apollo, and the third from Zeus, and if again we link him to these names…; since sometimes they maintain that even Zeus is born, and then again they show that he is the father and maker of everything. Aristides, Oratio XLII4 (150)

In the opinion of the Neo-platonists, Asclepius was in fact the soul of the world by which the creation is held together and filled with symmetry and balanced union (T.304). Through Asclepius, the savior of the whole world, the health and safety of all is guaranteed (T. 306). Through him, the elements do not relax their indestructible bonds; through him, the universe remains young and healthy (T.309)…In their opinion, therefore, Asclepius was a god even before the beginning of existence, a transcendental deity (T. 305; cf. also T.259), although he was ruling over the phenomenal world, although he was within it. Zeus had engendered Asclepius from himself; but through the sun, through Apollo, he had revealed him to the mundane regions (T.307) In his earthly appearance Asclepius was the third from Zeus (T.303). Thus the god of medicine took his place in the pagan trinity. He had risen high indeed. (Edelstein, 108)

At the same time, “despite all changes in his influence and in his position, he did not change his nature: he remained the healer of diseases and the giver of health.”

Since the 5^th century b.c., a desire for a more person religion (as well as the  idea that gods aren’t bad, should be free from envy and malice – plato, stoics, epicureans…) individual relationship rather than collective worship “There was a craving for a personal relationship to the deity, and the belief in divine providence progressed steadily. In such a world it was natural that Asclepius found favor, for if any god was interested in the private needs ofmen, in their most personal affairs, if any god showed providence, it was Asclepius.(Edelstein113)

Asclepius only heals the pure of heart and mind… he heals the poor and he does it for free “Asclepius, again, does not heal mankind in the hope of repayment, but everywhere fulfills his own function of beneficence to mankind. Julianus, epistulae 419 b (164)

Images of Asclepius show him as youthful and bearded. He ‘radiates dignity mixed with compassion; eyes turned upward looking saintly and benign. Curly locks falling over the back and down to the eyebrows.” He liked children was fond of them (Edelstein, 224)

Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum III, 45 Phoebus gave to mortals Asclepius and Plato, the one to save their souls, theother to save their bodies. (Jesus becomes both…is this before or after? Why not make the obvious connection?) 164 (3rd century AD).

On the contrary, in addition to the similarity of the deeds of the two saviors, which even the later Christians seem to have found disconcerting, there was a disturbing resemblance in their way of life and in their chatacters. Christ did not perform heroic or wordly exploits; he fought no battles; he concerned himself soley with assisting those who were in need of succor. So did Asclepius. Christ, like Asclepius, was sent into the world as a helper of men. Christ’s life on earth was blameless, as was that of Aslepius. Christ in his love of men invited his patients to come to him, or else he wandered about to meet them. This, too, could be said of Asclepius. All in all, it is not astonishing that Apologists and Church Fathers had a hard stand in their fight against Asclepius, in proving the superiority of Jesus, if moral reasoning alone was to be relied upon. The nature of the godhead of the two saviors was indisputably identical: both were man-gods. Son of God and mortal woman, the story of Christ’s birth in many ways resembled the birth saga of divine Asclepius.  God died…through god had risen to heaven, immortal on account of virtue. Human and divine, Asclepius was called a ‘terrestrial and intelligible’ god (Edelstein, 136)

Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi) was the consort of Ishtar. He is mentioned, already in the Epic of Gilgamesh, as a suffering lover of the goddess, a shepherd beloved and scapegoat of the netherworld. When Ishtar tries to become Gilgamesh’s lover, he points out that her past lovers have not fared well. “Dumuzi, the lover of your youth, year upon year, to lamenting you doomed him.” (Gilgamesh 137) When Gilgamesh is mourning the death of Enkidu, he presents a carnelian flute for “Dumuzi, shepherd beloved of Ishtar”, so that he may welcome his friend and walk at his side (epic of Gilgamesh, translated Andrew George, 68). Thus Dumuzi, who was thought to have been originally a historical king that entered into sexual union with the goddess, had also been considered a god in his own right more than three thousand years ago. His demise is tied to the story of Ianna’s descent into the underworld. The reason she gives for entering the underworld is to attend her brother-in-law’s funeral rites (Gugalana, the Bull of Heaven which had just been killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu). After she decides to go down into the Great Below, she leaves instructions for her rescue in case she does not return. As she descendes, she is required to remove one of her seven layers of clothing at each of the seven gates, until she stood before Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, naked and humble. Ereshkigal ‘fixed the eye of death’ upon her and she was turned into a corpse, and hung from a hook on the wall like a piece of rotting meat. After three days and three nights, her servant Ninshubar, following instructions, tried to get the gods to save her. Only one, Enki, agreed to help. He fashioned two sexless creatures from the dirt under the fingernails of the gods, and gave them the food and water of life to sprinkle on Ianna’s corpse. She returned to life, and Ereshkigal agreed to release her, but she had to provide another in her place. When she came back to heaven she found Dumuzi enjoying himself in her absence (on her throne or under a tree), rather than mourning for her, and ‘fixed the eye of death’ upon him. The demons took him down to Hell; however his sister loved him so much she wanted to go in his place. So, Dumuzi spends half of the year in the underworld, while his sister spends half. During the time that Dumuzi is in the underworld, his lover Ianna misses him; this infertile time was fall and winter. When Dumuzi returns from the underworld and he is with Ianna, their love fills the world with life, causing spring and summer.

This story is remarkably similar to the myth of Demeter and Persephone; both explain the coming of winter through a goddess grieving for a lost loved one, who then returns.A cult ritual for Dumuzi as the Dying God “began with laments sung as a sacred cedar tree growing in the compound of the temple Eanna in Uruk. The rite seems to have closed with a triumphant procession that followed the god downstream. The god appears to represent the sap lying dormant in the rushes and trees during the dry season but reviving, to the profound relief and joy of the orchardman, with the river’s rise.”  – Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness.

The mourning of Tammuz was a widespread annual ritual, which even appears in the Bible. Yahweh, giving Ezekial a sort of tour of the idolatry being practiced by the Israelites, points out the women sitting by the entrance to the north gate of the Temple of Yahweh, weeping for Tammuz. “Son of man, do you see that? You will see even more loathsome things than that,” he says (Ezek. 8:14). In Greek communities, Tammuz was called Adonis, and he was considered a consort of Aphrodite. The cult of Adonis existed in Sappho and Lesbos as early as 600BC. As Adonis is a mutation or evolved form of Tammus, in a different cultural setting, the two figures are not exactly the same. The cult of Aphrodite’s paramour Adonis held a special appeal for Greek women, combining the erotic adoration of a beautiful youth with the emotional catharsis of lamentation for his death. The Adonis cult was an early import from the Levant, probably via Cyprus, but while many of the outward forms remained the same, its cultural context and significance changed.

Adonis was modeled upon Tammuz, the consort of Ishtar whose death was annually lamented by women, and his name is a direct borrowing of the West Semitic adon, Lord. (Larson 124)There are multiple versions of Adonis’ birth story, but the commonly accepted version is that Aphrodite urged Myrrha to commit incest with her father, Theias. Myrrha slept with her father in the darkness, until he used and oil lamp to learn the truth and chased after her with a knife. Aphrodite turned Myrrha into a myrrh tree, out of which Adonis was born (either when Theias shot an arrow in the tree, or when a boar tore of the bark with its tusks). He was such a beautiful baby that Aphrodite locked him in a trunk and gave him to Persephone, queen of the underworld, for safe keeping; however Persephone was so enthralled by him that she refused to return him. Finally Zeus decided that he would be shared – six months with Aphrodite, who later seduced him, and six months with Persephone. (Hamilton) According to Ovid in The Metamorphoses, Adonis met his death by a wild boar. Aprhodite (Roman Venus), who’d been pricked by Eros’ arrow of love, specifically warned him to be careful and stay away from wild beasts:

The wild and large are much too wild for you; My dear, remember that sweet Venus loves you, And if you walk in danger, so does she. Nature has armed her monsters to destroy you –Even your valour would be grief to me. (Ovid, Metamorphoses X)

But the young Adonis ignored her warning (due to “pride and manliness”) and headed off into the wood with his hunting dogs, where he woke a great boar. The boar pierced his white loins with a great thrust, and Adonis bled to death. Although the cult of Tammuz “enjoyed near-universal recognition in Mesopotamia and his festival was so important that a Babylonian month was named after him” (Larson 124), worship of Adonis, although popular, rarely gained state sponsorship. It was viewed as a foreign cult; moreover Adonis was mostly mourned by women, in rituals not tied to a sanctuary, temple or sacred space.Women sit by the gate weeping for Tammuz, or they offer incense to Baal on roof-tops and plant pleasant plants.

These are the very features of the Adonis cult: a cult confined to women which is celebrated on flat roof-tops on which sherds sown with quickly germinating green salading are placed, Adonis gardens… the climax is loud lamentation for the dead god. (Burkert 177)

To perform the Adonia, which took place in late summer, women ascended to the roof, where they sang dirges, cried out in grief, and beat their breasts. Sappho (fr. 140a LP) mentions that the women tore their garments, a standard sign of mourning. Other features of of Adonis’ ritual belon to the cult in Classical Athens. A few days before the Adonia, garden herbs and cereals were sown in broken pots. These tender young plants were brought to the rooftops during the festival, to be withered in the hot sun as emblems of the youthful Adonis’ death. Another custom involved the laying out of Adonis dolls for burial. (Larson 124)

Frazer notes the similarity between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the cult of Adonis; the tradition is much the same even today. They bring out an effigy of the dead Jesus and parade it through town, mourning. They bury it, fasting, and then at midnight on Saturday, cry “Christ is risen!” (Incidentally, it may be noted that “Christ”, like Adonis, is a title meaning lord, or messiah, rather than a specific name; Adonis is even a name for Yahweh in the Old Testament). The resurrection of Jesus was met with joy, shouting, shrieks, and partaking of the easter lamb (Frazer, 416). Frazer concludes that the Christian celebration of Easter was modelled on the earlier ritual concerning Adonis:

When we reflect how often the Church has skilfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to believe, was celebrated in Syria in the same season. (Frazer 416)

More recent research has denied the claim that Adonis’ resurrection was celebrated; instead the focus always seems to be on the mourning of his death rather than his revival. However, Frazer may have had the cult of Attis in mind, which was very similar to that of Adonis, and did stress, not only the death, but the return of the god.

Cybele, (a Phrygian mother goddess whose cult was introduced into Greece by the 5th century BCE) rejected Zeus as a lover; but he spilled his seed on her while she was sleeping and she gave birth to Agdistis – a wild demon. The gods feared him so they cut off his testicles. From the blood, grew an almond tree. A woman, Nana, took an almond to her breast (or at the fruit) from this tree and 9 months later gave birth to Attis.

Attis was extremely handsome, and his grandmother Cybele desired him. Having no idea about his divine nature, he fell in love with the beautiful daughter of the king of Pessinus and wished to marry her. Cybele was so jealous she drove him crazy. He ran through the mountains and castrated and killed himself at the foot of a pine tree. From his blood grew the first violets. The tree took Attis’ spirit, and his flesh would have decayed if Zeus had not helped Cybele bring him back to life. Another version says that Zeus, angry at the Lydians for worshipping Attis and The Mother, sent a wild boar, who killed him and destroyed the Lydian Crops. In still another version, Attis was killed accidentally by a poorly thrown spear during a boar hunt. (Frazer notes that bulls sacrificed during rituals were bled to death with a consecrated spear – which probably has its roots in this myth, thus tying the death of Attis in with the cleansing blood of the bull).

In works of art Attis is represented as a shepherd with flute and staff; sometimes near or under a tree.

The cult of Attis and Cybele became extremely popular in Greek and Roman society, and a public festival, commemorating the death and rebirth of Attis, was the first of its kind to be celebrated in Rome.

“Noteworthy variations distinguish the versions of the legend, but from the time of Claudius (ad41-54) Romans took part in March in a kind of ‘holy week’ whose rites conveyed the myth of Attis, a god who died and came to life again each year; it was the first of its kind in the liturgy of the Urbs. The methods may have evolved before becoming fixed in the Antonine period, but its highlights were celebrated as early as the first century.” (The Gods of Ancient Rome, Turcan, 111-112.)

The ‘Passion’ of Attis began on the 15th of March with a procession of reed bearers. On the 22nd, a pine tree was cut, and a ram sacrificed on the stump. The tree was wrapped in wool, like the corpse of Attis had been, and carried to the sanctuary. The 24th was a day of mourning and fasting; but “after a night of doleful lamentation, on 25 March, the joy of the Hilaria erupted, celebrating the revived Attis. In the imperial period it became the great springtime festival enlivened by a kind of carnival (Turcan, 113).

“The next day was one of vociferous mourning, and on the day following, the ‘day of blood’, the Mother’s worshippers would whip themselves and some of them, carried away by ecstacy, would perform the irreversible act. With the dawn of 25 March came the day of rejoicing for some – convalescence for others – as Attis’ resurrection was celebrated.” (112 godwin).

Cultic Rites:

Besides the public ceremony, Attis had his own mystery cult. Followers abstained from pork because a boar killed their god. The great Basilica of St Peters on Vatican Hill is founded on a site of Cybele worship, which once included the Taurobolium or the sacrifice of a bull and the use of its blood in purifying rituals. Initiates who underwent the somewhat gruesome process of the Taurobolium were said to have been “born again.”

…washed in blood, the worshipper would emerge to ‘receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull.” (424, Frazer)

It is worthwhile to keep in mind that blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins or to attract favors from the gods was also an integral part of Judaism (Leviticus 17:11: “For the soul of the flesh is in the blood and I have assigned it for you upon the altar to provide atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that atones for the soul.”) Thousands of animals (bulls and rams) were sacrificed at the Temple in Jerusalem up until it was destroyed in 70AD). “Poorer people made do with a criobolium, in which a ram was killed, and were ‘washed in the blood of the Lamb’. (111, Godwin)

Initiates from the mysteries of Attis would need to recite certain magical formula or creeds:

“I ate from the tympanon, I drank from the cymbal, I carried the composite vessel (kernos), I slipped under the bedcurtain (Clement Protr. 15.3, Firmicus Err. 18.1 )(cited Burkert)

“I have eaten from the  tambourine, I have drunk from the cymbal, I have penetrated behind the curtain of the nuptial bed”

The most zealous of Attic priests, the Galli, became eunuchs by castrating themselves – a sacrifice said to have been made also by Origin, one of the first great Christian apologists, and not alien to the Christian tradition: “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.” (Matthew 19:12)

Similarities

The most obvious similarity between Jesus and Attis is, of course, the Christian celebration of Easter. A god that dies, is mourned, and celebrated after three days as having risen from the dead; a god who initiates redemption or salvation, (through his own suffering and death), where initiates can be washed in blood and free from sin; these similarities seem more than coincidental – and there is no doubt that Attis came first. The ‘Holy Week’ of Attis was already a State Ceremony by AD 41-54 – decades before the gospels were written. Moreover, Cybele had been worshiped by Romans for centuries, (she was credited with an exceptional harvest in 204BC (Pliny, NH,18,16)), and “numerous clay ex-votos depicting Attis (many of which are datable to the second century BC), unearthed during excavations in the temple cella, prove that the god had already reached the ordinary populace.” (Turcan, 111)

“And if generations of Christians believed that Jesus died on the cross as the only means to pacify his father’s anger at mankind, it was no more absurd for the devotees of Attis and Cybele to worship a jealous goddes and her mutilated son.” (Godwin, 111)

Critics have argued, incidentally, that stories about Attis nowhere explicitly mention any kind of salvation or afterlife prospects:

In a study devoted entirely to the subject of “soteriology” in the Attis cult, Gasparro finds no “explicit statements about the prospects open to the mystai of Cybele and Attis” and “little basis in the documents in our possession” for the idea of “a ritual containing a symbology of death and resurrection to a new life.” [Gasp.AAO, 82] (http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/attis.html)

Instead, they argue that Attis may have offered some benefit in this life (although what possible benefit could be great enough for followers to castrate themselves, they don’t dare to guess). They have also argued that Attis was not actually resurrected – at least not until much after the spread of Christianity. As usual when confronting such die-hards, there is no way to convince them to follow basic steps in common sense, logic and reason. Thousands of followers of Attis mourned, and then celebrated a story about Attis’ death and return; there is much evidence that this ritual process happened annually in Rome and other parts of the empire in the 1st century AD. Moreover, several other mystery cults with nearly identical symbolism are much more clear in labeling the tangible, exact afterlife benefits of initiates. We also know that the Attis cult was a mystery religion, and that key truths were never revealed openly, not written down and only hinted at in art.

We can either conclude that there was something meaningful enough to attract large numbers of passionate followers, or take the condescending position that Attis offered absolutely nothing but a thrilling story, and that the Galli castrated themselves for show.

“Dionysus, like Jesus, was son of the divine ruler of the world and a mortal mother, appeared in human form among mortals, was killed and restored to life. Early Christian writers, aware of the similarity between Christianity and mystery-cult, claim that the latter is a diabolical imitation of the former” (Dionysus, Richard Seaford, 126.)

“The correspondences between Christianity and the other mystery religions of antiquity are perhaps more startling than the differences. Orpheus and Christ share attributes in the early centuries of our era; and of all the major ancient deities, Dionysus has the most in common with the figure of Christ” (Classical Mythology 8th Edition, 385)

THE MYTH:

Dionysus was born from a mortal woman, Semele, Daughter of the King of Thebes, and Zeus, the ‘Father of the Gods’. Hera, Zeus’s jealous wife, planted seeds of doubt in the young mother’s mind, and Semele demanded that Zeus come down and take responsibility. However, as no mortal can stand the sight of Zeus without dying, she was burnt up by his firebolts. Zeus rescued the child and sewed him up in his thigh until he was ready to be born.

In another version of the story, which ties Dionysus even more closely to the sacred mysteries, Dionysus was son of Zeus and Persephone, queen of the underworld. The jealous Hera this time sent the Titans to rip the child to pieces, by distracting it with toys and mirrors. After they’d dismembered him, the Titans ate all the pieces – except the heart, which was saved. Zeus destroyed the Titans with lightning, and it was out of their ashes that humanity was created. The heart was to impregnate Semele, who gave birth to Dionysus again. (In either version of the story, Dionysus was ‘twice born’ – a title that would later be used frequently in conjunction with his role in the sacred mysteries, initiates of which were said to be ‘born again.’)

This story has been interpreted as the founding myth for ancient spiritual traditions, in particular Orphism: it explains why ’sin’ or evil came into the world, and how humans are special in creation. “Our nature therefore is twofold, born of Titans, wicked sons of earth, but there is in us something of a heavenly nature too, since there went to our making fragments of the body of Dionysus, son of Olympian Zeus, on whom the Titans had made their impious feast (Orpheus and Greek Religion, Guthrie,  83)CHK.

And again:

“Surely this is one of the most significant myths in terms of the philosophy and religious dogma that it provides. By it human beings are endowed with a dual nature-abody gross and evil (since we are sprung from the Titans) and a soul that is pure and divine (for after all the Titans had devoured the god). Thus basic religious concepts (which lie at the root of all mystery religions) are accounted for: sin, immortality, resurrection, life after death, reward, and punishment. It is no accident that Dionysus is linked with Orpheus an Demeter and the message that they preached. He is in his person a resurrection-god; the story is told that he went down into the realm of the dead and brought back his mother, who in this account is usually given the name Thyone” (Classical Mythology, 8th Edition, 313)

On a deeper level, Dionysus was identified as a powerful force that governed and controlled the universe. He is not only the ‘divine spark’ inside of us, he is also the beacon for ethical and moral action, as well as the gateway to eternal salvation:

“Dionysus can free us, wherefore we call him “liberator”, Dionysus the immortal, the resurrected, of whose nature there is yet a small part in each and every one of us. Knowing all this, what other aim can we have in life but to purge away as far as possible the Titanic element in us and exalt and cherish the Dionysiac?” (Guthrie, 83)

“As son and heir of the cosmic deity, Zeus, Dionysus is also a creative deity, but creative through thought, as it were. He produces the idea of the world, and his knowledge sustains it in all its reality. At the same time he is dismembered by the Titans, who are the direct creators of physical matter, and distributed into the human race, i.e. he is also the higher mind in each one of us.” (Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, Godwin, 133)

“In this way, the Orphic bible provided the divine authority for belief in an immortal soul; the necessity for keeping this soul pure despite the contamination and degradation of the body; the concept of a kind of original sin; the transmigration of the soul to an afterlife of reward or punishment; and finally, after various stages of purification, an apotheosis, a union with the divine spirit in the realms of the upper aether. The seeds of everything came from Phanes or Zeus; out of the One, all things come to be and into the One they are once again resolved.”(Classical Mythology, 8th Edition, 384)

Despite his divinity, Dionysus lived among humans “not as a god but in disguise as a man” (Classical Mythology 8th Edition, 294); and was somehow closer to humanity than any other deity.  Stories of his life on earth, notably The Bacchae by Euripides, (which premiered at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BCE), make it clear that Dionysus’ true power is only recognized by his closest followers. Importantly, Dionysus freely allows himself to be captured and persecuted, before finally revealing himself in his glory.

“Apparently powerless submission (in the Homeric Hymn to the pirates, in Bacchae to king Pentheus) is transformed into its opposite by epiphany, an emotive transformation that is in some respects comparable to the release of Paul and Silas in the Acts of the Apostles. Chased away or imprisoned by mere mortals, but comes back in triumph: associated with victory.” (Dionysus, Seaford, 44)

The Bacchae’s description of Dionysus submitting to his captors is eerily similar to the same motif in the Christian tradition. When the guard delivers him to Pentheus, he says:

“Pentheus, here we are, having hunted the quarry you sent us after, and our efforts  have not been unsuccessful. But we found this wild beast tame -he did not attempt to flee, but gave me his hands willingly; he did not even turn pale, but kept the flush of wine in his cheeks. With a smile he bade me tie him up and lead him away and waited for me, thus making my task easy. I was taken aback and said: “O stranger, I do not arrest you of my own free will but at the orders of Pentheus who has sent me.” (Bacchae 434-442)

Dionysus goes through a trial of sorts, where he refuses to answer Pentheus questions directly, and instead antagonizes the ruler – then he is put in prison. The following episode, although of course very different from that of Jesus, who is crucified, is remarkably similar to Acts of the Apostles 16:25-9:

“the missionaries of the new religion, Paul and Silas, are imprisoned, singing to their god in the darkness of midnight when there is a sudden earthquake, and (as at Bacchae 447-8) the doors open and the chains fall away from the prisoners. The gaoler seizes a sword, is reassured by Paul that the prisoners are still there, asks for light, rushes inside, falls trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas, and is converted to Christianity. So too Pentheus seizes a sword, rushes inside into the darkness,  and finally collapses, while Dionysus remains clam throughout and reassure Pentheus that he will not escape…These similarities are too numerous to be coincidental. Howe are we to explain them? One possibility is that they derive from knowledge of the Bacchae. Bacchae was indeed well known at this period: for instance, we hear of it being  recited in Corinth in the first century AD….the author of Acts has literary knowledge, because he includes a verse of Hellenistic poet Aratus in Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus (17.28). Moreover, in one version of the conversion of Saul the lord says to him “It is hard for you to kick against the goads’ (26.14). This expression occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, but it does occur in early Greek literature, notably when Dionysus says to his persecutor Pentheus ‘Do not kick against the goads, a mortal against a god’ (Bacchae 796). (124-25 Seaford)

There are other similarities between the life of Dionysus and the life of Jesus. Dionysus was a wanderer; his cult emphasized mobility. He does not give instructions for building a temple (as does Demeter in the Homeric hymns to Demeter, or Yahweh in the Old Testament). Worship of Dionysus was roofless – outdoors, in a temple under open sky; just like the early Christian practice, which was originally against the setting up of churches or worshiping from indoors. Jesus is an outdoor guy. (Converts of Christianity were instructed to hit the road carrying a bowl and a staff, and preach the gospel).

Dionysus is not only associated but often actually identified with animals that represent him, mostly the bull; just as he is associated and identified with wine. Dionysian cults at raw flesh; Dionysus himself could be called ‘eater of raw flesh’ (Seaford, 24). In the version cited by Frazer, Dionysus tried to evade the attacks of the Titans by changing forms: first a young man, then a lion, horse, and serpent. “Finally, in the form of a bull, he was cut into pieces by the murderous knives of his enemies.” (The Golden Bough, Frazer, 567). Thus, when we find that followers of Dionysus follow the cult ritual of dividing up a bull and eating its raw flesh, and drinking wine in thanksgiving and remembrance of their god, it is not a stretch to argue that they believed they were eating the body and blood of their savior in order to reach a spiritual communion.

“when we consider the practice of portraying the god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshipers at the sacred rites, and the legend that in bull form he had been torn to pieces, we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at this festival the worshipers of Dionysus believed themselves to be killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.” (The Golden Bough, Frazer, 470)

Although Dionysus was not crucified, certain aspects of his worship have early Christian parallels. When Dionysus was torn apart by the Titans, a pomegranate tree sprouted from his blood. Perhaps this is the root of the tradition of worshiping Dionysus in the form of a tree. Maximus of Tyre writes that ‘the peasants honour Dionysus by planting in the field an uncultivated tree-trunk, a rustic statue’ (2.1), and according to Plutarch (Moralia 675) all Greeks sacrifice to Dionysus as tree god (Dendrites). Pausanias reports that two images of Dionysus at Corinth were made from this very tree: the Delphic oracle had ordered the Corinthians to find the tree and ‘worship it equally with god’ (2.2.7) (23) (Dionysus, Seaford, 23).

Likewise, Jesus is celebrated as “Tree of Life” – a redemptive symbol counteracting the original Tree of Knowledge that lead to the fall into sin. Countless churches in Christendom have worshiped relics or magical pendants made of wood from the original cross (which was discovered by Emperor Constantine’s mother over 300 years after the event). Within early Christian communities, Jesus was even considered to have been ‘hung on a tree’ rather than crucified.

“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.” (Acts 5.30.)

“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness” (Peter 2.24.)

Dionysus was considered a great social leveler: in his festivals and ceremonies, there was no distinction given to class or rank. Dionysus “gave the pain-removing delight of wine equally to the wealthy man and to the lesser man” (Bacchae 421-3). He was also credited with freedom from prison, releasing slaves, as a liberator, and “in general resolved conflicts between peoples and cities, and created concord and much peace in place of civil conflicts and wars’ (3.64.7) (Seaford, 29). He was worshiped by everybody equally, all mixed up in a mob. A feature which “may not have appealed to some aristocrats was his inclusiveness, his association with the celebrations of a whole community” Seaford (27).

And then there are the wine miracles. It was Dionysus who brought wine to aristocratic wedding of Peleus and Thetis, and during a festival at Elis, 3 pots were put inside the Dionysus temple behind closed doors and ‘miraculously’ filled with wine; feats which are reproduced later by Jesus at Cana. This act of Jesus, as well as his claim of being the “True Vine”, were probably direct attempts to usurp the powers and influence of Dionysus.

Another story highlights the theological similarities. Dionysus wanted to sleep with the wife of King Oeneus (of Calydon in Aetolia).  Oeneus, whose name means ‘wine man’, tactfully withdrew; for this he was rewarded with gift of vine, which benefited the whole community. Stories of Gods fertilizing the wife of the king and producing a divine prince who becomes a savior/redeemer are not uncommon. When applied to the Christian birth story, this theme highlights the fact Joseph ‘made way’ for God/the Holy Spirit to impregnate Mary, who produces Jesus -  the True Vine.

Mysteries.

Dionysus was important to the Eleusinian and other mysteries, as savior, liberator and ruler of the underworld. His name was a magical password of freedom; initiates who underwent mysteries were promised eternal life, and given special gold leaves that acted as passports into the next life. One of these, for example, reads “Tell Persephone that Bakchios himself freed you” (Bakchios/Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysus)  (Seaford, 55). Interestingly, it is probably Dionysus’ role as ruler of the underworld and keeper of the dead that has been transfigured into the modern conception of Satan: (Dionysus = bacchus = bull = horned one = ruler of underworld = Satan).

According to the doctrine of these mysteries, (which was later used as the foundation for Platonic philosophy), the soul is ‘imprisoned’ in the body for an ancient crime or guilt, symbolized by the Titans’ murder of Dionysus (Cratylus 400c; Phaedo 62b)  (Seaford, 117). Humans, by being made from the remains of the Titans, have inherited this guilt; but also been given the gift of the Dionysian element, which, if cultivated, can result in eternal life.

“The 5^th century neoplatonist philosopher Proclus regarded Plato as following Orphic myths and interpreting mystic doctrine. In this interpretation, according to Proclus, the dismemberment of Dionysus means that body and soul are divided  into many bodies and souls, whereas the undivided heart of Dionysos, from which Athena recomposed his body, is cosmic mind of intellect (nous). In neoplatonist philosophy nous is undivided; it comprehends in one act of intelligence all intelligible things; and it is merged with but superior to the soul” (Seaford, 115).

This is hardly different from the tradition of Jesus as Logos, “Head of the body of the Church”, given in Pauline theology and the gospel of John. Paul’s usage of mirror imagery, in particular, make it likely he is familiar with mystery cult teachings stemming from the Dionysus myth.

Conclusions

There is no doubt that Dionysus, even more robust ideas about him, came before Jesus. His name first appears on clay tablet from Greek bronze age 3000 years ago (Seaford, 3). Poetry from the 6^th century BC claims that Dionysus gave wine as ‘joy and burden’ (Seaford, 21) and The Bacchae, published in 405 BC, was an increasingly popular and well known piece of literature. Although Jesus is certainly much more than any of these similarities, it is impossible to make the case that early Christians were unaware of Dionysius; whose public processions were large, loud and involved the entire community. In fact, according to 2 Maccabees 6.7, the Jews themselves were compelled under Seleucid King Antiochus IV(175-164BC) to wear ivy wreaths and walk  in procession in honour of Dionysus, an act which may have had lasting consequences: “Tacitus writes that various features of Jewish cult – the music of pipes and drums,  ivy crowns, and the golden vine at the temple – give rise to the view that the Jews worship Liber Pater (Dionysus), the conqueror of the East (Seaford, 122).

“When Christianity was establishing itself in the ancient Mediterranean world, the cult of Dionysus was its most geographically widespread and deeply rooted rival. And so the Christian church, while enclosing the revolutionary ethics of its gospels within the necessity of social control, was influenced by Dionysaic cult as well as opposing it” (Seaford, 4).

The question becomes: Did Jesus, aware of Dionysus, set himself up purposely to steal his rival’s spotlight? Or did early Christian writers include these stories and motifs into the gospel story to elevate Jesus into a more powerful deity?

“The question will arise, By whom is to be interpreted the sense of the passages which make for heresies? By the devil, of course, to whom pertain those wiles which pervert the truth, and who, by the mystic rites of his idols, vies even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God. He, too, baptizes somethat is, his own believers and faithful followers; he promises the putting away of sins by a layer (of his own); and if my memory still serves me, Mithra there, (in the kingdom of Satan) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown. What also must we say to (Satan’s) limiting his chief priest to a single marriage? He, too, has his virgins; he, too, has his proficients in continence…is it not clear to us that the devil imitated the well-known moroseness of the Jewish law? Since, therefore he has sown such emulation in his great aim of expressing, in the concerns of his idolatry, those very things of which consists the administration of Christ’s sacraments, it follows, of course, that the same being, possessing still the same genius, both set his heart upon, and succeeded in, adapting to his profane and rival creed the very documents of divine things and of the Christian saints.”

The Prescription Against Heretics, Tertullian, (ca. 160 – ca. 220 A.D.)

When I first discovered (and wrote about) the connections and similarities between Jesus and Mithras several years ago, I was fueled with excitement. Wow! Mithras also had 12 disciples, was also born on Dec. 25th, his followers also had a communal meal where they ate bread and wine the symbolized their savior’s body and blood; they also had baptism for the forgiveness of sins – and Mithras even died and came back to life? And Mithras was a Persian god going back into Zoroastrianism, possibly a thousand years before Christ?

No wonder the internet is so full of websites repeating the same (unresearched and unvalidated) claims that Jesus is a Mithras copy or replica.

The truth, however, is much more complicated. In this article I’ll try to look at Mithras as objectively as possibly and determine what, if any, is the extant of his relationship to Jesus Christ.

History

Mithra was originally a Persian sun god (or not exactly; sometimes he is equated with the sun, but sometimes higher or lower in rank), dating back to around 600bc if not earlier. Mentions of the god are found in both the Vedas and the Avesta (Hindu and Persian sacred texts); he became associated with Chaldean astrology and worship of Marduk, and finally came into conduct with the Western world through Alexander’s conquests. Mithraism spread rapidly through the Greek Empire and was well known by 100BC.

Mithraism was a religion of soldiers; stress was laid on brotherhood, fellowship, bravery, cleanliness, and fidelity. Initiation consisted of physical tests of endurance.

For example fasting is first imposed upon the neophytes for a period of about fifty days. If this is successfully endured, for two days they are exposed to extreme heat, then again plunged into snow for twenty days. And thus the severity of the discipline is gradually increased, and if the postulant shows himself capable of endurance he is finally admitted to the highest grades. (Pseudo-Nonnus)

Several Roman Emperors built temples to Mithra and put his face on coins. His popularity increased until the laws of Theodosius outlawed worship of Mithra (with a death penalty)  in the end of the 4th century.

(For a more complete summary, see The Catholic Encyclopedia Online)

Doctrine

Influenced by Zoroastrianism, Mithraic cosmology is conceived of as a battle between light (Ahura Mazda) and darkness (Ahriman). In prehistory, the evil forces rose up to overthrow the good forces; however they were beaten and thrown into Hell. They escape, and find refuge on earth, where they wander and afflict man.

He was born, fully grown, out of a rock or a cave (thus his name, the ‘god of the rock’). Mithra is the mediator between man and god; Mithraics believed that through him (and through certain ritualistic processes in this life) they will achieve immortality. Mithra will come again at the end of the world, and thus prove himself never conquered.

Mithraism was a mystery religion; a religion that taught it’s truth in several different stages and only revealed wisdom when an initiate was prepared for it. There are several references to the ‘markings’ of Mithras; initiates seemed to get a cross tattooed on their foreheads – the cross was the symbol of the sun, and also the shape of the sword. Initiates had to prove themselves masters over their physical passions, through fasting and ordeals. It also appears that they were vegetarians (they believed in reincarnation/transmigration and so refrained from killing any animal, much like modern Buddhists.)

Mithraism had 7 levels of initiation, and tying it to other mystery cults, such as the Pythagoreans, Orphics or the writings of Hermes Trismegistus (all of which to my knowledge, believe in transmigration of the souls, the impurity of the body and the ‘7 worlds’ or planets that must be passed through after death; the right knowledge of proper procedure (as in the Egyptian book of the dead) being necessary to make the trip safely.) Celsus demonstrates below some of the complexity of this system:

After this, Celsus, desiring to exhibit his learning in his treatise against us, quotes also certain Persian mysteries, where he says: “These things are obscurely hinted at in the accounts of the Persians, and especially in the mysteries of Mithras, which are celebrated amongst them. For in the latter there is a representation of the two heavenly revolutions,—-of the movement, viz., of the fixed stars, and of that which take place among the planets, and of the passage of the soul through these. The representation is of the following nature: There is a ladder with lofty gates, and on the top of it an eighth gate. The first gate consists of lead, the second of tin, the third of copper, the fourth of iron, the fifth of a mixture of metals, the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold. The first gate they assign to Saturn, indicating by the ‘lead’ the slowness of this star; the second to Venus, comparing her to the splendour and softness of tin; the third to Jupiter, being firm and solid; the fourth to Mercury, for both Mercury and iron are fit to endure all things, and are money-making and laborious; the fifth to Mars, because, being composed of a mixture of metals, it is varied and unequal; the sixth, of silver, to the Moon; the seventh, of gold, to the Sun,—-thus imitating the different colours of the two latter.” He next proceeds to examine the reason of the stars being arranged in this order, which is symbolized by the names of the rest of matter. Musical reasons, moreover, are added or quoted by the Persian theology; and to these, again, he strives to add a second explanation, connected also with musical considerations.

Origen, contra Celsum 6.22

Slaying of the Bull

Unfortunately, Mithraic written texts and studies on Mithraicism (such as the many volumes on Mithras written by Eubulus, as recorded by Jerome) were destroyed by Christian persecution. What remains are the symbolic and graphical representations found in the cave-like Mithraic grottos.

Mithra is nearly always shown standing over a bull, slitting its throat. This led some early researchers to conclude that Mithraism revolved around the Taurobolium; the practice of slaughtering a live bull and drinking or bathing in its blood. (Ninian Smart)

Actually, as others have pointed out, there was no physical space for such a procedure in the Mithraim. “Seldom if ever would the initiate be sprinkled with the blood of a slain bull. (Frend 277)

Moreover, due to the overwhelmingly consistent astrological features found, it is more probable that the Bull-Slaying act of Mithra was a celestial event of great importance to the spiritual climate of the cult.

As we know (and as attested in the above picture) the constellations have remained intact for several thousand years. The bull above is surrounded by a Scorpion (scorpio), a Sea-Goat (capricorn), two fish swimming in opposite directions (pisces), a woman holding scales, (libra) etc. Mithra here is accomplishing some monumental task by slaying the astrological sign of Taurus, the bull.

Although I won’t go into it here – I believe the symbolism represents the fact that the spring equinox took place under the sign of Taurus, and thus when the sun was victorious over darkness (by being reborn at the end of winter) the battle is represented by Mithra slaying the bull. Another interpretation is that Mithraism originally developed during the end of the age of Taurus, (2400BC), and that Mithra was seen as causing the precession of the equinoxes and virtually self-manifesting the coming age of Aries (2400 – 200BC).

A further interpretation I have come across (Lactantius Placidus) is that the bull represents the moon (like Egypt’s moon/bull goddess Hathor); in which case this could symbolize an eclipse.

The following fragments also hint of similarity – such as Jesus bearing the burden of the cross:

“This bullock which he properly carried on his golden shoulders.”

“And the most important (orders?) of the gods I have borned on my shoulders and carried”

“You have saved us by shedding the external blood.”

Extracts from CIMRM 485 (dowden79)

It is not true that Mithraicism had no sacred writings; however, with the subsequent rise of the Christian empire, Mithraic texts were gathered and destroyed.

Syncretism and translation of gods

Many ancient passages referring to Mithras compare him to Apollo or Osiris; he is simply the Persian name for the ‘unconquerable sun’. Translation and synthesis of religions was a common trend in the 2nd and 3rd century; with the joining of races under the Greco-Roman empire, rather than fighting for supremacy, most people assumed that different cultures worshiped the same gods under various names. Thus Mithras was just another sun god, and desirable features or symbols from other cultures were blended together. When the Roman Empire celebrated Dec. 25th as the Day of the Invincible Sun (Sol Invictus), followers of Apollo, Mithras, Osiris, Attis and other mystery cults could join together in celebration of light and goodness.

Moreover, as Mithraism believed in transmigration, One True God, the Logos (yes, Mithras was also given this title, which is based on Greek philosophy and used as early as Heraclitus c.500bc), the doctrine of Mithraism had nothing that conflicted with the philosophical underpinnings of Greco-Roman society, such as the Stoics or Neo-platonists.

Similarities with Jesus Christ

So what has this mystery cult/astrological/bull slaying/vegetarian soldier god have to do with Jesus Christ? On the surface not much; especially when we interpret the Mithraic symbols metaphorically and the gospel stories literally, as has been done by ‘Orthodox’ Christianity from the beginning of the movement.

The biggest difference between Mithraism and Christianity is that, from an early point in the movement, Christians began believing in Jesus as a human prophet. Although their stories of Jesus included the same symbols as found in Mithraism and other mystery religions – these were accidental, or inspired by the devil, and not to be interpreted in the same fashion as their parallels in other religions.

The main reason comparisons continue to be made about Mithras and Jesus Christ is that the early Christian writers told us that Mithraism was similar to Christianity! Today we can argue that – although they may have had a ‘meal’, it was no communion; or that Mithraic features that parallel Christianity actually were included into Mithraism much later and were actually copied from Christianity; or that those damning correspondences (such as both religions celebrating the birth of their savior on Dec. 25th) are simply unimportant.

However, Christians were obviously and continuously threatened both by the popularity of Mithraism and by its similarities to Christianity. This doesn’t mean of course that they were exactly the same; but it is certainly worth going back to the original texts and discovering just what they had in common.

“He is one of the gods, lower than Ahura Mazda (the Supreme Deity of Light of the Persians) but higher than the visible Sun. He is creator and orderer of the universe, hence a manifestation of the creative Logos or Word. Seeing mankind afflicted by Ahriman, the cosmic power of darkness, he incarnated on earth. His birth on 25 December was witnessed by shepherds. After many deeds he held a last supper with his disciples and returned to heaven. At the end of the world he will come again to judge resurrected mankind and after the last battle, victorious over evil, he will lead the choosen ones through a river of fire to blessed immortality. It is possible to prepare oneself for this event during life by devotion to him, and to attain a degree of communion with him through the sacramental means of initiation.” Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, Godwin 99

The ‘Mark’

Another one of these devilish nuisances to Christian apologists is the Mithraic mark upon the forehead, a rite similar to that within Catholicism. In The Chaplet (De Corona), Tertullian comments on the “mimicry of martyrdom,” as well as the crown and the mark of Mithraism, and says:

Let us take note of the devices of the devil, who is wont to ape some of God’s things with no other design than, by the faithfulness of his servants, to put us to shame, and to condemn us.

The mark on the forehead as a sign of religious respect is well known to have been used in India for millennia. Even the Bible records Ezekiel (9:4) as marking the foreheads of the “righteous”:

And the Lord said to him, “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”

Concerning this Jewish mark, Lundy states:

The cross was marked on the foreheads of the men of Jerusalem that were to be spared from destruction, in Ezekiel’s time, for it was tau [T]; (9:4-6) it was stamped on valuable documents, coins, and on the necks of camels and thighs of horses; it was woven into garments; and in various other ways it was used before the Christian era as a symbol of ownership, of safety and of solemn compact.

O’Brien says that the Jewish mark was the “cross X,” as admitted by Jerome. Concerning this mark, the Catholic Encyclopedia relates:

Thus the Greek letter (tau or thau) appears in Ezechiel (ix, 4), according to St. Jerome and other Fathers, as a solemn symbol of the Cross of Christ”Mark Thau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh.” The only other symbol of crucifixion indicated in the Old Testament is the brazen serpent in the Book of Numbers (xxi, 8-9). Christ Himself thus interpreted the passage: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John, iii, 14). The Psalmist predicts the piercing of the hands and the feet (Ps. xxi. 17).

Nevertheless, despite its presence in Judaism, a Protestant Christian website protests that the sign of the cross itself is Satanic, representing a Mithraic ritual that has erroneously found its way into Christianity:

After baptism into the Mysteries of Mithra, the initiate was marked on the forehead. The sign of the cross formed by the elliptic and the celestial equator was one of the signs of Mithra.

There is no Biblical support for the inclusion of Mithraic ritual, which is the worship of Satan, in the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Creator of heaven and earth. It is a Satanic scheme to disguise the transgression of Gods laws under the title of “Christianity.”

Worship on Sunday

In the fifth Tablet of the Babylonian (Chaldean) Epic of Creation, by the great God Marduk, we read, lines 17 and 18: “On the seventh day he appointed a holy day, And to cease from all work he commanded.” (Records of the Past, vol. ix; quoted, Clarke, Ten Great Religions, ii, p. 383.)

Justin Martyr

Justin is one of the earliest Christian apologists – he converted to Christianity around 130ad and was martyred in 165. Interestingly, Justin was kind of a spiritual tourist; he searched for a long time for a faith or religious teacher before settling on Christianity – however, he wasn’t willing to put in any time or effort (he was refused by a Pythagorean until he first learned about music, astronomy, and geometry, and quit another teacher when he was asked to pay a fee.) So in his quest for a free and easy faith, he found Christianity (many, like Justin, may consider these the virtues of Christianity – I do not.)

At any rate, Justin’s apologetic writings often refer to and make comparisons between Christianity and Mithraism.

And this food is called among us Eukaristia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn. (Emphasis added)

Justin also argues that the authors of Mithraism copied from the Old Testament (Mithras was born out of a cave because Daniel or Isaiah mentions a cave, etc). The argument is weak. Mostly Justin relies on “Diabolical Mimicry” – the idea that the Devil mimics Christianity in paganism to confuse people – and stresses that Jesus was real, and therefore, more valuable than the mere myths of the pagans.

Was Jesus originally a mystery god?

The controversy stems from a damning set of historical circumstances. The gospels of Jesus Christ are open to allegorical interpretation because they harbor the same symbols as are found in other mystery religions and pagan cults. Those familiar with philosophy, astrology and esoteric symbolism (as were all educated Greco-Romans); found it hard to ignore those same symbols in the gospels, and told the Christians that they could teaching them what it really means. Obviously this fueled the bitter animosity, creating an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ mentality. Mithras became almost a symbol of everything the Christians hated about pagan society. An illuminating anecdote from the Christian historian Socrates (305-438) illustrates the climate. He says that Emperor Constantius turned over a formerly pagan temple to the Christians, and in the process of cleaning it, they found the bones and skulls of human beings sacrificed to Mithra (in some kind of magical divination practice). We have no way to tell the truth of this statement; they may have raided a group burial ground for all we know. In fact from the language used “were said to have…” sounds a lot like rumor. I can picture the Christians, who were already accusing the pagan of deep, dark, ritual and satanic magic, finding a bunch of bones and being excited about the ‘proof’.

In the process of clearing it, an adytum of vast depth was discovered which unveiled the nature of their heathenish rites: for there were found there the skulls of many persons of all ages, who were said to have been immolated for the purpose of divination by the inspection of entrails, when the pagans performed these and such like magic arts whereby they enchanted the souls of men.

Demonstrating the righteousness, immaturity, lack of propriety and respect for tradition which made them so hated by their contemporaries, the Christians took all the bones and skulls and ran around town showing off – look what we found! We told you that Mithraism was satanic! The pagans were very pissed off, and butchered the Christians mercilessly.

…on discovering these abominations in the adytum of the Mithreum, went forth eagerly to expose them to the view and execration of all; and therefore carried the skulls throughout the city, in a kind of triumphal procession, for the inspection of the people. When the pagans of Alexandria beheld this, unable to bear the insulting character of the act, they became so exasperated, that they assailed the Christians with whatever weapon chanced to come to hand, in their fury destroying numbers of them in a variety of ways: some they killed with the sword, others with clubs and stones; some they strangled with ropes, others they crucified, purposely inflicting this last kind of death in contempt of the cross of Christ: most of them they wounded; and as it generally happens in such a case, neither friends nor relatives were spared, but friends, brothers, parents, and children imbrued their hands in each other’s blood. -Ecclesiastical History III, 2.

So although Christianity was the ‘legal’ religion, and was growing in property and riches and political power, they were still disliked; and in contrast, the majority of the citizens of Alexandria weren’t willing to bear insult to their god Mithras.

Christians argue that it is the sense and not the symbol which is important; and yes, it is true that Christianity was emerging as a very unique religion, at odds with everything around it. This does not, however, solve the problem of why Christianity takes and reinterprets (or fails to interpret) symbols that belong to older traditions.

Either A) these similarities are of no consequence to the story and were grafted onto the biography of Jesus later or B) the tradition of Jesus began as a mystery cult but lost the ability to interpret its own symbols.

Early Christians, including Justin Martyr, who lived during the formative periods of both, never raise point A. Justin says either the similarities were caused by the devil (which we refuse as a faith-based argument) or that Mithras got its ideas from the OT – a dangerous position which brings Mithra into the fold of the Judaic-Christian tradition.

If we take this problematic situation, and assume that the gospels are (as they appear to be) part of the same universal, overwhelmingly homogeneous religious climate that they were wholly submersed in, then we might profit from interpreting the symbolic aspects of Jesus Christ via the paradigm of the various other mysteries; assuming that they were originally intended to be so interpreted.

Thus we might argue that Jesus, (both true god and also lamb of god), on the cross, committing suicide/filicide) is symbolically no different from Mithras using a sword to slay the Bull; both can be interpreted astrologically – as can the fact that Christians became ‘little fishes’ to augment the beginning of the age of Pisces, or the four animals that were chosen to represent the four evangelists. Interpreting the symbols of Christian and openly comparing them to other pagan cults was the tradition in Western academic research throughout the enlightenment.

(Charles François Dupuis wrote about the similarities between Mithraism and Christianity as early as 1798, although his evidence may be untrustworthy. He follows basically an anti-diabolical-mimicry argument. ie ’since the argument given by apologists both confirms and fails to explain the similarities between Jesus and Mithras; therefore they exist, and Mithras came first.’)

The problem of paradigm

However, these ‘allegorical’ similarities are simply refuted by those that believe Jesus was a historical person; and so arguing that the transcendent, mysterious sun god – despite the shared titles, customs and symbols – is the same as the meek and mild preaching shepherd that Christians have in mind when they think of Jesus (much less comparing the suffering servant with the victorious soldier) is a waste of time. Of course these two figures are not the same. In fact, for the biographical, psychological make up of the literary figure of Jesus Christ, we will profit more from an investigation of Orpheus, or Ascelpius.

However, there is something further I would like to point out; the relationship between Mithras and the archangel Michael. After Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Michael became the patron saint of soldiers; immediately usurping the role of Mithras. Mithraea were converted into shrines for Michael (for instance the sacred cavern at Monte Gargano in Apulia, refounded in 493); and many such shrines still have bull imagery. Michael is always shone standing over Satan or the Dragon, winged and with a sword and shield (much like Mithras, and exactly like Perseus). Michael is the field commander of the army of god.

In Catholic tradition, it is Michael who defeated Satan and Michael who will come back to defeat the antichrist at the end of times. Michael was also a great healer – founding healing springs and sites of medicine; taking over the traditional medicinal authority of Ascelpius.

It is likely that the soldiers of the Roman empire would never have been satisfied with Jesus (indeed, how are any soldiers to be satisfied with Jesus’ ethical ‘turn the other cheek’ and his Old Testament commandment of ‘Thou shall not kill’?) It seems that it would have been impossible for Christianity to be successful without the inclusion of St. Michael, who easily allowed Mithra worship to continue under another name. This should not be seen as the superiority of Christianity or the insignificance of Mithraism – rather it is a testament to the strength and popularity of the ‘god of the rock’.

Who came first?

“The only dated Mithraic inscriptions from the pre-Christian period are the texts of Antiochus I of Commagene (69-34 B.C.) in eastern Asia Minor. After that there is one text possibly from the first century A.D., from Cappadocia, one from Phrygia dated to A.D. 77-78, and one from Rome dated to Trajan’s reign (A.D. 98-117). All other dated Mithraic inscriptions and monuments belong to the second century (after A.D. 140), the third, and the fourth century A.D. (M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae, 1956).”
- Edwin M. Yamauchid, “Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?”

According to Plutarch, a Greek biographer and Neo-Platonist philosopher, the worship of Mithras was first absorbed by the Romans around 70 B.C.E during Pompey’s campaign against Cicilian pirates. Mithra can be found to have been worshiped throughout Europe being that there are monuments to Mithra found everywhere from Scotland to India.

http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/deadangelsrot/mithra.html

Although traces of Mithraic worship can be found to predate Jesus Christ, it is impossible to prove the more exact similarities – the baptism, communal meal, sign on the forehead, etc – did not develop only later in Mithraic worship. However, very similar themes are found in other mystery cults, which do go back much earlier than Christianity, and it is not difficult to argue that Mithraics borrowed these elements from early traditions, rather than Christianity.

The argument is often made that Mithras must have borrowed from Christianity. Bremmer, for example, in The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, argues “that the success of Christianity also influenced other religions either to revalue their belief in the resurrection (ie Zoroastrians) or to copy the belief (Mithraism, Attis). Success stimulates imitation – not only in economics, but also in the market of symbolic goods.” (Bremmer 55) However, although Mithras and Attis may have come later than Jesus (which is in itself a statement impossible to prove), the ‘resurrection’ and other motifs could surely be traced back to Tammuz or Osiris, whose cults were definitely older. Moreover, the rites of Attis, especially, but also Mithras, seems to have been much more successful and widespread than Christianity was during the first several centuries of our era. Why would they borrow from Christians, a persecuted sect always at odds with their society, often ridiculed and identified as a ‘faith of fools’, rather than the socially acknowledged and much more powerful Egyptian or Persian religions?

The twisted argument that Bremmer and others make is that A) the Resurrection of Jesus can be traced to early Jewish sources (therefore Christians did not copy from the Pagans) and that similarities found in other cults then borrowed from Christianity. The problem with this reasoning is, that while Christianity did introduce a unique ‘resurrection of the flesh’ idea, other mystery religions universally believed in a spiritual resurrection, of the soul, out of the body, into one or many afterlives – a belief which can be traced to Pythagorean or Dionysian worship (such as found in the mysteries of Eleusis) at least for several centuries BC.