I would like to open said debate with a question- Has anyone ever heard of the Egyptian god Horus and his story? For those of you that haven't, I would like to explain.
Horus's story is astoundingly similar to that of 'christ'. Horus was born to a virgin mother on December 25th. Horus was baptizied in a river. His baptizer, Anup, was later beheaded. Horus was crusified after expressing his religious ideas. He rose from the dead three days later, this event being proclaimed by two women. Sound familiar, Christians? By the way, the story was written somewhere around 3500-2800 B.C., at least one thousand years before the Bible.
How could we know whether or not Horus was born on December 25? Egyptian calendars were structured differently from ours. One account has him born on December 31 - but even that is a rough estimate because the Egyptian calendar wasn't the same calendar we use - in fact, over time the "summer" months fell in winter. And there is no specific year sited for the birth of Horus. And no December.
(from infoplease.com)
The ancient Egyptians used a calendar with 12 months of 30 days each, for a total of 360 days per year. About 4000 B.C. they added five extra days at the end of every year to bring it more into line with the solar year. These five days became a festival because it was thought to be unlucky to work during that time.
The Egyptians had calculated that the solar year was actually closer to 3651/4 days, but instead of having a single leap day every four years to account for the fractional day (the way we do now), they let the one-quarter day accumulate. After 1,460 solar years, or four periods of 365 years, 1,461 Egyptian years had passed. This means that as the years passed, the Egyptian months fell out of sync with the seasons, so that the summer months eventually fell during winter. Only once every 1,460 years did their calendar year coincide precisely with the solar year.
In addition to the civic calendar, the Egyptians also had a religious calendar that was based on the 29/2-day lunar cycle and was more closely linked with agricultural cycles and the movements of the stars.
Furthermore, the myth of Horus changes over time in ancient Eygpt - eventually he blends with Ra in fact. Some accounts name Horus as the son of Ra, others name him as the son of Osiris.
Horus isn't born of a virgin - He is the son of Isis and Osiris (her brother) in the some accounts, and was conceived after her marriage to him. Hmm, that doesn't sound like Christianity or a virgin birth to me. Incest - yes, virgin birth - no.
The cult of Isis continued long after Christianity spread, and so her story changed as Christian elements were brought into it. Plutarch wrote down some details about Isis but this was AFTER the rise of Christianity.
Now let's talk about Mithras.
MIthraic studies are difficult for a variety of reasons. One is that Mithra is basically a "dead" religion. There are no seminaries or volumes of writings maintained over any length of time or continuity pertaining to Mithraic beliefs. These beliefs are scattered in bits and pieces in Iranian, Roman and Indian texts and art. The first recorded instance (carvings, not text) dates from 1400 BC. At various times during the growth of the Mithraic beliefs, Mithra was the leader, then second in command to Veruna, and then a member of a group of seven lesser gods who served an upper level of deities. The Roman and Iranian myths of Mithra differed quite a bit. In Roman stories, Mithra is associated with a bull - an idea foreign to the Iranian stories.
The problem is that ancient, pre Christian recordings rarely use WORDS to describe Mithraic beliefs - they use pictures, and these have been interpreted by different scholars in many different ways - often to fit the agenda of the interpreter.
As for the December 25 issue - for starters, nowhere in the bible does it state that Jesus was born on December 25. Late "december" (or whatever you want to call it) is the time of the winter solstice - recognized in many cultures and religions as a time of spiritual portent - including Christianity. If Christianity is guilty of "copying" then so is everyone else!
Mithra was not born of a virgin in a cave - in Roman accounts (in pictures and carvings) he was born OF A ROCK (though I guess a rock could be considered a virgin of sorts!). But even this story dates from a century PAST the birth of Christ. The Iranian Mithra didn't have a "born out of rock" story...his conception was attributed, variously, to an incestuous relationship between Ahura-Mazda and his mother, or to the plain doings of an ordinary mortal woman...but there is
no virgin conception/birth story to speak of.
There is an icon dating from after the birth of Christ, which shows the infant Mithra sitting on a woman's lap in Kangavar, Persia. This is not a Mithric temple, but a temple devoted to Anahita, the goddess of FERTILITY (not a virgin!). Some sources name her as Mithra's mother, others as his consort.
As for Mithra having 12 disciples, this assertion comes from ONE stone carving (post Christian at that), that shows Mithra with 2 rows of 6 faces included. Scholars have determined that these 12 faces represent the ZODIAC - not 12 disciples.
As for Mithra promising his adherents eternal life - well, that's a common theme of religions worldwide. There is ONE reference in Mithraic literature, from 200 AD, that states that followers of Mithra will achieve immortality through spilled blood - the blood of a bull - not Mithra's own blood.
Several scholars have tried to link the concepts of Eucharist, death, three days in the tomb, and resurrection to Mithra, but the earliest examples of this (stretch) are from Tertullian (POST New Testament era), and from a church writer in the FOURTH century AD. Zarathustra (medieval era) wrote of a sort of Eucharist for Mithraic followers, but this was WAYYYYY after the rise of Christianity. Who's copying who here?
Bread, wine, water, and meat are considered staples of diet in the ancient world and were (and still are) used in various religious rites throughout the centuries.
The Iranian Mithra had four celebrations for the four seasons - one of these was in the spring, which could coincide with Easter - this is also common throughout religions worldwide.
As for Mithras ascending to heaven, this is a misreading of a text. It is not Mithra, but the gods with him who after looking after the humans, ascend, then Mithras crosses the Ocean in his chariot. The Ocean tries to engulf him and fails, and finally he joins the immortals' habitation.
With careful study, one notices that there is an ABSENCE of pre Christian era TEXTS to support allegations that Mithraic and Christian beliefs are symmetrical. Both belief systems do spring from the middle East so there will be some (a few) similarities. But most of the idea that Christianity mirrors Mithras comes very late in the game - 19th century at the earliest - and seems a big STRETCH to me - to support an agenda undermining Christianity.
