2. Christianity Is A Knock-Off Of The Roman Cult Of Mithras
Hang on to your hats, everybody, because we're going to have to delve into religion on this one. Fortunately for me I don't have to touch on politics or sports in the rest of the article, so at most I'll just offend one third of the Internet. While there are certainly lots of Quite Interesting similarities between old pagan systems and that new upstart, Christianity, the list on QI (one of the Christmas specials, of course) was quite specific and latched on to Mithras in particular. According to Stephen and the elves, Mithras was immaculately conceived and virgin-born, came to Earth to die for people's sins so that they could be reborn, was worshiped on Sundays and had a ritual where his followers symbolically consumed his flesh and blood. On the face of it, that seems like a pretty clear indication of invisible-friend-in-the-sky plagiarism. However, the truth is that the story gets trickier than that. In a nutshell, it is highly unlikely that early Christians looked at the Mithras mysteries (Mithteries?), said, "That looks good!" and swiped them. To imply otherwise is disingenuous. This idea that Christianity had stolen most of its tenets wholesale from Mithras isn't new, by any means. The bulk of the "evidence" for this claim can be traced back to Saint Justin in the second century C.E., but even then he was accusing
Mithras of cribbing from
Jesus. Enough (shoddy) historians and antiquarians read his work and assumed, "The martyr doth protest too much, methinks!" and the reverse statement that Christians stole their mythology and practices from Mithras has been picked up and repeated ever since. A proper historical context quickly reveals most of the "thefts" to be trumped-up nonsense and the coincidences to be just that:
coincidences. First and foremost, the worship of Mithras was a secretive mystery cult that comprised, at its peak, about 1% of the population. As a lot of its focus was on bromance, contracts, and loyalty (especially to the government), its followers consisted mostly of soldiers, government clerks, freemen, and assorted slaves. A number of emperors
supported the cult, but that was it. It didn't mean they necessarily were members or had any kind of clue about it, except that its emphasis on loyalty to the government and emperor would only be good news for them. At one point, an altar to Mithras was constructed at Carnuntum (in 307 C.E.), but that is the closest thing to public recognition the religion ever participated in. Most of everything else was kept very private. A tiny minority whose faith was so underground they worshiped almost exclusively in caves is not, practically speaking, going to have the public presence necessary for a lasting cultural or historical impact. Unless Christianity saw a sudden mass influx of Mithras converts, they would have had little opportunity or knowledge of Mithras worship from which to copy. There were other, much more public deities and practices available for inspiration, including the Saturnalia festival that Dara Briain actually mentioned in the episode. As for the list of coincidences above, there are explanations. Mithras wasn't born to a virgin but rather sprung, fully-formed, out of rock. Grand feasts
are associated with him, but there isn't any indication that it is a ritualized symbolic consumption of his flesh and blood. Most of the images remaining of Mithras (one included above for reference) depict him slaughtering a bull, whose tail becomes a stalk of wheat. Dogs, snakes, and scorpions are also associated with him. As for salvation coming somehow through the feast (or even Mithras' own blood), this comes down to
one inscription on
one temple out of about 400 or so that have been found:
'et nos servasti... sanguine fuso'
"And who saved us with the shed blood," if you're not up on your Latin. Considering that all of the images we have of Mithras are him doing the slaughtering and not being slaughtered, it is much more likely the shed blood being referenced is from the bull, not Mithras himself. Finally, both faiths found their start in the same geographic region (roughly) at around the same time. Springing forth from the same cultural milieu, is it really that surprising that the two would have vaguely similar practices and tenets?