Anything Special About the Christian Myth?

[CJK]

Throughout human history, there have been as many myths as there are people in the world.

For example, Dionysus. Dionysus, like Jesus, was said to have been from a mortal woman and fathered by a god, risen from the dead, and turned water into wine. People believed in Dionysus long before the bible.

So my question for debate is; What makes Christianity so special?

Could it truly be the 'one true prophecy'?

What is the difference between believing in a Greek God or a Christian God?

Note: Beliefs and opinions are no grounds to make a claim. (e.g. "Christianity is real because I say so.")

[Lotan]

If Constantine would have picked mithraism or any other popular cult, probably it would have worked the same way.

I've just begun to read In Search of Paul : How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed.
The book makes the suggestion, supported somewhat by archaeology that Judaism could likely have been that "other popular cult", a situation reflected by Pauline polemics against "the Jews" who were "jealous". I don't see any reason why this could not have been the case, although I'm sure there were other contenders. By the time of Constantine, the Christians had won the propaganda war.

[Cephus]

If Constantine would have picked mithraism or any other popular cult, probably it would have worked the same way.

Not as well as a Romanised version of a previously illegal belief.

No, I don't think it would have mattered. Under Rome, Christianity got so powerful that eventually they were able to kill people who professed disbelief. Had Constantine ended up embracing some other religion and imposing it by force on the people, it likely would have ended up the same way and people would be fundamentalist Mithraists today instead of Christians.

It's all about power and control, not about the teaching.

[harvey1]

The book makes the suggestion, supported somewhat by archaeology that Judaism could likely have been that "other popular cult", a situation reflected by Pauline polemics against "the Jews" who were "jealous". I don't see any reason why this could not have been the case, although I'm sure there were other contenders. By the time of Constantine, the Christians had won the propaganda war.

I read a great deal of this book too, and I thought it made a good case that Paul targeted Gentiles who were sympathetic to the Jewish religion (technically, this was not Judaism since it had not evolved yet). However, it just goes to show how Christianity was an emergent phenomena with the "just so" conditions so that it could rapidly grow with a sympathetic audience. Christianity no doubt could not have survived had it not been for the earlier Jewish efforts to win over converts throughout the Empire. I think this is actually a sign of how God works in the world, and we see this kind of process happening in the biological evolution of life on earth. Precursors clear the path to that which emerged later, and because those precursors were present, the emergent feature was able to become dominant. It is the mind of God at work in the world. Let's all be thankful for God's power and wisdom!

[CJK]

I think this is actually a sign of how God works in the world, and we see this kind of process happening in the biological evolution of life on earth.

I disagree. I think it is a sign of how memes work in the world. Have you ever read The Selfish Gene, or The Blind Watchmaker?

[1John2_26]

Lotan, John Dominic Crossan?

Geez man. I sure hope you counter that guy by reading a well rounded group of "scholars."

By the time of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies in the early 70s, the lack of evidence of an Iranian/Roman continuity led Mithraic scholars to suspect that Roman Mithraism was "a new creation using old Iranian names and details for an exotic coloring to give a suitably esoteric appearance to a mystery cult" [MS, xiii] -- and that Roman Mithraism was Mithraism in name only, merely a new system that used the name of a known ancient Eastern deity to attract urbane Romans who found the east and all of its accoutrements an enticing mystery. Think of it as repackaging an old religion to suit new tastes, only all you keep is the name of the deity! And what was that new religion? For years Mithraic scholars puzzled over the meaning of the bull-slaying scene; the problem was, as we have noted, that the Mithraists left behind pictures without captions. Thus in the 70s, one scholar of Mithraism lamented [MS.437]:

At present our knowledge of both general and local cult practice in respect of rites of passage, ceremonial feats and even underlying ideology is based more on conjecture than fact.
And Cumont himself observed, in the 50s [Cum.MM, 150, 152]:

The sacred books which contain the prayers recited or chanted during the [Mithraic] survives, the ritual on the initiates, and the ceremonials of the feasts, have vanished and left scarce a trace behind...[we] know the esoteric disciplines of the Mysteries only from a few indiscretions.
But before too long, Mithraic scholars noticed something (or actually, revived something first posited in 1869 that Cumont, because of his biases, dismissed -- Ulan.OMM, 15) about the bull-slaying scene: The various human, animal, and other figures comprised a star-map! The bull corresponded with Taurus; the scorpion coincided with Scorpio; the dog matched up with Canis Major, and so on. What Mithra himself corresponded to took a bit longer to decide; Spiedel first made a case for a correspondence with Orion [Spie.MO], but Ulansey has led the way with the thesis that Mithra is here to be identified with Perseus [Ulan.OMM, 26ff], and that Roman Mithraism was founded upon a "revolutionary" discovery in ancient astronomy (which was closely linked to astrology in that time) that "the entire cosmic structure was moving in a way which no one had even known before" -- a process we now call the precession of the equinoxes. In line with the Stoic belief that a divine being was the "source of every natural force," the personifying of natural forces in the form of mythical divine figures, and the origin on the cult in Tarsus, a city long under Persian domination and where Perseus was the leading god, Perseus was the perfect choice -- but this wasn't the type of thing that the cultists wanted everyone to know about, so, Ulansey theorizes, they chose the name of Mithra (a Persian god), partly to cover the identity of Perseus (who was often associated with Persia), partly because of an alliance between the Ciclian pirates who first introduced Mithraism to the Romans and a leader in Asia Minor named Mithridates ("given of Mithra"). [Ulan.OMM, 89] Quite a tangled web, this story.

What has been the point of this diversion? The point is to give the reader a warning, to be on the lookout any time a critic makes some claim about Mithraism somehow being a parallel to Christianity. Check their sources carefully. If, like Acharya S, they cite source material from the Cumont or pre-Cumont era, then chances are excellent that they are using material that is either greatly outdated, or else does not rely on sound scholarship (i.e., prior to Cumont; works by the likes of King, Lajard, and Robertson). Furthermore, if they have asserted anything at all definitive about Mithraic belief, they are probably wrong about it, and certainly basing it on the conjectures of someone who is either not a Mithraic specialist (which is what Freke and Gandy do in The Jesus Mysteries) or else is badly outdated.

Mithraic scholars, you see, do not hold a candle for the thesis that Christianity borrowed anything philosophically from Mithraism, and they do not see any evidence of such borrowing, with one major exception: "The only domain in which we can ascertain in detail the extent to which Christianity imitated Mithraism is that of art." [MS.508n] We are talking here not of apostolic Christianity, note well, but of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, which, in an effort to prove that their faith was the superior one, embarked on an advertising campaign reminiscent of our soft drink wars. Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb. (Hmm, did the Jews copy that one?) Think of how popular Pokemon is these days, and then think of the church as the one doing the Digimon ripoff -- although one can't really bellow about borrowing in this case, for this happened in an age when art usually was imitative -- it was a sort of one-upsmanship designed as a competition, and the church was not the only one doing it. Furthermore, it didn't involve an exchange or theft of ideology.

As to any other parallels, in the late 60s, before the coming of age of the astrological thesis, appeal was made to the "possibility of Mithraic influence" as appearing "in many instances" -- and then again, the idea that Mithraism borrowed from Christianity was said to have "not been taken seriously enough into consideration." [Lae.MO, 86] But regarded as more likely in any case was that the two systems "could have spoken to a Roman condition, a social need, and a theological question without having known of each other's existence. As in so many other instances of philosophy and literature, parallel thoughts and social patterns can appear independently of one another as 'new' elements with the authentic consciousness of such newness."[ibid.] But such parallels have not been so much as suggested in the wake of the astrological thesis. Today (and even by Cumont) the parallels drawn between the two faiths (by professional Mithraic scholars) are almost entirely either "universal" religious traits (i.e., both had a moral code; what religion doesn't!?) or sociological: Both spread rapidly because of the "political unity and moral anarchy of the Empire." [Cum.MM, 188-9] Both drew large numbers from the lower classes. (And of course, numerous differences are cited as well: Christianity was favored in urban areas habited by the Jewish diaspora, whereas Mithraism was indifferent to Judaism and was popular in rural areas; Mithraism appealed to slaves, troops, and functionaries vs. Christianity's broader appeal; etc.)

You may ask whether the copycatters know of any of this newer work on Mithraism by Mithraic scholars, and if so what they make of it. The answer is yes, they are becoming aware of it; but what they make of it is no more than a conspiracy. In her latest effort Acharaya says of the star-map thesis, and the lack of evidence that Mithra in his Iranian period ever slew a bull:

The argument is in the main unconvincing and seems to be motivated by Christian backlash attempting to debunk the well-founded contention that Christianity copied Mithraism in many germane details.
At the point when scholars like Ulansey are implicitly accused, as here, of being "motivated by Christian backlash" (or as elsewhere, of being covert Christians!), the copycatters are clearly holding a counsel of despair. One would think from this confident statement that Acharya has gone to Iran and found dozens of pictures of Mithra slaying a bull, dated 500 BC, and footprints in the dust matching those of the Apostles nearby. Of course she had found no such thing. Instead we are told, "In reality, the bull-slaying motif and ritual existed in numerous cultures prior to the Christian era, regardless of whether or not it is depicted in literature or iconography in Persia." No one doubts that the bull-slaying motif existed; the question is whether it appears as something that Mithra did in the pre-Roman era, and the other instances are completely meaningless in this context. Ulansey shows that Mithra's act was related to the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes; Acharya offers the response that:

[Lotan]

Lotan, John Dominic Crossan?

Damn straight! I just finished reading Earl Doherty's "The Jesus Puzzle" so I thought that something more 'conservative' would bring some balance!
I know Crossan stretches a bit so I always wear my skeptic hat when I read his stuff. Actually, I always wear my skeptic hat when I read anybody's stuff. He still makes some good arguments though. There's nothing outlandish about suggesting that Judaism and Christianity were in competition at one time, especially if one has good evidence for it (like Paul's letters and Acts).
Just for fun, who would you consider to be "a well rounded group of "scholars"?