It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Mithras

[SallyF]

The Christian-Jewish propaganda does NOT say anything about celebrating the Divine Leader's birthday. We were only instructed to pretend to eat his flesh and drink his blood, for example.

I propose that Christianity has been a fraud from the very start.

Is stealing the birthdays of other supposed god-men part of the fraudulence ?

[bjs]

[Replying to SallyF]

The only one of these that is true in their original mythology is Mithra of Persia (and Prometheus). The oldest record of the birth of Mithra/Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25th came in 354 AD, more than 130 years after the oldest record of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th.

No ancient document placed the birth dates of any of these other deities on December 25th.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to SallyF]

The only one of these that is true in their original mythology is Mithra of Persia (and Prometheus). The oldest record of the birth of Mithra/Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25th came in 354 AD, more than 130 years after the oldest record of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th.

No ancient document placed the birth dates of any of these other deities on December 25th.

So you acknowledge they stole Mithra of Persia's B-day (and Prometheus's).

Care to address the OP?
Is stealing the birthdays of other supposed god-men part of the fraudulence ?

More info on Dec 25th:
For the pre-Christian Romans, December 25 marked their most important holiday, Saturnalia. This was later renamed to Sol Invicti, which means the unconquerable sun, in honor of the Syrian sun-god Apollo. Ancient Egyptians also used to celebrate December 25 in worship of Ra, or Horus, the sun-god child of Isis and Orisis. In Mesopotamia, the mythical god Marduk, who was believed to fight against the cold and darkness, was also worshipped on this day. The Aztecs on this day would sacrifice children in worship of their sun-god, Huitzilopochli. North-western Europe hosted festivities for the Nordic god Balder, while the Ancient Greeks dedicated the day for Adonis and Dionysos. For the Ancient Persians, December 25 represented the birth of Mithra, the sun-god.
https://www.worldbulletin.net/news-anal ... 25609.html

[Zzyzx]

.

The only one of these that is true in their original mythology is Mithra of Persia (and Prometheus).

Is this to claim 'Our mythology is better than their mythology'?

The oldest record of the birth of Mithra/Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25th came in 354 AD, more than 130 years after the oldest record of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th.

No ancient document placed the birth dates of any of these other deities on December 25th.

Kindly cite reference to Christian celebration of December 25 by 130 years before 354 (that would be 224 CE).

The following contradicts your claim.

The first recorded date of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th was in 336, during the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine (he was the first Christian Roman Emperor). But it was not an official Roman state festival at this time.
https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/25th.shtml

[bjs]

So you acknowledge they stole Mithra of Persia's B-day (and Prometheus's).

Care to address the OP?
Is stealing the birthdays of other supposed god-men part of the fraudulence ?

I suppose that we could accuse the worshipers of Mithra of stealing the birthday of Jesus. Personally, I would want to see some clear evidence that this was intentional fraudulence before making the accusation.

(Prometheus was a Titian in Greek mythology with no set birthday.)

[Mithrae]

For the pre-Christian Romans, December 25 marked their most important holiday, Saturnalia.

Maybe it would have been worth Googling Saturnalia before posting this?

• https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-rome/saturnalia
  The pagan celebration of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and time, began as a single day, but by the late Republic (133-31 B.C.) it had expanded to a weeklong festival beginning December 17.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia
  Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn, held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to 23 December.

Ancient Egyptians also used to celebrate December 25 in worship of Ra, or Horus, the sun-god child of Isis and Orisis. In Mesopotamia, the mythical god Marduk, who was believed to fight against the cold and darkness, was also worshipped on this day. The Aztecs on this day would sacrifice children in worship of their sun-god, Huitzilopochli. North-western Europe hosted festivities for the Nordic god Balder, while the Ancient Greeks dedicated the day for Adonis and Dionysos. For the Ancient Persians, December 25 represented the birth of Mithra, the sun-god.

I've never seen any credible sources for these claims. Have you?


EDIT: As I've done many times in the past, I'll add some advice which I feel should be emphasized every time this 'Christians copied pagans' stuff comes up:

• If you want to learn about Horus, look for a source which is about Horus
  If you want to learn about Mithras, find a source which is about Mithras

Finding sources which are about Jesus or Christianity is just begging to be led down the garden path.


#####

The oldest record of the birth of Mithra/Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25th came in 354 AD, more than 130 years after the oldest record of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th.

No ancient document placed the birth dates of any of these other deities on December 25th.

Kindly cite reference to Christian celebration of December 25 by 130 years before 354 (that would be 224 CE).

BJS' dates seem to be a bit out from what I can find, but the basic idea is correct:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas ... _the_birth
  In 221, Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160 " c. 240) gave March 25 as the day of creation and of the conception of Jesus in his universal history. This conclusion was based on solar symbolism, with March 25 the date of the equinox. As this implies a birth in December, it is sometimes claimed to be the earliest identification of December 25 as the nativity. However, Africanus was not such an influential writer that it is likely he determined the date of Christmas.[73]
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus
  Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. On 25 December AD 274, the Roman emperor Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults.[2]

Neither of these 'earliest references' preclude the possibility that members of one or both of those sects celebrated the date earlier than that of course: All we can say is that claims of Christians copying the pagan date are unfounded.

Not mentioned by Wikipedia (or in surviving early Christian literature) is the possibility that the Jewish festival for the dedication of the temple - celebrated in December starting on the 25th day of the Jewish month Kislev - was a major influence in early Christians' decision to celebrate the birth of their 'new temple' (cf. John 2:19-21) on an equivalent day in the Roman calendar. Hannukah of course predated Dies Natalis Sol Invictus by about three hundred years.

[bjs]

The only one of these that is true in their original mythology is Mithra of Persia (and Prometheus).

Is this to claim 'Our mythology is better than their mythology'?

I provided historically accurate information to address a historical inaccurate opening post.

The oldest record of the birth of Mithra/Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25th came in 354 AD, more than 130 years after the oldest record of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th.

No ancient document placed the birth dates of any of these other deities on December 25th.

Kindly cite reference to Christian celebration of December 25 by 130 years before 354 (that would be 224 CE).

The following contradicts your claim.

The first recorded date of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th was in 336, during the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine (he was the first Christian Roman Emperor). But it was not an official Roman state festival at this time.
https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/25th.shtml

The first Christmas (Christs Mass) was in 336 AD.

However, Jesus birth date has been placed on December 25th long before that.

Sextus Julius Africanus popularized the idea that Jesus was born on December 25th in his Chronographiai, a reference book for Christians written in 221 AD.

Inscriptions on various works of art record a connection between Mithra and the Roman God Sol Invictus and suggest that some worshipers at the time believed these two were the manifestation of the same God. The Roman Emperor Aurelian gave the worship of Sol Invictus official status in 274 AD. The earliest mention of Sol Invictus (and therefore Mithra) being born on December 25 comes from the calligrapher and illuminator Furius Dionysius Filocalus in his work the Chronography of 354, which as the name suggests was written in 354 AD.

[Mithrae]

The Christian-Jewish propaganda does NOT say anything about celebrating the Divine Leader's birthday. We were only instructed to pretend to eat his flesh and drink his blood, for example.

I propose that Christianity has been a fraud from the very start.

Is stealing the birthdays of other supposed god-men part of the fraudulence ?

The thread title made me smile, so you get a 'like,' but I'll say it again:
If you want to learn about Mithras, look for a source which is about Mithras*
If you want to learn about Horus, find a source which is about Horus
Finding sources which are about Jesus or Christianity is just begging to be led down the garden path with conspiracy theory nonsense. This topic has come up again and again and again over the years, and with the exception of some Pythagorean allusions in the fourth gospel (and perhaps some mirroring of a verse from a Hindu text) I've never seen any remotely convincing evidence of influence from pagan religions in the NT and little if any influence in 'early' Christianity (at least up to the 4th century or so).


* Preferably from the last few decades; apparently a lot of earlier work, notably Cumont's, failed to adequately recognize the distinctions between Indo-Iranian Mitra, later Iranian/Zoroastrian Mithra and the western (and ultimately Roman) Mithras. Which was presumably not intentional on the serious Mithraic scholars' part, but is actually kind of representative of the tactics of the various "Christians copied pagans" hacks which proliferate on the internet: They take bits and pieces from 'Mithras' or 'Horus' cults separated by thousands of kilometers and hundreds if not thousands of years, ignoring the vast majority of material from the sects in each time and location, in order to assemble from their various scraps a collage which exists in their own imagination and in the minds of their gullible readers, but never in actual history or reality. And that's in the best of cases; often it's just outright lies As my username suggests, there was a brief period (which ended before I joined the forum, but the name stuck) when I thought there might be something there, but there really isn't.

[SallyF]

Archeologists say they have traced the origins of the first Christmas to be celebrated on 25 December, 300 years before the birth of Christ. The original event marked the consecration of the ancient world's largest sun god statue, the 34m tall, 200 ton Colossus of Rhodes.

It has long been known that 25 December was not the real date of Christ's birth and that the decision to turn it into Jesus's birthday was made by Constantine, the Roman Emperor, in the early 4th century AD. But experts believe the origins of that decision go back to 283 BC, when, in Rhodes, the winter solstice occurred at about sunrise on 25 December. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/scie ... 83910.html

And

The New Catholic Encyclopedia states: Christmas originated at a time when the cult of the sun was particularly strong at Rome. This theory finds support in some of the Church Fathers contrasting the birth of Christ and the winter solstice. Though the substitution of Christmas for the pagan festival cannot be proved with certainty, it remains the most plausible explanation for the dating of Christmas (1967, Vol. 3, p. 656).

And ...

Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas or Easter because they believe that these festivals are based on (or massively contaminated by) pagan customs and religions. They point out that Jesus did not ask his followers to mark his birthday. https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religion ... ance.shtml

The (Northern) Winter Solstice and its association with the superstitions of gods and god-men is unlikely to have been unnoticed before the superstition of the god-man Jesus and his bursting onto the planet he created and flooded through the uterus of the BVM.

I suggest that the Christian claim of monopoly or primacy on the 25th Dec is part of the general fraudulence of this personality cult/religion of their Divine Leader.

A divine Leader whose propagandists said NOTHING of celebrating his birthday

At the common festival time of Winter Solstice, or any other time.

I suggest that our very good friends in the Watchtower are perfectly correct on this one.

[Zzyzx]

.

The first Christmas (Christs Mass) was in 336 AD.

However, Jesus birth date has been placed on December 25th long before that.

Bold added below to illustrate that your claim was 'record of Christmas being celebrated'.

The only one of these that is true in their original mythology is Mithra of Persia (and Prometheus). The oldest record of the birth of Mithra/Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25th came in 354 AD, more than 130 years after the oldest record of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th.

Are you attempting to abandon that claim and make a different one now that it has been shown to be in error?