Could Abraham be from the Vedas?

[Forum Monk]

Ishtar, it seems the church has absconded with christianity more than a thousand years ago and usurped its hegemony over basic principles upon which it was founded. Fear and intolerance have replaced love and forgiveness. Pity really. I think christianity was never a belief system for the masses and it remains true today. Only a very small segment of people understand it, in my opinion.

There may actually be some fact to your belief that the relationship between christianilty and ancient mystery religions is real. At first I discounted this notion but now I am considering it more carefully. If I might turn a bit philosophical, perhaps they are all rooted in a common and central truth and each reveals certain characteristics of the true nature of existence. It is of course, a matter of debate (and often strife) over who has glimpsed the whole more completely.

[Ishtar]

Ishtar, it seems the church has absconded with christianity more than a thousand years ago and usurped its hegemony over basic principles upon which it was founded. Fear and intolerance have replaced love and forgiveness. Pity really. I think christianity was never a belief system for the masses and it remains true today. Only a very small segment of people understand it, in my opinion.

There may actually be some fact to your belief that the relationship between christianilty and ancient mystery religions is real. At first I discounted this notion but now I am considering it more carefully. If I might turn a bit philosophical, perhaps they are all rooted in a common and central truth and each reveals certain characteristics of the true nature of existence. It is of course, a matter of debate (and often strife) over who has glimpsed the whole more completely.

Thank you for such an interesting, considered and rational response.

My point all along has been this (and this is where, I think, Min and I differ in our views): Discovering that Jesus did not exist as a historical person by no means discounts the experience that Christians have of the spirit of Jesus in their lives. In fact, I would go further. I believe that if they understood the foundation or roots of their religion better (which the Church has consistently hidden from them) they would have an even better communication and thus relationship with the spirit of Jesus Christ.

However, it takes courage for Christians to adopt this approach because it flies in the face of everything the Church has always warned them about: i.e. other religions being pagan/heathen/even evil. They've also been encouraged not to think for themselves, or even to dare to believe that they could have their own experience of what's become known as God without going through them, the middleman, the Church.

So I really appreciate your reply. It takes intellectual honesty and courage to even consider these options, and even if you eventually reject my ideas, I thank you for considering them.

[clubs_stink]

Here's the info on Shelly Yates of FIRE THE GRID fame

http://www.starfiretor.com/report_firethegrid.htm

Seems she changed her story when she discovered there was $$$ in NDEs. Also there is the idea floating out there that focusing energy (even if positive) on negative issues merely feeds that negative issue. Don't want to get into all that philosophy here, but i's an interesting concept.

[Ishtar]

Just to put the Jesus story into context, it might be useful to look at some of the key milestones of the life of Mithras. Mithras is the Roman god whose worship had dominated Rome for some 600 years preceding Christianity. If we do this, we can see the root stock upon which Constantine grafted Christianity:

1. Mithra was born on December 25th as an offspring of the Sun. In the catacombs at Rome was preserved a relic of the old Mithraic worship. It was a picture of the infant Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, while on their knees before him were Persian Magi adoring him and offering gifts.

2. He was considered a great travelling teacher and masters. He had twelve companions as Jesus had twelve disciples.

3. Mithras also performed miracles. Mithra was called "the good shepherd,” "the way, the truth and the light,” “redeemer,” “savior,” “Messiah." He was identified with both the lion and the lamb.

4. He was buried in a tomb and after three days he rose again. His resurrection was celebrated every year.

5. The International Encyclopedia states: "Mithras seems to have owed his prominence to the belief that he was the source of life, and could also redeem the souls of the dead into the better world ... The ceremonies included a sort of baptism to remove sins, anointing, and a sacred meal of bread and water, while a consecrated wine, believed to possess wonderful power, played a prominent part."

6. The mysteries of Mithras, which fell in the spring equinox [Easter], were famous even among the many Roman festivals. The ceremonies observed in the initiation to these mysteries -- symbolical of the struggle between Ahriman and Ormuzd [the Good and the Evil – Zoroastrian gods] -- were of the most extraordinary and to a certain degree even dangerous character. Baptism and the partaking of a mystical liquid, consisting of flour and water, to be drunk with the utterance of sacred formulas, were among the inauguration acts."

7. Prof. Franz Cumont, of the University of Ghent, writes: "The sectaries of the Persian god, like the Christians, purified themselves by baptism, received by a species of confirmation the power necessary to combat the spirit of evil; and expected from a Lord's supper salvation of body and soul. Like the latter, they also held Sunday sacred, and celebrated the birth of the Sun on the 25th of December....

8. [Both Jesus and Mithras] preached a categorical system of ethics, regarded asceticism as meritorious and counted among their principal virtues abstinence and continence, renunciation and self-control. Their conceptions of the world and of the destiny of man were similar. They both admitted the existence of a Heaven inhabited by beatified ones, situated in the upper regions, and of a Hell, peopled by demons, situated in the bowels of the earth. They both placed a flood at the beginning of history; they both assigned as the source of their condition, a primitive revelation; they both, finally, believed in the immortality of the soul, in a last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, consequent upon a final conflagration of the universe" (The Mysteries of Mithras, pp. 190, 191).

9. Reverend Charles Biggs stated: "The disciples of Mithra formed an organized church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation, Atonement, and a Saviour, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of Christ (The Christian Platonists, p. 240).

McClintock and Strong wrote: "In modern times Christian writers have been induced to look favourably upon the assertion that some of our ecclesiastical usages (e.g., the institution of the Christmas festival) originated in the cultus of Mithraism. Some writers who refuse to accept the Christian religion as of supernatural origin, have even gone so far as to institute a close comparison with the founder of Christianity; and Dupuis and others, going even beyond this, have not hesitated to pronounce the Gospel simply a branch of Mithraism" (Art. "Mithra").

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen048.html

Thanks for the link on Shelley Yates, Clubs. I'll take a look at it.

[Forum Monk]

Ishtar,
You seemed to have mixed the characteristics of the Iranian/Vedic Mithra with the Roman one and derived a hybrid who did not exist in the mythologies or religions of anyone. Many of the points you make are completely unsupported by the few facts we do have thanks to Franz Cumont and the more significant ones are thoroughly debunked by Christian apologists. The remaining 'comparisons' are generic enough to apply to virtually every religious leader who ever claimed a following or more properly, every following who ever crafted a leader to suit their belief system.

Interesting, nevertheless, is the strong connection between the Rigveda Mithra and the Arian/Iranian/Persian Mithra. Another strong indication that cultural mixing occurred. Funnily enough, the cult of Mithra was apparently not overflowing with historians, authors, or story-tellers who left us with much contextual evidence about the cults. At least not that I can find.

[Ishtar]

Ishtar,
You seemed to have mixed the characteristics of the Iranian/Vedic Mithra with the Roman one and derived a hybrid who did not exist in the mythologies or religions of anyone.

Which points do you believe are not true. I only found one similarity with the Vedic/Zoroastrian one. (More on that below)

Many of the points you make are completely unsupported by the few facts we do have thanks to Franz Cumont and the more significant ones are thoroughly debunked by Christian apologists.

Who is the 'we' you refer to? I seem to have read quite a lot on the Roman Mithras, and haven't found a paucity of information.

The remaining 'comparisons' are generic enough to apply to virtually every religious leader who ever claimed a following or more properly, every following who ever crafted a leader to suit their belief system.

And that's my point.

Forum Monk, I don't think I mixed anything. These are the facts that are known about the Roman Mithras, and I gave a link to the website I got them from. But I knew them anyway, from various books I've read, one of which charts how Mthraism arrives in Italy. David Ulansey in The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries says:

"Mithraism began to spread throughout the Roman Empire in the 1st century CE and reached its peak in the 3rd century, and finally sucumbed to Christianity in the 4th century. At the cult's height, Mithras was worshipped "from the banks of the Black Sea to the mountains of Scotland and the borders of the great Sahara desert", as one authority puts it."

I think "the banks of the Black Sea" is a bit of a give away as to where it came from.

Interesting, nevertheless, is the strong connection between the Rigveda Mithra and the Arian/Iranian/Persian Mithra. Another strong indication that cultural mixing occurred.

I also know that I haven't mixed them because, as you would expect, I'm very familiar with the Zoroastrian Mithras who originally was the Vedic Mithra. The only similarity between the Roman Mithras and the Vedic/Zoroastrian Mithra that I could see was that he Roman Mithras is supposed to have been the son of the Sun. In Vedic mythology, the Sun is called the Eye of Mithra.

Funnily enough, the cult of Mithra was apparently not overflowing with historians, authors, or story-tellers who left us with much contextual evidence about the cults. At least not that I can find.

Yes, it was an oral tradition.

FM - Who are these 'debunking Christian apologists' and if they are Christian apologists, why are they to be believed over other authors?

[Ishtar]

FM - Just found this in a Catholic encyclopaedia:

Mithraism
A pagan religion consisting mainly of the cult of the ancient Indo-Iranian Sun-god Mithra. It entered Europe from Asia Minor after Alexander's conquest, spread rapidly over the whole Roman Empire at the beginning of our era, reached its zenith during the third century, and vanished under the repressive regulations of Theodosius at the end of the fourth century. Of late the researches of Cumont have brought it into prominence mainly because of its supposed similarity to Christianity.

The origin of the cult of Mithra dates from the time that the Hindus and Persians still formed one people, for the god Mithra occurs in the religion and the sacred books of both races, i.e. in the Vedas and in the Avesta. In Vedic hymns he is frequently mentioned and is nearly always coupled with Varuna, but beyond the bare occurrence of his name, little is known of him (Rigveda, III, 59). It is conjectured (Oldenberg, "Die "Religion des Veda," Berlin, 1894) that Mithra was the rising sun, Varuna the setting sun; or, Mithra, the sky at daytime, Varuna, the sky at night; or, the one the sun, the other the moon. In any case Mithra is a light or solar deity of some sort; but in vedic times the vague and general mention of him seems to indicate that his name was little more than a memory.

In the Avesta he is much more of a living and ruling deity than in Indian piety; nevertheless, he is not only secondary to Ahura Mazda, but he does not belong to the seven Amshaspands or personified virtues which immediately surround Ahura; he is but a Yazad, a popular demigod or genius. The Avesta however gives us his position only after the Zoroastrian reformation; the inscriptions of the Achaemenidae (seventh to fourth century B.C.) assign him amuch higher place, naming him immediately after Ahura Mazda and associating him with the goddess Anaitis (Anahata), whose name sometimes precedes his own.

Mithra is the god of light, Anaitis the goddess of water. Independently of the Zoroastrian reform, Mithra retained his place as foremost deity in the north-west of the Iranian highlands. After the conquest of Babylon this Persian cult came into contact with Chaldean astrology and with the national worship of Marduk. For a time the two priesthoods of Mithra and Marduk (magi and chaldaei respectively) coexisted in the capital and Mithraism borrowed much from this intercourse.

This modified Mithraism traveled farther north-westward and became the State cult of Armenia. Its rulers, anxious to claim descent from the glorious kings of the past, adopted Mithradates as their royal name (so five kings of Georgia, and Eupator of the Bosporus). Mithraism then entered Asia Minor, especially Pontus and Cappadocia. Here it came into contact with the Phrygian cult of Attis and Cybele from which it adopted a number of ideas and practices, though apparently not the gross obscenities of the Phrygian worship.

This Phrygian-Chaldean-Indo-Iranian religion, in which the Iranian element remained predominant, came, after Alexander's conquest, in touch with the Western World. Hellenism, however, and especially Greece itself, remained remarkably free from its influence. When finally the Romans took possession of the Kingdom of Pergamum, occupied Asia Minor and stationed two legions of soldiers on the Euphrates, the success of Mithraism in the West was secured. It spread rapidly from the Bosporus to the Atlantic, from Illyria to Britain. Its foremost apostles were the legionaries; hence it spread first to the frontier stations of the Roman army.




http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm

[Forum Monk]

I apologize for my incomplete post which lacks corroborating information, but because I am work right now, I don't have the much time to craft a proper response. One is forthcoming and hopefully before it gets too late in the UK (or where ever in the world, you currently are).

[Ishtar]

I'm in the UK, but don't worry. I can reply tomorrow if it comes too late.

BTW, just posted an extract from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. Please take a look and tell me what you think.

[kbs2244]

Istar, you are making some strong, and wrong, assumptions about my belief systems.

First, you have no idea of how many “religions” I checked out before settling on a belief system. In truth it was very extensive. Some things where what people do not think of as a religion, but do have as a center point in their life. Finical success, and science included.

Secondly I do not conform to what is commonly accepted as “Christian Dogma.” I do not worship a “Religion.” I am not a member of a “Religion.”
I do however worship a Supreme God. The most powerful of many gods.

The biggest difference is that I do not accept the Trinity doctrine. I do not believe Jesus is God. It just is not supported by scripture. I do believe he is, as he said, the Son of God. Thus all your comparisons of other religions that have a god that died and was reborn being similar to the Christian story I disregard. It doesn’t apply to my belief system.

The fact that many religions around the world share many things doesn’t bother me either. The concept that we, as humans, have a common start, and thus a common foundation for our various beliefs, supports rather than threatens my beliefs.

I do not mind at all discussing if Jesus, or the Patriarchs, were historical or real people. I enjoy hearing others opinions and their reasons for them. At this point, I doubt they will change my mind, anymore then I am likely to change yours. I do enjoy the mental stimulation, and sometimes I learn things. I have from your posts. And Min paid more attention in his history classes then I did.

I do believe the Bible is what it was meant to be. A basis for a belief system. The best, most logical, even if the most misinterpreted, I could find. It is not a history or science book. I am open to the concept that some of it may be a bit free and easy with some facts to make a point. But I am also open to the idea that a powerful God could arrange historical events to conform to His desires.

And I doubt Jesus is aware of my Internet habits. At least I hope he has more important things to worry about.

And I share your opinion of Hollywood.

[Ishtar]

OK, cool.

[kbs2244]

Peace be with you, my child.

[Forum Monk]

At the start, I would like to point out that if one is to suggest that Christianity imitated or borrowed from Mithraism, one must consider the practice of Mithraism in the early centuries of the common era. Further the idea, that Iranian Mithraism was imported by the Romans is speculatory at best. It is a somewhat dated theory proposed by Franz Cumont (or at least popularized by him). In fact the connection between the Roman Mithra and Iranian of Mitra is more based upon a linguistic similarity in names but not necessarily similar attributes.

Precious little is firmly known about diety in ancient Iran. In the Iranian version of Mitra, he is a god of light or illumination and in my opion more closely related to Venus.

In the Avesta, Mithra is the genius of the celestial light. He appears before sunrise on the rocky summits of the mountains; during the day he traverses the wide firmament in his chariot drawn by four white horses, and when night falls he still illumines with flickering glow the surface of the earth, "ever waking, ever watchful."
(The Mysteries Of Mithra by Franz Cumont 1903
translated from the second revised French edition by Thomas J. McCormack
Chicago, Open Court [1903])

In the Iranian pantheon, there is no evidence that Mitra was a supreme being. In fact apart from Zoasterism, very little is really known about his nature apart from his association with light and the idea that he was suspended in the air between a higher and lower diety.

Nevertheless, the possible influence of Mitra on the ever evolving pantheons of Asia Minor, and to a lesser extent, Greece is not entirely discounted but it is clear that a strong link between Roman Mithraism and Iranian adoration of Mitra may be overstated.

There are several competing theories about the origins of Mithraism in Rome. The once popular theory of Cumont it no longer considered viable.

Cumont's ideas, though in many respects valid, had however one serious problem with respect to the author's theory on the origins of Mithraism: If the Roman religion was an outgrowth of an Iranian one, there would have to be evidence of Mithraic-like practices attested in Greater Iran. However, that is not the case: No mithraea have been found there, and the Mithraic myth of the tauroctony does not conclusively match the Zoroastrian legend of the slaying of Gayomart, in which Mithra does not play any role at all. The historians of antiquity, otherwise expansive in their descriptions of Iranian religious practices, hardly mention Mithra at all (one notable exception is Herodotus i.131, which associates Mithra with other divinities of the morning star).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras

The most noticable parallel between Roman and eastern Mithraism is that they share the name of the same god, and his appearance in Roman iconographic remains is indicative of Persian origins, particularly, the Phrygian cap (which is reminiscent of the East, especially Asia Minor, where Mithraic worship strongly took hold) that he invariably wears. Also, the notion of the bull sacrifice is shared. Because Cumont's thesis of strong association can no longer be held as reasonable, an alternate explanation of the origins of Roman Mithraism must be derived.
http://www.mithraism.org/cgi-bin/displa ... =1&total=8

Looking fully at the references cited above, including Cumont, what we see is evolution of the nature and importance of Mithra at various places and periods of time. For this reason, it is important to realize that if Christianity imitated Mithrasim, it would have been the Roman version of the practice. The Roman version being derived (as the latest theory proposes) from the Asian Minor version (where once again Mithra was not the chief among Gods) which was probably derived from a Greek influenced version of the ancient practice mixed with a healthy dose of Zoasterism. I have not bothered to detail the evolution in the interest of brevity as I am sure you also realize the cultic practices have evolved significantly. But I do concede that any documentation of the full evolution of Mithraism is speculation to a degree, since very little evidence of the origins in ancient Persia or India exists.

Further it needs to be noted that Mithraism did not enjoy a wide-spread following until after the first century CE. While that does not discount the idea that Christianity borrowed from the cult of Mithra it is clear that Christianity had already established some foundational principles prior to the first century and may have swallowed Mithraism later in order to eliminate what it deemed, pagan practices.

Having established some background for my position, I will continue in additional posts.

[Forum Monk]

More about the development of the practice of Mithraism is required to establish a background for its satisfactory comparison to Christianity. David Ulansey, in his book The Origin of the Mithraic Mysteries poses another interesting theory about the origins of the practice. Realizing that very little is known about the nature of the practice in ancient Iran, Ulansey focuses on the iconography of the Roman cults and compares it to other extant evidence from other cultures.

There were, however, a number of serious problems with Cumont's assumption that the Mithraic mysteries derived from ancient Iranian religion. Most significant among these is that there is no parallel in ancient Iran to the iconography which is the primary fact of the Roman Mithraic cult. For example, as already mentioned, by far the most important icon in the Roman cult was the tauroctony. This scene shows Mithras in the act of killing a bull, accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, and a scorpion; the scene is depicted as taking place inside a cave like the mithraeum itself. This icon was located in the most important place in every mithraeum, and therefore must have been an expression of the central myth of the Roman cult. Thus, if the god Mithras of the Roman religion was actually the Iranian god Mithra, we should expect to find in Iranian mythology a story in which Mithra kills a bull. However, the fact is that no such Iranian myth exists: in no known Iranian text does Mithra have anything to do with killing a bull.

...

In the absence of any convincing alternative, Cumont's explanation satisfied scholars for more than seventy years. However, in 1971 the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies was held in Manchester England, and in the course of this Congress Cumont's theories came under concerted attack. Was it not possible, scholars at the Congress asked, that the Roman cult of Mithras was actually a new religion, and had simply borrowed the name of an Iranian god in order to give itself an exotic oriental flavor? If such a scenario seemed plausible, these scholars argued, one could no longer assume without question that the proper way to interpret Mithraism was to find parallels to its elements in ancient Iranian religion. In particular, Franz Cumont's interpretation of the tauroctony as representing an Iranian myth was now no longer unquestionable. Thus from 1971 on, the meaning of the Mithraic tauroctony suddenly became a mystery: if this bull-slaying icon did not represent an ancient Iranian myth, what did it represent?
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html

Ulansey then offers his own interesting theory that Roman practice was derived from a astrological foundation related to the zodical and nearby constellations. It is interesting how he sees the icons of the bull, the dog, the snake and the raven and scorpion in the equivalent constellations of Taurus, Canis Major, Hydra, Corvus and Scorpio.

An important point and cornerstone of Roman Mithraism centers around the ritualistic sacrifice of the bull by Mithras. This notion is in stark contrast to the Christian Christ who offers himself as the ultimate and final sacrifice for sins. Ulansey sees another purpose:

This, I propose, is the origin and nature of Mithras the cosmic bull-slayer. His killing of the bull symbolizes his supreme power: namely, the power to move the entire universe, which he had demonstrated by shifting the cosmic sphere in such a way that the spring equinox had moved out of Taurus the Bull.

Given the pervasive influence in the Greco-Roman period of astrology and "astral immortality," a god possessing such a literally world-shaking power would clearly have been eminently worthy of worship: since he had control over the cosmos, he would automatically have power over the astrological forces determining life on earth, and would also possess the ability to guarantee the soul a safe journey through the celestial spheres after death.

That Mithras was believed to possess precisely such a cosmic power is in fact proven by a number of Mithraic artworks depicting Mithras in various ways as having control over the universe. For example, one scene shows a youthful Mithras holding the cosmic sphere in one hand while with his other hand he rotates the circle of the zodiac.

reference: The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World by David Ulansey (Oxford University Press, 1989; revised paperback, 1991)

[Forum Monk]

In a previous post, you asked, why should we believe what the christian apologists say. If we were discussing the Great Flood or the 6 day creation, I would understand your immediate skeptism as so much of the apologetics of those topics require complete suspension of scientific knowledge. This puts many way ouside of their comfort zone. However, we are discussing facts with evidence taken from manuscripts, iconography, archaeology and some fundamental common sense. Therefore, I feel we can look at the arguments presented by the apologists, in this case and judge the validty of their case based on established evidence. Where such evidence is lacking we can at least argue from reasonable logic as one theory may be as good as another if it does not mitigate what is irrefutible.

As I stated, the post in which you enumerated the various similarities between Mithraism and Christianity appeared to be inconsistent with what is known about Mithraic practice in Rome at the time of the emergence of Christianity.

Much of the apologetics of any topic is explored by a handful of principle researchers and then expoused ad infinitum by a host of others, sans primary sources. Nevertheless I think it worthwhile to look at a few of the notible examples, evaluate the arguments and look at the sources. Most of the references are I will quote below are taken from the apologetics of J. P. Holding and can be seen in totality here: http://tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html

First the most prominent source for much of the comparison comes from here and in fact offers addional points not listed by Ishtar -

a leading proponent of that view, Acharya S, who, in her magnum opus The Christ Conspiracy (118-120), lays out over a dozen things that Jesus supposedly has in common with Mithras and, by extension, Christianity allegedly borrowed to create the Jesus character; some of these points she now defends further in a work titled Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, which is presently only available in sample chapters on her Internet page

Like, me, Holding warns the reader to check sources:

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.

Ok, perhaps he slightly exagerrates the unreliability of Cumont's work, but the point is clear snd in keeping with evidence I have already presented.

The points -

1. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds.
Most informed people understand that Jesus was not born on the 25th of December. Clearly the later church absconded with the date to absorb the pagan winter solstice festivals which were prevalent at the time and Holding agrees: "nowhere does the NT associate this date with Jesus' birth at all." This is something the later church did, wherever they got the idea from -- not the apostolic church, and if there was any borrowing at all"

According to Holding, he was not born in a cave, but rather solid rock, as a full grown adult. According to Ulansey, the rock-birth "was a likely carryover from Perseus, who experienced a similar birth in an underground cavern; Ulan.OMM, 36"

Holding then agrees that the sheperd account is true, as they helped Mithra emerge from the rock but cleverly points out according to Cumont, "Mithra's birth took place at a time when (oops!) men had supposedly not been created on earth yet. [Cum.MM, 132]"

As pointed out, the difference in the Iranian and Roman accounts are noteworthy. In the Iranian account, there is no rock-birth but rather "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. [Cum.MM, 16]"

Holding then presents his case that Acharya's "virgin birth" scenario was evidenced by iconography:

One is constrained to ask how an icon reflects that Mithra's mother was a virgin, since it is obviously not stated. One also wants to know if any of this evidence is pre-Christian (it is not)

...

Finally, we are told of the "largest near-eastern Mithraeum [which] was built in western Persia at Kangavar, dedicated to 'Anahita, the Immaculate Virgin Mother of the Lord Mithras'."

...

I have found the terminal source, and it is a paper written in 1993 by a then-high school student, David Fingrut, who made this claim without any documentation whatsoever himself. His paper is now posted on the Net as a text file.

Sources can be troublesome on a media like the world wide web, where practically anyone can write "the truth" and it becomes defacto, whether it is true or not - hmmm like we said before.


continued-