DID YOU KNOW: Maybe Early Christianity Exploded Because It Was Radically Unlike Pagan Deities
If you’ve been in a college classroom during the past several decades in which the history of religion came up, you almost certainly heard somebody — most likely the professor — make the case that Christianity “stole” or “adapted” many elements of the multiple pagan deities that flourished in the ancient world.
One of the most often mentioned such pagan deities is that of Mithras, who supposedly was born of a virgin, died and was resurrected long before Jesus came along. The idea is that Jesus disciples in the days after His crucifixion stole the idea of resurrection from the Mythras movement.
Sounds reasonable, maybe, but in fact there are two big, fat reasons why this claim makes absolutely no sense in light of the historical facts. Here’s reason number one:
Mithras (Wikimedia Commons).
First, Mithras was born from a rock, not a virgin, and that’s just the first of the ways this pagan deity was nothing like Jesus. As J. Warner Wallace of Cold Case Christianity, explains:
“Claim: Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25th, in a cave, attended by shepherds.
“Truth: Mithras was actually born out of solid rock, leaving a hole in the side of a mountain (presumably described as a ‘cave’). He was not born of a virgin (unless you consider the rock mountain to have been a virgin).
“His birth was celebrated on December 25th, but the first Christians knew this was not the true date of Christ’s birth anyway, and both Mithraic worshippers and the early Roman Church borrowed this celebration from earlier winter solstice celebrations.
“Shepherds are part of Mithraism, witnessing his birth and helping Mithras emerge from the rock, but interestingly, the shepherds exist in the birth chronology at a time when humans are not supposed to have been yet born.
“This, coupled with the fact the earliest version of this part of the Mithraic mythology emerges one hundred years after the appearance of the New Testament, infers it is far more likely this portion of Mithraism was borrowed from Christianity rather than the other way around.”
Wallace, who specialized for years as a Los Angeles Police Detective solving cold murder cases that had defied being solved for years, knows a few things about assessing evidence, forensic, historical and logical. Here, he offers multiple additional reasons why the Mithras/Jesus comparison makes about as much sense as Apples and Oranges.
Second, Jesus was radically different from all of the pagan deities that people worshipped during the Roman era. In fact, as Michael Hurtado suggests in his “Why on Earth Did Anybody Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries,” the radical difference between Christianity and the pagan deities that defined the dominant culture is likely a factor that helps explain the extraordinary growth of the movement in years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Christianity Was VERY Different, Not Similar:
At its most basic element and unlike its pagan competitors, Christianity offered its followers the prospect of a joyous eternal life with the creator of the Universe after death:
“In a time in which the threat of death, especially from illness, was very much a pressing reality, the promise of eternal life may well have struck a positive chord, and so may help account for the readiness of some people to make a Christian commitment,” Hurtado writes on page 128.
Remember, the decision to become a Christian in that period carried with it the assurance of social, economic and political isolation and punishment, as well as the very real prospect of possibly having to suffer physical persecution and even martyrdom. This was not a decision to be made lightly and yet steadily growing legions of people did so.
Hurtado goes on, noting that the prevailing view of Christianity among the Roman elites was almost totally negative. From Tacitus and Seutonius to Celsus and many in between, Christianity in general, and the idea of resurrection to eternal life in particular, was held up as foolishness at best and a dangerous superstition at worst.
So, perhaps you are one of those working on the Hill who comes from a top-flight campus where you inhaled some or many of the any false claims about Christianity put forth by its academic and media critics, including this one about Mithras.
Maybe it’s time to subject what you were told to a little honest criticism based on facts they didn’t share with you back on campus?