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Before we come to the final discussions which bring this century of
controversy and crisis to an end, something must be said of yet another
ancient religion from the East which, by now, was racing for the
primacy of popularity. This was the cult of Mithra.
Mithra, originally, in the religion of ancient Persia is the god of
Light. In the religion of the Avesta he is a god of the second rank,
the judge of the dead, the god who keeps men to their promises, the god
of Honour then, and especially of military honour. He sees all things
and the Sun is his eye. With the fourth century B.C. the cult spread to
Chaldea, and Chaldean astrological theologies influenced it, working
out an identity between Mithra and the Sun God. About the same time
Alexander's conquest of Persia brought Mithraism into relation with the
Greek mythology, and thence derived a more aesthetic interpretation of
the rites and the myth. Finally the later Roman conquest of the East
opened to the cult the whole of the West, and from the end of the first
century (A.D.) Mithraism was a settled religion in the West and rapidly
developing. Merchants and oriental slaves took it to all the ports of
the western world, but the chief agent of its spread was undoubtedly
the army, and with the legionaries it soon travelled to the very
frontiers. As a religion it has its foundation in the great eastern
theory of the dual origin of all reality. To fight the evil principle,
beings are created intermediary between God and man. Mithra is one of
these heroes and gradually, as the theories develop, he comes to
eclipse all the other heroes, and even the transcendent divinity, as
the God of Light and the protector of mankind.
The culminating point of the Mithra legend is his victorious conflict
with the bull, and from the slain bull flows all life and all
usefulness. Finally Mithra ascends to Heaven in a fiery chariot driven
by the Sun. He will, however, return once more. There will be a second
slaying of the bull, whence will come immortality for the faithful, and
then a general conflagration will destroy the wicked, the demons, and
the principle of evil, Ahriman himself.
The cult was organised in circles of restricted membership which
divided and sub-divided as their members increased. It had an elaborate
liturgy in which ablutions, an anointing with honey, fasts, and a
ritual banquet of bread and water played their part. The initiation was
through seven degrees, animals were sacrificed, and the candidate was
received through a baptism of blood which poured from the bull slain
above him. The meetings took place in caves, and crypts built to
resemble caves, decorated with pictures of Mithra slaying the bull. The
weekly holy day, naturally, was Sunday and, equally naturally, the
Equinoxes were regarded as a sacred season, and the date of Mithra's
birth, placed at the winter solstice -- December 25.
That the cult was immensely popular with the army there is no doubt,
nor of its influence in the third century. But that it ever threatened
the future victory of Christianity is a matter infinitely less certain.
It has, however, been the subject of much loose thinking, as has been
also the question of the analogies between Mithraism and the religion
of the Church. Fr. Martindale [ ] summarises the position very fairly,
setting side by side M. Salomon Reinach's neatly phrased thesis and the
no less skilfully worded examination of Pere Lagrange. "M. Salomon
Reinach thus sums it up: ' Mithra is the mediator between God and man;
he secures salvation to mankind by a sacrifice; the cult includes
baptism, communion, fasts; his disciples call themselves brothers; in
the Mithraist clergy there are men and women vowed to celibacy; there
is a moral code which is of obligation and which is identical with that
of Christianity.' We have here a series of scornful affirmations to
which Pere Lagrange can oppose another series of flat denials. 'The
fasts and the brotherhood we can admit -- and they are found in every
religion that ever was. Everything else is incorrect. Mithra is called
"mediator" once-in Plutarch, and he is mediator between the God of
Goodness and the God of Evil. We have no knowledge of any direct
relation between the sacrifice of the bull and salvation. Nor is Mithra
ever sacrificed, as was Jesus. The Mithraist baptism is a simple
ablution in no way different from any other; the communion is nothing
more than an offering of bread and water, nor can anyone say it was
even intended to represent Mithra; women, usually, had no part in the
mysteries of Mithra and could not, therefore, have been there dedicated
to celibacy. . . as to men, in that respect, we know nothing except for
a single text of Tertullian. . . a text which has been misinterpreted.
Every moral code sets out to be obligatory, more or less, and if that
of Mithra was identical with the Christian code why did Julian the
Apostate-himself a devotee of Mithra -- recommend the Christian code as
a model to Pagans?' "
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