[Junior]

Well, Mithras was the son of god (Zoroaster) born of a virgin; he was worshipped on Sunday with a meal of bread and wine; he died and rose from the dead and he was prophesied to return and judge the world. His cult arose at roughly the same time as Christianity, and there is strong evidence that early Christians changed the day of worship from the Jewish sabbath to Sunday to accommodate and attract converts from Mithraism. It is widely accepted that Christianity did coopt the Dec. 25th birthday of Mithras.

[NJ_gent]

Zeus periodically impregnated human females, usually without any physical contact. The distinction did seem, however, lost on Zeus' wife. ;-)

[GarySpFc]

Well, Mithras was the son of god (Zoroaster) born of a virgin; he was worshipped on Sunday with a meal of bread and wine; he died and rose from the dead and he was prophesied to return and judge the world. His cult arose at roughly the same time as Christianity, and there is strong evidence that early Christians changed the day of worship from the Jewish sabbath to Sunday to accommodate and attract converts from Mithraism. It is widely accepted that Christianity did coopt the Dec. 25th birthday of Mithras.

Nonsense! br>
Christianity affirms the physical death and bodily resurrection of Christ. Mithraism, like other pagan religions, has no bodily resurrection. The Greek writer Aeschylus sums up the Greek view, "When the earth has drunk up a man's blood, once he is dead, there is no resurrection." He uses the same Greek word for "resurrection," anastasis, that Paul uses in I Corinthians 15.

Allegations of an early Christian dependence on Mithraism have been rejected on many grounds. Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of it's God and no concept of rebirth--at least during its early stages...During the early stages of the cult, the notion of rebirth would have been foreign to its basic outlook...Moreover, Mithraism was basically a military cult. Therefore, one must be skeptical about suggestions that it appealed to nonmilitary like the early Christians.

Mithraism flowered after Christianity, not before, so Christianity could not have copied from Mithraism. The timing is all wrong to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity.