Curious the heart shaped head of the stylized figure. Would a heart symbol have been understood by that culture at that time? “God is love”?
Not to mention that sometimes echos of Christ have shown up in other faiths; complaints about such Christ-similar figures of historical devotion as Mithras supposedly showing Christian faith to be untrue presume that faith is purely a manmade function. But if faith is a supernaturally driven, revealed function, then our classic bible accounts do not have to explicitly tell of either every possible real, or rival imitation, revelation.
This adds to the pool of possibilities to explain the figure, which would indeed make a pretty cookie.
Mithras has ALWAYS been one of the things that stood in the way of stronger faith!!
atheists say it was copied in Christianity.
your answer makes a lot of sense. Very well stated.
I’m not sure that’s supposed to be a ‘heart’. I think it’s a stylisation of the time, a way to indicate a human face with broad forehead and chin.
-JT
Yeah that “heart-face” is interesting.
Wikipedia says the earliest known use of the “heart symbol” is from the mid-13th century, which was hundreds of years after this thing was made. So I don’t think people would have associated the shape with a heart.