Kind of like in western theology, how GOD got Adam and Eve out of Eden...He drove them out in his Fury...
Mention of any cars then disappears until the New Testament where the 12 Apostles are brought together in one Accord...
Posted on 02/06/2006 9:40:03 AM PST by presidio9
After trying for four years to have a baby, Khorshed Bulsara called on her fellow Zoroastrians for help. She tapped into a new fertility clinic whose mission is to save one of the world's oldest religions.
Her doctor waved off concerns that Parsis, as Zoroastrians are known in India, may suffer fertility problems linked to generations of inbreeding within a tiny and highly insular community. She put Ms. Bulsara through a battery of tests, prescribed fertility drugs and began an expensive program of in vitro fertilization.
To defray costs, a local Parsi organization and anonymous Parsi donors gave the couple about $2,500.
The investment paid off. In September, Ms. Bulsara delivered Parsi triplets. "There is a way to fulfill one's dream of having a beautiful family through the wonders of technology and the undoubted power of prayers," said her husband, Khushro Bulsara.
There are fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians in the world, experts say. Most are in India and Iran, the religion's birthplace. The numbers are clearly dwindling in India. According to the 2001 census -- the latest figures available -- India's Parsi population had fallen to 69,601 from 76,382 a decade earlier.
To replenish their ranks, followers of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, who is thought to have lived about 3,500 years ago, are extolling not just the modern benefits of fertility clinics but also those of Internet dating.
The high-technology push to connect and reproduce Parsis comes as education and work opportunities pull a younger generation into the global work force, delaying love, marriage and children. Like other ethnic
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Most notably, the idea of the "hidden Imam", the promised saviour who is awaited, but is among us in a hidden form, comes from Zorastrianism. Most Shias do acknowledge this, and make reference to Zorastrian scriptures to bolster up their claims (Sunnis go mad with fury if they have to listen to this). The "birthday of the Twelfth Imam" is a jubilant Shia festival, with many overtly Zorastrian themes.
So anyway, the Zorastrians have certainly been an influence, out of all proportion to their numbers.
*snort*
Zoroastrianism is a Persian religion. In India they have to face both the Hindi AND the Muslims. I don't know about Armenia. I don't know how far it had spread, nor what the boundaries of the Seleucid Empire were.
Wrong again. Mithraism as we understand it now shows up in Persian writings beginning about the 2nd century B.C. (though references to Mithra go back to the 14th century B.C.) The Romans began adopting the religion around the first century B.C. with the return of the legions from the Mideast, from which many misconceptions about the historicity of Mithraism arise (misconceptions latched onto by Christian apologists in an effort to salvage some legitimacy).
I am a history professor. I am well aware of the history of Mithraism and its origins. I'm also aware of WHEN the doctrines you are speaking of first appear in Roman writings. It is post Christ. Check your facts, sir.
I was pretty much in the same boat as all of y'all when I began researching this. I figured all those other mystery religions bouncing around the Mediterranean in the centuries bracketing Jesus' birth had borrowed heavily from Christianity (it didn't dawn on me till later that it would have been impossible for religions predating Christianity to borrow from it). Chalk this up to my extremely strong Catholic upbringing.
However, as I continued my research it was apparent that the early Church co-opted a number of concepts from other religions, including the virgin birth (present in a number of religions), moving the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday (lifted wholesale from Mithraism), ascribing Jesus' birth to Dec. 25 (ditto), and death for mankind's sins followed by resurrection (a number of religions).
I had never liked St. Paul; his writings seemed at odds with the message presented in the Gospels and it became obvious to me that he'd hijacked the whole Christianity movement, glommed on a bunch of stuff borrowed from neighboring religions, and presented it to the gentiles who were more readily accepting of a new god (having so many floating around) than the Jews.
Romans put it in their writings. Prior to the Romans very little was written about Mithraic belief. And I believe you know that. Hence, the "Christians borrowed from 'other religions' part."
Yes, the early Catholic church incorporated a number of pagan holidays and such into 'Christianity', but not on the essentials. You may have some similarities. But then again, Satan is the great impersonator and Isaiah's prophecy that 'a virgin shall conceive' predates Christ by several hundred years. Yet, the Mithraism accusation doesn't have historical backing. The Mithraic similarities between Jesus and Mithra all come from post-Christ writings.
RELATION TO CHRISTIANITYA similarity between Mithra and Christ struck even early observers, such as Justin, Tertullian, and other Fathers, and in recent times has been urged to prove that Christianity is but an adaptation of Mithraism, or at most the outcome of the same religious ideas and aspirations (e.g. Robertson, "Pagan Christs", 1903). Against this erroneous and unscientific procedure, which is not endorsed by the greatest living authority on Mithraism, the following considerations must be brought forward. (1) Our knowledge regarding Mithraism is very imperfect; some 600 brief inscriptions, mostly dedicatory, some 300 often fragmentary, exiguous, almost identical monuments, a few casual references in the Fathers or Acts of the Martyrs, and a brief polemic against Mithraism which the Armenian Eznig about 450 probably copied from Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) who lived when Mithraism was almost a thing of the past -- these are our only sources, unless we include the Avesta in which Mithra is indeed mentioned, but which cannot be an authority for Roman Mithraism with which Christianity is compared. Our knowledge is mostly ingenious guess-work; of the real inner working of Mithraism and the sense in which it was understood by those who professed it at the advent of Christianity, we know nothing. (2) Some apparent similarities exist; but in a number of details it is quite probable that Mithraism was the borrower from Christianity. Tertullian about 200 could say: "hesterni sumus et omnia vestra implevimus" ("we are but of yesterday, yet your whole world is full of us"). It is not unnatural to suppose that a religion which filled the whole world, should have been copied at least in some details by another religion which was quite popular during the third century. Moreover the resemblances pointed out are superficial and external. Similarity in words and names is nothing; it is the sense that matters. During these centuries Christianity was coining its own technical terms, and naturally took names, terms, and expressions current in that day; and so did Mithraism. But under identical terms each system thought its own thoughts. Mithra is called a mediator; and so is Christ; but Mithra originally only in a cosmogonic or astronomical sense; Christ, being God and man, is by nature the Mediator between God and man. And so in similar instances. Mithraism had a Eucharist, but the idea of a sacred banquet is as old as the human race and existed at all ages and amongst all peoples. Mithra saved the world by sacrificing a bull; Christ by sacrificing Himself. It is hardly possible to conceive a more radical difference than that between Mithra taurochtonos and Christ crucified. Christ was born of a Virgin; there is nothing to prove that the same was believed of Mithra born from the rock. Christ was born in a cave; and Mithraists worshipped in a cave, but Mithra was born under a tree near a river. Much as been made of the presence of adoring shepherds; but their existence on sculptures has not been proven, and considering that man had not yet appeared, it is an anachronism to suppose their presence. (3) Christ was an historical personage, recently born in a well known town of Judea, and crucified under a Roman governor, whose name figured in the ordinary official lists. Mithra was an abstraction, a personification not even of the sun but of the diffused daylight; his incarnation, if such it may be called, was supposed to have happened before the creation of the human race, before all history. The small Mithraic congregations were like masonic lodges for a few and for men only and even those mostly of one class, the military; a religion that excludes the half of the human race bears no comparison to the religion of Christ. Mithraism was all comprehensive and tolerant of every other cult, the Pater Patrum himself was an adept in a number of other religions; Christianity was essential exclusive, condemning every other religion in the world, alone and unique in its majesty.
From a Catholic website -- not exactly the most objective source of information on this subject, is it?
\ The Persians wrote on the religion, and, as I pointed out earlier, the Mithraism adopted by the Romans had gelled in Persia two centuries before Jesus.
Please provide references to the pre-Christ teachings of Mithraism that expound the beliefs that you claim were adopted by Christianity. What I need are direct quotations from contemporary pre-Christ inscriptions to that effect. I am sceptical that any exist. In the absence of this, I view your premise as being based on atheist, or at least anti-Christian, taking points.
"His feast day was Dec. 25, which was obviously co-opted by the early Church."
Amongst Jews? Here's a good link to start with, http://www.carm.org/evidence/mithra.htm. You are OBVIOUSLY of the Freke and Gandy school of scholarship. Be careful in presenting your opinion as fact (unless you just like arguing for the sake of argument).
Wikipedia's a good place to start. It gives a general overview of Mithraism. It also includes links to a number of scholarly works available online (note, Wikipedia has a warning about the neutrality of its entries on this subject, so you might want to skip to the scholarly works). A Google search turns up about a million references, but most are not objective, either being rabidly anti-Christian, or rabidly "Christianity was first and everything else is a copycat!" One must hunt through a lot of dross before one gets to anything objective. I do have some scholarly books on ancient mystery religions at home in the attic. I'll see if I can locate them this evening.
Now there's a rigorous defense of ones position...
Actually it's an acknowledgement that the source has a sacred ox it does not want gored. For the same reason I won't readily accept material from rabidly anti-Christian sites, though in both cases I will check the source material from which they draw. I often find they will pick and choose from the source material only those points that will bolster their own positions rather than taking the source material as a whole.
So dispute the assertions rather than the source, don't be lazy. Dismantle the information, destroy the facts and disabuse the believers of their folly. Don't be lazy.
Kind of like in western theology, how GOD got Adam and Eve out of Eden...He drove them out in his Fury...
Mention of any cars then disappears until the New Testament where the 12 Apostles are brought together in one Accord...
I understand that the Persians wrote about it. I understand its origin. You evidentally don't understand WHAT was written about it.
When you can't argue the facts...
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