(1) Ch. ii.
(2) See Cumont, op. cit., who says, p. 171:—“Jamais, pas meme a l’epoque des invasions mussulmanes, l’Europe ne sembla plus pres de devenir asiatique qu’au moment ou Diocletien reconnaissait officiellement en Mithra, le protecteur de l’empire reconstitue.” See also Cumont’s Mysteres de Mithra, preface. The Roman Army, in fact, stuck to Mithra throughout, as against Christianity; and so did the Roman nobility. (See S. Augustine’s Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 2.)
(3) Cumont indeed says that the identification of Mithra with the Sun (the emblem of imperial power) formed one reason why Mithraism was NOT persecuted at that time.
(4) Epist. cvii, ad Laetam. See Robertson’s Pagan Christs, p. 350.
Nor was force the only method employed. IMITATION is not only the sincerest flattery, but it is often the most subtle and effective way of defeating a rival. The priests of the rising Christian Church were, like the priests of ALL religions, not wanting in craft; and at this moment when the question of a World-religion was in the balance, it was an obvious policy for them to throw into their own scale as many elements as possible of the popular Pagan cults. Mithraism had been flourishing for 600 years; and it is, to say the least, CURIOUS that the Mithraic doctrines and legends which I have just mentioned should all have been adopted (quite unintentionally of course!) into Christianity; and still more so that some others from the same source, like the legend of the Shepherds at the Nativity and the doctrine of the Resurrection and Ascension, which are NOT mentioned at all in the original draft of the earliest Gospel (St. Mark), should have made their appearance, in the Christian writings at a later time, when Mithraism was making great forward strides. History shows that as a Church progresses and expands it generally feels compelled to enlarge and fortify its own foundations by inserting material which was not there at first. I shall shortly give another illustration of this; at present I will merely point out that the Christian writers, as time went on, not only introduced new doctrines, legends, miracles and so forth—most of which we can trace to antecedent pagan sources—but that they took especial pains to destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own dishonesty. We learn from Porphyry (1) that there were several elaborate treatises setting forth the religion of Mithra; and J. M. Robertson adds (Pagan Christs, p. 325): “everyone of these has been destroyed by the care of the Church, and it is remarkable that even the treatise of Firmicus is mutilated at a passage (v.) where he seems to be accusing Christians of following Mithraic usages.” While again Professor Murray says, “The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant; the books of the Pagans have been DESTROYED.” (2)
(1) De Abstinentia, ii. 56; iv. 16.
(2) Four Stages, p. 180. We have probably an instance of this destruction in the total disappearance of Celsus’ lively attack on Christianity (180 A.D.), of which, however, portions have been fortunately preserved in Origen’s rather prolix refutation of the same.
Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already in preceding chapters given so many instances of belief in such a deity among the pagans—whether he be called Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or Apollo or Hercules—that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any further in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was ‘in the air’ at the time of the advent of Christianity. Even Dionysus, then a prominent figure in the ‘Mysteries,’ was called Eleutherios, The Deliverer. But it may be of interest to trace the same doctrine among the PRE-CHRISTIAN sects of Gnostics. The Gnostics, says Professor Murray, (1) “are still commonly thought of as a body of CHRISTIAN heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the Hellenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after. They must have been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the days of Paul or Apollos. Their Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was established in men’s minds before the Savior of the Christians. ‘If we look close,’ says Professor Bousset, ‘the result emerges with great clearness that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait for Christianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis, but was already present there under various forms.’”
(1) Four Stages, p. 143.
This Gnostic Redeemer, continues Professor Murray, “is descended by a fairly clear genealogy from the ‘Tritos Soter’ (‘third Savior’) (1) of early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name of Jesus or ‘Christos,’ ‘the Anointed,’ tends gradually to supersede. Above all, he is in some sense Man, or ‘the second Man’ or ‘the Son of Man’... He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man, of whom all bodily men are feeble copies.” (2)