Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 06/ 7/05 11:24pm
In reply to:
QUITTNER
's message, "The 25th of December was Mithra's birthday" on 06/ 7/05 12:29pm
>Christianity, after Jesus was crucified by the Romans,
>was changed considerably in order to attract many
>non-Jews.
Not this again...
The claim that Jesus is a copycat savior has been refuted many times. There's a good reason (actually, a number of them) why most scholars reject the copycat theory.
>Mithraism, the ancient Persian religion, was
>partly absorbed by Christianiy; its followers
>celebrated Mithra's birthday on the 25th of December
>in the catacombs.
The birthday of Mithra is actually uncertain, though this doesn't stop a number of brash people from making the same claims you are making.
Perhaps most notably, the date of Jesus' birth was never mentioned in the gospels, leaving little basis for a copycat claim.
Still, you are not without some validity to claim that post-first-century Christianity incorporated some changes for convenience. One source said,
The reason, then, why the fathers of the church moved the January 6th celebration to December 25th was this, they say: it was the custom of the pagans to celebrate on this same December 25th the birthday of the Sun, and they lit lights then to exalt the day, and invited and admitted the Christians to these rites. When, therefore, the teachers of the Church saw that Christians inclined to this custom, figuring out a strategy, they set the celebration of the true Sunrise on this day, and ordered Epiphany to be celebrated on January 6th; and this usage they maintain to the present day along with the lighting of lights.
From Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries page 155.
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