Picture above: Face of Mithra or Jesus Christ or Alexander of Greece?
Picture: A beautifully carved sculpture of Mithra in the Hall of Animals at Vatican Museum. Pictures clicked by me during my visit in 2017. What a place they chose to put Mithra sculpture in!
Picture: Mithra tauroctomy sculpture in British Museum. He is shown wearing a Phrygian cap.
Picture: Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) in Greek attire
Greeks have always been very good at giving a great face and body to their gods and figures. Their imaginations gave a persona to their gods that evoked power, grace, super strength and perfect proportions. The garments of gods were also typical Greek. The God Mithras was also given a face by Greeks, which some scholars say, resembles Alexander from his early days. Seeing the face, it does seem to resemble the Greek warrior. On the other hand, many Christian scholars say that the face resembles Christ! Christian scholars deliberately look away from the unpalatable truth that Mithras was the prevailing Sun-god before the advent of Christian Sun-god, Jesus Christ.
Pictures: Mithra Sun god surrounded with a Zodiac and Solar related activities and symbolism
The most striking and common image of Mithra is that of ‘slaying’ of a Bull. But, it is a very simplistic and incorrect interpretation of a complex picture/statue which has so many components forming the whole. There is a bull who has been brought to its knees by God Mithras, digging a dagger in his shoulder, a snake, a dog and a scorpion are also attacking the bull. The scene is surrounded by the twelve signs of Zodiac. Obviously, the Mithras form most commonly worshipped, is a cosmic representation of Sun god Mithras, going across the sky traversing all zodiac positions. The Bull or Taurus is the most important animal in agriculture around the world. In some pictures or statues this scene also displays people holding agriculture produce and two persons standing on either side of Bull, holding flaming torches, one pointing upward and the other pointing downwards, seeming to show rising of sun and the sun setting at the end of the day.
MITHRAEUM
A temple of Mithras is known as Mithraeum. Archaeology has discovered more than 400 Mithraeums in widely scattered locations throughout the Roman empire, from East to West and North to South. The map gives a widespread location of Mithras temples through the Roman Empire in the first three centuries.
Picture: More than 400 Mithra temples have been discovered spread in the entire Roman Empire.
In 1954, during a building’s construction in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, a Temple of Mithras was discovered which is now known as, The London Mithraeum. During excavation, many artefacts were discovered which were later housed in the local museum. One find was a head of Mithras. When Christian scholars saw the head, they couldn’t believe their eyes. They were seeing the head of Christ!
Picture: London Mithreum and the recovered ‘head’ of Mithras from the site
In Rome, under many Catholic Churches, temples of Mithras exist even today. These Churches were obviously constructed on top of the Mithas temples.
Pictures: Most famous Christian Church, the Basilica of Saint Clemente (Basilica de San Clemente) has a large Mithra temple under it.
Picture: Santa Maria Capua Vetere in Italy carries a Mithras temple underneath.
Pictures: There is a Temple of Mithras near Carrawburgh Roman Fort on Hadrian’s Wall in UK.
Picture: A temple of Mithas at Ostia Antica Rome, also called the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres, seems to have been excavated for the first time by Petrini, in the years 1802-1804.
Picture: A Mithraeum located at the far west of Roman empire in Dura-Europos, also spelled Dura-Europus. It was a Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman border city built on 90 meters (300 feet) above the right bank of the Euphrates river, on an elevated area. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in today’s Syria.
There are vast number of them scattered throughout Rome and other cities of Roman empire. It is obvious that there was a concerted campaign towards destruction of Mithras religion and its temples when Christianity came into power and state control. Christians constructed their churches over them. It is similar to what happened in India, where so many Hindu temples were destroyed or converted to mosques by Muslim rulers. Foundations of those Hindu temples exist under the superimposed mosques.
The temples of Sun God Mithras and worship in his religion of Seven Spheres (seven steps of progression on path of righteousness) continued until the rule of Emperor Constantine. In 325AD, Constantine held the Council of Nicaea. The Creed of Nicaea or the Nicene Creed was promulgated and adopted. Christianity was declared the official religion of Rome. An official alliance between Church and Empire came into being. A politico-religious Roman Catholic Church was established and came to wield unprecedented state power and military influence. A rapid decline of the religion of Mithras followed. Roman Catholic Church launched a virtual cultural and religious genocide of Mithras religion and its followers.
On the ruins of Mithras emerged the Christian Sun god, Jesus Christ.
Charles Francois Dupuis (1742-1809): In The Origin of All Religious Worship, Dupuis states: “Let us well bear in mind here, what we have proved in another place, that Christ has all the characteristics of the God Sun in his birth, or in his incarnation in the womb of a virgin, and that this birth arrives just at the same moment, when the ancients celebrated that of the Sun or of Mithras… The actual question now is, to show, that he has also the characteristics of the God Sun in his resurrection…” (Dupuis, 243)
Dupuis calls Christians “those worshipers of the Sun under the name of Christ”
Picture: Christ in the center of the Zodiac. Image of the 11th Century Northern Italy (from the book “The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism”)
Picture: Jesus as the Sun god throughout history. Illuminated manuscript featuring Jesus as sun.
Picture: Sun worship. With Sun god in her arms and the Greek Sun god Apollo carved on the temple of Apollo
Far from being a “modern” conspiracy of atheists or internet scholars, the nature of Christ as Sun-god coming from pre-Christian traditions, rituals, architecture and artifacts, was obvious to even Church fathers.
Picture: Pope Francis Sun worship – Roman Catholic Eucharist
Jesus Christ is considered a real historical person by Christians. He appeared suddenly in 30 AD and his ministry lasted only three years, until 33 AD. He was crucified, ‘resurrected’ and then he disappeared from history. Just three years! Nobody knew him before 30 AD.
It is important for Christians to ask themselves, as Acharya S in ‘The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold’, asks –‘ Is it more scientifically plausible that 2,000 years ago the God of the cosmos took birth through the womb of a virgin as a Jewish man who walked on water, performed miracles, raised the dead, resurrected himself from death and ascended into heaven – or could it be that this tale is a reworking of older myths in currency around the known world of the time?’
Acknowledgements:
- Kenneth Humphreys: Jesus Never Existed
- Joseph Atwill: Caesar’s Messiah
- British Museum Hadron’s gallery
- Seema Anand, How Mitra became Mithras
- Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
Dr JB Ratti 
Reblogged this on Die Goldene Landschaft.
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