Changes

{{Mediawiki:kindleoasis}}

==Mithra and Key Beliefs==

Mithra or Mithras was a god with an origin in Iran and India, where his imagery and display is often associated with the sun. The religion is mostly associated with its peak in worship that occurred around the 1st-4th century CE (or AD), where it was worshiped from Scotland to India.<ref> For more on the origins of Mithra, see: Ulansey, D. (1991). The origins of the Mithraic mysteries: cosmology and salvation in the ancient world. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr.</ref> Key beliefs include the ritual slaughter of the bull by Mithra, which would likely lead to the presence of new life or emergence of life, although the meaning is not fully understood (Figure 1). Worship centered around underground temples known as Mithraea (or Mithraeum singular) that attempted to represent caves or secret, hidden places. Sometimes, in fact, the temples were in caves (Figure 2). These temples were representative of the world and the ceremonies held were to reflect a type of global worship. The worship ceremony often involved ritual feasting and was held in a type of secrecy that members take an oath to follow and worship the god. Members would be gradually initiated into the sacred rights where a total of seven levels that worshipers had to attain being part of their spiritual journey. The religion seemed to mostly incorporate men, although this might not be the case in every place. Because no written sources have survived that directly speak to the theology, outside of small inscriptions or secondary references by writers, there is still relatively little known about the religion. However, that is probably in part because it was a type of mystery cult, intended to an orally taught faith. From Persian sources, Mithra is seen as a god of justice, a good shepherd to his people, and infallible in fighting evil.<ref>For a summary on the belief system, see: Cooper, D. J. (1996). Mithras: mysteries and initiation rediscovered. York Beach, Me: S. Weiser.</ref>

[[File:Mithrasgrotte Halberg Saarbruecken.jpg|thumbnail|Figure 2. A Mithraeum site in Germany.]]

Although Mithra was worshiped in regions as far as India and Scotland, the extent of how widely spread within populations and how much of a true rival the religion was to other emerging religions like Christianity is not agreed upon by scholars. There are hundreds of Mithra temples, such as that shown in Figure 2, scattered throughout the Roman Empire, with perhaps the chief Roman temple in Rome itself; sometimes existing temples to various gods also had Mithraea underneath them.<ref> For more on where Mithra was worshiped, see: Grant, J., Gorin, S., & Fleming, N. (2008). The archaeology coursebook: an introduction to themes, sites, methods and skills (3rd ed). London ; New York: Routledge, pg. 179. </ref> It seems to have been a religion that was brought to the Roman Empire by Roman soldiers stationed in the eastern part of the empire, who became influenced by the worship of this god in the Parthian and later Sassanian empires and in the Near East in general as the soldiers encountered the local population. The god was also very popular in Indian and Iran, while Mithra was likely combined with earlier sun gods in the Near East, including Shamash and Ba'al.

However, it is likely that the Mithra in the Roman Empire was understood differently that that of Persia and Iran, although many similarities remained.<ref>For more on how Mithra was adopted across the Roman Empire, see: Beck, R. (2007). The religion of the Mithras cult in the Roman Empire: mysteries of the unconquered sun (1. publ. in paperback). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.</ref> Thus, scholars do debate how unified the belief was of Mithra and the adoption of the god could have been as such that local customs in different places adapted the religion to their own concepts, mainly incorporating the god with other gods or syncretizing religious ideas. Although in any one place the number of worshipers may have been low, the vast extent of the worship of the god does make Mithra perhaps the most widespread god until the rise of Christianity and its subsequent proselytizing faith. The wide extent of the worship of this god may explain why some ideas were adopted by Christianity. However, more likely the animosity toward this cult reflects that it may have been seen as a threat to the early Christian faith in the first few centuries after Christ. This could explain why some ideas of Mithra could have been adopted by Christians, so that some keeping some aspects of the faith may have been more attractive to some worshipers in joining Christianity; however, the subsequent suppression of the Mithra cults likely reflects it was mostly seen as a threat.

==References==

<references/>

[[Category:Wikis]]

[[Category:European History]] [[Category:Ancient History]][[Category:Religious History]][[Category: Iranian History]]