Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [73]
Indeed, Mithraism represented the greatest challenge to Christianity, which won out by a hair over its competitor cult. Mithra has the following in common with the Christ character:
• Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds bearing gifts.
• He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
• He had 12 companions or disciples.
• Mithra's followers were promised immortality.
• He performed miracles.
• As the "great bull of the Sun," Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.85
• He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again.
• His resurrection was celebrated every year.
• He was called "the Good Shepherd" and identified with both the Lamb and the Lion.
• He was considered the "Way, the Truth and the Light," and the "Logos," "Redeemer," "Savior" and "Messiah."
• His sacred day was Sunday, the "Lord's Day," hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.
• Mithra had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter.
• His religion had a eucharist or "Lord's Supper," at which Mithra said, "He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved."86
• "His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi, a symbolical atonement or pledge of moral and physical regeneration. "87
Furthermore, the Vatican itself is built upon the papacy of Mithra, and the Christian hierarchy is nearly identical to the Mithraic version it replaced. As Walker states:
The cave of the Vatican belonged to Mithra until 376 A.D., when a city prefect suppressed the cult of the rival Savior and seized the shrine in the name of Christ, on the very birthday of the pagan god, December 25.88
Walker also says:
Christians copied many details of the Mithraic mystery-religion, explaining the resemblance later with their favorite argument that the devil had anticipated the true faith by imitating it before Christ's birth.89
Shmuel Golding states, in The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read:
Paul says, "They drank from that spiritual rock and that rock was Christ" (I Cor. 10:4). These are identical words to those found in the Mithraic scriptures, except that the name Mithra is used instead of Christ. The Vatican hill in Rome that is regarded as sacred to Peter, the Christian rock, was already sacred to Mithra. Many Mithraic remains have been found there. The merging of the worship of Attis into that of Mithra, then later into that of Jesus, was effected almost without interruption.90
In fact, the legendary home of Paul, Tarsus, was a site of Mithra worship.
Of Mithraism the Catholic Encyclopedia states, as related by Wheless, "The fathers conducted the worship. The chief of the fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived at Rome, was called `Pater Patratus. m The Mithraic pope was also known as Papa and Pontimus Maximus.
Virtually all of the elements of the Catholic ritual, from miter to wafer to altar to doxology, are directly taken from earlier Pagan mystery religions. As Taylor states, "That Popery has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doctrines from the rituals of Paganism,' is a fact which the most learned and orthodox of the established church have most strenuously maintained and most convincingly demonstrated."
Prometheus of Greece
The Greek god Prometheus is said to have migrated from Egypt, but his drama traditionally took place in the Caucasus mountains. Prometheus shares a number of striking similarities with the Christ character:
• Prometheus descended from heaven as God incarnate to save mankind.
• He had a "especially professed" friend, "Petraeus" (Peter), the fisherman, who deserted him.9'
• He was crucified, suffered and rose from the dead.
• He was called the Logos or Word.
Quetzalcoatl of Mexico
Modern scientific orthodoxy allows neither for the date provided by Graves, i.e., that