Smoodock's Blog

I recently received a “comment” to my What I Believe page. It was rather lengthy, not the normal two or three sentences. I decided to reply to the gentleman by way of a series of blogs that address the claims he made in his lengthy critique. Please don’t think I am seeking to make light of this man’s criticism; I mean only to give it the importance that it deserves. Obviously “Ra” [short for “Rana” in his email address (?)] thought it important enough to offer a lengthy reason why what I believe about Jesus and Christianity is wrong, so rather than give a very lengthy reply, which probably no one would read, I’ve decided to take portions of his commentary and reply to each in a separate blog. Anyone who wishes to do so may check to make sure I am quoting Ra in context, and I welcome any correction, if someone believes I am abusing the common courtesy everyone deserves who takes the time to offer his or her comments.

Ra wrote: “jesus was not god jesus was a man and i dont worship him chrisntiay is a pagan shit, ur jesus prayed to god lol how can he be god”

I have written several blogs, showing what the scriptures claim about Jesus’ Deity, including his own claims to Deity which were understood as such by the Jewish authorities of Jesus day. All I have done is show what the New Covenant text claims about Jesus. I do believe what the scriptures claim, but that is another matter. Concerning worshiping Jesus, I wouldn’t expect you to worship anyone you didn’t believe is God, so we understand one another on that point. As far as Jesus praying to God is concerned, “prayer” is nothing more than a request. We make requests of one another all the time, but making requests is not ordinarily deemed worship. I see nothing out of the ordinary with Jesus making his requests known to his Father. If the text claimed Jesus worshiped God, then you might have something to point to for consideration, as it pertains to our claim that Jesus is God in the flesh. However, the text never makes this claim.

1. Mithraism and Christianity (200BCE +)
Many have realized that as Christianity copied, re-named and inherited many Pagan myths, such as those of Mithraism, that it is hard to pin down a “start” date for Christian ideas. If you go back far enough, Christian history is actually pagan history.

Your claim above is not justified. You are not showing what “Pagan myths” Christianity is supposed to have copied. It is difficult to respond, if I must assume your argument. As far as the “beginning” for the Jesus Movement is concerned, we begin with the Gospel narratives. It is a very simple matter, but if you wish to claim the narratives stole or copied stories from other religions like Mithraism, you would have to point to the thing we are supposed to have copied. By the way, most Mithraic scholarship today admit that Christianity is not derived from that religious system.  All the hullabaloo we see today is a result of the biases of one of Mithraism’s original scholars, and these biases have been exposed, to the degree that folks, who study these matters, no longer use his arguments to make the claim your are trying to make.

“Jesus, son of the Hebrew sky God, and Mithras, son of Ormuzd are both the same myth. The rituals of Christianity coincide with the earlier rituals of Mithraism, including the Eucharist and the Communion in great detail. The language used by Mithraism was the language used by Christians. […]

I’ve never seen the God of the Hebrews referred to as the “Hebrew sky God.” Is this a term you have derived from others or is it something you have made up in order to show some similarity to the pagan faiths? Almost every god in the pagan pantheon is the son or daughter of some other god, or a god and a human. Why do you believe we copied this from Mithraism? Concerning the Eucharist, I believe you, or whomever you read, are placing Christian terminology upon a pagan myth in order to show similarity. The Mithraic cult had attendants pour the blood of a bull over the priest, and he was expected to drink as much as he could in the process. This was supposed to be the Mithraic “holy meal,” which bears absolutely no resemblance to the bread and the wine (some denomination use grape juice) used in our worship service. If you believe the language used by the Mithraic cult resembles anything used in Christianity, please, by all means, quote the text and give us a reference to the work in which you have found the similarity.

The idea of a sacrificed saviour is Mithraist, so is the symbolism of bulls, rams, sheep, the blood of a transformed saviour washing away sins and granting eternal life, the 7 sacraments, the banishing of an evil host from heaven, apocalyptic end of time when God/Ormuzd sends the wicked to hell and establishes peace. Roman Emperors, Mithraist then Christian, mixed the rituals and laws of both religions into one. Emperor Constantine established 25th of Dec, the birthdate of Mithras, to be the birthdate of Jesus too. The principal day of worship of the Jews, The Sabbath, was replaced by the Mithraistic Sun Day as the Christian holy day. The Catholic Church, based in Rome and founded on top of the most venerated Mithraist temple, wiped out all competing son-of-god religions within the Roman Empire, giving us modern literalist Christianity.”

The language used in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures are not taken from paganism. In ancient times, all peoples used various animals to sacrifice to God, as a form of worship, thanksgiving, obedience and even as a point of fellowship with one another (meal offerings). The Hebrew faith is much older than Mithraism, so the Jewish form of worship could not be considered a copy of that religion. The New Testament makes reference to these Jewish sacrifices, saying they foretold the saving death of Jesus. The symbolism we use points to the ancient Jewish faith, which foretold the coming of the Messiah.

Concerning eternal life, I believe you would have a problem proving your case here. I don’t believe any ancient faith preached what Christians do, concerning our life with Jesus in ages to come. Christianity was not a syncretistic faith. We borrowed from no one but the Jewish faith, out of which we were born. We were called Jews in the beginning. What occurred in the 4^th century AD has no bearing upon what was written and preached in the 1^st century AD. For the first three centuries documentation shows that we celebrated both the Jewish Sabbath and the 1^st day of the week as a memorial to Jesus’ resurrection. What Constantine did in the 4^th century is another matter entirely. Concerning December 25^th, we have no record of observing this day in the first and second centuries AD, so it cannot be used to show similarity between the Jesus Movement and Mithraism.