Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

BigEd369 t1_j9ld6h2 wrote

Reply to comment by Vainpaix in TIL about Saint Josaphat (aka Būdhasaf), a legendary Christian saint whose life is based on Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. His life story tells of how Josaphat, a son of an Indian kind that persecuted the Christian Church in his kingdom, converted to Christianity. by kweenllama

That would be the story of a human male born without a human father (or mother, to be fair) by divine power and destined to ascend to divinity, a god who’s cult used caves as isolated meeting spots just like the early cChristians. A religion in which priests could only be male, and the adherents of said religion recognized seven sacred sacramental practices? Did you mean that Mithras? Because there are a lot of definite parallels. A new story sharing a lot of, but not all of, the themes of an existing story is both completely plausible and extremely likely.

2

Vainpaix t1_j9lp1u4 wrote

> That would be the story of a human male born without a human father (or mother, to be fair) by divine power and destined to ascend to divinity

Mithras was not human....

> a god who’s cult used caves as isolated meeting spots just like the early cChristians.

And? Mithraics worshipped in underground chambers and caves because it was a mystery cult, Christians did it because they were a persecuted minority within a persecuted minority....

> and the adherents of said religion recognized seven sacred sacramental practices?

Coincidental. Actually, straight up misleading on your part - levels of initiatien and the number of sacraments is not the same....

1

BigEd369 t1_j9ls7d7 wrote

1- Okay then, if I’m wrong, I’ll be cool with it, but your statements haven’t led me to any such conclusion. 2- Please provide some sort of explanation for you statement that Mithras wasn’t a human, I’m not accepting “No he wasn’t” as a valid answer. 3- You left off the part where I talked about old stories and myths informing new ones, so if you need everything to line up perfectly before you’ll consider it as possible, we’ll that’s not going to happen for anything that happened prior to about 1300 CE in Europe, and can’t happen for most of European history until the 1600s. 4- Christianity was also a mystery cult at that time, one of the theories on its rise in popularity was that the Christians didn’t charge an admission fee or the like, unlike most other mystery cults at the time. 5- As for your statements that the seven sacraments were just a coincidence, you’re stating that two religions being practiced in the same place at the same time (place meaning not just Rome but also the Roman underground caves and public works, time meaning the 1st century CE) independently had similarities going on but that there was no crossover or common source for any of the commonalities, so that’s a claim that needs some backup. TL;DR, I won’t mind being wrong, but I won’t accept that I’m wrong just because you say “that’s not true” or “you’re wrong”, you need to convince the same way I’m trying to convince you, by demonstrating reasons and facts that the other would or could find compelling.

2

Vainpaix t1_j9ly911 wrote

> 2- Please provide some sort of explanation for you statement that Mithras wasn’t a human, I’m not accepting “No he wasn’t” as a valid answer.

Mithras was literally the incarnation of the light of the Sun, a living attribute of his father's power as the Sun. He slays the bull that becomes the moon, like the sun's rays slays the darkness of night.

> 3- You left off the part where I talked about old stories and myths informing new ones, so if you need everything to line up perfectly before you’ll consider it as possible, we’ll that’s not going to happen for anything that happened prior to about 1300 CE in Europe, and can’t happen for most of European history until the 1600s.

Worship of Christ is older than Roman Mithraism.

> 4- Christianity was also a mystery cult at that time, one of the theories on its rise in popularity was that the Christians didn’t charge an admission fee or the like, unlike most other mystery cults at the time.

Christianity was and is a proselytising religion, the mystery cults meanwhile were akin to Freemasonry in how only a limited number of initiates were allowed and how they were forbidden from sharing with outsiders wtf they were up to.

> 5- As for your statements that the seven sacraments were just a coincidence, you’re stating that two religions being practiced in the same place at the same time (place meaning not just Rome but also the Roman underground caves and public works, time meaning the 1st century CE) independently had similarities going on but that there was no crossover or common source for any of the commonalities, so that’s a claim that needs some backup.

The seven levels of initiatien in Mithraism corresponds to the number of planets, thereby the attributes of the levels; the number of Sacraments within the Chrstian Church varies, the definition of what a Sacrament is varies, but that there are seven was only pegged down within the Catholic Church in 1215, nearly 900-years after Mithraism started its decline. It is coincidental.

1