Was this on QI last night? I taped it and started to watch after I came back from a party, but fell asleep. Too much booooooze (again)

People are becoming more aware of the Mithras cult in recent years, and the history of Christmas in general. It used to be that anyone relating the history of Christmas being borrowed into Christianity from a wide range of Pagan traditions would be attacked on a Biblical basis. The ideas seem by now to have been absorbed, except among Biblical literalists. I've heard Mithras mentioned this year in some NPR stories and on some trivia-type web pages about Christmas.

Make sure to read the discussion archives of that Wiki article. It's a neat view into the inner world of wiki, especially where something like religion is concerned.

Was this on QI last night?

I watched "Christmas Unwrapped" (History Channel/ONDemand) last night which showed "how the bawdy Roman Saturnalia, a week-long festival of food and drink that culminated on December 25, became the centerpiece of the Christian year, and why the holiday is known as much for shopping as the birth of Christ."

This all brings to mind the monotheistic mystery cults of the 1st. Century A.D. and how they were adopted by Roman soldiers throughout the reaches of the empire and brought back to Rome ... paving the way for Christianity's adoption, etc.

From the wiki, it sounds like Mithraism was one of those mystery cults.

That History Channel program is really pretty good. There's an online version. Another fantastic resource on the holiday's origins is The Battle for Christmas.

I got into an argument with someone a few years ago about the origins of the Christmas story. I wasn't helping myself when I kept referring to Mothra as a basis for Christmas.

However, I think I will form a monotheistic mystery cult about a giant moth that can telepathically communicate with people.

Man, if Mothra was the basis for Christmas the there is no fucking way I'd be an atheist.

Mothra! Mothra! Bring us gifts with your great wings, oh giant flying one! Allow us to propitiate your strange small goddesses who sing so sweetly!
≡ Click to see image ≡

(our college film competition awards ceremony was called the Mothras.)

Osiris also did the life-death-resurrection thing. The rituals involved in the worship of Osiris also had the symbolic eating of the body to ensure everlasting life... "All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man."

[At one of the sushi joints I worked at, we had a special maki called the Mothra: negihama inside, rainbow outside. YUM!!]

From seanyboy's second link:

Hundreds of years before Jesus, there was a passion story told about a God man, born of a virgin mother, in a stable. He travels about with his followers, preaching and performing miracles, including turning water into wine. Eventually, he incurs the wrath of the religious authorities, who are appalled that he refers to himself as the son of god. He allows himself to be arrested and tried for blasphemy- a willing self-sacrifice. He is found guilty and executed, only to rise from the grave three days later, where the women weeping at his tomb do not recognize him until he assumes his divine form. This god, also one of the first depicted crucified, is the vine-God Dionysus.

I wonder how Christians (believers in the inerrancy of the Bible) reconcile these stories with the Biblical story. My mum is sitting right here and we're talking about this. She says they ignore it.

Not to get to deep into this, but having someone like bunnyfire weigh in would be nice. I'm truly curious and not snarking in any way.

Wouldn't it be more or less the same as Jonah, or any of the Old Testament prophets? Not that all these various resurrected folks would be recognized as prophets, necessarily, but just the general idea of people before Jesus heralding Jesus' coming?

Joseph Campbell is fascinating on this kind of stuff, too.

From the wiki, it sounds like Mithraism was one of those mystery cults.

As was Christianity originally, really. It's fascinating thinking about what it was about Christianity and the Roman empire that allows it to grow and become absorbed into the imperial framework. In terms of immediate causes Paul has a lot to do with re-shaping the religion, but there is a lot to think about in terms of wider social factors on how the empire was constituted and what made Christianity slot into it. And there is also the huge borrowing Christianity makes from polytheistic religions. The most interesting counterfactual question for me is thinking about the emperor Julian's attempt to un-Christianise the emperer - to reshape polytheism into a coherent ideology of paganism that would fit well with imperial government. If he hadn't been killed in battle, who knows where we'd be now?