Mitra/Mithra

see also MITHRAISM AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON CHRISTIANITY.

Best lecture David Ulansey - The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezr71f2z7po&ab_channel=dreamlion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIQ0i_1eoJ8

Mitra/Mithra From... http://www.egodeath.com/mithraism.htm

http://alexanderbard.blogspot.com/2010/09/secrecy-of-mithraeum.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=QmFxMMpHFaYC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=mazdai...

http://www.iranica.com/articles/cosmogony-i

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/bull_killer/

Justin Martyr LXXI: "And when those who record the mysteries of Mithras say that he was begotten of a rock, and call the place where those who believe in him are initiated a cave, do I not perceive here that the utterance of Daniel, that a stone without hands was cut out of a great mountain, has been imitated by them, and that they have attempted likewise to imitate the whole of Isaiah's words?"

Daniel 2:34: "While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them."

The first mentions of "Mitra" come from India and Iran. The Rig Veda is a collection of sacred Sanskrit texts composed as early as 1200 B.C. Its Hymn 66 invokes "Mitra," a protector of the law and a god of light. In Iran, Mithras continued in the same vein: the modern Farsi word for "sun" is "mehr," also the root of "Mithras." The Greek historiographer Strabo (63 B.C.-A.D. 23) corroborates this report in Book XV of his Geography, noting that the Iranians "worship the sun also, whom they call Mithras." In Hymn 10 of the Yasht, an Iranian collection of praise poems to gods dating from after 250 B.C., Ahura Mazda, the god of light, commends Mithras. He tells his disciple, Zoroaster, that Mithras respects justice and brings "down terror upon the bodies of the men who lie...to [him]."

"We pretty much know for certain he wasn't originally a sun god," says David H. Sick, chair of the Greek and Roman Studies department at Rhodes College, who uses extant literary sources to study the Iranian Mithras. He adds, "The original meaning of the god's name is 'contract', so he starts with 'contract' and, somehow, becomes the solar god. ...The reason that the contract god may become a solar god is because both contracts and the sun are related to sacrifice."

In Roman reliefs, Mithras kills a bull, an action called a tauroctony. In Indo-Iranian myths, men sacrifice cattle to please the gods. Sacrifice is an element of proper conduct in Greek mythology, which Sick argues was heavily influenced by Indo-Iranian stories. If one does not sacrifice to the gods and fulfill his part of the human-divine contract, that individual will be punished. The all-seeing sun witnesses contracts between the divine and mortal worlds and also is the master of cattle-for example, Helios's herds in Book XI of Homer's Odyssey. Though Sick maintains these cows are distinct from the bull of the tauroctony, he places great emphasis on the mythological connections that produced the Iranian Mithras and his Roman cousin.

The tauroctony scene, in which Mithras kills the bull, from Rome (Wikimedia Commons)

The 19th-century Belgian archaeologist Franz Cumont, considered the father of Mithraic studies, believed that Roman Mithras was a direct descendant of the Iranian Ahura Mazda, but modern scholars now believe Mithraism was a separate development. "There's Persian elements there [in Roman Mithraism], but where they appear in Mithraism is not the way they appear anywhere in Persian materials," says Luther Martin. Roman Mithras was a distant relative, not a direct descendant, of Indo-Iranian gods.

If Mithras was a Roman creation, why did he retain the Iranian influences, like his name and solar association? "Again, we're speculating, but the Romans, like modern Americans, were fascinated by the wisdom of the east," says Martin. The Romans had an attitude of mixed veneration and condescension for eastern knowledge, says Roger Beck, author of several books on Mithraism. Though it had conquered the east, the Greco-Roman world still saw "these civilizations [as] older and thus [having] access, particularly in physiologies, to speculation about the gods and maybe secret" knowledge, Beck says. To access these ancient secrets, perhaps the Romans mimicked eastern rites and gods.