Mithras Supreme

But you brought up the whole godman thing and the "Jesus didn't exist" thing.

 

First of all, I brought up the godman thing in response to your statement that there were differences between Mithraism and Christianity. Second of all, I haven't said Jesus didn't exist on this thread.

 

Yes, any website which features this picture is just oozing with credibility. Certainly makes ME want to believe everything they say.

 

You alluded it.

Tone aside, the only way you could make that statement is if you thought Jesus didn't exist. Otherwise, 'literalist christianity' would have been there all along.

But I'm done arguing this here. Absolutely done. If you want to keep on it, go to the Chat forum. I'd prefer to keep this thread as much on topic as possible. This thread has been about the timeline inspired by this same thread, for nearly a year now. If you want to make your own, then make your own. But I'm not going to go into the different dark ages map thread and start going on about how the modern koran developed later than muslims hold it to have developed, or something like that (besides the fact that Islam in that timeline is a completely different religion). They've already pursued the idea, which is a rarity. We've all got great ideas, but a thread where someone actually makes a timeline is rare, and those based on someone else's map/question/whatever are rarer still.

 

This isn't an argument you should've started with me in the first place because I didn't start the pagan godman argument on this thread. Leo did, by contradicting my assertion that Mithras was a pagan godman. So, if anything, you should've been bitching at him, not me.

 

In originally researching this, I came across a book that indicates we may have drastically underestimated the number of Mithraists in the Empire, based on number and size of Mithraea (sp?). The "churches" of this religion were not, apparently, meant to hold the entire congregation at once. Mithras was quite popular with the Roman military, who did not have their days off on the same day (for reasons Israel learned on Yom Kippur 1973). Thus, the "apparent" number of adherants should be multiplied by seven. This still does not make them greater in number than Christians in early 4th Century, but it comes close.

 

This suggests that in a 'modern' Mithraic world there would have been no 'legislated day of rest' but rather a continual low 'hum' of religious activity. This raises the issue of how holidays would have been handled. Perhaps in all but rare occasions, they would have taken place over several days, during which time observant Mithraists would have to fulfill certain rites.

 

good work w/ this one gents... keep it up and don't let the bastards get you down.

 

As I said before, a wealth of reliable information on Mithraism can be found at the Encyclopaedia Iranica, founded and directed by the Ehsan Yarshater, professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and counting among its contributors and editors such luminaries as Prods Oktor Skjaervo, Aga Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard University. Fortunately for our purposes, it has a web presence. You can read more about the project here at the Columbia University news service.

 

The Wikipedia article (don't know how reliable Leo would consider it) suggests Mithraism was already syncretizing with other belief systems, particularly ones involved in astrology. This would make an Isis syncretizing more plausible.

 

Bump.
Norman used a character from this TL in his Crosstime Semester at Sea stories. And I used a more advanced outcome of the TL as the seed of a second contact sphere in my more recent Child's Guide to Intertimeline Travel.