By Flavio Barbiero
Editor's Note: While some people may be shocked to learn that
Christianity's Jesus was not born on December 25th, historians have long
known that this date was chosen because of the birthdate of another
famous individual called Mithras. Not surprising then, we learn that
Mithras' birth was signalled by a shining star in the night sky and that
he was born to a virgin in a cave. Before he died, Mithras had a "Last
supper" and later came back from the dead. But the historical "facts"
that Christianity borrowed from Mithras go much deeper. In this article,
author and historian Flavio Barbiero traces the cult of Mithras through
recent times and shows how the power and influence of this mysterious
and secret society endures even today.
Flavio Barbiero is a retired admiral in the Italian Navy
who last served with NATO. He is the author of three books, including
The Bible Without Secrets, and is an archae- ological researcher at the
University of Bergamo. He lives in Italy.
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On 384 AD Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, the last "papa" (acronym of
the words Pater Patrum = Fathers' Father) of the so called Cult of
Mithras, died in Rome. His name, and his religious and political
appointments, are written on the basement of St Peters' Basilica,
together with the names of a long list of other Roman senators, spanning
a period from 305 to 390. The one thing that they have in common is
that they all are "patres" of Mithras.
As many as nine amongst them have the supreme title of Pater Patrum,
clear evidence that it was here, inside the Vatican, that the supreme
leader of the mithraic organization resided, at the side of the most
sacred Basilica of Christianity, erected by Constantine the Great in 320
AD.
For at least 70 years the supreme leaders of two "religions" that were
always supposed to be competitors, if not sworn enemies, lived
peacefully and in perfect harmony side by side. It was the same
Praetextatus, as prefect of the town, who defended Damasus against his
opponents, on 367, and confirmed him as bishop of Rome.
Praetextatus often declared that he willingly had accepted to be
baptized, if the see of St. Peter was offered to him. Following his
death, however, the opposite happened. The title of Pater Patrum fell
(today we would say by default) upon Damasus' successor, the bishop
Siricius, who was the first in the Church’s history, to assume the title
of "papa" (pope). Together with it he took also upon himself a long
series of other prerogatives, titles, symbols, objects and possessions,
that passed en masse from Mithraism to Christianity.
It was a true handover from the Mithraic pope to the Christian one, that
we can understand only in the light of what had happened the year
before, in 383.
On that date, the senate almost unanimously voted for the abolition
of paganism and all its symbols in Rome and throughout the Western
empire. A vote that always puzzled the historians, because in their
opinion the majority of the senators were pagans and represented the
last stronghold of paganism against the irresistible advance of
Christianity. This opinion, however, is utterly in disagreement with
what, during those same years, Ambrose -- the bishop of Milan --used to
declare that the Christians had the "majority" in the senate. Who is
right, Ambrose or modern historians?
bishop of Milan
The bishop of Milan [above] was a member of a great senatorial
family and closely followed the Roman events; so it is unlikely that he
could be wrong on a matter of that kind. On the other hand, we cannot
give the lie to the historians, because written and archaeological
evidence confirm that the majority of the Roman senators were at that
time "patres" of the Sol Invictus Mithras (the Invincible Sun Mithras), and therefore, according to common opinion, definitely pagans.
What nobody seems to have understood, however, is that the two
conditions, of affiliate of Mithras and of Christian, were all but
compatible. There is no lack of historical evidence proving it.
The most significant of many possible examples is emperor Constantine
the Great. He was an affiliate of Sol Invictus Mithras and never
disowned it, not even when he openly embraced Christianity and declared
himself to be "God's servant" and a sort of "universal bishop". His
biographer Eusebius hails him as the "new Moses", but Constantine was
baptized only on his death bed, and he never stopped minting coins with
mithraic symbols on one side and Christian on the opposite [above]; he even erected in Constantinople a colossal statue of himself wrapped up in mithraic symbols.
As for the Roman senators, several contemporary sources, starting from
St. Jerome, affirm that most of their wives and daughters were
Christian. An extant example is St. Ambrose, himself a pagan and the son
of a mithraic pagan (the prefect of Gaul Ambrose), according to
historians, although there is no doubt that his family was Christian and
lived in a profoundly Christian environment.
Indeed, from his childhood Ambrose loved to play the part of a bishop,
and in the year 353, in St. Peter's, his sister Marcellina, still a
young girl, received the veil of the consecrated virgins from Pope
Liberius in person. Formally, however, he remained a pagan until he was
designated bishop of Milan. He was actually baptized only fifteen days
before being consecrated bishop.
|
Josephus |
The fact is that in that period, Christians destined for a public career
were baptized only at the point of death, or else when, for one reason
or another, they decided to embrace the ecclesiastic career. This was
normal practice. The senator Nectarius, who was designated bishop of
Antioch by the council of Constantinople in 381, was forced to postpone
the consecration ceremony because first he had to arrange his own
baptism.
After the abolition of paganism all Roman senators became Christian
overnight, starting from that Symmachus who went down in History for his
stern defence of "pagan" traditions in front of emperor Valentinian. A
few years later, in fact, emperor Teodosius, the most fanatic persecutor
of heretics and pagans, appointed him as a consul, the highest position
in the Roman bureaucracy.
How is it possible, one might ask, that people could follow two different religions at the same time?
The Mithraic Mysteries or Mysteries of Mithras (also Mithraism) was a
mystery cult centered on the god Mithras, became popular among the
military in the Roman Empire, from the 1st to 4th centuries AD.
Information on the cult is based mainly on interpretations of the many
surviving monuments. The most characteristic of these are depictions of
Mithras as being born from a rock, and as sacrificing a bull. His
worshippers had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with
ritual meals. They met in underground temples, which survive in large
numbers. Little else is known for certain.
In every Mithraeum the centrepiece was a representation of Mithras killing a sacred bull; the so-called tauroctony.
Mithras and the bull
The image may be a relief, or free-standing, and side details may be
present or omitted. The centre-piece is Mithras clothed in Anatolian
costume and wearing a Phrygian cap; who is kneeling on the exhausted
bull, holding it by the nostrils with his left hand, and stabbing it
with his right. As he does so, he looks over his shoulder towards the
figure of Sol. A dog and a snake reach up towards the blood. A scorpion
seizes the bull's genitals. The two torch-bearers are on either side,
dressed like Mithras, Cautes with his torch pointing up and Cautopates
with his torch pointing down.
The event takes place in a cavern, into which Mithras has carried the
bull, after having hunted it, ridden it and overwhelmed its strength.
Sometimes the cavern is surrounded by a circle, on which the twelve
signs of the zodiac appear. Outside the cavern, top left, is Sol the
sun, with his flaming crown, often driving a quadriga. A ray of light
often reaches down to touch Mithras. (Thanks toWikipedia)
Cult or Religion?
This is the essential point. There is an enormous and incredible
misunderstanding (that in some way might be deliberate) about the so
called "cult" of the Sol Invictus Mithras, which is always presented as a
"religion", arisen in parallel with Christianity and in competition
with it. Some historians go so far as to maintain that this religion was
so popular and deeply rooted in Roman society that it very nearly won
the race with Christianity.
Yet there is absolute evidence that the so called "cult" of Mithras, in
Rome, was not a religion, but an esoteric organization, with several
levels of initiation, which from the oriental religion had borrowed only
the name and a few exterior symbols.
For what concerns contents, scope and operative procedures, however, the
Roman Mithras had nothing in common with the Persian god.
The Roman mithraic institution can in no way be defined as a religion
devoted to the worship of the Sun -- no more than modern Freemasonry can
be defined a religion devoted to the worship of the Great Architect of
the Universe (G:.A:.O:.T:.U:.). The comparison with modern Freemasonry
is quite appropriate and very helpful for understanding what kind of
organization we are talking about. Actually, the two institutions are
quite similar in their essential characteristic.
Freemasonry's adepts are not requested to profess any particular
creed, but only to believe in the existence of a supreme Being, however
defined. This Entity is represented in all masonic temples as the Sun,
inserted in a triangle, and with a name (Great Architect of the
Universe) which is the same given by the Pythagoreans to the Sun [above].
In these temples ceremonies of various kind and rituals are performed
that never have a religious character. Religion is explicitly banned
from the masonic temples, but in his private life every adept is free to
follow whatever creed he likes.
A link between the mithraic and the masonic institutions is far from
improbable, as there are profound similarities in the architecture and
decoration of the respective temples, symbols, rituals and so on; but
it's a theme outside the scope of this article.
The comparison has been made only with the purpose of stressing the
point that mithraism was not a religion dedicated to the worship of a
specific divinity, but a secret association of mutual assistance, whose
members were free, in their public life, to worship whatever god they
liked.
And yet all the adepts of Mithras apparently shared a common attitude
towards religion. This is a well known fact. It is the same Praetextatus
who exposes in an exhaustive way the philosophy of his organisation in
the book "Saturnalia", written by Macrobius around 430 A.D. (well after
the abolition of paganism). In a long conversation with other great
mithraic senators, like Symmachus and Flavianus, Praetextatus affirms
that all the different gods of the pagan religion are only different
manifestations (or even different names) of a unique supreme Entity,
represented by the Sun, the Great Architect of the Universe. This
syncretistic vision has been defined, with full reason, as "monotheistic
paganism".
Most historians agree that the followers of Mithras were monotheists;
what they fail to underline is the fact that their particular
syncretistic vision allowed them to "infiltrate" and get hold of the
cult (and revenues) of all pagan divinities. In fact all mithraic
grottos harboured (exactly as the masonic temples of today) a host of
pagans gods like Saturn, Athena, Venus, Hercules and so on, and the
adepts of Mithras in their public life were priests at the service not
only of the Sun (who was worshipped in public temples which had nothing
to do with the mithraic grottos), but also of all the other Roman gods.
In fact, all the senators who figure in the inscriptions at the base of
St Peters' Basilica, alongside the titles of vir clarissimus (senator),
pater, or pater patrum in the cult of Sol Invictus Mithras, also held a
long series of other religious positions: sacerdos, hierophanta,
archibucolus of Brontes or of Hecate, Isis, and Liberius; maior augur,
quindecimvir sacris faciundis and even pontifex of various pagan cults.
They were also in charge of the college of the Vestal Virgins and of the
sacred fire of Vesta. In the senate, there was no manifestation of cult
connected to the pagan tradition that was not celebrated by a senator
adhering to the Sol Invictus Mithras. That same senator most of the time
was backed by a Christian family.
Pagan or Christian
So, what were they, pagan or Christian? The available evidence on this
point is ambiguous. Also the character of Mithras himself, as he is
depicted by Christian writers, is absolutely ambiguous.
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A long series of analogies exists between
him [Mithras] and Jesus. Mithras was born on December 25 in a stable to a
virgin, surrounded by shepherds who brought gifts. He was venerated on
the day of the sun (Sunday). He bore a halo around his head. He
celebrated a last supper with his faithful followers before returning to
his father. He was said not to have died, but to have ascended to
heaven from where he would return in the last days to raise the dead and
judge them, sending the good to Paradise and the evil to Hell. He
guaranteed his followers immortality after baptism.
Furthermore, the followers of Mithras believed in the immortality of the
soul, the last judgment, and the resurrection of the dead at the end of
the world. They celebrated the atoning death of a saviour who had risen
on a Sunday. They celebrated a ceremony corresponding to the Catholic
Mass during which they consumed consecrated bread and wine in memory of
the last supper of Mithras --and during the ceremony they used hymns,
bells, candles, and holy water. Indeed, they shared with Christians a
long series of other beliefs and ritual practices, to the point that
they were practically indistinguishable from each other in the eyes of
the pagans and also of many Christians.
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The existence of a connection between Christianity and the sun cult from
the earliest times is recognized by the church fathers, too. Tertullian
writes that the pagans "...believe that the Christian God is the Sun,
because it is a well-known fact that we pray turning towards the rising
Sun, and that on the Sun's day we give ourselves to jubilation."
(Tertullian, Ad Nationes 1, 13). He attempts to justify this substantial
commonality to the eyes of the Christian faithful, attributing it to
Satan's plagiarism of the most sacred rites and beliefs of the Christian
religion.
Constantine believed that Jesus Christ and Sol Invictus Mithras were
both aspects of the same Superior Divinity. He was certainly not the
only one to have this conviction.
Neoplatonism contended that the religion of the sun represented a
"bridge" between paganism and Christianity. Jesus was often called by
the name Sol Justitiae (Sun of Justice) and was represented by statues
that were similar to the young Apollo.
Clement of Alexandria describes Jesus driving
the chariot of the sun across the sky, and a mosaic of the fourth
century shows him on the chariot (see above) while he ascends to
heaven, represented by the sun. On some coins of the fourth century, the
Christian banner at the top reads "Sol Invictus." A large part of the
Roman population believed that Christianity and the worship of the sun
were closely connected, if not the same.
For a very long time the Romans kept on worshipping both the Sun and
Christ. In 410, pope Innocentius authorized the resumption of ceremonies
in honour of the Sun, hoping with that to save Rome from the Visigoths.
And in 460 pope Leo the Great wrote: "most Christians, before entering
the Basilica of St Peter, turn towards the sun and bow in its honour."
The bishop of Troy openly continued to profess his worship of the sun even during his episcopate.
Another important example in this sense is that of Synesius of Cyrene, a
disciple of the famous Neoplatonic philosopher Apathias, who was killed
by the mob in Alexandria in 415. Synesius, not yet baptized, was
elected bishop of Ptolemais and metropolitan bishop of Cyrenaica, but he
accepted the position only on condition that he did not have to retract
his Neoplatonic ideas or renounce his worship of the Sun.
Friends or Enemies?
In the light of all of this, how should we consider the position of
Mithraists towards Christianity? Competitors or cooperators? Friends or
enemies? Perhaps the best indication is given by the coins minted by
emperor Constantine until 320 a.D., with Christian symbols on one side,
mithraic symbols on the other.
Were Jesus and Mithras two faces of the same coin?
In order to explain the strict relation between Christianity and Mithraism we have to go back to their origins.
Christianity, as we know it, by universal
recognition is a creation of St Paul, the Pharisee who was sent to Rome
around 61 AD, where he founded the first Christian community of the
capital.
The religion imposed by Paul in Rome was quite different from that
preached by Jesus in Palestine and put into practice by James the Just,
who was subsequently the leader of the Christian community of Jerusalem.
Jesus' preaching was in line with the way of living and thinking of the
sect known as the Essenes. The doctrinal contents of Christianity as it
emerged in Rome, at the end of the 1st century, instead, are
extraordinarily close to those of the sect of the Pharisees, to which
Paul belonged.
Paul was executed probably in 67 by Nero, together with most of his
followers. The Roman Christian community was virtually wiped out by
Nero's persecution. We do not have the slightest information about what
happened in this community during the following 30 years; a very
disturbing blackout of news, because something very important happened
in Rome at that period. In fact, some of the most eminent citizens of
the capital were converted, like the consul Flavius Clemens, cousin of
emperor Domitian; besides the Roman Church assumed a monarchic structure
and imposed its leadership on all the Christian communities of the
empire, which had to adjust their structure and their doctrine
accordingly. This is proved by a long letter of pope Clemens to the
Corinthians, written towards the end of Domitian's reign, where his
leadership is clearly stated.
This means that during the years of the blackout, somebody who had
access to the imperial house had revived the Roman Christian community
to such a point that it could impose its authority upon all the other
Christian communities. And it was "somebody" who perfectly knew the
doctrine and thinking of Paul, 100% Pharisaic.
The mithraic organization also was born in that same period and in that same environment.
Given the scarcity of written documents on the subject, the origin and
the spread of the cult of Mithras are known to us almost exclusively
from archaeological evidence (remains of mithraea, dedicatory
inscriptions, iconography and statues of the god, reliefs, paintings,
and mosaics) that survived in large quantities throughout the Roman
empire. These archaeological testimonies prove conclusively that, apart
from their common name, there was no relationship at all between the
Roman cult of Mithras and the oriental religion from which it is
supposed to derive.
In the whole of the Persian world, in fact, there is nothing that can be
compared to a Roman mithraeum. Almost all the mithraic monuments can be
dated with relative precision and bear dedicatory inscriptions. As a
result, the times and the circumstances of the spread of the Sol
Invictus Mithras (these three names are indissolubly linked in all
inscriptions, so there is no doubt that they refer to the same and only
institution) are known to us with reasonable certainty. Also known are
the names, professions, and responsibilities of a large
number of people
connected to it.
The first mithraeum [above: an example] discovered was set up in
Rome at the time of Domitian, and there are precise indications that it
was attended by people close to the imperial family, in particular
Jewish freedmen. The mithraeum, in fact, was dedicated by a certain
Titus Flavius Iginus Ephebianus, a freedman of emperor Titus Flavius,
and therefore almost certainly a Romanised Jew. From Rome the mithraic
organization spread, during the following century, all over the western
empire.
There is a third event, that happened in that same period, connected
somehow to the imperial family and to the Jewish environment, to which
no particular attention was ever given by the historians: the arrival in
Rome of an important group of persons, 15 Jewish high priests, with
their families and relatives. They belonged to a priestly class that had
ruled Jerusalem for half a millennium, since the return from the
Babylonian exile, when 24 priestly lines had stipulated a covenant
amongst them and created a secret organization with the scope of
securing the families' fortunes, through the exclusive ownership of the
Temple and the exclusive administration of the priesthood.
The Roman domination of Judea had been marked by passionate tensions on
the religious level, which had provoked a series of revolts, the last of
which, in AD 66, was fatal for the Jewish nation and for the priestly
family. With the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus Flavius in AD 70, the
Temple, the instrument of the family's power, was razed to the ground,
never to be rebuilt, and the priests were killed by the thousands.
There were survivors, of course, in particular a group of 15 high
priests, who had sided with the Romans, surrendering to Titus the
treasure of the Temple, and for that reason they had kept in their
properties and were given Roman citizenship. They then followed Titus to
Rome, where they apparently disappeared from the stage of history,
never again to play a visible role -- apart from the one who undoubtedly
was the leader of that group, Josephus Flavius.
Josephus (see pix above) was a priest who
belonged to the first of the 24 priestly family lines. At the time of
the revolt against Rome, he had played a leading role in the events that
tormented Palestine.
Sent by the Jerusalem Sanhedrin to be governor of Galilee, Jesephus had
been the first to fight against the legions of the Roman general Titus
Flavius Vespasianus, who had been ordered by Nero to quell the revolt.
Barricaded inside the fortress of Jotapata, he bravely withstood the
Roman troops’ siege. When the city finally capitulated, he surrendered,
asking to be granted a personal audience with Vespasian (The Jewish War,
III, 8,9).
Their meeting led to an upturn in the fortunes of Vespasian, as well as
in those of Josephus: the former was shortly to become emperor in Rome,
while the latter not only had his life spared, but not long afterward,
he was "adopted" into the emperor's family and assumed the name Flavius.
He then received Roman citizenship, a patrician villa in Rome, a life
income and an enormous estate. The prize of his treason.
The priests of this group had one thing in common: they were all
traitors of their people and therefore certainly banished from the
Jewish community. But they all belonged to a millenarian family line,
bound together by the secret organization created by Ezra, and
possessing a unique specialisation and experience in running a religion
and a country through it. The scattered remnants of the Roman Christian
community offered them a wonderful opportunity to profit their
millennial experience.
We don't know anything about their activity in Rome, but we have clear hints of it through the writings of Josephus Flavius.
After a few years Josephus started to write down the history of the
events of which he had been a protagonist, with the aim, apparently, of
justifying his betrayal and that of his companions. It was God's will,
he claims, who called him to build a Spiritual Temple, instead of the
material one destroyed by Titus.
These words certainly were not addressed to Jewish ears, but to Christian ones.
Most historians are sceptical about the fact that Josephus was a
Christian, and yet the evidence in his writings is compelling. In a
famous passage (the so called Testimonium Flavianum) in his book Jewish Antiquities,
he reveals his acceptance of two fundamental points, the resurrection
of Jesus, and his identification with the Messiah of prophecies, which
are necessary and sufficient condition for a Jew of that time to be
considered a Christian. The Christian sympathies of Josephus also
clearly emanate from other passages of the same work, where he speaks
with great admiration of John the Baptist as well as of James, the
brother of Jesus.
Josephus Flavius and St. Paul
The arguments used by Josephus Flavius to justify his own betrayal and
that of his brethren seem to echo the words of St. Paul. The two seem to
be perfectly in agreement with regard to their attitude toward the
Roman world. Paul, for example, considered it his task to free the
church of Jesus from the narrowness of Judaism and from the land of
Judaea and to make it universal, linking it to Rome.
They are also in agreement on other significant points: for example,
both of them declare their belief in the doctrines of the Pharisees,
which were those that were wholly received by the Roman church.
There are sufficient historical indications to lead us to consider it
certain that the two knew each other and were linked by a strong
friendship. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that after reaching
Jerusalem, Paul was brought before the high priests and the Sanhedrin to
be judged (Acts 22:30). He defended himself:
"Brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question."
And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees
and the Sadducees: and the multitude was divided. For the Sadducees say
that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the
Pharisees confess both. And there arose a great cry: and the scribes
that were of the Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, "We find no
evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us
not fight against God.
And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain, fearing lest
Paul should have been pulled in pieces by them, commanded the soldiers
to go down, and to take him by force from among them."
Josephus was a high-ranking priest and he was in Jerusalem at that time;
he certainly was present at that assembly. He had joined the sect of
the Pharisees at the age of nineteen and so he must have been among
those priests who stood up to defend Paul.
The apostle was then handed over to the Roman governor, Felix, who kept
him under arrest for some time, until he was sent to Rome, together with
some other prisoners (Acts 27:1), to be judged by the emperor, to whom,
as a Roman citizen, Paul had appealed. In Rome, he spent two years in
prison (Acts 28:39) before being set free in AD 63 or 64.
In his autobiography (Life, 3.13), Josephus says:
"Between the age of twenty-six and twenty-seven I embarked on a journey
to Rome, for the following reason. During the period when he was
governor of Judaea, Felix had sent some priests to Rome to justify
themselves before the emperor; I knew them to be excellent people, who
had been arrested on insignificant charges. As I desired to devise a
plan to save them, . . . I journeyed to Rome."
Somehow, Josephus succeeded in reaching Rome, where he made friends with
Aliturus, a Jewish mime who was appreciated by Nero. Thanks to
Aliturus, he was introduced to Poppaea, the wife of the emperor, and
through her agency, he succeeded in freeing the priests (Life, 3.16).
The correspondence of dates, facts, and people involved is so perfect
that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Josephus went to Rome,
at his own personal risk and expense, specifically to free Paul and his
companions, and that it was due to his intervention that the apostle
was released.
This presupposes that the relationship between the two was much closer
than that of a simple occasional acquaintance. Thus Josephus must have
known much more about Christianity than is evident from his works, and
his knowledge came directly from the teaching of Paul, of whom, in all
likelihood, he was a disciple.
When Josepus returned to Rome in AD 70, his master had been executed,
together with most of the Christians he had converted. His fatherland
had been annihilated, the Temple destroyed, the priestly family
exterminated, and his reputation tarnished by the stain of treachery. He
must have been animated by very strong desires for redemption and
revenge. Besides he probably felt responsible for the destinies of the
humiliated remnants of one of the greatest families in the world, the 15
high priests who shared his same condition.
There is information about a meeting presided over by Josephus Flavius,
unquestionably the strongest and most important character in that group
of people, during the course of which the priests examined the situation
of the their family and decided on a strategy to improve its fortunes.
Josephus lucidly conceived a plan that in those circumstances would have
appeared to anybody else to be the utmost folly. This man, sitting amid
the smoking ruins of what had been his fatherland, surrounded by a few
humiliated, disconsolate survivors rejected by their fellow countrymen,
aspired to no less than conquering that enormous, powerful Empire that
had defeated him, and establishing his descendants and those of the men
around him as the ruling class of that Empire.
The first step in that strategy was taking control of the newborn
Christian religion and transforming it into a solid basis of power for
the priestly family.
Having come to Rome in the entourage of Titus, and thus strong in the
emperor's protection and well supplied from an economic point of view,
these priests could not have encountered great problems in taking over
the leadership of the tiny group of Christians who had survived Nero's
persecution, legitimated as they were by the relationship of Josephus
Flavius with Paul.
Only six years had passed since he sought Paul's freedom from Roman
imprisonment. The apostle of the nations must have died at least three
years before. Josephus must have felt a moral obligation to continue the
deeds of his ancient master whose doctrine he knew perfectly, and,
sensing its potential for propagation in the Roman world, he dedicated
himself and his organization of priests to its practical implementation.
Once he had created a strong Christian community in the capital, it
could not have been difficult for the priests also to impose its
authority on the other Christian communities scattered around the
Empire—first of all, on those that had been created or catechized by
Paul himself.
Josephus Flavius and the Sol Invictus Mithras
Josephus Flavius knew all too well that no religion has a future unless
it is an integral part of a system of political power. It was a concept
innate in the DNA, so to speak, of the priests of Judah that religion
and political power should live together in symbiosis, mutually
sustaining each other. It is unimaginable that he could think that the
new religion would spread throughout the Empire independently, or even
in contrast to political power.
His first aim was, therefore, seizing power. Thanks not only to the
millennial experience of his family, but also to his own experience of
life, Josephus knew all too well that political power, especially in an
elephantine organism such as the Roman Empire, was based on military
power, and military power was based on economic power, and economic
power on the ability to influence and control the financial leverage of
the country. His plan must have envisaged that the priestly family would
sooner or later take control of these levers. Then the Empire would be
in his hands, and the new religion would be the main instrument to
maintain control of it.
What was Josephus' plan to achieve this
ambitious project? He didn't have to invent anything; the model was
there: the secret organization created by Ezra a few centuries earlier,
which had assured power and prosperity to the priestly families for
half a millennium. He only had to make a few changes, in order to
disguise this institution in the pagan world as a mystery religion,
dedicated to the Greek god Helios, the Sun, for his undoubted assonance
with the Jewish god El Elyon. He was represented as invincible, the Sol
Invictus, to spur the morale of his adepts, and at his side was put, as
an inseparable companion, a solar divinity of that same Mesopotamia from
where the Jews had originated, Mithras, the Sun's envoy on Earth to
redeem humanity; and all around them, in the mithraea, the statues of
various divinities, Athena, Hercules, Venus and so on. A clear reference
to God Father, and his envoy on earth Jesus, surrounded by their
attributes of wisdom, strength, beauty and so on, that was well
understood by the Christians, but was perfectly pagan to a pagan's eye.
This organization didn't have any religious purpose: his scope was to
preserve union between the priestly families and assure their security
and wealth, through mutual support and a common strategy, aimed at
infiltrating all the positions of power in the Roman society.
It was secret. In spite of the fact that it lasted for three centuries
and it had thousands of members, most of them very cultured men, there
isn't a single word written by a member about what was going on during
the meetings of the mithraic institution, what decisions were taken and
so on. This means that absolute secrecy was always maintained about the
works that were held in a mithraeum.
The access was evidently reserved for the descendants of priestly
families, at least at the operative level, from the third grade up
(occasionally people of different origin could be accepted in the first
two grades, as in the case of emperor Commodus). This system of
recruitment is perfectly in line with the historical and archaeological
evidence.
Even at the peak of its power and diffusion, the Sol Invictus Mithras
appears to be an elitist institution, with a very limited number of
members. Most mithraea were very small in size and could not harbour
more than 20 people. It was definitely not a mass religion, but an
organisation to which only the top leaders of the army and of the
imperial bureaucracy were admitted. Yet, we don’t know anything about
the enlisting policy of the Sol Invictus Mithras.
Did it recruit its members amongst the high ranks of Roman society, or
was opposite true -- that it was the members of this organization who
"infiltrated" all the positions of power of that society? Historical
evidence favours the hypothesis that membership in the institution was
reserved on a ethnic basis. Access to it, at least at the operative
level, was most likely reserved for descendants of the group of the
Jewish priests who came to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The Sol Invictus Mithras conquers the Roman empire
Written sources and the archaeological testimonies give evidence that
from Domitian on Rome always remained the most important centre of the
Sol Invictus Mithras institution, which had become firmly entrenched at
the very heart of the imperial administration, both in the palace and
among the Praetorian Guard.
From Rome very soon the organization spread to the nearby Ostia, the
port with the greatest volume of trading in the world, as goods and
foodstuffs from every part of the Empire arrived to delight the
insatiable appetite of the capital. In the course of the second and
third centuries, almost forty mithraea were built there, clear evidence
that the members of the institution had taken control of trading
activities, source of incomparable incomes and economic power.
Subsequently, it spread to the rest of the Empire. The first Mithraea to
arise outside the Roman circle were built, shortly before AD 110, in
Pannonia, at Poetovium, the main customs centre of the region, then in
the military garrison of Carnuntum, and soon after in all the Danubian
provinces (Rhaetia, Noricum, Pannonia, Mesia, and Dacia).
The followers of the cult of Mithras included
the customs officers, who collected a tax on every kind of transport
dispatched from Italy toward central Europe and vice versa; the imperial
functionaries who controlled transport, the post, the administration of
finance and mines; and last, the military troops of the garrisons
scattered along the border. Almost in the same period as in the Danubian
region, the cult of Mithras started to appear in the basin of the
Rhine, at Bonn and Treves. This was followed by Britannia, Spain, and
North Africa, where mithraea appeared in the early decades of the second
century, always associated with administrative centres and military
garrisons.
Archaeological evidence, therefore, conclusively demonstrates that
throughout the second century AD, the members of Sol Invictus Mithras
occupied the main positions in the public administration, becoming the
dominant class in the outlying provinces of the Empire -- especially in
central and northern Europe. We have seen that the members of Sol
Invictus Mithras had infiltrated also the pagan religion, taking control
of the cult of the main divinities, starting with the Sun.
The winning move, however, which made irresistible the success of the
Mithraic institution, was that of seizing control of the army. Josephus
Flavius knew, from direct experience, that the army could become the
arbiter of the imperial throne. Whoever controlled the army controlled
the Empire. The main aim fixed by him for the
Mithraic organization,
therefore, must have been infiltrating the army and taking control of
it.
Soon, mithraea sprang up in all the places where Roman garrisons were
stationed. Within a century, the cult of Mithras, had succeeded in
controlling all the Roman legions stationed in the provinces and along
the borders, at a point that the worship of Sol Invictus Mithras is
often considered by historians to be the "religion" typical of Roman
soldiers.
Even before the army, however, the attention of Sol Invictus had been
concentrated on the Praetorian Guard, the emperor's personal guard. It
is not by chance that the second known dedicatory inscription of a
Mithraic character regards a commander of the Praetorium, and that the
concentration of mithraea was particularly high in the area surrounding
the Praetorian barracks. The infiltration of this body must have started
under the Flavian emperors. They could count on the unconditional
loyalty of many Jewish freedmen who owed them everything -- their lives,
their safety, and their well-being. The Roman emperors were somewhat
reluctant to entrust their personal safety to officers who came from the
ranks of the Roman senate, their main political adversary, and so the
ranks of their personal guard were mainly filled with freedmen and
members of the equestrian class. This must have favoured the Sol
Invictus, which made the Praetorium its unchallenged fief from the
beginning of the second century on.
Once it achieved control of the Praetorium and the army, the Sol
Invictus Mithras was able to put its hands also on the imperial office.
This actually happened on 193 a.D., when Septimius Severus was
proclaimed emperor by the army. Born in Leptis Magna, in North Africa,
to an equestrian family of high-ranking bureaucrats, he was certainly an
affiliate of the Mithraic organization, having married Julia Domna,
sister of Bassianus, a high priest of Sol Invictus. From then on, the
imperial office was prerogative of the Sol Invictus Mithras, as all
emperors were proclaimed and/or removed by the army or by the praetorian
guard.
As far as we can judge with hindsight, the
final objective of the strategy devised by Josephus Flavius was the
complete substitution of the ruling class of the Roman Empire with
members of Sol Invictus Mithras. This result was achieved in less than
two centuries, thanks to the policy enforced by the Mitharaic emperors.
The backbone of the Roman imperial administration was formed by new
families of unknown origin, that had emerged at the end of the first
century and the beginning of the second, in antagonism to the senatorial
aristocracy, traditionally opposed to the imperial power. They formed
the so called "equestrian" order which soon became the undisputed
fiefdom of the Sol Invictus Mithras. For sure most of the families of
the 15 Jewish priests of Josephus Flavius' entourage, rich, well
connected and enjoying the imperial favour, ended up belonging to this
order.
The Sol Invictus emperors all belonged to the equestrian order and
governed in open opposition to the senate, humiliating it, depriving it
of its prerogatives and wealth, and striking it physically with the
exile and execution of a great number of its high-profile members. At
the same time they started introducing equestrian families into the
senate. This policy had been initiated by Septimius Severus and
developed by Gallienus (who, we must remember, was also the author of
the first Edict of Tolerance toward Christianity) who established by
decree that all those who had held the position of provincial governors
or prefects of the Praetorian Guard, both appointments reserved for the
equestrian order, would enter by right into the senatorial ranks.
This right was later extended to other categories of functionary, great
bureaucrats and high-ranking army officers (all members of the mithraic
institution). As a result, within a few decades, virtually the whole
equestrian class passed into the ranks of the senate, outnumbering the
families of the original Italic and Roman aristocracy.
In the meantime the spread of Christianity throughout the empire
proceeded at a steady pace. Wherever the representatives of Mithras
arrived, there a Christian community immediately sprang up. By the end
of the second century, there were already at least four bishop's sees in
Britannia, sixteen in Gaul, sixteen in Spain, and one in practically
every big city in North Africa and the Middle East. In 261 Christianity
was recognized as lawful religion by the mithraic Gallienus and was
proclaimed the official religion of the empire by the mithraic
Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century, although it was
still in a minority in Roman society. It was then gradually enforced
upon the population of the empire, with a series of measures that
culminated at the end of the fourth century with the abolition of the
pagan religions and the mass "conversion" of the Roman senate.
The final situation regarding the ruling class of the Western Empire was
the following: the ancient nobility of pagan origin had virtually
disappeared and the new great nobility, that identified itself with the
senatorial class of the landowners, was made up by former members of the
Sol Invictus Mitras. On the religious level, paganism had been
eliminated and Christianity had become the religion of all the
inhabitants of the Empire; it was controlled by ecclesiastical
hierarchies, coming entirely from the senatorial class, endowed with
immense landed properties and quasi-royal powers within their sees.
The priestly families had become the absolute master of that same Empire
that had destroyed Israel and the Temple of Jerusalem. All its high
offices, both civil and religious, and all its wealth were in their
hands, and supreme power had been entrusted in perpetuity, by divine
right, to the most illustrious of the priestly tribes, the "Gens Flavia"
(starting from Constantine all Roman emperors bore the name of
Flavius), in all likelihood descendants of Josephus Flavius.
Three centuries earlier, Josephus had written with pride: "My family is
not obscure, on the contrary, it is of priestly descent: as in all
peoples there is a different foundation of the nobility, so with us the
excellence of the line is confirmed by its belonging to the priestly
order" (Life 1.1). By the end of the fourth century his descendants had
every right to apply those same words to the Roman Empire.
At that point the institution of the Sol Invictus Mithras was no more
necessary to boost the fortunes of the priestly family and it was
disposed of. It had been the instrument of the most successful
conspiracy in History.
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note: ...as this blogger agrees with the general message,
he might not agree with some points as stated by the author