Why do you call yourself Orthodox?
Besides, mithraism came later than christianity, so if anything mithraism copied christianity.
Mithraism in the Roman Empire is at least as old as christianity maybe older.Mithraism as a religious precedes Christianity with 1400 years.
But Mithraism in the context of the Roman Empire bears little resemblance to the Persian worship of Mithras that pre-dates it. So little, in fact, that you really can't call it the same religion. Roman Mithraism was a syncretic cult that absorbed the figure of Mithras. This is quite similar to the way some gnostic cults absorbed the figure of Christ. In neither case is the syncretic cult that uses the figure a direct descendent of the faith in which the figure was originally found.
James
Keep telling yourself that.. the secret rites of Mythra were being performed in 67 BC in Cilicia.Sculptures of the roman version of Mithras slaying a bull were being produced by Greek sculptors in Pergamum in the 2nd century BC.Both this dates precede not only christianity but even the birth of Christ.
"It is tempting to identify the Roman Mithras with the Persian Mithra, except that there is no known Persian legend or text about Mithra killing a bull or being associated with other animals. On the other hand, there is a story of Ahriman, the evil god in popular developments of Zoroastrianism, killing a bull. It is also hard to explain how the Sun-god Mithra would come to be worshipped in the windowless, cave-like mithraeum.
A possible link between Persia and Rome, which could be the stage for these changes, may be the kingdoms of Parthia and Pontus in Asia Minor. Several of their kings were called Mithradates, meaning "given by Mithra", starting with Mithradates I of Parthia (died 138 BC). It would seem that, in those kingdoms, Mithra was a god whose power lent luster even to a king. And it was at Pergamum, in the 2nd century BC, that Greek sculptors started to produce bas-relief imagery of Mithra Taurocthonos, "Mithra the bull-slayer." Although the cult of Mithras never caught on in the Greek homeland, those sculptures may indicate the route between Persian Mithra and Roman Mithras.
Around the first century AD, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote about pirates of Cilicia who practiced the Mithraic "secret rites" around 67 BC. Since Cilicia was the coastal province in the southeast of Anatolia, the Mithras mentioned by Plutarch may have been worship of the Persian god Mithra; or may have been associated with Ahriman, the Persian god who killed a bull."
Mithraism arrived at Rome fully matured in the 1st century bc, before Christ.
"Mithraism arrived fully mature at Rome with the return of the legions from the east in the first century BC. As an action god of armies and the champion of heroes, he appealed to the professional Roman soldiers, who carried his cult to Iberia, Britain, the German frontiers and Dacia.
The cult of Mithras began to attract attention at Rome about the end of the first century AD, perhaps in connection with the conquest of then-Zoroastrian Armenia. The earliest material evidence for the Roman worship of Mithras dates from that period, in a record of Roman soldiers who came from the military garrison at Carnuntum in the Roman province of Upper Pannonia (near the Danube River in modern Austria, near the Hungarian border). These soldiers fought against the Parthians and were involved in the suppression of the revolts in Jerusalem from 60 A.D. to about 70 A.D. When they returned home, they made Mithraic dedications, probably in the year 71 or 72.
Statius mentions the typical Mithraic relief in his Thebaid (Book i. 719,720), around A. D. 80; Plutarch's Life of Pompey also makes it clear that the worship of Mithras was well known at that time."
http://www.crystalinks.com/mithraism.htmlThe question of the origin of Mithraism has intrigued scholars for many years. Franz Cumont, one of the greatest students of Mithraism, theorized that the roots of the Roman6mystery religion were in ancient Iran. He identified the ancient Aryan deity who appears in Persian literature as Mithra with the Hindu god Mitra of the Vedic hymns. Mithra/Mitra was a solar deity. With the coming of Zoroastrianism to Persia in the
