Roman cults

[Gooding]

Not you. Just some stuff in the comments before you suggested value in that.

Okay.

[Gooding]

Awesome. Does anybody else have further insights on these similarities and differences? I'd say that the Roman mystery religions and Christianity have much in common in that they met in secret, their doctrines weren't easily understood outside their membership and there were more rumors than facts circulating about them among the general public. The Roman cults and the Christian faith part ways in the very important detail that involved the Christian claim to there being One universal God, which was the same claim made by Judaism. Generally, the mystery religions didn't seem to care if one offered a sacrifice to the Emperor as Divine, which was something that the Christians refused to do.

The Christians came under persecution because they were seen as seditious in refusing to offer such sacrifices, or indeed in participating in the Imperial Cult at all.http://romanimperialcult.org/ http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/...0.html?start=4 This was seen as treason and opened the Christian Church to all kinds of accusations. http://www.examiner.com/article/the-...ns-250-251-a-d

[sean]

Various similarities between Christianity and Roman mystery cults are either too exaggerated or fabricated. Mystery cults as a rule didn't proselytize - that's why they were mystery cults. And 90% of them didn't exclude the existence of other deities at most levels.

The cult of Mithra had a seven-stage system by which an initiate could transcend this reality and be rejoined with "the divine mind", which was inspired by Pythagoreanism. Some archeologists think that there were at least 600 sites of Mithra worship in the city of Rome alone around the time Christianity was becoming popular.

Mithraism wasn't really playing the same game that Christianity was, what gave people the idea that it was a "rival" was that Mithraic Mysteries were very popular among the Roman military around the same time, and the military constantly being on the move meant that Mithraism got to spread around the Empire where most mystery cults were very regional.