The assertion that the dying/resurrected god idea did not get going until the mid 2d century AD - when xtianity acutally got going, btw - seems quite absurd.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/mba/mba11.htm
and,
Further, Plutarch dates the contact of the Romans with Mithraism to the campaign of Pompey against the Cilician pirates (c 67 BC ) when they overran the city of Tarsus. Oddly.....or perhaps not so oddly... the alleged "Paul" also came from Tarsus.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/mba/mba11.htm
Quote:AMONG the gods of Babylonia none achieved wider and more enduring fame than Tammuz, who was loved by Ishtar, the amorous Queen of Heaven--the beautiful youth who died and was mourned for and came to life again. He does not figure by his popular name in any of the city pantheons, but from the earliest times of which we have knowledge until the passing of Babylonian civilization, he played a prominent part in the religious life of the people
and,
Quote:There is every possibility, therefore, that the Tammuz ritual may have been attached to a harvest god of the pre-Hellenic Greeks, who received at the same time the new name of Adonis. Osiris of Egypt resembles Tammuz, but his Mesopotamian origin has not been proved. It would appear probable that Tammuz, Attis, Osiris, and the deities represented by Adonis and Diarmid were all developed from an archaic god of fertility and vegetation,
Further, Plutarch dates the contact of the Romans with Mithraism to the campaign of Pompey against the Cilician pirates (c 67 BC ) when they overran the city of Tarsus. Oddly.....or perhaps not so oddly... the alleged "Paul" also came from Tarsus.
