Carus, Paul

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MITHRAISM AND ITS INFLUENCE UPONCHRISTIANITY.BY THE EDITOR.MAZDAISM, the religion of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster or Zer-dusk), is distinguished by its purity and high moral tone.The word is derived from Mazda, which means wisdom or omni-science, and occurs mainly in connection with Ahura, the Lord.Ahura Mazda (abbreviated by the Greek into Ormudz) is now com-monly translated Lord Omniscient.The sacred books of Mazdaism, especially the Avesta, breathethe spirit of a lofty monotheism, which in the course of its furtherdevelopment was supplemented by the belief in a divine mediator,Mithra, born of a virgin and destined to be the ruler of the king-dom of God on earth, for the coming of which all good worshippersof Ahura Mazda were praying.Mazdaism has on several occasions powerfully influenced thereligious life of the Western world, first in the days of Cyrus, thenin the time when the Apocrypha of the Old Testament were writ-ten, furthermore in the beginning of the Christian era when Mithra-ism became a rival of Christianity, and finally in its sectarian re-vival as Manicheism, after the suppression of which the verynames of Ahura Mazda, of Zarathushtra, and of Mithra were forgot-ten. Though Mazdaism (with the exception of the small sect ofParsees) has disappeared from the face of the earth, some of itstraditions have been preserved in its greatest rival religion, Chris-tianity, and some traces of it are left even in the canonical booksof the Old and the New Testaments. Isaiah regards it so much asthe religion of his own people that he calls Cyrus, the king of thePersians, the Anointed One (Messiah) of the Lord. God says ofCyrus:" He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure : even saying to Jeru-salem, Thou shalt be rebuilt; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid."MITHRAISM AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON CHRISTIANITY. 105In the Greek text of Ezra we read that Cyrus had the symbolof Mazdaism, the eternal fire, transferred to the temple of Jeru-salem (Septuagint Ezra vi. 24).In the second book of Maccabees (i. 20) we read that the priestswere requested by the King (of the Persians) to search for the holyfire which their fathers had hidden in a dry pit, and they found nofire, but thick water; and he ordered them to dip it out and pour itover the altar and the sacrifice. When they had done so, and whenthe clouds had dispersed and the sun shone, a great fire was kindledand they marvelled greatly (i. 22), and Nehemiah prayed (i. 24-29)and the King had the place fenced in, and the followers of Nehe-miah called the water Nephthar, which is "cleansing."The Jewish priests were dressed like the Persian priests, inlinen garments.The influence of Persian views in the Apocrypha is universallyrecognised and in the religious life of the Jewish people it resultedin the formation of sects, especially the Essenes, whose institutionswere so similar to the Nazarenes and the Ebionites (the sect of thePoor) that they may have been different names for the same insti-tution.We know that Jesus came from the ranks of the Nazarenes,for not only is he called a Nazarene himself, but St. Paul, too, iscalled a ringleader of the Nazarenes.A trace of Mazdaism left in the canonical Gospels is the storyof the Wise Men of the East (Matthew ii.) who, guided by a star,came to Bethlehem offering gold, frankincense, and myrrh to thenew-born king of the Jews. One of the Apocryphal Gospels, viz.,"the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy," directly mentions that theycame in obedience to a prophecy of Zoroaster, the venerable founderof Mazdaism;1 and the names of the Magi still in use in the Ro-man Catholic calendar of saints are Caspar, which means "Splen-dor," Melchior, meaning "Light of Melech," 2 and Balthazar, whichmeans "he whom Baal protects." 3The pagan significance of the names has been lost sight of inlater centuries; otherwise, the Magi would not have proved worthyof canonisation.Many rabbis adopted the Mazdean invocation for the comingof God's kingdom, and Jesus deemed it worthy to be incorporatedas the prayer which he taught to his disciples.1 See The Apocryphal Gospels translated by B. Harris (London : Norgate, 1874) p. 176.2 Another form of Moloch, which means " King.''ZBaal, or Babylonian, Bel means "Lord."106 THE OPEN COURT.The similarity of the Lord's Supper to the sacrament of Mithrawas so striking that Justinus Martyr speaks of it as "the sameritual," which had been introduced among the pagans by the in-trigues of Satan.Man is more conservative in religious practices than in thecommon walks of life. So the Jewish priests even to-day use flintknives in preference to steel blades, and unleavened bread has re-mained in many instances the sacramental food of various rituals.We may assume that the Persian sacrament consisted of waferswhich were called in Persian myasda (or in Hebrew piazza) and itseems probable that the very name of the Christian mass is noth-ing but a corruption of the Persian word that denoted the breadused in this mystical ceremony.The last flickering up of the flame of Mazdaism under its ownname is the revival of Manicheism—the religion of Mani, whichspread from Persia and Mesopotamia over the whole East andpenetrated even the Roman empire, where it gained its most numer-ous adherents in North Africa. The Manichees assert that thestruggle between the two empires, that of light and that of dark-ness, is still going on, and that the duality of spirit and body enjoinsa rigorous asceticism. They accepted Christ, but rejected theChurch as a worldly institution. The main danger of Manicheismto Christianity lay in the moral earnestness of the Manichean move-ment, and yet it was the rigidity of its ethics that rendered it unac-ceptable as a universal religion. Manicheism was naturally limitedto small numbers, and so it could easily be crushed. Pope Leothe Great took energetic State measures against it; Valentian III.punished Manicheans with banishment and Justinian with death.In Africa the Vandals made an end of Manicheism.Some Church historians, who see a doctrinary kinship in allheresies, regard them as the forerunners of the Albigenses, theWaldenses, the Hussites, and finally even the Reformers. And ina certain sense this may be granted. Though the Reformers, farfrom favoring asceticism, abolished monastic institutions, we cannotdeny that Luther's conception of Satan (as represented in the fa-mous battle-hymn of the Reformation) reminds one very much ofAhriman, the fiend, the enemy of God and man, and thus we maysay that with certain modifications Luther may be regarded as Zara-thushtra redivivus.

Mithraism and Its Influence Upon Christianity.

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Mithraism and Its Influence Upon Christianity.

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