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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

Did Christianity borrow from Mithraism?

Jim Blackburn

Question:

My comparative mythology class textbook and professor teach that the Christian faith took some of its most significant elements from a Persian religion dedicated to Mithra. Is this true?

Answer:

While Mithraism appears to have had many similarities to Christianity, it seems that Mithraism copied from Christianity, not the other way around. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

Our knowledge regarding Mithraism is very imperfect . . . mostly ingenious guesswork; of the real inner working of Mithraism and the sense in which it was understood by those who professed it at the advent of Christianity, we know nothing. . . . Some apparent similarities exist; but in a number of details it is quite probable that Mithraism was the borrower from Christianity.

 

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