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The Lord of Spirits
No, Virginia, Christmas Isn’t About Mithras
In 1954, deep under the streets of London, a mysterious 3rd c. temple was unearthed, but it was not as hoped a Christian church. It was a Mithraeum, a place of bloody secret rituals practiced by Roman soldiers. Who is their god Mithras? And is he the real Jesus?
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- [00:00]
Narrator
He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.
- [01:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Hey. Greetings, giant killers, dragon slayers. You're listening to the 127th episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're in our sixth year. Nevertheless, I'm still Father Andrew Steve McDamac. And with me is still the only ancient faith radio podcaster ever to have declared a blood feud against James Earl Jones, Father Stephen DeYoung. And we're live.
- [01:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Other people have declared other blood feuds, but my war against James Earl Jones is one that I fought alone and victoriously. He's dead. I'm alive.
- [01:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Starting in the second half of the show. If you're joining us as live as Father Stephen is, you can call us at 855-237-2346. And if you make it past the gatekeeper, Mike Taroman Degan will with your mostly on topic question. We might even talk back to you.
- [01:54]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So you could lie.
- [01:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Here we are, it's November. You were saying, Father?
- [02:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I was saying they could lie when they did the call screener to get on the air.
- [02:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
People are liars these days.
- [02:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But on the, on the Christmas thing.
- [02:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, I was about to talk about Christmas.
- [02:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, you say it's November. We're getting toward the. The season. I mean, I feel like we have to address the elephant in the room once again. I need to make some polarizing comments.
- [02:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Oh, I'll sit back.
- [02:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And that is that, brethren, we are now called to the heights of asceticism because once again, as we prepare to begin the nativity fast, the evil benighted fools at the McDonald's Corporation have brought back the McRib again. It is not. Well, arguably it is not technically meat, but it does contain animal products.
- [02:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It's malicious. The timing is malicious.
- [02:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Making it off limits. Never have so many been called to give up so much.
- [02:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I'm going to watch the McRib Girl YouTube video again, just for old time's sake.
- [03:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Now, I know you reject the McRib out of disdain, and so for you, this has no aesthetic value.
- [03:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, no, I. I like the McRib. I know, I know. A bunch of. I was just canceled by a bunch of people for saying that. Like what? What? No, I do. I kind of like the McRib. I don't know what to say.
- [03:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It's a bold admission on your part.
- [03:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [03:21]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean, will your wife let you eat one?
- [03:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Not in her presence. Okay, yeah.
- [03:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So now. Now it's doubly surreptitious. Right. You're gonna have to, like, sneak off tomorrow before the fast begins and get yourself like a small.
- [03:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, it's Friday, though, so.
- [03:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, that's true. Before midnight tonight on your way home, is there a McDonald's between the studio and your house?
- [03:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, there isn't. There is not. But speaking of Christmas, though, it's on a lot of people's minds, and everybody knows what that means. The season of meme history and theology is upon us. That's right, kids. Soon you will be seeing non stop memes explaining how the birth of Jesus is really just one or another ancient pagan God dressed up in new clothes to oppress you and enslave you with brutal Christian ideas like forgiveness, loving your enemies, and the inherent God given value of every human being. Among all of these pagan figures, who somehow are all more Jesus than Jesus, one rises above them all, and that is Mithras. Some have compared Mithraists to the Freemasons, such as me, when devising, I was.
- [04:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Going to say for the.
- [04:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
For the YouTube version of this.
- [04:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Probably some other people, too.
- [04:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, well, also notably Tom Holland on.
- [04:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
The rest of the podcast.
- [04:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, there you go. I didn't make this up. Yes. Men gathering with their buddies in their lodges, being initiated into successively secret degrees of mysteries. But the meme makers, they know better. So how about it, Father Stephen? Have you, much like the people in Carabura, England, have got a Mithraum in your backyard? Any Mithraeum archaeology going on in Louisiana?
- [04:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No. Oh, you know what the water table's like in southern Louisiana.
- [05:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's true. Everything had better be completely above ground. Yes, except for New Orleans, which, as we know, isn't.
- [05:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Is it a bowl? What could Go wrong.
- [05:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, Literally lower than sea level. That should be their secondary motto. God bless them.
- [05:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So, yeah, not happening around here. Yeah, basements and bombs.
- [05:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, Right. No basements. Someone in the chat said they had an unduly sausage today, so there you go. Well, that's something that connects you to Louisiana.
- [05:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They're going to play Gambit in Marvel Rivals when he releases tomorrow. He's even a Cajun, so you know.
- [05:43]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right.
- [05:44]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So what are we talking about? Oh, yeah, okay. Mithrism.
- [05:48]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Mithraism. Yeah, Mitraism, if you want to.
- [05:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And just to clarify for folks, this episode is actually about witherism.
- [05:58]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes.
- [05:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
The previous live episode was not about Zoroastrianism.
- [06:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, it was today.
- [06:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It was about Cyrus.
- [06:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
How dare you not cover Zoroastrianism thoroughly in an episode that wasn't about Zoroastrium.
- [06:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, in an academic way with verbal footnotes.
- [06:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Verbal footnotes. Footnote. I feel like I'm in audiobook narration mode now suddenly.
- [06:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Oh, yeah, there was one of those where I forgot to do it. And so at the end. No, they just had me record me going, footnote, end, footnote, end, footnote, end, footnote.
- [06:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
We've all been there, Father.
- [06:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So I did a lot of reads, I did a lot of inflections, I gave them a lot of samples to work with and they peppered them through.
- [06:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Nice.
- [06:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But yeah, we're not doing that on the show, much to a few people's chagrin and everyone else's rejoicing. So, yeah, Mithras. So Mithraism proper. We're talking about a cult in the Roman world. Yeah, but he isn't a God. That's like invented for that cult in the Roman world.
- [07:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
He's an import.
- [07:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, right. And pretty much all of the central figures in the mystery cults of the Roman world were pre existing gods and goddesses that just became associated with particular mystery rights in particular places. They weren't sort of invented. Whole cloth people weren't like, hey guys, I invented a new religion. I mean, is that how that works?
- [07:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It's funny, I. You get the sense sometimes that sort of the. The ultra secular historians of the ancient world seem to think that that's how it works, that religions are invented, that they're like the result of a conspiracy or something like this.
- [07:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, I mean, to be fair, a lot of our Protestant friends think that's how Christianity worked.
- [07:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Oh, man. Now begins the hot spicy take. Yes.
- [07:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Just dropped out of the sky. Had no relation to preceding Judaism. But so Mithras, what do we know about his preceding existence before the Mithraism proper. That is our subject proper tonight, which we will get to later on, as is our want. So the first appearance, the first still extant appearance of Mitra, which is the original or more original form of his name, the first surviving appearance to this day is from a Hittite suzerainty treaty.
- [08:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I love a good Hittite suzerainty treaty.
- [08:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Which These have come up on the show before.
- [08:34]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes. What other podcasts do you listen to, dear listener, in which Hittite Su treaties come up more than once and on.
- [08:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Different topics, different unrelated topics, because the previous place we talked about it was unrelated to Mithraism. So these are. This is the. The treaty, the treaties that we found involving the Hittites and the Luvians in Asia Minor, that the format of these Suzerain vassal treaties from the mid second millennium, we're talking about like 16th century B.C. that format is the format that biblical covenants generally follow. And where we've talked about this in the past, we used the Ten Commandments and the book of Deuteronomy as a whole as examples of this. But finding these treaties that are not directly related in any way to the Bible sort of showed us, oh, this is a format that was present in the ancient world. And if you want to read about the Suzer tree treaties of Shupalaluma in great detail and their connection to the Bible, you could get Meredith Klein's Treaty of the Great King.
- [09:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Say that again five times fast.
- [09:49]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes.
- [09:51]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Shupaloo Looma. Also, not one to name your kids after. I mean, what do you call him? Shoop.
- [09:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He was. Yeah, Shoopy Doop. I don't know. He was an abject heathen. So, yes, not a baptismal name. Right. But so in the context of that, we talked about the general, real broad strokes format. And you can see this. We're not going to go through all this again. But you can see this in the Ten Commandments. You can see this in the book of Deuteronomy as a whole. It begins with an introduction saying, here's who the person is who is issuing the treaty in the case of these Hittite documents, Shupiluluma in the case of the Ten Commandments. I am the Lord your God. I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Right. Who the person is and what they have done for the vassal. And then there are a series of stipulations that outline what the suzerain, the great king, expects from the vassal king. The lesser king. And then there is a listing of blessings that the great king will bestow upon the vassal if he keeps to those stipulations and various consequences that will come upon the vassal if he fails to keep those stipulations. And then there are divine figures called as witnesses. In the case of, you know, if you're familiar with your Bible, in the case of Deuteronomy, right, God calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses because there's nothing greater than himself by which to swear. And then a copy was put at the feet of the idol of the God who was a witness in the temple. And another copy was kept by the vassal king, by the king himself. And so in the case of the Torah covenant, both copies are put in the Ark of the covenant, because that is both the footstool of God's throne, him being God and him being king. But so these follow that format. But in the case of these Hittite treaties, the actual Hittite treaties themselves that follow this format, they call a series of divine witnesses, a series of gods essentially, to bear witness. And the gods who they call upon, most of them are actually old Indo Aryan or Indo Persian gods. So this is an Indo European people group that has migrated to Asia Minor by this point in the second millennium BC in the Bronze Age. And so the otherwise known Indo Persian gods who are called upon are, number one, Mitra, who we're talking about tonight. And then Varuna, Indra, and two of the Nasatya.
- [12:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And Mike, tell everybody what the Nosatya are.
- [12:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They're lesser deities who are called upon, but they're otherwise known from Indian paganism and early Persian paganism. So we're focusing tonight on Mitra. The next major place where he shows up is in the Rig Veda. So now we're getting into Vedic Hinduism and early Persian paganism. In the rig Veda, at 359, he shows up with Varuna. Again, like that, same pairing. And there's a reason why those two are paired together. So Mitra's name, like his literal name, is the word for a covenant or a treaty or an agreement. So it kind of makes sense. If you were making a covenant or treaty or agreement, he would be the deity in particular, who some who a pagan would call upon to be a witness. Witness, right. That's his shtick. That's his. His whole bag. And Varuna, Varuna's name means something like a true statement, a true word.
- [13:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. There also seems to be speaking truth. There also seems to be an etymology related to the notion of binding, which, I mean, obviously these things are all kind of connected. Well, not to. I wasn't trying to make a pun, but. But yeah, I mean, binding, truth, all this kind of stuff together, Right.
- [14:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So you've got an agreement, you want it to be binding, you want the person to be true to their word. And so these two being paired together and being invoked for a covenant agreement makes a whole ton of sense. The other major Indo Persian source that mentions Mitra and gives some more information is Avesta 10. So the Avesta are basically ancient hymns to these gods. And what comes out of a Vesta 10 about Mitra in particular is it's talking about Mitra in terms of him enforcing sort of covenant stipulations, him enforcing agreements, meaning if someone is sort of true to their word and fulfills their duty and their responsibilities, he's the one who sends the blessings of rain and crops and good health.
- [15:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [15:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
For people and animals. And if someone is not on the other hand, then Mitra goes to war against them in his chariot. So you can see there again, once you understand that covenant structure, you can understand how that relates. Right. The idea is that he's called as a witness and then he sort of enforces it as a pagan deity.
- [15:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
These are the rules. And I mean, it's important to note, of course, that these covenants are not like contracts in our own day where two parties get together in they agree on what's going to bind them. It's I'm the big guy, you're the small guy, you're going to do what I say. And this is the way that I expect you to do it. And this is what's going to happen to you if you do it. What's going to happen to you if you don't do it? Because I'm the big guy.
- [15:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. It's more like an employer, employee employment contract, except instead of getting fired, you get killed, Right?
- [16:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep. Hey, this is the ancient world. Getting killed is probably the least of the bad things.
- [16:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Not the worst thing that could happen to you by far.
- [16:09]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So.
- [16:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Between this. So now, I mean, we're all the way back in the high mid to late Bronze Age here in what we're talking about, there's a good thousand years before we get to Mithraism in the Roman world, before there's a Roman Empire around. And so we see him pop up in various ways, mostly in Persian religion and Persian cultural practice as we come into sort of pre imperial Persian life.
- [16:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Earlier Persian paganism, before Zoroastrianism Some of.
- [16:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
This will continue into the imperial period. Some of the things we're about to talk about, even as the worship of Mithras as a sort of standard pagan deity kind of recedes in the face of Zoroastrianism. But so he's. Because of everything we said, he has this role as a sort of mediator of covenants and treaties and agreements, where he is the one who sort of comes in between and enforces them. And because of that sort of idea of him as mediator, in the Persian calendar, the old Persian calendar, the seventh month was named after him.
- [17:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. So that would be like right in the middle of the year.
- [17:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And the 16th day of the month was the day on which he was celebrated, which is also right in the middle of the month.
- [17:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, the middle of the middle.
- [17:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And so he was the one who watched between the heavens and the underworld. Right. So remember, we've got the three layers in ancient Near Eastern cosmology. Right. There's the heavens, the earth and the regions under the earth. And so he's keeping an eye on all the stuff going on on the Earth in the middle. In the middle tier. Right. Because he's got to enforce all these agreements that he's been called as a witness to. So he's got to kind of keep track of what everybody's doing. And this idea of him being in the middle.
- [18:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [18:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Has led to a lot of people arguing, this is not conclusive, that mestatis in Greek that means mediator. And the whole set of cognate words in Latin, like media, median, mediate, are actually derived from his name, from Mitra. It's not 100%, but people argue it, that there's an animalogical relationship. But the concept obviously is related either way. So as we talked about last time when we were talking about Persia, as Cyrus begins the Persian Empire, Persian say.
- [18:58]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All the kids at home, from their point of view, it's not last time. It was two episodes ago.
- [19:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, but, you know, we're not experiencing time. Space don't exist, everybody. Space don't exist. So it's all relative. I didn't say last time.
- [19:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I.
- [19:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
What? I didn't say last time.
- [19:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
You know, what year is it where you are? Father Stephen?
- [19:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It is 178 AD, and that's how I like it. Anyway, as there comes to be a Persian Empire, as this becomes a thing under Cyrus, of course, we talked a little bit last time about, you know, Zoroastrianism becomes a thing and becomes sort of the imperial religion that sort of shapes the religious identity of the newborn empire rather than the old paganism. And there's a little bit of a need for that. There's a need for that in that the old Indo Persian paganism is something they shared with their neighbors, with scattered Indo European peoples in other places at different levels. Right. So this is a shared thing. It's hard to form your identity around something you share with all of your neighbors.
- [20:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Sure. I want to be different just like all the different people.
- [20:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So there's that, right? Yeah, I want to be unique and different like everyone else. But also remember, and this is another episode, it all weaves together. We talked about the Axial age. And as we come into the Persian Empire, we're coming into the Axial age, meaning there are religious shifts happening everywhere. And we didn't go into a ton of detail on Zoroastrianism, but we did talk about the fact. We did mention the fact that especially early on there were a lot of forms of Zoroastrianism that didn't just do away with the earlier paganism. They sort of incorporated it in a transitional way by making the old Indo pagan gods sort of lesser divinities. Right. Sort of demoting them under Ahura Mazda rather than just, you know, rejecting them outright. And so the shift to Zoroastrianism was part of a shift all over the place, literally all over the world in that period, from the earlier paganism to kind of a paganism 2.0. Then we talked about that in that episode in terms of pretty much everybody, but including like this is where Greek philosophy starts to emerge as a more refined form in certain ways of the previous Greek paganism. So it's part of that, that general trend. But so that new INDO Persian Religion 2.0 that emerges in the Persian Empire is also new in the sense that it is a phenomenon that happens within the newborn empire, making it well suited to becoming a religion around that will form the identity in part of that empire going forward. That said, even as that happens. Right. And sort of the, the royal cult and the official cult and everything transitions to Zoroastrianism, the Persian Empire, there are a lot of scattered tribal groups here and there that are still basically doing the old school pagan thing.
- [22:34]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean this is, this is how it works. When a new sort of religious sort of speak sheriff comes to town is the people kind of out in the countryside are often still doing the old thing.
- [22:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And I mean this is true even. I mean this is, this is the story in medieval Europe. Right. Medieval Europe becomes officially you know, Christian Europe, but you go out in the countryside, in all of those countries, there's people doing folk magic and all kinds of holdover ritual stuff from old European paganism.
- [23:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Or even, like, when the Muslims took over southern Spain. There's Christians and Jews in Spain, but eventually, like, the cities are not as Christian or Jewish, and it's more kind of, you know, out in the countryside that people are practicing those religions.
- [23:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, yeah. So. And one example in this particular case is that there's pretty solid evidence that there were different Kurdish tribal groups still worshiping Mitra.
- [23:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [23:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
During the. The period of the Persian Empire, including the Yazidis.
- [23:42]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow.
- [23:43]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Which we will not be doing an episode on the Yazidis.
- [23:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Their religion is quite different now, but.
- [23:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I'm sure too off topic for us, but they've always been kind of religious minorities. They've always been sort of doing their own thing.
- [23:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
They are mentioned in the 2017 edition of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Just had to put that up.
- [24:02]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There you go. Sell that book.
- [24:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There you go.
- [24:06]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I think everyone owns a copy now, though, so you're gonna have to do, like, a third edition.
- [24:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Oh, no.
- [24:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
To resell it again.
- [24:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
What religions should I add? Everybody sound off in the chat. Let's find out.
- [24:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, you've got. For all the ones that have changed and warped and fallen apart and some.
- [24:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
New ones that have come up.
- [24:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Covid did a number on some of these things.
- [24:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I'm told there's a religion and heresy called Covidism, since you mentioned that. So maybe I could put that in there. Yeah.
- [24:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I was amazed that you didn't, you know, spend a whole chapter on ecumenism. The Pan heresy.
- [24:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So the Pan heresy of ecumenism.
- [24:40]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You could have just covered that and not talked about anything else. Right. You could have, just.
- [24:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Because that's everything. That's right. I would. You don't need anything else.
- [24:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And so it's not that, because, of course, the Persian Empire is going to be conquered by Alexander, but the worship of Mitra never totally goes away. There are strains of it. And so when Mithraism in the Roman Empire rises. Right. There is this connection back into the past. But let's talk about that for a second.
- [25:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [25:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because how do you decide when something started religiously? A religious phenomenon.
- [25:27]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean, there's usually no one there recording.
- [25:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. Well, how do you decide what is part of the same phenomenon and what is it?
- [25:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. When is it a new religion? When is it. You know, unfortunately, it's not neat and Tidy, where you get, you know, like Scientology in the 1950s or whatever, where literally there's a guy who says, I invented a new religion.
- [25:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And for example, famously, or used to be famously, I don't know if anybody knows about this anymore. Dearman McCulloch, when he put out his one volume History of Christianity, it was called Christianity the first 3,000 years.
- [26:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, yes, Right.
- [26:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because the threads, right, the theological and religious threads that become Christianity start during the reign of King David, essentially, he argues. And so you've got to start there and trace those threads up to and through Jesus of Nazareth in order to get the whole history of Christianity. But there was nothing called Christianity in the first millennium bc. So we're going to spend basically most of the rest of tonight talking about Roman Mithraism. Right. Mithraism in the Roman Empire, which is an AD phenomenon. But you will see people talking about it who will say, oh, this is far more ancient than Christianity. This starts in a thousand BC or 1500 BC. I mean, because that's where somebody's worshiping Mitra, right?
- [27:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean there is Mitra worship, but probably doesn't look like the Roman version at all. Yeah, it's probably much more like most other paganism.
- [27:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right.
- [27:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
You know, where it's community, cult, public sacrifices, all the usual idolatry, all the usual stuff.
- [27:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. Like we would all say Islam starts with Muhammad, but of course Muslims would say it starts with Abraham or Adam, like, or even Adam. Yeah, yeah. So these things could be slippery. But the Mithraism, we're going to be talking about the Mithraism that people try to compare to Christianity, the Mithraism that is Mithraism, not just the worship of a God, Mitra, from whom in a distant way Mithraism is. Is derived, is an AD phenomenon. Okay, we're just giving you here some prehistory so you know where this came from. Just as a spoiler next our, our next episode that's going to come out on Thanksgiving and it's going to be pre recorded because Father Andrew again, you know, loves his family more than you. The listener. You can decide whether that's appropriate.
- [28:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I love them more than you, Father Stephen.
- [28:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I know it's hard to believe, given what a delight I am, but them's facts.
- [28:30]
Caller
Yeah.
- [28:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So it's going to be pre recorded, but we're going to be talking about other mystery cults in the Roman world. So for example, there's the Mysteries of Demeter. Well, where do the Mysteries of Demeter begin? Do they begin the first time somebody Tells the story of Demeter and Persephone.
- [28:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [28:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Do they begin the first time someone worships a goddess named Demeter? Well, no, not really. The mysteries of Demeter begin the first time the mysteries of Demeter are celebrated.
- [29:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. The particular actual practices.
- [29:06]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. So, name of the figure aside, the Mithraism we're going to be focusing on is a particular form of worship of this God. The fact that there was a God with that name and some similar features preceding that does not mean that the religious phenomenon preceded that.
- [29:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [29:29]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But before we move to Roman Mithraism proper, a last note. So there are two places in the Bible, one, if you're a Protestant, where the name Mitra occurs. Both of them are just somebody's name. It's a theophoric name of a Persian official in the Persian Empire. So the first place, which even our Protestant friends have, is in Ezra, chapter one, verse eight and chapter four, verse seven, where there is a dude named Mithridates who is Cyrus treasurer. And then if you've got a little bit beefier Old testament, then in first Esdras. Yeah, first Esdras to chapter two, verses eight and 12, there's another Mithridates, spelled slightly differently in Greek, but basically the same name because they're both being transliterated from Persian Aramaic. Who is a court official for Artaxerxes for later Persian emperor. Either spelling the name means Gift of Mitra. That may be the result of, like, the parents having taken an oath. Right. Something if they were given a child to meet. Well, and also, like, given the things.
- [30:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Was a ridiculously popular name in a number of dynasties related to, you know, that region. So.
- [30:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that may. It may have been a custom to name your kid Gift of Mitra if you made some kind of. Made some kind of vow to Mitra to have a child. You know what I mean?
- [31:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [31:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Since he's the guy who enforces that sort of thing. And then if you had the child, you better, you know, do your thing.
- [31:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Or you might just be naming your kid after the emperor, you know.
- [31:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, that too. Yeah. That becomes popular. There's a lot of those figures with that name who. Yeah, yeah. Have people named after them. So, yeah, those are two places. First. First Esdras, by the way, is a fascinating book because it is a separate book in the Greek tradition, and it gets translated by St. Jerome into Latin. And it is a chunk of Ezra and a chunk of Second Chronicles kind of smooshed and edited together. It's One of the weirder conundrums. So I know how the. The Protestant Roman Catholic debates, because Orthodox people usually don't engage in this, but the Protestant Roman Catholic debates about, quote, unquote, the apocrypha by which they're referring to, in the case of the Latin canon Tobit, the seven. Yeah, the seven extra books and the extension and the added bits of Daniel and Esther. You know, it's all about like Protestants saying Josephus was inerrant and Roman Catholics saying, no, the Council of Trent is inerrant. Yeah. That was kind of a cheap shot at Protestants. But all of a sudden Josephus is right about everything.
- [32:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I know he's. He's like this kind of semi canonical.
- [32:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Figure, non Christian Jew, not the church fathers, but Josephus.
- [32:43]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [32:44]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And one of the most treacherous Pharisees to ever live since he was a Roman sympathizer and collaborator. I know, but he knew the canon, darn it. But anyway, so it's all about, you know, who has the authority to decide the canon list. Right. And that's boring. The more interesting discussion is discussing the actual texts themselves.
- [33:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [33:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And some of them being utilized in the New Testament, for example, and what's going on the text. And this is a good example. I think First Estrus is a good example because it's like, okay, you're going to say this isn't canonical, but like pretty much all the contents under the Protestant canon are canonical, just not in this form. Right. Because if you say Second Chronicles and Ezra are both canonical, that's like 97% of the content of First Esdras. The other 3% are a few added details and stuff joining them together. Right. Linking things together. But the content's pretty much the same. So you kind of have to argue that the content is canonical, but the text into which that content has been put or this particular arrangement of that content is non canonical. And then what does that even mean? That an arrangement of text is uncanonical just means in their Bible it becomes errant. If you rearrange it, that's gonna cause you some big Jeremiah problems.
- [34:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But anyway, my next side project for a band, Big Jeremiah.
- [34:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Big Jeremiah problems. Yeah. Okay. I think it's a better album title. I don't know.
- [34:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [34:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Bad title. But.
- [34:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Well, as a band, it's kind of like an indie band, you know? Yeah.
- [34:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
In the vein of Better than Anthem, we're.
- [34:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Big Jeremiah problem.
- [34:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Okay, I'll give you that one. But so now finally, we will touch on. Begin to touch on the actual topic of tonight's show, which is Roman Mithrism. And as we were just saying at some length, Roman mithrism, the religious phenomenon we're actually talking about here, post dates Christianity.
- [34:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, the Roman Forum. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Not by a ton. Not by a ton, but by a little. So our best guess is that Roman Mithraism as we know it and as we're going to talk about it emerges roughly in the time of Nero. Not because we have material talking about it from the time of Nero, we don't. We have material talking about it for the first time like a Dio Cassius at the end of the first century ad, but that material at the end of the first century AD talks about it beginning during the time of Nero. So that's, you know, 30, 35 years after Nero. They're saying it emerged in the time of Nero. The time of Nero is when we have the earliest versions of Christianity, by the way. And Christianity, like Christ died and rose again about 30 years before that. So checks out. Right. And you may be saying, well, okay, so Mithraism does only post dates Christianity by what, 30 years or so. And I say, you know, friend of the show, bart Ehrman thinks 30 years in terms of the writing of the gospels is this huge chasm. So.
- [36:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, right. It was 30 years before they wrote any of this down. I'm like, Dr. Ehrman, you just need to check out the entire. Yeah, pretty much anything before, like, I don't know, the Renaissance, because. Well, no.
- [36:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And people have given him pushback. I've seen pushback on this.
- [36:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, right.
- [36:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Where they point out like, just from talking to people, you could put together a pretty good and pretty reliable oral history of the first Iraq War right now.
- [36:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, absolutely.
- [36:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean, which is like 35 years right now. Talking to people who are involved, veterans and stuff. If you try to do that with the Korean War right now, you're going to have a really hard time. Or World War II if you do it just by talking to still living humans.
- [36:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But I mean, 30 to have a rough time. You and I are 50, Father. We could easily write stories about stuff that was 30 years ago and be.
- [36:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Very active 35 years ago. Yes, I remember it.
- [36:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, right. As do I.
- [37:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Way back.
- [37:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, no, it's the great chasm, Father. It's like an age.
- [37:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Way back when you could walk all the way to the gate with your loved ones as they got on a plane.
- [37:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Oh man, I remember that. That wasn't even 30 years ago.
- [37:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I'm joyful that finally 24 years after some idiot lit his shoes on fire, I now no longer have to take off my shoes at an airport. I am grateful for that. The only thing I'm grateful for about flying, and that's more like I'm happy they stopped abusing me, but still. But. So we're talking about a mid to. This is a mid to late 1st century AD thing that really becomes a phenomenon. Again, not that there weren't people out in their closets, you know, and people out in the hinterlands worshiping Mitra. There sure were. And there may have even been in the 40s or even 30s ad people coming up with forming the first little groups to practice what became Roman Mithraism. But as a sort of even semi organized phenomenon that anybody noticed and had any kind of following. We're talking about Nero's time and later. So we're talking about, you know, A.D. 65 and later. And it really becomes popular. It really becomes popular and widespread in the second and third centuries. So primarily as a phenomenon, Mithraism is in the second and third centuries A.D. by the time you get to St. Constantine, it takes a massive hit from St. Constantine because as we're going to talk about in a minute, Roman Mithras, it was primarily a religion practice within the Roman military.
- [38:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, it was like a military religion.
- [38:49]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And St. Constantine, remember, go see our episode on St. Constantine if you want more about this. One of the things he did was he removed all of the pagan rites from the Roman military, including even stuff like sacrifices before going into battle and replaced them with priests serving the Eucharist.
- [39:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Basically creates soldiers, Christian chaplaincy.
- [39:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And then in general, by the time you get to Saint Theodosius, he pretty much abolishes paganism as such, including Mithraism as Roman emperor at the end of the fourth century. Okay. So second to third century is sort of the apex. And then they have a really rough fourth century and don't make it out of the fourth century.
- [39:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. So at best it exists as a religion for maybe 350 years, plus or.
- [39:42]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Minus exists at all. Yeah. And really you're talking about more like 250 where it was ascendant and popular. So but it was very popular during that period in certain circles because we have a lot archeologically, we have a lot of Mithra.
- [39:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. And we'll explain the way Mithra work, whatever. But basically for now, all you need to know is a mithraium is a physical location where the rituals of Mithraism are practiced.
- [40:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. And reasons we'll talk about in our second half, they are recognizable. There are distinguishing features that let you know, oh, this is a mithraeum. But yeah, mithraeum is the singular. Mithraea is the plural. And we've found mithraea from Syria to Britain and everywhere in between.
- [40:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, I mean just about everywhere. The Roman Empire was like, that's the front two frontiers.
- [40:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That's the eastern frontier and the northwestern frontier.
- [40:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I think the greatest number of them is like in Germany, which is another frontier. Yeah, there's two in. No, sorry, there's four that are known in the UK and I just, a couple weeks ago I was actually quite near one of them at Hadrian's Wall. I didn't actually get to see it, I didn't get out that far, but I was, I don't know, it's probably within 10 miles of it or so.
- [41:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I bet it, I bet it was that, that guy you were with, Deacon Seraphim Mountbatten Windsor, if that is real name.
- [41:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow.
- [41:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He probably had some kind of gastrointestinal discomfort and wouldn't let you go to the Mithraum.
- [41:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And now it's very, very spicy.
- [41:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Something like that.
- [41:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I'm surprised you would make such spicy jokes about people who are in the uk. Although actually the UK is a great place to get, get curries.
- [41:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But, but that's not exactly native.
- [41:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [41:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So. And so the reason, the reason you find them concentrated in places like Syria, Britain, Germany, out at the frontiers is as we mentioned, its main center of popularity was within the Roman military. Whereas the Roman military garrisoned out on the frontiers of the empire.
- [41:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right. So that's where the army is. So that's where these religious practices are.
- [41:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, at these Roman fortifications. And so that's where you find Mithraea. That's who it's really popular with. Now, in addition to being very popular within the Roman military, only men could participate in Roman Mithraism.
- [42:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, there's no, you know, Order of the Eastern Star for Mithraists.
- [42:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He man woman haters club, no girls allowed. Right.
- [42:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I mean we don't make up the rules. This is the way that it is.
- [42:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And this is unlike other Roman paganism. Right. Because there's no like women as shrine, prostitutes or anything. Right. Like there's no women. Right. Involved at all.
- [42:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
This is a purely male religion.
- [42:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And you gotta factor this into account. Right. We've talked about this on the show before that when you're talking about like especially second century Christianity, it's primarily the coverts are primarily women and slaves. And we know that from several places, including the fact that the pagans looked down on Christians in part because it was a religion of women and slaves, but Christianity treated them as human beings, which is crazy. Go figure. It was a religion that they could fully participate in, whereas they can't even get near a mithraum. So not an option for anybody except Roman Freeman, many of whom were in the military. So in our next half, we'll talk about what they got up to in the Mithraya.
- [43:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right. Well, we've begun our dive into Mithraism here on this episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with the second half.
- [43:38]
Narrator
Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio.
- [44:00]
Announcer
Poised between east and west, between Orthodox and Catholic Lithuania, the last of Europe's pagan nations did not forget its ancient tales such as that of the giantess Neringa Eglay, Queen of Serpents and the Iron Wolf. Rather, they fulfilled and enriched them with legends like the hill of crosses and the miracle working icon of Our lady of the gate of the dawn in the Wolf and the Cross. Father Andrew Stephen Damek and Deacon Seraphim Richard Rowland take a very personal pilgrimage into a land where history and legend have met and fused, where Orthodox Christians have lived as a minority for nearly seven centuries, their faith founded upon the blood of martyrs and the witness of dozens of saints. To find this book and others like it, you can go to store.ancientfaith.com Again, that is store.ancientfaith.com.
- [45:05]
Narrator
We'Re back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio.
- [45:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Hey, welcome back, everybody. Second half of this episode of the Laura Spirits podcast and already we have a caller who's calling in who wants to discuss the spicy remarks, Father, that you made about the pan heresy of ecumenism. Are you ready, Father?
- [45:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They're pro Pan heresy.
- [45:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I don't know. I don't know. We'll find out. So, Jordan, welcome to Lord of Spirits podcast.
- [45:45]
Caller
Hi, Father's Bless God bless you.
- [45:48]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So what's on your mind?
- [45:50]
Caller
So I actually, I lied about my questions. Oh, I'm sorry. I am interested.
- [45:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I told them they could do that, so.
- [45:56]
Caller
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I image you to hear what Father Stephen meant. Haven't heard a negative take on ecumenism, at least not to that extent. But I'm a catechumen and I've been reading a bunch of stuff, and the concept of the Trinity really bothered me, and I've asked some priests about it, and I just can't conceptualize. When we say that the Holy Trinity is one mind, I don't see how that doesn't become modalism or the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being different forms of the one God. And I was hoping that maybe you guys would be able to, like, just conceptualize that. And I know it's a mystery, you know, at some extent, and we can't fully comprehend, but, I mean, the only way that I've been able to make sense of it is there must be some type of mind that is the one mind, and then a different mind that we would say is. That correlates to the personhood.
- [46:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
One mind. That's not.
- [46:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, that's not.
- [47:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, that's not a thing I was gonna say. Where are you getting that language, Jordan? I mean, I'm racking my brain. I'm like. I don't remember actually coming across that phrase in any of our liturgical texts talking about the Holy Trinity. I mean, maybe one of the Church Fathers uses that divine energy.
- [47:17]
Caller
The book Divine Energy by, I think Braun, Joe.
- [47:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Father Thomas Braun. So I've read that book, but it's been a long time. I would have to look and see what he meant by that. Maybe what he means is something like one will.
- [47:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, because that's the. So the. The orthodox doctor of the Trinity, right, is that you have the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are not the same person. They are three persons, and then they are one in a series of ways. One of those is that they are one in essence. Meaning they're the same thing. That's what homoseos means. It means the same thing.
- [47:58]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [48:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Meaning one of them is. It's sort of more God than the others, including the Father. They're all the same thing. One of those is that. Now, this is the sort of upward direction. They receive one worship because the Son and the Spirit are the exact image of the Father. And so the worship received by the Son and the Spirit passes to the prototype. This is where St. Basil the Great first uses that principle. And so they are worshiped as one by us. And then more directly related to Your question? The three persons, and this is in a descending way, are one in nature, will and energy. And those three things are related ideas. So nature is a sort of directedness of being. Basically, the three persons are not oriented in different directions. They are oriented in the same direction. And then will, the concept of will. Will is a function of nature. Will is a sort of internal drive or force or push in the direction of nature. This is a crude analogy, but pointed in the same direction and moving in the same direction. And then energy in working their activity is one in that they. Then, because they're oriented in the same direction, moving in the same direction, then their activity, and that activity is generally experienced. We're talking about activity, the divine energies, activity experienced in creation. That is all one. So those are the ways in which the three persons are one. The Holy Trinity is not, in the orthodox understanding, three and one in the same sense. They are three in some senses and one in other senses.
- [49:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. It's not just pure contradiction. Yeah. That one might. When you use that one mind phrase, Jordan, I mean, that just merely obviously struck both of us as like, what. Because it's not. It's not the usual language, for sure.
- [50:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. And it's not even clear what that would signify like, as you said, that sounds like you're saying there's one consciousness, and that sounds an awful lot like one person.
- [50:23]
Caller
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [50:25]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So I think that's. I'll say this out of. I'll try to be charitable, which is rare for me, and just say, I think that way of expressing it is not helpful and causes confusion.
- [50:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep. Yeah. I. I always say, look, it's just best to stick with the language that one finds, particularly in the liturgical services, because it's. It's pretty conventional by this point. You know, the kinds of ways that we talk about God's oneness and threeness in the hymns that we sing.
- [50:54]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And you could also, if you want a primary source on this, you could read St. Gregory of Nice's why There Are Not Three Gods.
- [51:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Well, I hope that helps, Jordan.
- [51:03]
Caller
Yeah. Thank you very much.
- [51:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
You're welcome. You're welcome. All right, well, rolling right along.
- [51:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Nice. Rebellion against the shackles of call screening continues.
- [51:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Now that he's done that, people are going to be left and right telling Mike all kinds of things, and then we'll cut them off. Cut them off, Mike. So, yeah, I mean, is there, like a big, you know, Boy Scout manual somewhere that someone's uploaded to the Internet telling all the secret rituals of Mithraism that We can all read.
- [51:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, no.
- [51:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So how do we know.
- [51:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. There is no mithrist Joseph Smith to spill the beans on Freemasonry.
- [51:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I want to trigger some more Masons. I mean, come on. And anti Masons, too.
- [51:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, I just triggered Masons and Mormons all at once.
- [51:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right. Yeah.
- [51:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. So what are our sources for knowing about Roman Mithraism? Well, we don't have a lot. We've got some things, but we don't have the things we'd like to have. We'll put it that way. In that we have no primary texts. We have no texts from Mithraists. We have none of the texts that they might have used amongst themselves. We have nobody spilling the beans. Which. Which we do next episode where we're talking about other mystery cults. A bunch of the other Greek and Roman mystery cults. There are people who spilled the bee. There are people who are like, yeah, I went through that. Here's what they do. Right.
- [52:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So there's no, like, texts to read.
- [52:35]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah.
- [52:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
From the Ancient. No primary. And there's. There's a lot of possible reasons why this is the case. The two biggest ones probably are. Number one, history destroys text. Like, the majority of texts written in the ancient world are gone forever. The vast majority. It's so sad. It's just the way that it is. And the other thing, of course, this is a secretive cult, so, like, they have a vested interest in not revealing what it is that they're doing.
- [53:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. You're not supposed to spill the beans.
- [53:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So that would also limit the fact that it might get written down somewhere or whatever.
- [53:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They weren't making lots of copies of whatever texts they had. And, yeah, history destroys texts. And, you know, having your cult get outlawed destroys tax. That'll do it too, either actively. And that doesn't always mean. I know there's these images fostered by Internet atheists that Christians were just running around burning all these texts. That was actually fairly rare. It's just if nobody's copying them, they deteriorate and they go away.
- [53:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's the biggest thing is it's not like there's some big data dump somewhere that they burned down. It's that. Yeah, if you don't copy it, then it just goes away.
- [53:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And people, people, the Library of Alexandria did not burn down. It never happened. It did not burn down. So if you hear someone say Christians burned it, now, you know they're doubly stupid.
- [54:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Actually, I. This would be the second time I mentioned that show in this episode. But The Rest Is History podcast has a great episode on the Library of LA Alexandria. And what it wasn't, largely part of.
- [54:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Where that myth comes from is there was a fire there at a certain point, but it did not destroy the whole library. It was like a small little bit.
- [54:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep.
- [54:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And it was not set by Christians either. So if anyone comes to you and says Christians burned down the Library of Alexandria, you know they're stupid because number one, it didn't burn down. So nobody burned it down. But they're not only confidently telling you that something that never happened happened, they're telling you who did the thing that never happened.
- [54:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean, the reality is, since we're on this little discursis about Christianity and texts. Of all the religious traditions that have ever existed in the world, the most text generating, text saving, text copying, text loving religion ever is Christianity. And in many cases literacy came to cultures because Christianity showed up.
- [55:02]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Long before Sola scriptura was an idea in anyone's mind.
- [55:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [55:08]
Father Stephen DeYoung
By the way, they were copying texts other than the Bible to prove it.
- [55:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [55:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. Well, hey, while we're ranting, all those Greek philosophical texts were preserved in the Muslim world by Greek monks.
- [55:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It's true.
- [55:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay.
- [55:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Or even Greek mythological texts. I mean.
- [55:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And one last note, because I use the term stupid and I know some of our. How dare you. How dare you say someone. Right. They're going to get mad. I'm causing emotional harm to people with my words. I know, but I use the word stupid as a technical term. Someone who is ignorant about things is not stupid. We're all ignorant. I am ignorant about more things than I know about. Like if you listed all the possible topics someone could know about, I am ignorant of way more than 51% of them. So being ignorant does not make you stupid. What makes someone stupid in the way I use it is they don't know anything about a topic and they're speaking very confidently about that topic. Someone who doesn't know what they don't know is a stupid person. Okay, so I don't feel bad about saying that because that's bad behavior that should be avoided. If you don't know anything about a topic, I'll even let you comment on it as long as you're not super self assured. As long as you say I don't know a lot about this, but I think I'll. I'll be nice about it. Right. But yeah, you come to me and say something like Christians burn down the Library of Alexandria, I will laugh at you and do more Emotional harm with my words, I will hurt your feelings and not feel bad about it. Okay, back to our topic and send your angry emails about that to Father Andrew at agent about what a mean, horrible person I am. So we don't have the texts. What we do have, the biggest thing we have is the archaeology of the Mithraea themselves. So we've got a lot of data from that. The problem with archeology as a source is all that data has to be interpreted. And normally we would use things like texts to guide our interpretation, but we don't have the texts, so there's not really a solid guide for our interpretation of the archaeological data. And so you get a lot of theories when you read literature about Mithraism. There's this one guy, Condon, who was the guy for most of the 20th century. Then in the 1970s, everybody decided all of his reconstructions were all wet, and now nobody really accepts them. So now you've got just, everybody has their own ways of putting the data together and their own theories and the good ones presented as well. Here's my theory and here's why I think this theory is better than other theories. But until and unless we find some actual texts or something from the original Mithras, we're not going to know for sure who's reconstructing it the right way. So lots of data, but how certain we can be about the interpretation of that data, very limited. The other source we have is we have comments and brief descriptions of different things about Mithraism in the Church Fathers of the second and third century. Now, I love the Church Fathers. The Church Fathers are great, but it's not like they talk about Mithraism a lot. It's not like we have a lot of writings of Church Fathers from those centuries in the first place. So we've got relatively few writings from Church Fathers in the second and third centuries. Most of those are not talking about Mithraism. Right. So we've got these little bits and pieces in their texts and when they do mention Mithraism, they're like attacking Mithraism. So they're not setting out to, like, here, let me explain Roman Mithraism to you and then I will offer a detailed critique. It's an offhand reference to the demonic wickedness of Mithraism in doing X. So it's not unhelpful, it's not irrelevant. There are some details that we get about Mithraism that we wouldn't know otherwise this way. So it is helpful, but it's not enough. And it's not the kind of thing where we can really get some kind of full orb to picture of what Mithraism looked like in the Roman Empire. So as we go through the rest of this half of the program, we're going to be trying to give you the data we have and some possible interpretations based on that data. Anything that falls into the realm of interpretation, we can't be sure of.
- [59:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, I mean, when archeology, you got a bunch of stuff and you look at that stuff and you have to try to figure out what it was used for, what it might have meant to the people who used it. But if you have no one there to explain it and no text to describe what's going on, at best you got guesses. You can do context clues, you can compare it against other things, you know, but still, like, it's still a bunch of stuff, you know, you might not know what it's for, you might not know what a particular symbol means. You can just. You can guess. So that's, that's, you know, these are educated guesses.
- [60:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And there are certain ways of testing things. You talk about explanatory power and stuff, right. So, for example, if someone comes and says, oh, one of the key things in a mithraeum is this. And then you look at all the excavations of Mithra and you find out, well, only two of them have that thing. You're like, well, that can't really have been a key element, right? Yeah, maybe an element, but that can't have been the main thing.
- [60:58]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [60:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So there, there are ways you could. It's not that just. It's anybody's guess, right?
- [61:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, no. Right.
- [61:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But it's also. You can't be like 100% certain this is what they did. They did this at this time. It took this long. These are the words they said. This is, you know, nothing like that. Right. Can we have any real assuredness about. So that said, that said, what do we see when we look at the Mithra, the ones we have? So a Mithra is basically a fake cave.
- [61:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. It's so it's, it's cut out usually or sometimes built. Yeah. And. And it's meant to be like a cave. And so the. Why would you, why would you, why would you make a fake cave? It's because the cave itself is important. Right. Like you want. The cave is part of the event. It's not just a space. Like you could build a building. It's not just a space. But obviously the cave has some kind of meaning, right?
- [62:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And they didn't make it look like a pagan temple.
- [62:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [62:08]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There's a sort of normal Roman pagan temple structure. And this is different. Right. And so this. The fact that it's a fake cave is one of the differences. Right. Because normal pagan temples were not made to look like caves. There were temples in caves, but those were actual caves. They didn't build a temple to look like a cave. So that's important. It's also important to note that, you know, obviously we know the size, we know how big they were. Right. Because even in the ones that are the most broken down, we've got the exterior walls. Right. So we can see how big the. The space was. Right. And the biggest ones. The largest ones could hold maybe 40.
- [62:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
45 people, which suggests that even though this was basically a military religion, the vast majority of soldiers were not participants in it.
- [63:08]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right.
- [63:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Just a small group.
- [63:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. So this is a subgroup. And they're gathering by themselves to do this, going off into this place. Right. To do it. And this was. They, you know, they weren't building to receive converts. Right. Like, there's a certain exclusivism to it.
- [63:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [63:31]
Father Stephen DeYoung
When you're only building at that small size.
- [63:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [63:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And so there's. There's basically two chambers or two rooms. Right. Two spaces in a mithraeum. There's the. An outer space, like an entry space, which we know from the archeology, contained water sources that were used for washing. So sometimes, depending on where it was and the context, sometimes that was just basically a basin of water, sometimes that was actually moving water diverted from an aqueduct to flow through the mithraium in more established settings. And then in that same chamber, based on textile and fabric samples, we know they had some kind of specialized garments, likely related to their sort of level of initiation that we'll talk about here in a few minutes.
- [64:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [64:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That they would put on before going into the main chamber of the Mithraum. So when they were coming to do the rituals in the main room of the Mithraium, they would come into this room, take off their regular clothes, wash themselves, put on their fancy robes, whatever, kind of. And we don't know exactly what. We don't have any intact ones. Right. We just have a bunch of sort of oddly colored fabric samples. Right. That's why we're concluding this, that they had. There were some kind of garments, specialized garments in this room. So then the main body of the Mithraeum was a dining hall, which, you.
- [65:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Know, that's very much to be expected with, frankly, any Religious building from the ancient world.
- [65:31]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, the temples had dining halls.
- [65:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Temples have dining halls. That's. That's a normal.
- [65:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But the temple itself was not primarily a dining hall.
- [65:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the main space here seems to be the eating space. And we know that because there's, like, bones and stuff that were found there. Animal bones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [65:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So there's. Right, so there's this. The dining hall here is the main space, but the dining hall has some of the things that you would normally find in a pagan temple in the dining hall. Right. In the sense that the dining hall was sort of a straight room with an apps. And then in the apps would be sort of the central image. Right. The central idol.
- [66:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [66:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Of the cult, which we'll talk about here in a minute. And then there were sort of frescoes along around the rest of the dining hall, like iconography, depicting iconographic scenes involving Mithras. We'll be talking about those here as we go in this half. And then. So the main body of the room, the apps, has the central main image, and then the main body of the room, there are benches along the sides. Right. For the dining hall.
- [66:52]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. And there's photos online of this. So if you look up Mithraam M I T H R A E U M you can see either archaeological pictures or there's also. There's some, like, reconstructions of them that you can see to see what this would have looked like.
- [67:08]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. So the aforementioned central image, which is the same in. In all of them. Now, there are different versions of this. They're sort of freestanding statue versions. They're sort of bas relief versions. But it's always this image, Right. This prominent place of the apps, which is the taroctony.
- [67:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Taroctany, yeah. Which means.
- [67:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That's today's secret word. Whenever you hear it scream real loud, Everyone screaming.
- [67:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Which means bull slaying. Bull slaying. Tarochtonee.
- [67:44]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And if you've ever. Anytime anyone mentions Mithras, Right. Anywhere online, someone will post the, you know, one of the stock photos from Getty Images or wherever of the Tarochtony of Mithras slaying the bull. Okay. But there are a number of details in this central image that are important beyond just. It's a guy killing a bull. Right. And guy killing a bull. I mean, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Right. They kill the bull of heaven.
- [68:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [68:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like, I mean, killing a bull is all over the place in ancient paganism.
- [68:21]
Caller
Right.
- [68:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But so the details here are important in Terms of thinking about Mithraism as such. Right. So Mithras is slaying the bull of heaven. Mithras is always dressed. We're going to kind of go through the details first and then talk about interpreting them.
- [68:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes. People in the chat are really excited about this particular detail, Father.
- [68:43]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay. Yeah, it's true. I don't know why.
- [68:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
They're really. They're really into it.
- [68:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Slaying the bowl of heaven. And he's wearing a Phrygian cap and a cape.
- [68:52]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Phrygian cap. That's the real term, everybody. Phrygian cap.
- [68:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
The frigid cap. We're talking more about Phrygian caps and their amazing history.
- [69:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep.
- [69:02]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Up to this very day. And Mithras is slaying the bull by. He. He has one hand with his fingers in the nostrils of the bull, pulling it up. Up. And then the other hand is plunging a knife into the side of the bowl.
- [69:27]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [69:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Kill it. There is then ears. There are then ears of corn sprouting from the bull's backside. His hindquarters.
- [69:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep. And if you. Again, if you look, if you want to see a complete image of what we're talking about, look up to knee. You know, T A, U, R, O, C, T, O, N, Y. Just Google image that. And you can see all of this stuff. Yeah.
- [70:07]
Caller
Okay.
- [70:08]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So he's getting nose pulled, stabbed. Corn is coming out of his rear end. Years of corn.
- [70:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep.
- [70:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And there are. There's a snake and a dog drinking the bull's blood.
- [70:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Lapping it up as it's coming out.
- [70:26]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It's coming out of the wound. And a scorpion grabbing the bull's genitals. I can only assume to add insult to injury, this bull is having a very bad day.
- [70:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I really need a symbolic world episode about.
- [70:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, we really need Pageau.
- [70:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
We really.
- [70:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Please, if you hear this, I want an episode on the Taroxity image.
- [70:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Jonathan Pageau, we are requesting this from you, please.
- [70:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, please do weigh in, if you would. And if he's not, and then somebody.
- [71:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Somebody contact him, write him an email.
- [71:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Point him to this. When this is on YouTube. This is all said and done on YouTube. Put it. Put a timestamp in the comments or.
- [71:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Jonathan, if you're listening right now, please call in. We want to discuss this.
- [71:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, we'll do it live. We'll do it live.
- [71:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Exactly.
- [71:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Exactly. What time is it in Canadia right now?
- [71:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Well, they've got a lot of different times in.
- [71:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Know they still have the Internet in Canupistan anyway. And then finally, in terms of details, Mithras has two helpers who are dressed exactly like him with the Phrygian caps and the capes named Coutis and Cotopatis who are both holding torches. And they're. They look just like him, but they're smaller. They're sort of little mini mes. Right. They're hanging out with him. Okay, so hearing no phone call from Peugeot, we will forge ahead on our own. What's that all about?
- [72:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I don't know. I don't know. Should we declare another lord of spirits symbolic world blood feud? It might be time.
- [72:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It's been a while. We're issuing a fatwa on all of French speaking Canadia.
- [72:22]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
He is the world's second greatest Canadian though.
- [72:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Second greatest French Canadian. Everybody's second or third favorite French Canadian, Jonathan Peugeot. So, but, so what's all that about? Right?
- [72:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes. What is going on? What is going on?
- [72:40]
Father Stephen DeYoung
What is even happening in this, in this image? Right.
- [72:43]
Caller
Okay.
- [72:43]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So bizarre.
- [72:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
A couple of things.
- [72:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [72:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So first of all, the whole slaying of the bull motif, the slay of the bull of heaven motif. Right. This is a creation event motif. Right. But you have to remember what creation means in a pagan context. Right?
- [73:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [73:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Pagans who didn't really believe the world had a beginning.
- [73:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. So it's about like taking, taking chaos and turning it into order. Or sometimes it's actually about taking order, turning it into chaos and then order again.
- [73:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. So it's, it's reinitiating the cycle.
- [73:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Tearing something apart or putting something.
- [73:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Everything goes in this cycle. So this is reinitiating the cycle. It's creation in that sense. Right?
- [73:34]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [73:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And this cyclical thing is important in interpreting a whole bunch of things in this image. The cyclical idea. So Phrygian caps are a whole thing in the ancient world.
- [73:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So this is what everyone wants to talk about.
- [73:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Historically, Phrygian caps were originally just hats that they wore in, in, in Persia.
- [73:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, right.
- [73:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Persian hats. Right, that's. But so then they become a way as depicted in iconography and art in, in Europe, for example, in points west to depict something or someone as being Persian.
- [74:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. It's just a sick. Like for instance, a beret might signal Frenchness to Americans maybe. I don't know.
- [74:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And a striped shirt and a little scarf tied around their neck and a baguette in their bicycle basket. You are so racist, Father Andrew. Anyway, That's, that's okay. I went out first time I was in England. I saw a commercial for frozen pizzas and they had one that was French style and they had a guy dressed exactly like that with a mustache to represent France. And then they had. You could just imagine what the Italian guy looked like. But then. But then that I felt attacked because the third one was American style and it was, of course, a cowboy.
- [75:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I strongly suspect sometime, and we have a number of people that are tuning in from abroad right now, I strongly suspect sometimes that a lot of people who are not Americans and have never been to the United States, that there's basically two kinds of Americans. There's Texans and there's New Yorkers. And I think that's what America is for. A lot of our friends that are overseas.
- [75:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, yeah.
- [75:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep.
- [75:35]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But there's much more to it than that.
- [75:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There's so much more.
- [75:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You guys, there's southern Louisiana. There are five people in Montana. So. Yeah. So it's just a way. Right. And so really, in this context, right. The. The Phrygian caps are a way of identifying Mithras and his compatriots as being from the East.
- [76:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [76:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. It's a kind of early Orientalism on the part of the Romans. Now, here's the interesting thing. Phrygian caps have a. This is kind of a digression, but it's interesting. So I don't care. Phrygian caps have kind of interesting afterlife in that they show up again. Right. I mean, they pop up here and there at art when they're trying to draw a Persian, you give them that kind of hat. But then they make this sudden reappearance in the American and French Revolution, and the Phrygian cap in both the US And French Revolutions becomes a symbol of the goddess liberty.
- [76:53]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. What's that about? Why?
- [76:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because it's almost like in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, they were trying to return to pre Christian paganism when they rejected the divine right of kings. It's almost like that.
- [77:09]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Almost like that.
- [77:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Almost like they built a capital with all Roman architecture and started a republic. But anyway.
- [77:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But. But then also a piece of popular entertainment that is largely about a group.
- [77:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Of guys, Scandinavian in origin.
- [77:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Called the Smurfs. They're all wearing Phrygian caps.
- [77:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes.
- [77:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
What is up with that?
- [77:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
This is connecting them to Mithraism. So your grandma was right. The Smurfs are satanic.
- [77:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I knew it. I knew it.
- [77:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They are little demons.
- [77:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I mean, the cat is named Azrael and that is literally the angel of Death. Right.
- [77:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But Gargamel's the bad guy, right?
- [77:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
He's the one trying to exterminate these little demons?
- [77:53]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, no, he wants to eat them. Well, that's what's really interesting to me, because, like, that's not. I don't think that's cannibalism technically, because.
- [78:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, not the same species.
- [78:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He's a human. And the Smurfs are technically not.
- [78:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. And then Smurf. Smurfette is basically a magically created golem.
- [78:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, she is. Yes. Originally created to do evil.
- [78:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right. That's right.
- [78:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
When she had. When she had dark hair. And then she gets blonde hair and becomes good. So there's like, some racism. Wow. But anyway.
- [78:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Clearly she has good genesis.
- [78:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Scandinavian racism.
- [78:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There you go. Okay, where were we? Smurfs. Okay, so what's the deal?
- [78:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So that aside about the Phrygian cap. Right.
- [78:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. What's the deal with corn or wheat? Or is this the British usage of the term corn, meaning all.
- [78:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, these are. Well, sort of. Yeah. In the sense that. Right. The idea here is this is about fertility and crops and harvest.
- [78:52]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [78:53]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. So reinitiating the cycle again. Right. And the animals, right? What? You know, you're going, okay, it's a bull. And then you got like, a scorpion and a snake and a dog. Right. And a really nasty scorpion.
- [79:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, yes.
- [79:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But, right, these are astrological symbols. These are constellations. Right. Canis. Right. Scorpio. Right. And so the. Including the bull, Taurus. Right. That the. The animals depicted. Again, this is the astrological cycle.
- [79:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [79:42]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. And then you've got the two mini mes, Cowdies and Katripatis and Couties. We said they both have torches. Cowdis has his torch. He's holding it up. And Counter Potty's has his torch and he's pointing it at the ground, so it's down. Right. And so there's a bunch of theories about this, but this is. I take a Porque no los cuatro on this. So there are people who will say this is. You know, they represent spring and autumn. Right. Spring and fall. Right. Or sunrise and sunset, or just the beginning and end of life, or the two points at which the moon crosses the ecliptic. Because they're going with the astrological constellation thing with the animals and where they're placed in the image, you know, beginning and end of the cycle. Right. And I think all of those. Right, yes, all four of those are contained in this idea. Right. And so there's this idea of the ordering of creation out of chaos. Right. Things collapse and are reborn. Things deteriorate and New life grows out of it. Right. This whole cyclical thing. The idea is that in this image, Mithras is the one reinitiating the cycle. Right. And if you're, you know, out at Hadrian's Wall in a. In a British winner and you're a nice Italian boy, that. That kind of seems like death.
- [81:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's a nice part of the country, but I also do not come from Italy.
- [81:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right, right. You're not Mediterranean born and bred. Right. So the idea is, you know, you would want someone to come and reinitiate. Right. That. That cycle, restart it again. Right. And. And bring crops. So while we don't have any primary texts, we do have one inscription.
- [81:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Hey, an inscription.
- [81:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
One of these. The one at one of these. A Latin inscription. And here's the problem with this, is that one of the words in the inscription is kind of scratched up.
- [82:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. So what it says is, et nos servasti. And then the scratched word, sanguine fuso, which. The scratched word.
- [82:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You favor the Italian pronunciation of the Latin, clearly.
- [82:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Well, there you go. Ecclesiastical pronunciation.
- [82:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Hey, it's a me barius.
- [82:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, yes. The. The scratched out word might be eternali. But it might be. If it is that, then it's probably.
- [82:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But it's spelled wrong.
- [82:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, which is not. Which is not impossible. I mean, right.
- [82:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It could be a misspelled inscription. Yeah, there's a lot of our military.
- [82:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Guys including misspelled inscriptions. You know, I mean, I've seen gravestones that are very embarrassingly misspelled.
- [83:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. So that does happen.
- [83:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right?
- [83:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So it could just be misspelled.
- [83:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So for everybody that's not a classical scholar. Father, what does this. How dare you mean?
- [83:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
First of all, how dare you not study the classics?
- [83:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's wrong with you?
- [83:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
What have you been doing with your life? Playing Marvel Rivals on Twitch? Come on.
- [83:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
You mean the magisterial livestream for modernists.
- [83:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Modernists, yes, exactly. Yes. So what that means in Latin, so I'll leave out the scratchy word for now, is you have also saved us by shedding some adjective. Blood. So if that's eternally misspelled, then it's shedding eternal blood. But it could be something else.
- [83:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, you have. Yeah. Shedding something. Blood. Anyway.
- [84:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Now already the excitable among you are going. You have saved us by shedding eternal blood.
- [84:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, it's salvation.
- [84:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It's Christianity.
- [84:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It's Christianity. And as we know, this is where Christianity. Wait. This post dates Christianity.
- [84:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Wait. Well, but also. Right. Yes, we're jumping to a lot of conclusions here.
- [84:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
What do you mean by saved? Yeah, right. Like, like, like, you know, Caesar Augustus was said to be the savior of the world.
- [84:35]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes.
- [84:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Like, that was.
- [84:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That clearly means that. That in his death, Caesar Augustus took upon himself the punishment for the sins of the world.
- [84:42]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right. He was having the sins of the world imputed upon him.
- [84:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
All that could mean. That's all that could mean.
- [84:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No kids. I mean, everybody saved. It just. It literally means rescued. That's what saved means.
- [84:57]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But even with. Even within that context. Right. It could have a number of applications.
- [85:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right. Rescued from what?
- [85:06]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And so the reason Caesar Augustus takes the title savior of the World is that he ended the Roman Civil War.
- [85:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [85:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And restored order.
- [85:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right. Yeah.
- [85:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay. Well, he restored order to the world by ending the Roman Civil War and creating the Roman Empire. Right. So. Yeah. So that's. Or. Right. And the concept saved here we're talking about, Mithraism, is closer to that than to Christian salvation. Right. The idea. By killing the bull, that's the bloodshedding we're talking about here.
- [85:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [85:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. By killing the bull of heaven, he has. Right. Cause ears of corn to fly out of its backside. He has restarted the cycle.
- [85:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Caused a scorpion to. Anyway.
- [85:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, yes. Well, the scorpion's there with an assist. Right.
- [86:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean, it might mean, within context, it might mean something like, you've rescued us from chaos, from winter, from destruction, from.
- [86:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
From famine, from.
- [86:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
From famine.
- [86:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. By re. Initiating the cycle. Right, right.
- [86:24]
Caller
And.
- [86:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And bringing good order and life back to the world. Right. In this cyclical sense. Right. Like this is something that's repeated over and over again, the cycle.
- [86:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Not something.
- [86:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That'S done once and for all. So that said, that's sort of a brief breakdown of this central image of the Tarachtony. But there's other iconography, as we mentioned. So there's one image that's, like, super common. And honestly, we have no idea what it's really all about because we don't have a text, we don't have the story. But in the image, there is some water, like a flow of water that has been blocked off. And Mithras is shooting an arrow and destroying the blockage and letting the water flow freely.
- [87:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [87:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And it's over and over again in these Mithra. And again, we have no idea what.
- [87:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
The context is, what that's all about.
- [87:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because we just have this image. Right. And that seems like something very specific. That seems like something that there's a story surrounding that we don't have. Right. That that's some particular flow of water, not like water in general. Right. Like it was blocked by someone or something and he overcame it. But we don't know what exactly more important. And the second most common image we see, the second most important image we see after the tr, is Mithras having dinner with the sun. Not S O N S u n, like the sun in the sky. And the sun is usually depicted in ways that match up with either the Greek Helios or the Roman Sol Invictus. Now, at the same time. At the same time, Mithras is often depicted kind of as the sun. So he is kind of a solar deity in terms of the astrological stuff and that kind of thing.
- [88:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [88:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And so, you know, how can. How. If he kind of is the sun, like, how is he having dinner with the sun? And this falls under the category of something we've talked about super controversially on the show that's tricky for people to understand. And this is the concept that of ancient world of one God being a hypostasis of another God. Right. We had a question about the Trinity. So now that question sounds on topic. See, see? Go long enough. But. So this is not identical to what we mean when we talk about the hypostasis of the Trinity. And the Greek word hypostasis was not used for this in the ancient world. Modern scholars use it for this. Okay, so with those qualifiers, what we mean when we talk about this is that in ancient paganism, they understood that a single deity could have multiple localized embodiments at the same time.
- [89:48]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, I mean, this is like the basis for idolatry.
- [89:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, it's basically for idolatry, but it's also the basis for, like, Alexander the Great showing up in what would become anti. Near what would become Antioch on the Orontes and saying, oh, they're shrine to baal. He's basically Zeus.
- [90:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah.
- [90:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And. And saying this is tribe Zeus Boanerges. So Zeus Boanerges. This particular version of Zeus is baal or BAAL is a particular version of Zeus. Right. The way they understood that working because, like, the depictions are different. Right. You'll get Artemis anywhere other than Ephesus, and she's like this huntress God. Right. Then at Ephesus, she's got, like, fruit hanging all over her.
- [90:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, right.
- [90:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. But they understood this as being two different we. The modern term for this is that those are two different hypostasis of the. The same deity. Right. So the idea here is that Mithras is another Hypostasis of the sun God that probably, again, we don't have texts, so we don't know for sure. Probably had some kind of familial relationship projected onto it, like Helios or Sol Invictus was his father, for example.
- [91:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, but we don't know.
- [91:08]
Father Stephen DeYoung
We don't know exactly. Could have been brother. Could have been the other way around. Could be Mithras was the father.
- [91:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah.
- [91:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And Helios, or solid victims, was his son. They could have been brothers. We don't know. Right.
- [91:22]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
For sure. Yeah.
- [91:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But there was probably, given the way this works in paganism, they would have labeled some kind of familial relationship between the two if they're both associated with the sun. And so it's not clear these depictions exactly what they're eating for dinner either.
- [91:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Maybe the bull, because that's killed nearby.
- [91:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That's the going theory. Almost everyone thinks it's the bull.
- [91:48]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [91:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That this is. This is sort of following up on. He slays the bull and then serves the bull to. Right. The. The sun God. And they. They share this meal. And you could see how that could go either way of the familial relationship. Right. Like, if they thought the son was his father, then he, you know, slays it, brings it to his father, is like an offering. Or it could go the other way. Right. He could be the father and he slays the bull and then provides for. Right. This other deity. That's his son. Right. I mean, could go all kinds of ways. This is exhibit one. Exhibit of the problem with interpreting archeological data without any texts. Right.
- [92:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, that's a guess.
- [92:40]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But so that. That is very prominent. And we'll get. We'll get into more of why that's so prominent here in just a second, but we have to do a last little bit of iconography. So Mithras was born from a rock. Yeah, he sort of popped forth from a rock.
- [93:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Pops out of the rock.
- [93:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Pop rock. Right. Which, as I said to Father Andrew earlier today, I think is being, like, born in a barrel of butcher knives. It's just about how tough you are. Right?
- [93:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah. He's. He's really hardcore.
- [93:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. He's a hard man. Right. Yeah. Burst forth from a rock. That's how he was born. But the rock he burst out of was also worshiped within. Within Roman Mithraism.
- [93:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Crazy.
- [93:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And the rock was referred to as Petrogenatrix, which basically means mother rock, mama rock.
- [93:42]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah.
- [93:44]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Female parent rock, female progenitor rock. So not Dwayne Johnson and not Simon Bar Jona.
- [93:53]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes.
- [93:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But Mother Rock who. And again they worshiped this rock. So yeah, there's. That's not the same as worshiping rock and roll either.
- [94:14]
Caller
Right.
- [94:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So the central ritual that's going on in the Smith Rayum, as you might expect, since it's a dining hall, is a dinner. Right. And this meal was held daily at dinner time in late afternoon. Right. The equivalent of around 4 or 5 o', clock, which of course would shift based on sunrise and sunset, not just seasonally, but where they were in the world. Right. Higher latitude. Lower latitude, which are very different between like Britain and Syria. But at dinner time they gather daily to have this dinner. And this meal was a participation in Mithras, dinner with the sun. And one of the things we found in several of the Mithra is this bas relief on a stand that kind of flips around like it's double sided. So you like flip it around from one side to the other and on one side the bas relief is the, the taroctini and on the other side is the dinner with the sun.
- [95:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Which might mean that it's at one point in the ritual you see one side and then another point of the ritual, they flip it around and you see.
- [95:42]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So they tell the story of the taroctony, for example, with that image facing forward and then turn it around and then they have the meal. Right. But you get people who have even more elaborate theories based on pretty much nothing. Like, oh well, clearly when they had the Taroctady showing that was a teaching period.
- [96:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [96:06]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean they taught about something.
- [96:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
How do you. Right. That's pure speculation.
- [96:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And then they turn it around and eat the meal. See, it's just like a Christian liturgy.
- [96:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [96:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Where there's teaching and then the Eucharist a meal. But that's based on nothing. Yeah. Now that said, that said Saint Justin being the first Saint Justin martyr saint just to the philosopher. And then other fathers after him referred to the meal eaten in the Mithraium as a parody of the Eucharist. Not that like the, the participants, the Roman soldiers doing it, stole it for St. Justin, the demons who they're worshiping. Right. So Mithras, cowdies. Right. I guess the rock, the demons who they're worshiping were parodying the Eucharist. Right. Because he holds that, that their ritual life was created not by a bunch of people who came up with a religion, but by the demons who were who they had tricked into worshiping and following them. Right.
- [97:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [97:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So the idea that there is some Kind of relationship, albeit for St. Justin in verse, between the euchre, you know, a Eucharistic meal. And this meal is not like, out of left field when scholars propose it. Right. St. Justin here is proposing it. Just. It's an inverse relationship.
- [97:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. He's saying that it's. Demons saw the Eucharist and came up with this and inspired these Roman soldiers to do this stuff. That's basically what he's saying.
- [97:54]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. As an abomination. Yes. So this is a meal. It is. We can tell it's in some way in the category of sacrificial meal. Right. Ritual meal. But here's. Here's another great example of trying to interpret archeological data. As Father Andrew mentioned earlier, they found the remains of bone, like animal bones and stuff. Right. Stuff that they were eating food waste. Right. In the mithraea. So they were eating this stuff. Right. But were they sacrificing it?
- [98:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [98:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Was it trapezomata? Because of the dining halls in Greek and Roman temples, they ate meat from the sacrifices, but they also had what's called trapezobata, which is literally table things, meaning. Right.
- [98:48]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Other food, side dishes.
- [98:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, basically. Yeah. Sides. You got your Mac and cheese, you got your mashed potatoes and gravy.
- [98:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [98:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Just the turkey. They sacrificed as is.
- [99:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But pulled.
- [99:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. But so we don't know. And, you know, while normally anytime you find food waste until you assume that they had sacrificed at least some of it. Right. The issue with Mithra is there's. There's no obvious place to sacrifice stuff.
- [99:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. There's no altar or anything like that, which, I mean, you think about this, right? These are like caves. They are often literally underground. Sacrifice involves burning stuff. So it just wouldn't be super practical. I mean, I'm. Again, I'm speculating here, but it would not be super practical to actually be offering sacrifices in a space like that.
- [99:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right, Right. So a normal Roman temple, you have temple property where sacrifices are going on and where the idol is. Right. And then you have the dining halls where the meat is taken, and then the festal meals are eaten and other ritual activities, usually of a sexual nature, are engaged in. Right. Mithraea are a little weird in that regard in that the main body is the dining hall, but the idol and the iconography are there, but there's not an altar, per se, or sacrificial implements per se. So a lot of people theorize. But it's just a theory. Right. We don't know for sure, but a lot of people theorize that sacrificial meat was being brought there from somewhere else. Right. So there are altars and things in these. Because these are military sites, in these military forts. There are places where the more traditional pagan worship is going on.
- [100:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
On.
- [100:42]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And they're sacrificing animals. Right. So therefore the theory is they're going and sacrificing stuff to Mithras there and then taking it there to have their private ritual.
- [100:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [101:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Meal. Yeah, that's the theory. But you can't prove that. Right. If someone comes and argues, know they were doing something fundamentally, I mean, you can't prove that other theory wrong. Right. We're just going by what we have archaeologically. So we also know that there are levels of initiation involved. So this is. This is a mystery cult. Right. We've talked about this, that Roman mythrism is a mystery religion. It's a mystery culture, but it's also weird compared to other mystery cults. So we just talked about how Mithraea are weird compared to regular Roman pagan temples, but their practices are also weird compared to other mystery cults that we're going to talk about next time. Because other mystery cults, while obviously there's mysteries, so there's some private experience that happens. Right. Somebody's initiated into the Mysteries of, say, Demeter. Right. But at the time when those initiations happen, there is a big public festival to Demeter.
- [102:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [102:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There's sort of more regular sacrifices going on, feasts going on, partying going on, sexual activity going on. All of this that's happening in a public setting. And then often private, There are people who are being initiated into the. The Mysteries of Demeter.
- [102:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There's like an esoteric, you know, thing happening. Addition.
- [102:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah.
- [102:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Whereas Mithraism seems to have been kind of all esoterica.
- [102:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. There is no public element.
- [102:43]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [102:43]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There is no element where anyone else is involved, as far as we can tell.
- [102:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And, I mean, it should be known. I think we. We haven't actually defined the word mystery up to this point. I mean, it really just comes from a word in Greek that just means secret.
- [102:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah.
- [102:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So it.
- [102:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, yeah.
- [103:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So, like. Yeah, some you'll even get sometimes in liturgical texts, orthodox liturgical texts will say, and the priest says the following mystically, which doesn't mean he kind of does.
- [103:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It with a lot of mysteriously.
- [103:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, no, it's quietly hid in a hidden way, you know, but, yeah, I mean, the idea is that the mysteries, it's something secret, something hidden that's happening. So, like, even when we refer to the Eucharist as a holy mystery, we don't mean that it's, you know, that. That no one can see it.
- [103:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
What we mean is you're having a bizarre esoteric experience.
- [103:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. In this case, we mean that there's something hidden happening, you know, namely that you're eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ. That's not happening in a completely open way. Right. But so a mystery called. Is even more of all of that.
- [103:54]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. You know, and we'll get into that a lot more in the next episode.
- [103:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Deep dive into. Yep. Yeah, yeah.
- [104:02]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. I think in the. It's in Spanish that Doctor who is Doctor Mysterio.
- [104:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Interesting.
- [104:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Which is way cooler than Doctor who.
- [104:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Like.
- [104:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So there are, within Roman Mithraism, levels of initiation. So it's not just. This is another difference than at least some of the other mystery cults, some of the other history cults. You're either an initiate or not. Right. And so someone would go and be initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Right. And then you've been initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
- [104:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [104:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But there are, like ranks of initiation.
- [104:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [104:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
With it. And the way we know about this is not directly from origin, but sort of through origin. Because another thing that's come up on the show before is Origins contra Celsus or contra Celsus. Although if you pronounce it that way, I guess it should be centra Celsus, shouldn't it? But anyway, no, Gotta go classical Latin or nothing. Weenie wechi. Anyway, so. That text, right. Celsus, or Celsus is. Was the pagan, that sort of the great pagan polemical opponent of Christianity in the late second century. And who wrote this sort of attempted refutation of Christianity, which apparently was significant and had enough weight to it that people like Origen felt like they had to respond. Right. We do not have the original, so we only know about what Kelsis wrote through Origen quoting it in his response. But he does quote it pretty liberally.
- [106:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [106:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He'll quote rather large chunks and then respond to them. Right. In his response. So in. In one of those chunks, Kelsis tells us about the seven levels of initiation into Roman Mithraism. Starting we're going to go lowest to highest. Lowest to highest. It is Corax, nymphus, Miles, Leo, Perses, Heliodromus, and then pater. Okay, so depending on your level of Latin, you probably got at least a couple of those. Yeah.
- [106:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Is this like. Is this like wee belows, Boy Scouts, Eagles. Wait, how's that going?
- [106:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, you know, the. The Freemasons have like what, 30 odd levels.
- [106:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So many, so many degrees of mason.
- [106:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
This is just seven. Right. And so you get the third degree. You've only got four left to go. Yes. Corax. We'll translate these into English for the ones people may not know. Corax is a raven.
- [107:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, Right.
- [107:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So you start out as a raven.
- [107:22]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep.
- [107:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Then you become a Nymphus, which is a bride.
- [107:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Huh? Okay. Yeah.
- [107:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Then you become a Miles, which is a soldier. Then you become a Leo, which is a lion. You probably figured that one out already, even if you don't know Latin.
- [107:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Which one?
- [107:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Then you become a Perses, which means you become a Persian.
- [107:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes. Now you're a Persian.
- [107:44]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Which all that reminds me of when, when I got ordained and my mother in law said to my wife Trisha. So now you're a Korean.
- [107:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It's a nice Antiochian in joke.
- [107:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That's great. Yes.
- [108:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So.
- [108:06]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So it is the hardest one to.
- [108:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Pronounce of all the clergy wife names.
- [108:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Perseus. You become a Persian. Right?
- [108:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Persian.
- [108:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. Heliodromus means literally a sun runner.
- [108:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [108:21]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But is more the idea of a messenger of the sun.
- [108:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah.
- [108:25]
Father Stephen DeYoung
S U N. Right. You are a messenger of the sun. And then finally pater, you probably figured that one out too. That means father. And there would be one person initiated to the rank of pater in any given group.
- [108:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [108:44]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He's the dad who's sort of the boss of that particular mithraium, who sort of presided at all the things, all the ritual things. So you may be wondering, that sounds like a weird random collection of ranks. And you're not wrong. These just these just random things. But these are again, these are constellations.
- [109:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. So probably the seven heavens or something like that.
- [109:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So as there's seven of them, because each of these constellations is associated with one of the seven heavens, you're ascending up into the heavens. Right. And you cut, you get, you get close to a full zodiac if you actually throw all these together, the seven ranks, plus the bull, the scorpion, that. Right. So. But yeah, you sort of are. That is you're sending upward into the heavens toward joining the feast with the sun and, and Mithras.
- [109:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So. Yeah. So just to reiterate, this is a best set of guesses from scholarship generally kind of an attempted reconstruction of what this is all about.
- [110:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. And we've left it vague. Right. We did not give you a ton of detail about, for example, what happened at the dinner because we don't know.
- [110:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
We don't know. And let's just leave off with the whole Scorpion thing.
- [110:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes.
- [110:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right.
- [110:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Hopefully that didn't happen to anyone at the dinner.
- [110:26]
Caller
Really?
- [110:26]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well.
- [110:27]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And now we bring out the scorpions. No.
- [110:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. That'd be a good initiation. The newest raven is like, I'm out.
- [110:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I'm out. Yeah.
- [110:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, I'm done. I'm done.
- [110:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right, well, we're gonna take our second break, and we'll be right back with this episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast.
- [110:49]
Narrator
Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346.
- [111:02]
Announcer
That's 855 AF radio. Ancient Near Eastern texts such as the BAAL Cycle portray the pagan God BAAL as a rebel, the hero of a revolution, worshipped and glorified for his long string of victories. In the Baal book, A Biography of the Devil, Fr. Stephen DeYoung shows that the Hebrew Scriptures consciously turn the Baal story on its head, depicting him as a failed and defeated rebel who nonetheless tries to steal the glory that belongs to Almighty God. From these scriptures, the figure of the devil emerged within Jewish and Christian tradition. Father De Jong works through the Old and New Testament passages that refer to various BAAL stories, and he surveys BAAL worship through followers, beliefs, religious practices, and liturgical life. In these pages, we will see that the figures of BAAL and the Devil, the Prince of Demons, are one and the same. To find this book and others like it, you can go to store.ancientfaith.com again, that is store.ancient faith.com.
- [112:21]
Narrator
We'Re back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick, and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.
- [112:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Hey, welcome back, everybody. We're talking Mithraism here on this, this episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast. And now we're finally getting to the part where we address all of those crazy memes. Like there's, I mean, just.
- [112:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Which is what's really important.
- [112:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I just want to suggest to everybody.
- [112:57]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Meme theology at this point, if you.
- [112:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Don'T, if you think we're making this up, which maybe some of you are, like, I've never seen any of this stuff before. Go to the Googles or whatever, search.
- [113:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Don'T expose them to this.
- [113:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And, and, you know, type, thank the.
- [113:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Lord that he has protected you from.
- [113:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
This until now, Jesus Mithras memes, and you will See that the Internet is replete. Replete, I say, with. With what we're about to talk about. So anyway, yes, all kinds of people claiming that. That Christianity comes from Mithraism. It's so fun. All right, so where are we? What's going on?
- [113:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, no phone calls.
- [113:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Who am I.
- [113:42]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Is our call screener cracking down now that I've encouraged people to lie? Is he not letting anybody through?
- [113:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Pretty much, something like that. Yeah. No calls currently on the board, so I don't know. So anyway, yeah, people are curious enough about Mithras to comment in the chat.
- [114:06]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So, yes, people on the interwebs are fascinating folk. I would think that just like a thousand anthropology degrees could be granted on theses. Just. And sociology, while we're at it, just working with, you know, subreddits and I'll bet you.
- [114:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, someone just did mention redditors in the. In the chat. I mean, has the first doctoral dissertation on memes been written and defended? Has that already.
- [114:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Oh, yes. Oh, I'm sure it has. Yeah, I'm sure it has. Dozens of them.
- [114:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And you ashamed of yourselves?
- [114:53]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Anyway, yeah. So first we'll start with. Before we get into the. The hoo ha.
- [115:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's the technical term.
- [115:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, yes, the hoo ha, as we say in. In academia, where does Mithraism actually come from? Okay. And what kind of relationship does it actually have with Christianity? Well, In the same way, or in a similar way we talked about, mentioned the Axial Age earlier, these shifts that happened. So on a much more localized level, because it's within the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity over the course of the Roman Empire leading up to St. Constantine, during that period, there is a transformation happening in Roman paganism in general.
- [115:51]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [115:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because Roman paganism had to begin to compete with Christianity in the marketplace of ideas. And so that. I'm not saying Christianity is composed of ideas. That was just a joke for people terminally online in certain circles. Come on, people.
- [116:09]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Anyway, but also, I mean, like, it seems in a lot of ways, it seems like Greco Roman pagan Buddhism is kind of exhausted by this point in its history.
- [116:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, it kind of is. So Caesar Augustus, not to be confused with St. Augustine, Caesar Augustus really had to revitalize paganism at the beginning of the empire. One of the many reforms. Right. We've talked before on the show about him. You know, the Aeneid really is now the new official history for the Roman Empire. And Ovid is collecting sort of what we would call the folklore. Right. The. The stories of the various regions of the newly. The newly United Empire and Augustus, the Roman Republic was spent. That's why it died and became an empire. And so he revitalized a lot of things. He had a big family values thing, which don't correspond to our idea of family values, but Roman family values.
- [117:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Which.
- [117:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Was mainly women being faithful to their husbands and who cares what their husbands do, you know, that kind of thing. But he also had to revitalize the religion because, I mean, temples were in disrepair, sacrifices weren't being offered. Like it had gotten bad. Right. And even under Augustus, a lot of the Romans still had a very impious view of their own gods.
- [117:38]
Caller
Gods.
- [117:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So, for example, famously, when the legion gets lost in Germany to Arminius, not that Arminius Calvinist, don't get excited. To Arminius. The Romans were mad at the gods about it. So they throw rocks at the temples in Rome and hurl curses at the gods because they're like, hey, we held up our head, we gave you, you know, bulls and goats and, you know, you're supposed to give us victory. So he had had to revitalize it. And so he had, to a certain extent, he had sort of reasserted himself as Pontifex Maximus and everything. I was performing sacrificial rituals himself, publicly serving as a priest as part of all this. But having gone through that very sort of irreligious, by ancient standards, impious period, the Romans never really got their former pagan religiosity back. And so what happens in this transition because of that? And again, because Christianity is ascendant and Christianity being ascended, it's not just a question of, oh, people have to decide what religion they're going to follow. Christians were actively attacking paganism.
- [119:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, right.
- [119:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They move from this is why this is kind of an outdated trope now. But back in the day when you did the, you know, 101 level study of church history, they talked about the second century as the era of Christian Apollo. Apologists, right. Who are defending Christianity. And then in the third century, this is only vaguely true, but in the third century, Christians kind of go on the attack. That's the era of the polemicists, where they're going after paganism. Right. And going after Greek philosophy and things. And so some of those attacks, especially on people who are kind of jaded about the gods and people come along and are offering now these not dumb critiques of traditional Roman pagan religion. They had some bite.
- [119:53]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Especially considering, like within paganism you're getting critiques, you know, like Plato often saying, well, the gods aren't really like that.
- [120:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You know, and so what happens is outside of. Right. The old paganism still survives, as we talked about earlier, out in the hinterlands. Right. That's. They're still doing the old paganism, but they're just fine with it. But in your urban centers and this kind of thing. Right. Like, it was all too rustic, it was all too pagan. Like they weren't interested anymore.
- [120:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [120:26]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And so you see the ascendancy of various more philosophical approaches and other approaches, but almost all of them are under at least some influence of Christianity in the sense that they're borrowing Christian terminology, Christian ideas and these kind of things to kind of overcome the Christian attacks and to appeal to those tempted to become Christians. Right. To remain within the broader pagan umbrella. And so you get within people who are still considered pagans. Right. Aren't actually sacrificing animals anymore.
- [121:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Which.
- [121:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And they're less likely to be engaging in direct idolatry. Things become much more philosophical. So famously. Right. People may know this today. St. John Chrysostom's feast day. St. John Chrysostom, teacher in rhetoric, was, quote, unquote, a pagan. He was part of the last generation of pagans in the Roman Empire, post Theodosius. Right.
- [121:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And.
- [121:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But the fact that he was a pagan doesn't mean he was out there sacrificing pigs to Zeus. Right. It means he wasn't a Christian. He basically believed in Greek philosophy. Right. He was. By our standards, we wouldn't even call him a pagan. We'd call him a classicist.
- [121:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. So what happens is paganism becomes a lot more kind of intellectual and talky in terms of its public manifestation. I mean, honestly, like, this is just an analogy. It's just an analogy. It's almost like a Protestantizing where the emphasis on all the ritual life is, you know. Yeah. That's. We're a little too cool for that, you know, and it becomes much more intellectual. Much more doc. You know, doctrinal.
- [122:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, yeah.
- [122:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Intellectual. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [122:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And so that's. That's the way this is sort of going even within. Right. The pagan world.
- [122:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [122:26]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But.
- [122:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But the truth is, is that human beings need ritual. And so a lot of people are turning to Christianity and, you know, some little group of Roman soldiers here and there. Yeah. On the borders, are going into their caves and eating their meals with this. With the Sun God.
- [122:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But. Yeah. And the ones who aren't are still going to end up in something that very much resembles a religion. And it's kind of Christian. Ish. Because Christianity becomes the religion that is ascendant. And so Neoplatonism is essentially what you get when you try to stir some Christian ideas of salvation and that kind of thing into Platonism.
- [123:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [123:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And Gnosticism is what you get when you try to stir some of the. Some Christian ideas into the older paganism. Right. You take one of the emanations, you take one of the divine spirits, and you name it Christ. Yeah, Right. And you make it some kind of redeemer figure within the whole larger cycle of gods and goddesses of various tiers and levels. Right. That it's basically taking the older paganism and just stirring in a little hint of Christianity some of the same terms, some of the same ideas, doing some kind of version of the Eucharist, but it's clearly not the Eucharist, but it's Eucharist ish, you know, and the same thing, really, with Mithraism.
- [123:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So before we. Before we move on to the next thing about this, you have summoned callers. Father Stephen, with your. With your.
- [123:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Your great power is one of the pageau.
- [123:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I don't think so. Unless he's going under.
- [124:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
He's dodging us. He fears us. Peugeot fears Lord of Spirits.
- [124:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's clearly what it is. So, yes, we have Raul calling from Olympia, Washington. So, Raul, welcome to Laura Spears podcast.
- [124:17]
Caller
Thank you very much, Father.
- [124:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah. What's on your mind?
- [124:24]
Caller
I wanted to ask Father Stephen if. Two questions. One is what exegetical commentary would he recommend for the book of Genesis? And the other one is a good book on the Holy Trinity from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.
- [124:48]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So how about a Father recommended commentaries on Genesis and also Orthodox book on triadology on the Holy Trinity.
- [124:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I would read. So exegetical commentary. So you don't want, like, Church fathers. Right. You want, like, more modern exegetical commentary.
- [125:09]
Caller
Enjoying the Church Fathers, but I was hoping. I tried looking it up, to be honest with you, as far as an exegetical commentary, but I struck out. Now I'm legally blind, so that may have something to do with it, but I thought, yeah, Stephen could recommend it.
- [125:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [125:29]
Caller
Commentary in Genesis.
- [125:31]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So the, the, in general, if you just want a straight exegetical commentary, Right. You're just looking to get into the text and you're not looking for a particular perspective. Basically, the anchor Bible commentary series is almost always good on the Old Testament. So now some of the volumes aren't even written by Christians. Some of the Old Testament volumes are by Jewish scholars. But the value of them is that they're. They're just about their textual commentaries. They're about the text. So that kind of modern thing. If you want more meaning and interpretation, then I'm more about the church, Father.
- [126:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [126:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like. But if you're just wanting to dig into the text, the Agra Bible Commentary series, there's a volume on Genesis. I think there's two volumes on Genesis. I think they split it up. But Genesis is a good place to go in that regard. In terms of a book on the Holy Trinity, if you want a book, there's one by Boris Bobrinskoy that's good, called the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. If you said you're legally blind, if you want to listen to something, my friend Doc Branson, Dr. Bo Branson, has a whole series of lectures on the doctrine, the. The orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity from the perspective of the Cappadocian Fathers that you can listen to for free online if you go to his website. So if you just put his name, Bo Beau Branson and search for it, you'll get his website and you can listen to all those lectures for free. So there's a book and another option.
- [127:22]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Does that help, Raoul? Yeah, Bo Branson.
- [127:27]
Caller
Great. Could I ask, what church, Father, do you recommend as far as getting a good handle on Genesis?
- [127:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I would say two, two main things. St. Basil the Great Hexameron and St. Augustine's literal interpretation of Genesis.
- [127:51]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There you go.
- [127:54]
Caller
All right, well, thank you very much. I greatly appreciate it.
- [127:58]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, thank you for calling. So, all right, we've got another caller and I'm not going to attempt to pronounce the name, so you're going to have to tell me, caller, but apparently you're calling from Beijing, is that right?
- [128:10]
Caller
Yeah, Am I, Am I there?
- [128:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, you're. You're there. So tell me how to pronounce your name.
- [128:16]
Caller
Yeah, my name is Keegan. Keegan. It should.
- [128:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Keegan. Keegan. Okay. With a K. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Well, Mike, the, you know, Mike, our engineer has desperately misspelled your name. So I wasn't even going to try to say what it is that he wrote.
- [128:34]
Caller
It sounded like he got it right on the line.
- [128:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I don't know. I don't know.
- [128:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Anyway, he scratched out some kind of gibberish in a language his twin taught him in the womb before he consumed it.
- [128:46]
Caller
Wow.
- [128:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So.
- [128:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
He'S got a million of those. So, yeah. So what's on your mind? And what time is it in Beijing right now? It's got to be, what, like.
- [128:59]
Caller
It'S about 10:30, 10, 10:20. Two amazing time.
- [129:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay.
- [129:04]
Caller
It's 10:22 from east to west all through China. They only got one time zone here.
- [129:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay, gotcha. That's right. Only one time zone for that. Great.
- [129:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And what day is it? Is it Friday already?
- [129:13]
Caller
I'm not even sure it is Friday. Happy Friday. Yeah.
- [129:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay. It is.
- [129:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I could still eat a McRib and you can't, so there.
- [129:22]
Caller
Yeah, I could pay. I'll find one.
- [129:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Do they have McRibs in China?
- [129:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They have McDonald's.
- [129:28]
Caller
No McRibs. They have a really good McDonald's. Talk about that later. You got a really great, like chicken kind of filet, like a spicy chicken fillet. Fantastic.
- [129:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow.
- [129:37]
Caller
So anyway.
- [129:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay.
- [129:39]
Caller
Yeah.
- [129:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So what's up?
- [129:40]
Caller
We could talk all day, but I said skip to it with a question. I was talking to a friend back in the States. I'm not Orthodox myself, but I got a friend who is. And I heard you guys talking about, you know, you mentioned masonry. I was on the subway.
- [129:53]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So I.
- [129:53]
Caller
A little bit. In and out of the time. But. But anyway, the. The guy is with. I'm. Since I'm not too familiar with the different forms, but he's of some form of Russian Orthodox in the United States. I believe oca, but I'm not too sure. Please forgive me. But. And he had said that he was also a practicing Freemason and that this was cool with his, you know, a spiritual father and his community or whatever and that. And I was kind of surprised. I don't know. Is that. Is this within. I imagine that within. Is that okay within most Orthodox traditions? Or is it very. Or what's the. And what's the rationale there?
- [130:31]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [130:32]
Caller
Or is this.
- [130:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [130:33]
Caller
An exception.
- [130:34]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So, I mean. Okay, so you know, of course, that this episode is not about Freemasonry, but.
- [130:40]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Obviously, hey, it's closer to odd topic than the last call.
- [130:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That is exactly. Exactly. So it's only fair since we've kind.
- [130:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Of try and weasel out of this as a parallel.
- [130:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But. And this is the case. So, number one, there has never been a universal pan Orthodox considered decree against it. There has, however, been multiple local conciliar decrees against it, saying that one may not be an Orthodox Christian and a Freemason. There are. There are no official statements that I have ever heard of from any synod or even individual bishop officially saying that it is. That it is okay. In other words, there's none saying. Making a positive statement about it. All we have are negative statements. Again, there's not ever been a universal condemnation of Freemasonry. Put forward, the whole church sang it. But every time the Church has spoken about it, it's been negative. There are canons against membership in secret societies without mentioning the Freemasons in particular, because, because quite frankly, the whole canonical tradition comes from. At least the main texts come from a period before there are any records of the Freemasons. Right. Like the latest canons, you know, are from like the 8th century. Right. So they're not going to name the Freemasons because they wouldn't have ever met one or even heard of one. But yeah, the short answer is no, you cannot be a Freemason and an Orthodox Christian. And I've heard people give all kinds of, of weaselly explanations for this and attempts to say, well, and, but, but, but, but, you know, the, and you know, it's not really what you think. And to me it's like, well, the question is not whether anybody is getting this right or whatever. It's just that every time the Church has spoken about it, it's spoken negatively about it. So why make a, why make a point of it? You know, and if the point is to do good things together with your friends or to be charitable or whatever, there's so many ways to do that without being a member of a secret society, aren't there? You know, so to me, anything good that one gets out of the Freemasons one can get from some other context. Absolutely.
- [133:05]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like the Elks Lodge. Oh, no, wait, that's not what you mean.
- [133:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So, so, yeah, I do know that there are many cases that it has been tolerated within Orthodox churches. And there are, of course, there's a number of, probably early. A number of early 20th century Orthodox bishops who might well have been members, although it seems sometimes that the evidence of that is sketchy. I don't know. But in any event, there's nothing positive coming from church synods or even bishops about the Freemasons. There are only negative things. So that is the actual record.
- [133:45]
Caller
Interesting.
- [133:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yep.
- [133:47]
Caller
Cool. I have one quick follow up for Dr. Stephen DeYoung, if it's possible. I don't know if he's aware that there's a Chinese copy of the Religion of the Apostles came across, as you were. I've transferred that on the download to a few friends here. So that's making the rounds, I'm sure, all over China.
- [134:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
We know it, it is authorized, it is free to download. It is absolutely free. Unlike English copies, which, please, just buy a copy. People don't, don't steal. But the Chinese one, if you could.
- [134:26]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Read Chinese, it Was translated.
- [134:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right. If you can read Mandarin Chinese, it was translated specifically for the purpose of giving it away for free. The same is true with my book, Arizo God. You can download both, you know, both of those from ancient faith. Yeah. So. Yep. You don't have to do it on the down low. You can. Well, I mean, if you're, you know, running away from the Chinese government or something, then I suppose. But not from us. It's free as far as we're concerned, so enjoy.
- [134:54]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. In fact, the translator of it visited my parish last Sunday. Hey, so I saw him just a few days ago.
- [135:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
How about that? I think you might be our first caller from China. Is that true? I'm trying to remember. I don't remember another one.
- [135:11]
Caller
Oh, glad to be the first. I'm originally from the States. It's not terribly clear, but.
- [135:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But, but I detected that from your accent.
- [135:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah, seems like it. Anyway.
- [135:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. So anyway, you have an American accent.
- [135:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for calling. Oh, are you from the part of Wisconsin that pronounces the, the milky white. The. The. The white substance that comes out of cows as milk? Or do you say milk?
- [135:39]
Caller
No, no, I say milk.
- [135:42]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
You say. Oh, you're not from the milk part.
- [135:44]
Caller
I'm like from the Las Vegas part. They say Vegas. Vegas. It's weird. That's another like something with the.
- [135:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You call it a bagel or a bagel.
- [135:54]
Caller
Bagel. Sorry.
- [135:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Oh, that's, that's real. You britted that one train in university.
- [136:02]
Caller
And all the people from not Wisconsin came in or tell me I'm doing it wrong.
- [136:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So he did totally Brita it.
- [136:08]
Caller
Anyway.
- [136:09]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right, well, thanks for calling, Keegan.
- [136:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Thanks.
- [136:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right.
- [136:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay, so I feel like that caller was streets ahead.
- [136:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Nice. So are there any, like. Are there real parallels between what we think we know or what we do know about Mithraism and Christianity? Like actual things that someone point to and say. No, that's real. That's real.
- [136:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean, I mean, kinda kind of. Right, right. If we want to steel man this. Right, Right. We're going to try and find the best parallels we can. Right.
- [136:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay.
- [136:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
We're gonna hunt for them. So you could say both of them centered on a meal.
- [136:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay.
- [136:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
In the case. In the case of Roman Mithraism, that would be the, the dinner with the sun. And in the case of Christianity, that would be the Eucharist.
- [137:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But that's, I mean, that's so broad.
- [137:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay, listen, we're, we're, we're. We're still manning this, all right?
- [137:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Like Almost tried to work with them. Practice. Okay, okay.
- [137:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Try to work with them.
- [137:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right, all right.
- [137:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Both. Both of them had had their ritual life was private, and you had to be initiated to attend the meeting.
- [137:27]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Oh, okay. All right.
- [137:29]
Father Stephen DeYoung
In very different ways, but still. Right.
- [137:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [137:34]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Both involved salvation.
- [137:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [137:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean, there's a broad concept, you.
- [137:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Know, Hindu yogins are trying to achieve salvation.
- [137:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
We're working hard here, man. We're working hard.
- [137:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's not what we mean by.
- [137:49]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, we're working hard. And both appear. Both seem to have involved sacrificial blood. Maybe like every other religion in the world, but still literally, like.
- [138:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So there we go. So it seems that Christianity is like every other religion in the world.
- [138:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Well, in order to make. Use terms broadly enough to make Christianity and Mithraism parallel, you have to make them both parallel with every other religion. Yes. That's where this is going. Yes.
- [138:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There you go.
- [138:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There is nothing uniquely true about the two of them. Really.
- [138:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [138:28]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That isn't shared by at least a bunch of other groups, if not everybody.
- [138:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But the memes have so many other things they mention.
- [138:35]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Oh, yes.
- [138:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Aren't they true?
- [138:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like, and here's what's amazing. Here's what's amazing. So the memes are drawing on a set of sources that are all coming from Jesus myth, mythicists who are kooks. There is. I think it's still available on YouTube, Friend of the show Bart Ehrman having a debate with a Jesus mythicist. And the debate kind of falls apart because there's a point. And it's amazing that this happened to friend of the show Bart Ehrman, because he usually is so good about this kind of thing, but where his opponent, the Jesus mythicist, says something and he just bursts out laughing.
- [139:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
No, I mean, I don't know. Like, some things that are just so ridiculous that. What else can you do?
- [139:25]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And when he does it, he's. If you watch the debate, like, he's very apologetic after he does it. And then Jesus mythicist, he's debating is very offended. Right?
- [139:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah.
- [139:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
As he probably should be. But that's right. But. So Jesus mythicism is here. Watch me alienate. A whole bunch of people is up there with, like, flat earth for me in the. Just come on, dude.
- [139:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Like.
- [140:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like, level of ridiculousness required to actually hold to it. Okay, but. So there are these groups of Jesus mythicists, okay. And they, for whatever reasons. We'll talk about this more in a minute. For whatever reasons, have decided that the key to their proving Christianity false and justifying their atheism because apparently they need to do that to be atheists. They can't just be atheists. This. Right. Like I would think they could just say hey, they, they don't believe in Christianity and leave it at that. But no, they, they think they have to prove something in order to justify that.
- [140:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So I mean you could spend a lot of time trying to disprove many other religions in order to prove. Yeah.
- [140:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. They don't feel the need to disprove any other religions.
- [140:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [140:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And they think the way to disprove Christianity is to show that Jesus didn't exist and therefore Christianity is a form of paganism. Okay. So having decided that, they then self publish these books and make these arguments. And what's amazing is you get these circular citation threads. Right. This is one of the many reasons why people overvalue citations where they all cite each other. Right, right. And if you follow the chain back, you just get somebody making an assertion.
- [141:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [141:38]
Father Stephen DeYoung
With no evidence.
- [141:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But yeah, A good, for this kind of thing, a good citation, a good piece of evidence would be to say here is a text from the ancient world, here is a archaeology. I'm interpreting in the following way. Anything, you know. Yeah, anything.
- [141:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. An argument, just a logically constructed argument.
- [142:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean what we just, what we just went through these, these parallels that are based on something is the most that you can get. But as we said, it doesn't add up. So yeah, the entity is derived from Mithraism.
- [142:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So one of them just makes an assertion. Right. And then another one of them quotes that assertion, meaning they make the assertion too. But then they put a footnote to the first guy.
- [142:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [142:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And then a third guy footnotes the two of them and makes the same assertion. And so by the time you get about three or four self published books deep into this stuff, you've got a book published with this raft of citations underneath the things we're about to talk about. But if you actually go and follow said it, which of course no one does, they just look at this big list of citations and say oh this must be true, they have lots of citations.
- [142:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [142:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But you actually find out they're just citing each other and it just goes back to nothing. Right. So far more valuable, let me suggest that a rafter citations is just logically coherent arguments. For example.
- [143:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Example.
- [143:13]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, but anyway, so we're going to run through a few of these that have been asserted and then quoted and re quoted and all this such that the people by the time you get to the meme People who post the meme think, well, this is based on scholarship. Right. But that scholarship is five people quoting each other in self published books. Okay, so Christmas, for the title of this episode, you may believe that Mithras was born on December 25th.
- [143:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There. Yeah. Piles of memes out there saying this. Like when I went searching for the memes to make sure that Father Stephen wasn't just making stuff up, this was on all of them. Yes. This is number one. This is number one that he's born on December 25th, which is based on nothing. Nothing at all.
- [144:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Literally nothing at all. Now, the closest thing to something is there was a Roman festival of Soul Invictus on the winter solstice, which is not December 25th.
- [144:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. The problem with that is the earliest references. And you can go look this up. The earliest references to a celebration of a festival of Sol Invictus. Post date. The earliest references to Jesus being born, his birth being celebrated on December 25th.
- [144:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right.
- [144:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And so there's.
- [144:47]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, actually.
- [144:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And this will be my third time I referenced the rest of this history podcast. Go check out the episode that they did about Sol Invictus and Christmas and stuff. And you can hear a 2. A pair of secular historians.
- [145:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, absolutely.
- [145:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Trashing the idea that Christmas is derived from Sol Invictus and actually indicating that it seems to have possibly gone the other way around. That Sol Invictus was an attempt by pagans to try to do something to, you know, take over Christmas.
- [145:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, yeah. But even, even that, that's Sol Invictus, that's not Mithras.
- [145:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [145:23]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And it wasn't his birthday. Right.
- [145:27]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It's not like. Yeah, that's the thing is, it's like, it's like, well, these two things are kind of like each other, therefore it must be the same thing. It's like, look, it's not like ancient pagans didn't know, you know, that there's all these different days in the year and they didn't know the difference between December 25th and December 21st. And they didn't, you know, they didn't have numerous different feast days that they were celebrating. You can't just say, oh, well, these things are like each other, therefore it must be the same thing.
- [145:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. So that they will say Mithras had a virgin birth.
- [146:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Which. The closest you get to that sort of maybe kind of is the whole rock thing, but.
- [146:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. Flying out of a rock is technically.
- [146:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Asexual reproduction, but not exactly parthenogenesis. Yeah.
- [146:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Not what Luke 2 is talking about.
- [146:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [146:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
St. Matthew's talking about. Not remotely, but I mean, technically. Right, like, right. They say that Mithras had 12 disciples.
- [146:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Which is based on nothing. Nothing. Again, like, at most there's two of them. Like the two mini me's.
- [146:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Now try. Trying to be. Trying to steel man this right? Like, maybe they're thinking of the 12 sides of the zodiac because there's like the astrological thing with Mithras.
- [146:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, but.
- [146:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But they're not like followers.
- [146:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I mean, the number 12, they're like constellations.
- [146:53]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Groping the bull. But I mean.
- [146:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, the number 12 is a big deal in pretty much every religion. So.
- [147:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because of the zodiac.
- [147:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes, because of the zodiac. Because of the human hand. Like, if you look at your four fingers, they each have three segments. That's 12.
- [147:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah.
- [147:09]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
This is where the Sumerian counting system comes from.
- [147:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Babylonian.
- [147:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But yeah, yeah, Babylonian. Sorry, but you know, same neighborhood. But, but like, yeah. So again, like, as you like, there's a.
- [147:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Just horrified at you now don't hunt.
- [147:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So all of our Sumerian listeners are ready to start writing me angry emails. The Babylonian.
- [147:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So he supposedly, mithras died and rose again and sometimes even say died and rose again after three days, which is based on nothing.
- [147:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Literally nothing. Like, there's none of the iconography in the Mithraum. Mithraea. There's none of the. What anyone said about the actual practice, which again is sparse, but it's just. It's just not even there. It's really. This is people trying to dress up Mithras and Jesus.
- [148:01]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. I mean, you've got ending and restarting, like the cycle of life in the world. Like, that's as close as you get. But there are myths of gods, pagan gods that die and come back in some way.
- [148:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, That's a thing. Yeah, Right. But nothing.
- [148:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, Mithras, there's nothing about this. Yes. This is one of my favorite. Mithras represented life, truth and purity.
- [148:28]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
This sounds very sort of 1970s hippie.
- [148:31]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Right. Which. Okay, but what does truth mean for a Roman soldier?
- [148:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [148:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. Doesn't mean what Christ meant when Christ said he's the truth.
- [148:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, right.
- [148:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like truth in the Roman Empire was, you know, a question of force and power. You made something true.
- [148:53]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [148:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
This is, this is my favorite one because it's hysterical. Mithras was all about social justice.
- [149:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes. Social justice in a cult that was men only and then was highly stratified and was. Was entirely between people whose whole profession was violence.
- [149:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. The military elite. Yes.
- [149:17]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Social justice. That's where I look for social Justice.
- [149:20]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Nothing says social justice like an exclusive club for free white dudes.
- [149:27]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Well, have to be white. Just Roman soldiers, you know.
- [149:30]
Caller
Come on.
- [149:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Come on. Pretty much all white by modern standards. And the people who use the phrase social justice today to describe Mithras, they very much have a category, white, shall we say?
- [149:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [149:49]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So they say they did baptisms because, you know, there was water to wash with.
- [149:58]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. If. If. If a place where there's a water basin means there's baptisms, then literally everyone in the world is doing baptisms.
- [150:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, yes. The Hindus who go into the Ganges, that's baptism now, I guess.
- [150:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, right.
- [150:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So. And they offered bread and wine, which is. This is another great one.
- [150:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. There's no indication of that. All the. All the food remains we have are just animal. Now, if they were eating bread and wine, there probably wouldn't be any or much trace of that, you know, But.
- [150:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, but literally, the. The argument that they were having bread and wine. Right. Because, you know, I went back to a bunch of my books. Mythrism and Mystery cults in general. When we're getting ready for this episode, literally they're making arguments like, well, I mean, they're Roman soldiers. Of course they're drinking wine.
- [150:52]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay. But I'm like, cool.
- [150:54]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But that means it has no ritual significance.
- [150:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean. Or they're all Mithraists.
- [151:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Like, presumably they're drinking water as well, or they die.
- [151:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes.
- [151:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That's not ritually significant. Right. And yes, bread was the most common food in the Roman military. So, yes, they probably ate some bread.
- [151:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [151:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That does not make the Eucharist. Right. And this is a great one. This is a great one, too. This is another favorite. So supposedly Mithras was visited by shepherds and Magi when he was born. Now, I don't know how that works since he flew out of Iraq.
- [151:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Say, which is based on nothing. Nothing. What?
- [151:43]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean, but this is the.
- [151:44]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, okay, we're. We're laughing at this, but that's because it really is a big joke. It really. It just is. It just is.
- [151:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So, you know, really, you hear this one? So I backtracked that.
- [152:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [152:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like, where does that come from? Right. In the memes and stuff. Right. And it comes from one of those Jesus mythicist guys who just asserts it that gets cited by everyone else. And in the original thing, he says the idea that Christ was visited by Magi was not added in Christianity until A.D. 813.
- [152:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow. Tell me you know nothing about the text of the Bible without telling, you know nothing about the text of the Bible.
- [152:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So apparently no one read St. Matthew's Gospel until 8:13 and they're like, oh hey look, Magi.
- [152:45]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
It was edited worldwide.
- [152:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
But I think I figured out, I figured out how this knucklehead got there.
- [152:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. As I say, where's that date from?
- [152:56]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, that's okay. That is the earliest date at which we know that in the West. In Latin practice, on the feast of Epiphany on January6, they commemorated the visit of the Magi to see Jesus.
- [153:15]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow. So the establishment of a feast day.
- [153:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, not the establishment of feast day. It's a shift because they celebrated like our theophany. January 6th was Christ's baptism.
- [153:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Sure. Okay.
- [153:26]
Father Stephen DeYoung
At a certain point in the west, they started celebrating the visit of the magi on that day. Earliest testimony we have to, that is 813, the 9th century.
- [153:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow.
- [153:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So this, this fellow, this bright bulb reads that and says, oh, they came up with the idea that Magi visited Jesus at 8:13.
- [153:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. I mean, what's amazing, just, just to give you, give everybody some sense of how ridiculous an assertion that is, by 8:13 you not only have thousands and thousands of manuscript copies of the New Testament around, most of which include those passages from Matthew's gospel. So not only do you have that, but you have church fathers commenting on that, you have apocryphal texts, including elaborations on that, and you have almost the complete set of the standard festal hymns of the church that include that by that point in church history.
- [154:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. And Mithraism had been gone for 400 years.
- [154:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right. So it's just, it's just breathtaking, you know, invincible ignorance.
- [154:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
This is, this is double digit IQ stuff. And I'm being generous with double digit.
- [154:55]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, it's just, it's, it's like, like it's. No, you know, even secular historians of Christianity or the ancient world do not take this kind of stuff seriously. They just don't, you know.
- [155:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes.
- [155:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And so finally, finally, finally one last assertion.
- [155:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Supposedly they worshiped Mithras on Sunday, which is basically, after all, it's called Sunday.
- [155:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Oh, yes. And there's a whole sun thing.
- [155:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
That's what it's based on.
- [155:32]
Caller
Wow.
- [155:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That again means that everybody else in the world who has sun motifs or something is worshiping Mithras.
- [155:42]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. So. So literally. Yes. Even though we, literally. One of the few things we know for sure is that they did this every day in the evening. That's one of the few things we know for sure. About Mithraism is that this was not a one day a week thing, let alone on Sunday. Right. But there we go.
- [156:06]
Caller
Wow.
- [156:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. So it's, it's not just they don't know anything about Christianity, they don't know anything about Mithraism.
- [156:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, yeah.
- [156:15]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like they have studied neither and pontificate about both. And remember how I defined stupid earlier this evening? This idea is stupid.
- [156:26]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [156:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So, but on top of that, on top of the conclusions. Right. There are a bunch of these weird underlying assumptions underneath this whole thing. For example, that there's some kind of continuity across the Mithras cult. Like Roman Mithraism is identical to whatever was going on with the Hittites. Number one. Because they want to say it's so much older than Christianity that everywhere in the world where there was a Mithraum, they were doing the exact same thing, which we have no evidence of. We see similarities. Right. But we don't know how much variety there was beyond that. Right. They assume, as Father Andrews pointed out, they kind of assumed the Bible doesn't exist.
- [157:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [157:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
They kind of assume that either Judaism didn't exist or just Christianity has no relationship whatsoever to Judaism.
- [157:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Like, if you see something in Christianity that's in Judaism, especially given that the whole story of Christianity is that it is Israel, isn't it more reasonable to believe that Christianity got something from Judaism than that it got it from this little Roman cult?
- [157:50]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. Isn't that, you know, you have to go to Mithras for this? I mean, this is, you know, Easter was a pagan holiday. It's like Passover was a pagan holiday. I thought it was a Jewish holiday.
- [158:01]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right, exactly.
- [158:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. Like just Judaism doesn't exist. Right. Now, part of this, I do have to slightly poke our Protestant friends here, who, as we already mentioned, what's in this episode kind of talk. Like Christianity started from scratch.
- [158:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Like it's a new religion and kind.
- [158:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Of minimize a lot of the relationship to the Old Testament and to Judaism. And that culture is part of the fact that they're not really inquisitive and don't want to actually learn anything is why these nut bars don't know about a connection between Christianity and Judaism. Because a lot of the Christians they know have minimized it, but you're far less to blame than they are. This is just a gentle poke. Whereas I slapped these other people around.
- [158:51]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [158:52]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And then, and then, and then finally the, the kind of, the, the weirdest one to me is that if they were right, that would somehow magically debunk Christianity.
- [159:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [159:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So let's say they were absolutely correct that Christianity is a form of paganism. Why does that make it false?
- [159:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [159:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like play the final Jeopardy music.
- [159:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [159:17]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Like they're. There is no reason to conclude that this is just completely irrational. That's not a logical argument. Right. Between premises. Right. Even if you argue Mithraism and Christianity are identical. Okay. You prove that. Okay. Why is it false? Right. So the whole overarching point of the argument makes literally no rational sense. So this is one of those fractally wrong moments. The whole thing is wrong and makes no sense, and each individual part of it is wrong and makes no sense in the same way, to the same extent. Don't do Jesus mythicism, people. Not once. Yeah. And so to sum up, there's our broad summary of what we've talked about tonight. Things are different. Not everything is the same. You could make any two things seem the same if you describe them in broad and vague enough terms. But what value does that have said to Father Andrew earlier, I can point out broad similarities between chalk and cheese.
- [160:40]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yes. They have the same number of letters. They both start with the same sound. They're both monosyllabic. You can eat both. Clearly the same.
- [160:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Both are white to yellow in color. Right. Like, you know, you get. You have your breath. Okay, cool. So what does that do for us?
- [160:57]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
From England.
- [160:59]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. What does that do for us? We have now pointed out there are similarities between chalk and cheese. Vague similarities. So what?
- [161:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [161:09]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. This has no value.
- [161:11]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, Yeah. I. I think my. My big takeaway from this. I mean, the likelihood that we have a bunch of Jesus mythicists who are ever going to listen to this episode and are sitting there grinding their teeth at us is pretty small. So then what is the value for. For the rest of us? Well, it's not. It's not so that you. I mean, although if you want to, I guess you could or whatever, it's not to, like, go find some of these people and ridicule them. Although I won't blame you if you put a laugh react on these memes when you see them in a few weeks or sooner. But it's actually a lesson in how to think, number one, about how we understand evidence from the ancient world. I mean, this is something that we talk about a lot on this podcast, but also, frankly, it's about how to think in terms of understanding evidence and the things that you see in front of you. Even from the modern world. Right. Human beings, naturally, we want to make connections between stuff, and so we construct Narratives about how things are connected to each other. We see things that are similar and we say, oh, they must be connected, because look, this is similar to that. Wow, there's all these parallels that must be connected. And again, like a lot of the memes that we're talking about here at the end, they constitute lists. Like, they'll be on the one side to be a list of things that supposedly have to do with Mithras, on the other side, things that have to do with Jesus. And I've seen one. Then the bottom panel says, you know, Christians, why can't you even be original? Right? Like, it's all about these sort of lists. But here's the thing. Like, critical thinking involves not just saying, this is like this, or this is the same as this, but which parallels are actually meaningful. And that's why we spent this part of the episode taking apart a list that supposedly is meaningful but actually turns out to be meaningless and in many cases is based on literally nothing. Pure assertion, no evidence, right? But someone sees it and they don't know anything about any of this stuff. And so, like, wow, you know, I had no idea. Mithras, the. The proto Jesus. And there's a lot of thinking here in, you know, this part of the 21st century where people do this kind of stuff. And they'll say, well, this is like this. Or, wow, that that parallels this, and. And they'll create. And they'll connect dots. But the thing is, just because you can connect dots doesn't mean those dots actually have anything to do with each other or that the thing that they have to do with each other is maybe interesting, but possibly also meaningless. But for just a second, let's assume that all the dots that someone wants to connect should be connected, that they create these constellations out of stuff. And it's real, and it's an absolutely correct interpretation. And it turns out that all the terrible things that one might conclude from whatever set of evidence that you put together are real, right? There are people that will tell you, having revealed some hidden thing, having done that, that then you need to change the way that you live your life based on that, right? And often the way that they. The way that they motivate you to do that is for you to be afraid and. Or angry, preferably both, because of course, that will make you click on their stuff more often and get them more ad revenue. But let's say it's all true. Let's say you should connect all those dots. Let's say all the terrible things that you think are happening, are happening. And I mean, I'm not going to say that there's a lot of terrible things happening, right? There's, there's dots that should be connected. Let's say that's true. My question is, how does that change what it is that we are supposed to be doing as Christians? Because the truth is, is that Christianity emerges onto the scene in a world that in many cases is actively trying to destroy it. Like, talk about connecting dots, talk about conspiracies, talk about all that stuff. Like that's real. It's absolutely real. Christianity emerges in that context. And it doesn't say at that moment we should live angry and afraid. The opposite. Peace and have no fear. That's how we're supposed to live. Christian faithfulness is the same as it has always been. I know that people feel in some ways like the world is more insane than it has ever been, but really, if you listen to the show for a long time or just read a lot of history, then you know that there's been a lot of insane periods in the history of the world. And frankly, if you live in the United States in 2025, it's not actually that insane compared to most of history. It's really not. You know, I'm not saying that the bad stuff isn't bad. It's definitely bad, for sure. But we need to have a little perspective. But even if it is, even if this is the worst time ever, even if the world is about to end, what is it that Jesus has said that he wants to find when he comes for his second and glorious appearing? Faithfulness. That's what we're supposed to be doing. Faithfulness. And we know how to do that. We know what Christian faithfulness consists of. Love the Lord your God with all your whole soul, heart and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Every. All the commandments are summarized in those. That's what Jesus said. That's what we're supposed to be doing. That's what we're supposed to be doing. And that's why even this kind of, you know, connecting the dots thinking, which we, we outlined a really ridiculous. A really ridiculous example of that in the third part of this episode. But even if that is all true, the mission is still the same. So that's what I have to say about that.
- [167:29]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So I'm going to denounce the pan heresy of ecumenism.
- [167:32]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yay.
- [167:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because sort of what I said, in summary, there. Things are not everything is the same. Things are different. Actually is actually really important. And this is a point of the spirit of our age that we need to counter. And when I talk about this, I guess people get mad, which means I found a sensitive spot, so I'm going to jackhammer it. The spirit, a big part of the spirit of our age, which is not the Holy Spirit, sorry, Hegel. Is this idea that on whatever front, we might be discussing what we have in common, what we have that unites us is greater than what divides us. And that is false. That is a lie from the devil. When it comes to Christianity, I'm more of a St. Paul. What fellowship has light with darkness? What fellowship has God with Belial kind of guy? And the church has been facing this threat for a while now, but it was coming from one side. It was coming from, shall we say, the left side for a long time.
- [169:07]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Where.
- [169:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You know, you've got the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, you've got all these ecumenical groups where it's, you know, hey, what we have in common as Christians, or worse, as religious people, what we have in common is more important and more powerful than what separates us. What separates us is the truth, and the truth is Christ. What separates Christianity from other religions is Christ, the Son of God, the basis of our salvation. And what separates different people who identify as Christian from each other, when you boil it down, is who they think Christ is. And here's the thing. Only the real Christ, who actually exists, can save you. Not a version you've made up. Not a version someone else made up that they've bamboozled you into believing in, right? And putting your faith and trust in. Not bad theology. Not some system of salvation that's been sold to you, right? Only the actual, living, eternal second person of the Trinity, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who became man for our salvation, right? He can save you, and you need to come to know him. And, you know, from the perspective of those ecumenical groups and the kind of left thing and the whole, you know, oh, we need to come together for social progress or whatever. I think probably 99% of our audience is with me. Where I start losing people is what I point out that the threat right now is not those groups. The threat right now is coming from the other side. The threat right now is this idea that there is a thing called conservative Christianity and the Orthodox Church is a branch of it. Branch theory is just as ugly from that side as the other. The idea that, you know, what I have in common in my beliefs about marriage with a reformed Baptist who thinks it's not a sacrament, it's a civil institution. It is not a means by which the divine energies enter people's life. It's just a social relationship for the continued constitution of the species. Is what I have in common with him is negligible, certainly not enough where we could put together some kind of common political front. Certainly not amounting to anything, certainly not bigger than what divides us. Because what divides us is a fundamental difference in how we think God works in the human heart to bring about salvation. This other purely hypothetical person believes that there is a one time act done unilaterally by God that labels him as being saved so that when he dies he will go to heaven. And I believe that God is continually pouring forth his love and his mercies and his goodness in the world and that by cooperating with what God is doing in the world, I could be transformed into his likeness and find salvation. Those are not the same thing. Those are not two different ways of describing the same thing. And one of them is a lie. I know I'm being super hardcore today, but I don't care because this is really bothering me. And if this, this offends you as a non orthodox listener, maybe you need to be offended by it and think about it. Those aren't the same thing. My religion centers on the Eucharist. If yours doesn't, we don't practice the same religion. I don't relish that. Like I'm not rejoicing in the fact that there are people who consider themselves Christians and who honestly are Christians in the sense that they're people who love our Lord Jesus Christ as they understand him and they're doing their best to follow him as best they understand, as best they can. Right? I'm not putting some kind of moral promoter on them. Right. Mostly if they're wrong, it's because they've been misled. Right? So I'm not judging you as a person if you're one of those people, right, that's great. But what I want for you is not to hold your hand and say Kumbaya and pretend that there's no difference between us and those differences aren't significant. I want you to come to know the truth. I want you to come to know Christ more deeply. I want you to understand how salvation actually is. And I want you to experience it yourself. And I want you to surpass me. I want you to become a holier person than me. I want you to come to know Christ better than I do. I want better for you than I want for me. But we don't get that by me pretending that just anyone who calls themselves a Christian is a Christian and there's no difference, even if they're quote unquote conservative or quote unquote traditional to some tradition, because it's not true. I'm not going to get what I want for you out of love, for you to surpass me in your knowledge of God and your righteousness and your goodness before God. You're not going to get that by me lying to you and pretending everything's fine or you already have achieved that, or there's nothing that needs to change any more than I'm ever going to get there by lying to myself and telling myself that I'm okay and I understand everything and I'm doing everything right? I've got to be honest with myself. That means I've also got to be honest with you, right? And the truth is our Lord Jesus Christ truly lives, truly as a person. There are a lot of wrong views of him. There are a lot of fake Christs, Antichrist, personal Jesus that people have who aren't going to save you. So I am not absolutely opposed to ecumenism. I am not absolutely opposed to these kind of things and these minimizations and differences because I don't love you. I am absolutely opposed to them because I do. And I'm not going to be one more person lying to you about your faith. So that's what I have to say now. We have to do the outro outro read after that, but here we are.
- [176:05]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's okay. Well, thank you very much everybody for listening. That's our show for tonight. If you didn't happen to get through to us live on this episode about Mithraism, we'd still like to hear from you. You can email us. Send me all that hate mail. Lord of Spirits and Ancient faith dot com. Father Stephen gets it too. You can also message us at our Facebook page or you can leave us a voicemail@speakpipe.com LordOfSpirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help in finding a parish in the 3D world, go to orthodoxintro.org and.
- [176:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Join us for our live broadcast on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. Easy come, easy go. Have a good time with lots of dough.
- [176:51]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
If you're on Facebook, you can follow our page. You can join our big old discussion group and leave ratings, leave reviews and share this show with a friend or an enemy who might find out he.
- [177:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Loves it and finally be sure to go to ancientfaith.com stroke support and help make sure we lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. Slip it up high, slipping down low. Love them and leave them on with the show.
- [177:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Thank you. Good night. God bless you all.
- [177:19]
Narrator
You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.