Richard Stanley
Administrator
While Bartram is aware, via Carotta, of modern day Catholics celebrating rites clearly derived from the worship or adulation of the god, Julius Caesar, it is interesting that he wont allow that this process would have been fermenting in the 1st century.
It is here that I think Gary Courtney's, Et Tu Judas, fits in rather well. Courtney discusses that such as Julius Caesar would have been feted with scripted paeans, in such as plays and songs, across the new empire. And especially by legionary troops deployed to the frontiers.
These last areas are frequent sites of mithraeums, where military officers made a large portion of the Mithraic demographic. The entire Mithraic 'polity' including its Hellenized Jews, would have been down with praising this literal messiah, who had also given them the divine Augustus, the Prince of Peace. They would have been well familiar with the Pollio account of Julius versus Pompey in the Civil War. All this would provide a typological template to produce the gospels, and they could reference Chrest instead of Christ.
I'm guessing that 'Christ' was much like the Tetragramaton, and not meant to be spoken or written in those days. An initiate was to aspire to become a Chrest, and then a Christ, as is the typical tiered structure for mystery cults and secret societies. Obviously, Mithraism had a 7 layered tier structure not involving either a Chrest or Christ, but we already know of the Vatican panel identifying an individual as 'Chrest'. Was this a personal name, or an honorific title? Perhaps the leader of the 'lodge'?
As Bartram discusses, the Hellenizing efforts of Philo, like his 'legionary' relative, provide an early layer of support in the eventual merging of Judaism with the Greco-Roman system, especially with the Homeric millennial strata of Castor, Pollux, and sister Helen.
As Barbiero discusses in The Secret Society of Moses, it is in the Flavian period, after the fall of Jerusalem that Mithraism starts. This is coincident with the arrival of Titus back into Rome with Josephus and Josephus's extended family of Hasmoneans (Maccabees -- globalizing fake nationalists). Thus we have all the necessary elements and motives in place at this time. Whether we should take Nero's and Domitian's resistance to Chrestianity at face value or not, we have it that Chrestianity, as Bartram demonstrates, seeming to operate 'underground'.
Mithraism literally operates underground, and it clearly has at least tacit approval of the imperium. This considered its adherents' centuries of high level involvement in state functions. The Romans did not look kindly on subversive activities.
In this environment, the development of a Chrestian corpus would be for internal consumption ONLY, no proselytzing to the masses. This comes later, when the correct pieces are in place.
It is here that I think Gary Courtney's, Et Tu Judas, fits in rather well. Courtney discusses that such as Julius Caesar would have been feted with scripted paeans, in such as plays and songs, across the new empire. And especially by legionary troops deployed to the frontiers.
These last areas are frequent sites of mithraeums, where military officers made a large portion of the Mithraic demographic. The entire Mithraic 'polity' including its Hellenized Jews, would have been down with praising this literal messiah, who had also given them the divine Augustus, the Prince of Peace. They would have been well familiar with the Pollio account of Julius versus Pompey in the Civil War. All this would provide a typological template to produce the gospels, and they could reference Chrest instead of Christ.
I'm guessing that 'Christ' was much like the Tetragramaton, and not meant to be spoken or written in those days. An initiate was to aspire to become a Chrest, and then a Christ, as is the typical tiered structure for mystery cults and secret societies. Obviously, Mithraism had a 7 layered tier structure not involving either a Chrest or Christ, but we already know of the Vatican panel identifying an individual as 'Chrest'. Was this a personal name, or an honorific title? Perhaps the leader of the 'lodge'?
As Bartram discusses, the Hellenizing efforts of Philo, like his 'legionary' relative, provide an early layer of support in the eventual merging of Judaism with the Greco-Roman system, especially with the Homeric millennial strata of Castor, Pollux, and sister Helen.
As Barbiero discusses in The Secret Society of Moses, it is in the Flavian period, after the fall of Jerusalem that Mithraism starts. This is coincident with the arrival of Titus back into Rome with Josephus and Josephus's extended family of Hasmoneans (Maccabees -- globalizing fake nationalists). Thus we have all the necessary elements and motives in place at this time. Whether we should take Nero's and Domitian's resistance to Chrestianity at face value or not, we have it that Chrestianity, as Bartram demonstrates, seeming to operate 'underground'.
Mithraism literally operates underground, and it clearly has at least tacit approval of the imperium. This considered its adherents' centuries of high level involvement in state functions. The Romans did not look kindly on subversive activities.
In this environment, the development of a Chrestian corpus would be for internal consumption ONLY, no proselytzing to the masses. This comes later, when the correct pieces are in place.
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