I’m sure that at some time or another you have probably had some smarty-person try to roll up on you with “Did you know that the character of Jesus was based on Mithra?” nonsense. They may have laid all these “facts” on you about all the “parallels” between Jesus and Mithra. I prefer the Geico­ Caveman™ response:

“Yeah, I’d like to answer that. Uh…….what?”

In short: There were two separate and distinct “Mithra” worship systems–one Persian (Iranian) centuries before Christ; another Roman, beginning at least 100 years AFTER Christ. The first system (Persian) had none of the hallmarks that make up the “Jesus was Mithra” argument. Even the Roman system did not have any characteristics that are UNIQUE to Christianity.

If you have about a half-hour to spare, read this article over at Tektonics. Make sure you do it with a clear head and as few distractions as possible, because it is rather scholarly, technical, and highly annotated. Here is a sample of their research:

What has been the point of this diversion? The point is to give the reader a warning, to be on the lookout any time a critic makes some claim about Mithraism somehow being a parallel to Christianity. Check their sources carefully. If, like Acharya S, they cite source material from the Cumont or pre-Cumont era, then chances are excellent that they are using material that is either greatly outdated, or else does not rely on sound scholarship (i.e., prior to Cumont; works by the likes of King, Lajard, and Robertson). Furthermore, if they have asserted anything at all definitive about Mithraic belief, they are probably wrong about it, and certainly basing it on the conjectures of someone who is either not a Mithraic specialist (which is what Freke and Gandy do in The Jesus Mysteries) or else is badly outdated.

Mithraic scholars, you see, do not hold a candle for the thesis that Christianity borrowed anything philosophically from Mithraism, and they do not see any evidence of such borrowing, with one major exception: “The only domain in which we can ascertain in detail the extent to which Christianity imitated Mithraism is that of art.” [MS.508n] We are talking here not of apostolic Christianity, note well, but of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, which, in an effort to prove that their faith was the superior one, embarked on an advertising campaign reminiscent of our soft drink wars. Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb. (Hmm, did the Jews copy that one?) Think of how popular Pokemon is these days, and then think of the church as the one doing the Digimon ripoff — although one can’t really bellow about borrowing in this case, for this happened in an age when art usually was imitative — it was a sort of one-upsmanship designed as a competition, and the church was not the only one doing it. Furthermore, it didn’t involve an exchange or theft of ideology.

If anybody tries to pull this fast one on you, point them to this article. It should keep them busy for a while, and dispel any notions they have about such nonsense.