Why are there so many similiarities between Christianity and Mithraism????
There’s no doubt that once Christianity became the only legal religion in Rome that many of the pagan religious practices were “Christianized” to justify their practice. Some have little consequence, such as using Dec. 25 as a special holiday. Some are quite practical, such as waiting until spring when it’s not so cold in Europe to do water baptisms. Other practices were much more questionable from a Christian perspective, such as rewriting inscriptions on idols (perhaps like the one with the Johannian theme you cited) or replacing the names of Roman gods with the names of Christian saints. Still other practices were common to many religions (animal sacrifices) and seem to speak to human needs across cultures. Although many of these things can be used to show how medieval Roman Christianity was corrupted by other practices, none argue against the teachings of Jesus, the basis of true Christianity.
