Mysteries of Mithra

I just finished reading a book by Franz Cumont called The Mysteries of Mithra.  Mithras was a popular mystery religion god that was contemporary with the beginning of Christianity.  Because of this, people often look to Mithras as an influence on the story of Jesus.  While this book is not intended to be apologetic, it has much information that is damaging to the Jesus myth hypothesis.  Cumont shows that Mithraism did not become popular until the end of the first and really more into the second century.  It also became popular in different parts of the Roman Empire so that it did not come into conflict with Christianity until the later second, and especially the third and fourth centuries.  Because of all this, it is unlikely that it had any influence on the origins of Christianity.  In addition, despite popular claims, Mithras was not born of a virgin and was not a dying and rising god.  Mithraism really was a religion of the Roman military and it is difficult to see how the earliest Jewish Christians would be open to their beliefs.  While Cumont is sometimes guilty of using Christian terms such as church, baptism and last supper in describing Mithraic practices, this is still a useful tool in understanding the false claims of the Jesus myth hypothesis.  This is an older book but it is still a classic and is worth reading by anyone interested in these issues.