The Magi

Richard Cronin

Tim adds:

Mithraism, which competed with Christianity in the early Roman Empire, was based heavily on Zoroastrianism and featured a virgin birth and a god being born of woman, same as did the Christian faith. It was quite popular with Roman soldiers as it was a war cult; the soldier was duty-bound to fight holy war against the forces of darkenss and all those little Djinn you mentioned.

It is no coincidence that Islam would later be born in the hinterlands outside of the old Roman territory (where it wound up being suppressed by Constantine) and that it was heavily adopted in the Middle East and in central Asia where Mithraism had been strong. Holy war - Jihad - is a key component of Islam.

Also Manicheanism was born of Zoroastrianism with Mani (the founder) being called "the seal of the prophets" a term reserved for Muhammed. Mani lived in Mesopotamia in the third century and he adopted Christ as the second greatest prophet besides himself - same as did Muhammed. Mani was said to be the reincarnation of Jesus and Zoaraster. He commanded his followers to pray three times a day facing east (similar to Muhammed making his followers pray five times a day facing Mecca).

Mani was presented as the promised paraclete that Jesus mentioned. While he never claimed to have been born of a virgin he clearly was a copycat of Jesus.

Both Mithraism and Manicheanism came out of the Zoroastrian tradition - and was no doubt a heavy influence on the young Muhammed, who was a merchant with the caravans to the east in his youth.

Manicheanism was a Gnostic heresy, essentially.

The point is these are not idle topics; they are still with us today in the Islamic world. (So is Arianism, which is what Islam believes; Jesus was at most a man adopted by God, not born of God.) Arianism had been strong in Arabia at the time of Muhammed.

The Magi came out of this tradition, the same roots as Mithraism and Manicheanism.

One final point; when John the Baptist was killed by Herod his flock scattered, most of them going east into Iran and even to India. These people - the Mandeans - called their priestly cast Nazarenes and Muhammed mentioned them as "People of the Book". They finally died out in the 3rd century, about the time of Mani, so probably were subsumed into Manicheanism. They were not Christians but a Jewish sect, many of whom believed John the Baptist was the promised Messiah.

So all these traditions intersected and intersect today. We just don't understand the connections, which is why we find it so difficult to deal with the Islamic world. Islam, especially the Islam of Iran, is apocalyptic, waging a holy war against the forces of darkness as they see it.


Oh, one last thing about Manicheanism; it was a kind of theosophy, an attempt to blend all religions together into one. Know who else did that? The Nazis. Most of the Nazi top brass were members of the Thule society, which was a theosophic sect. Basically National Socialism was the implementation of some of the ideas of Manicheanism. It's why the Islamic world was amenable to Naziism and why to this day there is so much anti-semitism in the Islamic world.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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