Christianity is Copied from Mithra?

[Peter]

That Jesus, the Messiah, and His crucifixion death and resurrection were prophesied many hundreds of years in advance in Old Testament prophecy makes the following exercise irrelevant, since it demonstrates that far from being a first century invention, the Gospel is the fulfillment of ancient prophesy.

Sadly, there is no shortage of Muhammadans wallowing in stage 7 of the typical pattern of incremental descent deeper into Satan's lair, in which they finally turn to pure blasphemy against Yahweh and Yeshua, as if somehow blaspheming the one true God of the scriptures will make 7th century Muhammadanism more true. At this stage they search the internet for any source that blasphemes Yahweh and thus adopt unto themselves atheist and agnostic gods like entertainers Bill Maher and Brian Flemming, or Bart Ehrman and Robert Ingersoll, and faithless Jews like Michael H. Hart, as they busily copy and paste the words of these types of men as if they were holy writ, without ever investigating the veracity thereof. There is certainly no shortage of these automaton parrots, as a Yahoo search like this one reveals.

The random, quickly collected links that follow, are just the first few examples of what - through just quick glances at them appear to be well researched rebuttals, that refute the writings of the blasphemers faithless heroes, that are as easy to find on the internet as the research devoid writings of those men they have selected as their personal modern day demi-gods.

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/JesusEvidenceCrucifiedSaviors.htm

http://carm.org/christianity/bible/doesnt-religion-mithra-prove-christianity-false

http://kingdavid8.com/Copycat/JesusMithra.html

http://withalliamgod.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/refuting-mithras-myth-parallelism-to-christianity/

http://www.preventingtruthdecay.org/copycats.shtml

http://www.makeadefense.com/index.php/topics/was-christianity-borrowed/mithrasim-geisler/

[resistingrexmundi]

Lee Strobel covers this issue in his book "The Case for the Real Jesus". I will look into putting the relevant passages in here some time today. I have been so  busy working at the hospital on top of my normal job I haven't had much time to do anything for a while so today I will try to take advantage of some free time.

[Peter]

This is a video of his on the subject that I lifted from the "Case for a Creator" thread in this section.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5T0PKw4u-0

[resistingrexmundi]

I have finally found the book. I am trying to locate the specific area of the book that covers the issue in detail.

[resistingrexmundi]

Excerpt from an interview conducted by Lee Strobel with Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi.

"Mithraism was a late Roman mystery religion that was popular among soldiers and merchants, and which became a chief rival to Christianity in the second century and later...Mithraism as a mystery religion cannot be attested before about AD 90, which is about the time we see a Mithraic motif in a poem by Statius...Most of what we have as evidence of Mithraism comes in the second, third, and fourth centuries AD. That's basically what's wrong with the theories about Mithraism influencing the beginnings of Christianity."

Common parallels used by skeptics to "show" Christianity borrowed from Mithraism.

Claim: Mithras was born of a virgin.
Fact: Mithras was born out of a rock.

Claim: Mithras was born on December 25.
Fact: Irrelevant as we do not know when Jesus was born and the date of Christmas has changed over the years due to cultural surroundings.

Claim: Mithras was a great teacher with 12 disciples.
Fact: The legends claim that Mithras was a god, not a teacher.

Claim: Mithras sacraficed himself for world peace.
Fact: The legends claimed that Mithras killed a bull, not that he sacrificed himself.

Claim: Mithras was buried in a tomb and rose after three days.
Fact: We don't know anything about the death of Mithras. There are many monuments but almost no textual evidence and with no death there is obviously no resurrection.