Des Mysteres De Mithra Aux Mysteres De Jesus

The most important innovation of Mithraism was the cult of hyper-cosmic deities who ruled the cosmos but existed outside nature. One of them was depicted with a lion's head, another was a perfect young man encircled by a serpent, and the third was Mithras himself. This volume demonstrates how the Mithraic mysteries increasingly became a support of the Roman emperors' authority; how the old, republican gods thus became inferior gods; how the concept of hyper-cosmic deities led the Gnostic theologians to conceive the Christian gnosis by linking Jesus to the concept of hyper-cosmic gods; how the new form of Christianity conceived a cosmology heavily influenced by Mithraism. French text.