Chapter 20. Mithra Inside Zoroastrianism: Exclusion, Reintegration and Mihr the Judge

Zarathustra’s Gathas never name Mithra, yet in the Younger Avesta Ahura Mazda declares that he made Mithra as worthy of worship as himself. The library’s scholars disagree sharply about how this happened. Some see a prophet hostile to the cult of Mithra, with its bull sacrifice and haoma. Others see a prophet who simply left him out, and a later clergy that took him back without deception. The chapter then follows Mithra into Sasanian and Pahlavi literature, where Mihr becomes the judge of souls, and into the Zurvanite setting Western writers associated with him.

The silence of the Gathas

Vermaseren gives the classic account. Zarathustra, “who lived some time between 1000 and 600 B.C.”, tried “to transform the established polytheism into a monotheist pattern with Ahura-Mazda as the sole and supreme god, and so found himself obliged to relegate Mithra to the background”. He forbade “blood sacrifices such as the bull-offering” and denied his followers “the ecstatic enjoyment of the spirituous Haoma”. According to Vermaseren this “dealt a heavy blow to the Mithra cult, for Mithra was… closely associated with the bull, whose blood, mixed with the Haoma, bestowed immortality” [Vermaseren, Mithras the Secret God, #38300, ch. 1].

Campos Méndez goes further. He describes a secret warrior cult of Mithra centred on “the sacrifice of the bull and the consumption of haoma”, which Zoroaster “persecuted with special virulence”. He also reports Ries’s view that the Amesha Spenta Vohu Manah (“Good Thought”) took Mithra’s place in the reform, a replacement Campos Méndez calls “transitory” [Campos Méndez, El Culto del Dios Mithra, #60243, ch. I.2 “Mithra dentro del Zoroastrismo”; the catalogue wrongly lists Vaknin as author].

Moulton divides the evidence into two strands. “The Tenth Yasht is addressed to a Mithra whom Zarathushtra might not have disdained to acknowledge.” But the prophet also “seems to have been in contact with a Mithra cult that he could not countenance in any way”, an elemental worship “essentially akin to that which by further syncretism issued at last in the great system of Mithraism”. “Orgiastic nocturnal sacrifices, held perhaps in honour of Mithra, Slayer of the Bull, and under the inspiration of Haoma” were, he says, a grievance of Mazdayasnian farmers, and he reads Yasna 32.14 as a veiled allusion to haoma. Hence Vohu Manah “significantly supplants Mithra as lord of cattle” [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011, Lecture II “Before Zarathushtra”]. Duchesne-Guillemin accepts this, adding that Mithra’s associates Airyaman and Baga were replaced by Sraosha and Ashi [Duchesne-Guillemin, The Religion of Ancient Iran, #38271, “The Entities”].

Gershevitch rejects the whole idea of hostility. Zarathustra, he argues, had to “close the door” to Mithra only because Mazdah had no paired partner to absorb him, but it “does not follow that he considered him a daeva”. As guardian of the contract, “an aspect of Truth on which Zarathustra laid great store”, Mithra “had every claim to Zarathustra’s affection”. In an early post-Gathic text the disciples “timidly and almost clandestinely” brought him back under the harmless title pāyu- “protector”, paired with the creative Spenta Mainyu. The prophet “undoubtedly disapproves of animal sacrifices, but… nowhere in any way implies that Mithra… is their recipient”; the alleged “hostilité à l’égard de Mithra, le dieu des offrandes cruelles et des extases d’ivresse” (Duchesne-Guillemin’s phrase) “is a modern invention in all three respects”. He also calls “unrealistic” Dumézil’s theory that Vohu Manah deliberately replaced Mithra [Gershevitch, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, #60160, Introduction VI “Ahura” and VIII “The Western Mithras”].

Reinstatement in the Younger Avesta

Gershevitch calls Younger Avestan Zoroastrianism “a mixed religion” of the prophet’s teaching, inherited gods such as Mithra and Haoma, and Gathic notions recast as divinities, and he explains the mixture politically. The Magi were “a clergy of all denominations” who served whatever god a worshipper paid them to hymn. Darius brought Mazdah-worship into Persis. Under Artaxerxes I (calendar reform c. 441 BC), or at the latest Artaxerxes II, the court “officially came down on the side of the Magi”. The Zarathustrian priests of eastern Iran then turned this coexistence of cults into a scripture “purporting to be Zarathustra’s”. The Magi replied by declaring Zarathustra to have been a Magus [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction II-III]. Moulton agrees that the Magi “adapted his system long after his day and claimed his name” [Moulton, #55011, “The Prophet and the Reform”].

Duchesne-Guillemin stresses that this amalgamation “does not seem… to have been a simple process”: “instead of their paying homage to him, it is on the contrary Ahura Mazda who offers sacrifice to Anāhitā, to Tištrya, to Vayu” [Duchesne-Guillemin, #38271, section on the later Avestan gods and demons]. Gershevitch counts Mithra in the same class. Statements that Mazdah created Mithra and “made him as great as himself”, or even worshipped him (Yt 10.123: “whom (even) Ahurah Mazdah worshipped in Paradise”) are “so flagrantly and needlessly un-Zarathustrian” that they must come from non-Zarathustrian worshippers of Mithra, faithfully transmitted [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction VI; Text, section 31]. Vermaseren gives the theological formula: Mithra is “an extension of the idea of the supreme god from whom he takes his actual being”, just as the Amesha Spentas “constitute his being” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 1]. Campos Méndez makes Mithra a subordinate yazata, “clearly subject to Ahura-Mazda”, yet “the champion of Mazdaism”. He notes that the seventh month and the sixteenth day bore his name, and that the Mithrakana mobilised everyone “from the king himself down to the lowest strata of the people” [Campos Méndez, #60243, ch. I.2].

The Magi and the bull: the “camouflage” dispute

Vermaseren presents the Magi as the carriers. A fifth-century BC relief from Dascylium shows them “with a cloth… in front of the mouth, so as not to contaminate the fire with their breath, and a bundle of rods (baresman)”, before an altar hung with the heads of a ram and a bull. “These Hellenised Magi in Asia Minor must have been the priests who founded the worship of Mithras.” At the Mithrakana, after Ctesias, “the king… drank himself into a stupour in honour of the god” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 2 “Zarathustra and the Magi”]. Geden’s collection gives the Greek definition: “Among the Persians those who are learned in the doctrines of the gods and minister in their service bear the name of magi” [Geden, Select Passages Illustrating Mithraism, #38272].

Lommel, followed by Duchesne-Guillemin, held that Mithra’s killing of the bull was an ancient myth, linked by Vermaseren to the Vedic killing of King Soma, in which Mitra protests “Not I, for I am friend to all” before taking part [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 1]. On this view, Zoroastrian authors moved the deed onto Ahriman to clean up the god. Campos Méndez reports that some authors read the primordial bull’s death at Angra Mainyu’s hands as Zoroaster’s “attempt to eliminate Mithra’s role in the sacrifice of the bull” [Campos Méndez, #60243, ch. I.2, n. 49]. Gershevitch calls this “the clever camouflage of Mithra perpetrated by the authors of the Avesta”. It belongs to a “modern trend… always to suspect that the Avesta either conceals the truth or tells the untruth”. He argues the reverse: the Avesta’s silence shows that the attribution of the slaughter to Mithras “is an innovation, and not an ancient inheritance”. He cites Zaehner’s thesis that the Mithraists descended from daeva-worshippers who fled to Babylonia after Xerxes banned their cult, and who transferred Ahriman’s life-producing killing of the bull to Mithra [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction VIII].

Mihr the judge: Sasanian and Pahlavi literature

In the later literature Mithra becomes, above all, a judge. Campos Méndez places him among the three judges of souls at the Chinvat bridge with Sraosha and Rashnu, and notes Lincoln’s reading of Videvdat 19.28-29 as evidence of a saving, soul-guiding Mithra [Campos Méndez, #60243, ch. I.2]. Dhalla calls Mithra “the angel of truth” who “is accompanied by Dami Upamana at the ordeal court”, a co-adjutor who “impersonates the magic power of the curse”. He adds that “because of his overlordship of all space… Mithra receives the permanent title, lord of all countries” [Dhalla, Zoroastrian Civilization, #60424].

Shaked’s essay “Mihr the Judge” is the most detailed treatment. Middle Persian miyāncīg, later understood as “mediator, arbiter”, meant in Sasanian usage “a judge, as well as a position of administrative responsibility”. He argues there is “no need to assume… the semantic development ‘mediator’ → ‘arbiter’ → ‘judge'”. In the Mēnōg ī Xrad the eschatological “miyāncīgīh of Mihr and Srōš and Rašn” is a judgement, not a mediation. A propitiation prayer addresses “the virtuous Mihr, of wide pastures, who are a just judge of the defaulter(s), that is, you perform (the functions of) miyāncīg and judge in truth among both mēnōg and gētīg beings”. The Bundahishn explains: “His being of wide pastures is this: when it is possible to walk about in the desert without fear, it is due to Mihr”. In the Zand ī Wahman Yasn, Mihr helps Pēšōtan and rebukes the Evil Spirit over the “nine thousand years of contract” [Shaked, From Zoroastrian Iran to Islam, #60406, essay IV “Mihr the Judge”]. Duchesne-Guillemin adds the royal side: Ohrmazd I and II and Ardashir II “owe their investiture” to Mithra on Sasanian monuments [Duchesne-Guillemin, #38271, “Under the Sassanids and after”].

Mesites: Plutarch, Zurvan and the bridge to the West

For Western readers the key text is Plutarch, De Iside 46-47, in Geden’s translation. Some say there are two rival gods; “others confine the name of god to the good power, the other they term demon, as was done by Zoroaster the Magian”, and “to Mithra therefore the Persians give the name of the mediator”. Geden glosses Mithra as “mediator or intermediary… between the gods who inhabited the upper world and the lower world of men” [Geden, #38272]. The interpretations divide. Ries, following Widengren, takes Plutarch to show that Zurvanism and Mithraism “coexisted in Parthian-period Iran, that the Magi practised both cults and that in Zurvanism Mithra was considered the mediator between Good and Evil” [Ries, Il Culto di Mithra, #38276, Introduction]. Gershevitch lists Mithra’s “role of Mesites in Zervanism” as a later derivative of his judgeship, “not yet apparent in the Avesta” [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction V]. Shaked reports that Benveniste insisted on a literal, Zurvanite “mediation”. His own view is that Plutarch’s mesitēs is “a direct rendering of the Iranian predecessor of the Pahlavi miyāncīg“, meaning a judge who is “firmly and unequivocally on the side of… Ohrmazd”, not a neutral figure in the middle [Shaked, #60406, essay IV].

This Zurvanite background bears on the Roman lion-headed figure (treated later). Vermaseren says the Magi “placed Mithras in his role as sun-god in the foreground of their theology” and held that “Zervan was at the head of the two conflicting powers” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 2]. Boyce, reviewing Zaehner, writes that “the Manichaean evidence suggests that in the third century Zurvanism was dominant in the south-west of the Empire, Mazdeism among the Parthians” [Boyce, Selected Writings, #54999]. Duchesne-Guillemin concludes that “it is likely… that Zurvanism was dominant throughout the Sassanian period” [Duchesne-Guillemin, #38271]. Jackson adds that the sun “as an independent Yazata… is less prominent than other solar spirits, such as Mithra” [Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, #55164, Part I].

Key points

• Vermaseren, Campos Méndez and Moulton describe Zarathustra as relegating or attacking a Mithra cult tied to bull sacrifice and haoma. Moulton and Duchesne-Guillemin hold that Vohu Manah replaced Mithra as lord of cattle.
• Gershevitch counters that the Gathas never connect Mithra with blood sacrifice, that “Mithraphobia” is a modern invention, and that early disciples quietly brought Mithra back as the “protector”.
• The Younger Avesta is a “mixed religion”, in Gershevitch’s account the result of Achaemenid court policy and Magian eclecticism. In it Ahura Mazda himself worships Mithra, Anahita and other gods (Duchesne-Guillemin).
• Vermaseren makes Hellenised Magi of Asia Minor the founders of the Mithras cult. The Dascylium relief and Ctesias’s account of the drunken king at the Mithrakana are his evidence.
• Gershevitch rejects the theory that Avestan authors moved the bull-slaying from Mithra to Ahriman, and treats the tauroctony as a later innovation.
• Shaked shows that Pahlavi miyāncīg means “judge”, that Mihr is the just judge of souls and of the world, and that Plutarch’s “mediator” renders this judicial title rather than a neutral middle position.
• Ries (after Widengren), Boyce and Duchesne-Guillemin place Mithra in a Zurvanite milieu that was strong in western Iran, which is the background to the Western mysteries.