Who said that pagan sacrifice had anything to do with sins or the redemption thereof?
"The Lord's supper was not invented by Paul, but was borrowed by him from Mithraism, the mystery religion that existed long before Christianity and was Christianity's chief competitor up until the time of Constantine. In Mithraism, the central figure is the mythical Mithras, who died for the sins of mankind and was resurrected.
Believers in Mithras were rewarded with eternal life. Part of the Mithraic communion liturgy included the words, "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation."
(Compare to Matt. 26-28: "For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.")
The chief incident of Mithra's life was his struggle with a symbolical bull, which he overpowered and sacrificed, and from the blood of the sacrifice came the world's peace and plenty, typified by ears of corn. The bull appears to signify the earth or mankind, and the implication is that Mithra, like Christ, overcame the world; but in the early Persian writings Mithra is himself the bull [J.M. Robertson, /Pagan Christs/, p. 298.], the god thus sacrificing himself, which is a close approximation to the Christian idea. In later times the bull is interchangeable with a ram; but the zodiacal ram, Aries, which is associated with Mithra, was replaced by a lamb in the Persian zodiac [Bundahish, ii. 2.], so that it is a lamb which is sacrificed [Garucci, /Les Myste`res du Syn. Phrygien/, p. 34.], as in the Paschal conception of Yeshua. That this sacrifice had originally a human victim, and that it later involved the idea of the sacramental death of a human being, is clear from the fact that the Church historian, Socrates, believed that human victims were still sacrificed in the Mithraic mysteries down to some period before A.D. 360 [Socrates, /Eccles. Hist., bk. iii., ch. 2.].
Thus the paramount Christian idea of the sacrifice of the lamb of God was one with which every worshipper of Mithra was familiar; and just as Mithra was an embodiment of the seven spirits of God, so the slain Lamb in the Book of Revelation has seven horns and seven eyes "which are the seven spirits of G-d'' [Revelation v. 6.]. Early writers say that a lamb was consecrated, killed, and eaten as an Easter rite in the Church; but Easter was a Mithraic festival [Macrobius, /Saturnalia/, i. 18.], presumably of the resurrection of their god, and the parallel is thus complete, in which regard it is to be noted that in the Seventh Century the Church endeavored without success to suppress the picturing of Christ as a lamb, owing to the paganism involved in the idea [Bingham, /Christian Antiq./, viii. 8, sec. 11; xv. 2, sec. 3.].
The ceremonies of purification by the sprinkling or drenching of the novice with the blood of bulls or rams were widespread, and were to be found in the rites of Mithra. By this purification a man was "born again" [Beugnot, /Hist. de la Dest. Du Paganisme/, i. p. 334.], and the Christian expression "washed in the blood of the Lamb" is undoubtedly a reflection of this idea, the reference thus being clear in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins". In this passage the writer goes on to say: "Having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh ... let us draw near ... having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water" [Hebrews x. 19.]. But when we learn that the Mithraic initiation ceremony consisted in entering boldly into a mysterious underground "holy of holies", with the eyes veiled, and there being sprinkled with blood, and washed with water, it is clear that the author of the Epistle was thinking of those Mithraic rites with which everybody at that time must have been so familiar."
Mithra's Contributions to Christianity
