The Spread of Christianity

Christianity has many similarities to the other cults that had already gained widespread acceptance. Mithraism, derived from eastern Zoroastrism was a belief in the son of the sun who also come to earth to rescue mankind from itself. The similarities in the stories of Jesus and Mithras cannot be overlooked as an aid in Christian growth. Mithras was extremely popular in the Legions, and the army traveled throughout the empire, the acceptance of monotheistic concept and the story of the son of god coming to earth to save humanity traveled with it. The cult of Dionysus, one of the old gods of both Greeks and Romans, also had enough similarities to aid a slow conversion to Christianity. Perhaps even the Imperial cult (emperor worship) played its own part. Augustus himself were considered the son of a god (Julius Caesar) and transcended his human existence to become a divine being after his death. The Roman people had certainly been exposed to enough religious ideas bearing similarities to Christ to make the possibility of the Son of God and Savior of humanity a believable and relatively easy concept to adopt.