The First Step to Proving Christianity Was a Samaritan Sect

[Stephan Huller]

A plausible case can be made for Jesus (Eeshu) as the fire god of Apelles and the Marcionites going back through these early (Persian) Samaritan sects to the real Mithra figure of early Zoroastrianism (as opposed to the 'Mithras' figure of later Roman paganism. Note that in the Rig Veda 'Agni' (the Aryan fire god = ignis http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ignis) is at once called 'Mithra' (= friend):

Thou, O Agni, art the kinsman, the dear friend (' Mitra ') of men, a friend who is to be magnified by his friends. 5. Sacrifice for us to Mitra and Varuwa. Sacrifice to the gods, (a sacrifice conforming to) the great Rita. http://books.google.com/books?id=_55MAA ... nd&f=false

I strongly suspect (without actual data to back this suspicion admittedly) that the reason the earliest strand of Samaritans (a cult dating back to the Persian period) were called 'dostan' was because they identified themselves 'friends' (dustan) of the Jewish equivalent fire god/angel Eeshu (= Jesus) who was at once developed from the idea of Mithra the 'friend.' If I could find an instance of Mithra being identified as 'dost' = (the) Friend that would at least be a start. But I think this is the beginning of a systematic understanding of the beginning of Christianity.

[Stephan Huller]

The preservation of the figure of Ignatius (= seraph Hebrew) in early Christianity is a further confirmation of the antiquity of the Marcionite ideas identifying Jesus as a fire god.

[Stephan Huller]

A weak example of the general situation in Hindi (but not Persian): http://books.google.com/books?id=OkGbSc ... nd&f=false

[Stephan Huller]

I suspect that an important lost 'prehistory' to the development of the Second Commonwealth religion of Israel from Persian sources is supported by the disappearance of early Persian sources. I think the Philonic 'justice' and 'mercy' divinities of Yahweh and Elohim derive from the original Persian veneration of Varuna and Mitra respectively.

https://archive.org/stream/AHistoryOfZo ... I_djvu.txt

The difficulty is that 'Judaism' as we now developed no earlier than the Hellenstic period as an independent religion. The original Persian-Israelite religion was likely based in Shechem and was only retained by the Dustan who survived into the late Byzantine period as a distinct Samaritan cult and eventually consolidated themselves with the other Samaritan orthodoxy some time in the 8th or 9th century (?)