Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24577079-20141203031648/@comment-24997333-20151214012621

In case, you guys are finished with discussing the historicity of Jesus,

Mithraic mysteries

It was Christianity's main competitor and arc enemy within the a hundred years of Jesus dying. I'm considering that the Mithraic mysteries would simply take the place of Christianity. Quoting straight from Wikipedia:

"The Mithraic Mysteries were a mystery religion practiced in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to 4th centuries AD. The name of the Persian god Mithra (proto-Indo-Iranian Mitra), adapted into Greek as Mithras, was linked to a new and distinctive imagery. Writers of the Roman Empire period referred to this mystery religion by phrases which can be anglicized as Mysteries of Mithras or Mysteries of the Persians;[1][2] modern historians refer to it as Mithraism,[1] or sometimes Roman Mithraism.[3][4] The mysteries were popular in the Roman military.[5]

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake".[6] They met in underground temples (called mithraea), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its centre in Rome."

Not to mention the similarities with Christianity: "liberator-saviour, hierarchy of adepts (archbishops, bishops, priests), communal meal and a hard struggle of Good and Evil (bull-killing/crucifixion)."

The only reason this religion it declined was because Christianity became more popular and was eventually suppressed and destroyed with the emergence of a Christian Roman Empire.