The United States has given the world much, including peace, democracy and an open internet, and much that is perhaps less attractive. But it has also given us a vast surge of cranks and lunatics. In certain fields of study there must be many an undergraduate tutor who finds that, every year, he must try to be patient, when some self-assured young man innocently trots out some terrible old canard once again.
One of these claims – that Mithras was “born of a virgin,” was emailed to me by a concerned Iranian gentleman a couple of days ago. Unlike many who write to me, he had tried to source his claims. He found the claim on a website here:
An inscription on a Seleucid Temple in Iran dated to the 200s B.C. reads “Anahita, as the Immaculate Virgin Mother of the Lord Mithra.” While there is only one primary source for the “virgin birth” claim, and it has been shown to be very difficult to locate, the quote about Mithras being born of the virgin was published in 1983 by Mary Boyce, a British scholar on Iranian languages and Zoroastrianism who is so respected, the Royal Asiatic Society award for outstanding contributions to the study of religion is called the “Boyce Prize.”
Mithras was, in fact, born from a rock – petra genetrix, as it says on monuments. Amusingly the website even showed a picture of Mithras being born… from a rock. This is an unintelligent website pushing a fantasy, and deserves no consideration.
What concerned my correspondent was the claim that this came from Mary Boyce, the leading scholar of Zoroastrianism, published in an unspecified source in 1983.
The link given is to a PDF written by a certain Frank Zindler, containing emails that he wrote, without response, at Dr Bart Ehrman. The latter must receive a great quantity of crank emails. Indeed Mr Z. appears to be part of the lunatic fringe of US atheism. In the PDF we find this:
There is a popular, English-language women’s Web-site called www.irandokht.com. On it I found an article by a certain Manouchehr Saadat Noury, PhD, titled “First Iranian goddess of productivity and values,” dealing with the ancient Iranian goddess Anahita. After showing a picture of the great Temple of Anahita at Kangavar, the article says that
“By the HELLENISTIC era (330—310 BC), if not before, Anahita’s cult came to be closely associated with that of MITHRA.
The ANAHITA TEMPLES have been built in many Iranian cities like Kangavar, Bishapur (an ancient city in south of present-day Faliyan) and other places during different eras. An inscription from 200 BC dedicates a SELEUCID temple in western Iran to “Anahita, as the Immaculate Virgin Mother of the Lord Mithra.” The ANAHITA TEMPLE at Kangavar city of Kermanshah (a western province in present-day Iran) is possibly the most important one. It is speculated that the architectural structure of this temple is a combination of the Greek and Persian styles and some researchers suggest that the temple is related to a girl named Anahita, the daughter of din Mehr, who enjoyed a very high status with the ancient Iranians.”
And also this:
“In the Bundahishn, the two halves of the name “Ardwisur Anahid” are occasionally treated independently of one another, that is, with Ardwisur as the representative of waters, and Anahid identified with the planet Venus.[20] In yet other chapters, the text equates the two, as in “Ardwisur who is Anahid, the father and mother of the Waters” (3.17).
“This legend of the river that descends from Mount Hara appears to have remained a part of living observance for many generations. A Greek inscription from Roman times found in Asia Minor reads ‘the great goddess Anaïtis of high Hara.'[21] On Greek coins of the imperial epoch, she is
spoken of as ‘Anaïtis of the sacred water.[20]”[20] Boyce 1983, p. 1004 [Boyce, Mary (1983), “Āban,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. I, New York: Routledge &
Kegan Paul]
[21] Boyce 1975a, p. 74 [Boyce, Mary (1975a), A History of Zoroastrianism, Vol. I, Leiden/Köln: Brill]
There is indeed an article on “Aban” by Mary Boyce in vol. 1 of the Encyclopedia Iranica – on page 58, in the 1985 edition – but it does not contain the quote made at all. But the reference in the Zindler PDF to Boyce reference is nothing to do with the “immaculate conception of Anahita”, but to this stuff about the waters. I have also searched her publications from this time – the History of Zoroastrianism in 3 volumes – and there is no reference to this supposed “immaculate conception of Anahita” inscription.
So it looks very much as if the website author has just skimmed the Zindler PDF, and misread, and posted his misreading. He has assumed that the reference covered both claims. In fact Zindler references the “immaculate conception” claim is to an article online by somebody called “Manouchehr Saadat Noury, PhD”.
So the claim that this is by Mary Boyce is simply untrue.
Let’s see if we can go a bit further. Is there any evidence at all of such an inscription?
The ‘article by Manouchehr Saadat Noury, PhD, titled “First Iranian goddess of productivity and values,”‘ referred to by Zindler, seems today to be online at iranian.com here, making the same claims, but with no reference to Boyce at all. This gives the following references.
Frye, R. N. (1963): The Heritage of Persia: The pre-Islamic History of One of the World’s Great Civilizations, ed., The World Publishing Company, New York.
Frye, R. N. (1993): The Golden Age of Persia, ed., Weidenfeld, London.
Nazmi Afshar, M. S. (2005): Online Article on “Anahita, the Mother of Gods, Iran the cradle of the early gods”.
Saadat Noury, M. (2005): Various Articles on Persian Culture and the History of Iran.
Various Sources (2005): Notes & Articles on Anahita.
Wikipedia Encyclopedia (2005): Online Notes on Anahita (in English & Persian).
I have accessed the two Frye volumes, and I can confirm that neither contains this claim. The Afshar article is today here. This also says nothing about this supposed “immaculate conception” inscription in a Seleucid era temple.
There is a Persian-language Wikipedia article for Anahita here. As far as I can tell this does not include the claim either.
The other “references” are not references at all, and cannot be followed further.
In conclusion, this claim about an inscription in an unspecified temple in western Iran cannot be verified, and need not be attended to.
I was curious and tried to look more into this, and I found out some more information. The Manouchehr Saadat Noury article cites (vaguely) the Wikipedia page. You note it’s not on the Wikipedia page. HOWEVER, it says it’s from 2005. One can pull up the edit history of the page to see it earlier. However, looking at the Edit history for it in English, the earliest version is 2006 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anahita&oldid=85440755).
But there’s a whole lot in that initial version, which is normally a sign of a bunch of stuff from one page being transferred to another. So I looked at the edit history of the person who made that edit, figuring they probably had done some edits to whatever the original page was. In doing so, I found out that the earlier version of the article was Anāhitā (with the lines over some letters), and this does have 2005 versions. Here is the last one from 2005:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=An%C4%81hit%C4%81&oldid=33079572
We do indeed see the statement “An inscription from c. 200 BC dedicates a Seleucid temple in Western Iran to “Anahita, the Immaculate Virgin Mother of the Lord Mithras”. The Anahita Temple at Kangavar in western Iran is the most important Anahita temple.” (indeed, if one looks back to the very first version in 2004, it is also there)
So it seems this is the source for that statement in the Manouchehr Saadat Noury article. But where does the claim on the Wikipedia page come from? No source is explicitly cited for this; two external links are offered at the end (surprisingly, the websites linked to are still available!), but they say noting of this.
This sentence was actually removed in the very next update, from January 7 2006:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=An%C4%81hit%C4%81&direction=next&oldid=33079572
This edit does not offer an explanation for it, and the editor did not have a formal account, as only an IP address is offered. But I looked at the other edits this IP address made, and they made one other, to the talk page, which can still be viewed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Anahita/Archive_1
Specifically, they added the following to the talk page:
“The reference to an inscription describing Anahita as ‘the Immaculate Virgin mother’ of Mithra is found on many websites. Unfortunately, its origin seems to be an online version of a kid’s High School essay and nothing scholarly. It is spread around the internet largely because it appeals to those who ty to argue that Christianity is simply repackaged paganism and that Jesus never existed. I’m an atheist myself, so I don’t care too much about whether Jesus existed or not, but unless someone can provide a better source for this supposed inscription than a child’s high school essay, it has no place in this article.”
Unfortunately, they do not specifically say where the online essay is found, and like most things on the Internet in 2005, it has most likely disappeared by now (I was unable to find it).
In my searching, I did find the following link, however:
https://evidenceforchristianity.org/do-you-know-the-primary-source-for-a-supposed-inscription-which-has-mithra-born-of-a-virgin/
In here, it is asserted:
“I believe the source of this claim is Payam Nabarz The Mysteries of Mithras: The Pagan Beliefs that Shaped the Christian World (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2005), 19. The inscription was supposedly found in the area of Lake Humum, Iran. Nabarz is not very careful about giving his sources and he is very selective in his use of the primary sources, so we should be cautious about accepting what he says.”
As the claim was found on the Wikipedia page back in 2004, Nabarz could not have been the originator, and must have taken it from somewhere else (either the Wikipedia page or wherever the editor of the Wikipedia page ultimately took it from).
The above link is not clear whether they have personally confirmed it being in the book or not. However, one can look at the book on Google Books:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Mysteries_of_Mithras/BlwoDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Unfortunately, it is difficult to find exactly where this is, because the pages are not numbered and if you do a search it tells you unhelpfully “No preview available for this page” and as is the case for when that happens, clicking on them does not bring you to the page in question (and due to the lack of page numbering, you cannot even look at the number and manually navigate there). That said, the chapter on Anahita is chapter 7, and looking at it, it says “According to some sources, Mithra’s partner and virgin mother is the angel-goddess Anahita.” No further information is given on this that I see in the chapter, but Google Books is also missing some portions of this chapter (the dreaded “Some pages are omitted from this book preview” appears just when it starts talking about temples!) and it might have been in one of the missing pages. One would need to be able to have a physical copy of the book to check on it to confirm this statement is in it and to see if any source is cited.
At any rate, it appears that the source for Manouchehr Saadat Noury’s claim was the 2005 version of the Wikipedia page, but the Wikipedia page itself offered no source. It is not in the present version of the page because it was removed in 2006 by someone, who said that it appears to go back to an online version of a high school paper, though this cannot be confirmed now.
Eep! Looking at the preview for my previous comment after I submitted it (currently under moderation), it seems like for some reason all of the blank spaces I put between paragraphs has disappeared, leaving it all as one giant blob of a paragraph. I have no idea why that happened. Perhaps that’s a temporary thing and when published it will fix itself up, but in case it does not, I thought I should let people know it’s not my fault! Hopefully it can still be deciphered if that is the case.
It came through just fine, as you can see!
Thank you so much! That is simply excellent further research. The Nabarz book I can locate, I think.
I will look further.
Actually, there may not be any need to get Nabarz’s book. I was perhaps a bit too excited to post my findings, and I didn’t look at some things as much as I could have. I found an article by Payam Nabarz which is stated to be based on the Anahita chapter from his book:
https://iranian.com/main/blog/nabarz/anahita-lady-persia.html
This does give the statement about the temple (which I was unable to view in the online book), as well as a citation. It tells us:
“Circa 200 BC sees the dedication of a Seleucid temple in western Iran to “Anahita, as the Immaculate Virgin Mother of the Lord Mithra”.5
5. First Iranian Goddess of productivity and values by Manouchehr Saadat Noury – Persian Journal, Jul 21, 2005. //www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/printer_8378.shtml”
This page is no longer available, but an archive is:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051013062532/www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/printer_8378.shtml
And yes indeed, this is the exact same article by Manouchehr Saadat Noury that you linked to, though unlike your link, this does not give the list of references at the end; perhaps this is a re-posting of an earlier “original” version of his article which did give the reference list, which was retained in the re-posting you provided but not in the above one.
At any rate, it seems we don’t need to look farther into Nabarz, because he was just taking his source from Noury, which (as previously established) appears to have taken the claim from the earlier version of the Wikipedia article, which did not give any sources and (if the statement of the anonymous edit who removed it is correct) seems to trace back to a high school paper.