Mithraists, Etymology

The name Mithras (Latin, equivalent to Greek "Μίθρας"[11]) is a form of Mithra, the name of an old, pre-Zoroastrian, and, later on, Zoroastrian, god[g][h] – a relationship understood by Mithraic scholars since the days of Franz Cumont.[i]

An early example of the Greek form of the name is in a 4th century BCE work by Xenophon, the Cyropaedia, which is a biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great.[13]

The exact form of a Latin or classical Greek word varies due to the grammatical process of inflection.

There is archaeological evidence that in Latin worshippers wrote the nominative form of the god's name as "Mithras".

Porphyry's Greek text De Abstinentia (Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων), has a reference to the now-lost histories of the Mithraic mysteries by Euboulus and Pallas, the wording of which suggests that these authors treated the name "Mithra" as an indeclinable foreign word.[j]

Related deity-names in other languages include:

Vedic Sanskrit Mitra, "friend, friendship," as the name of a god praised in the Rigveda.[15][16][k][17]

In Sanskrit, mitra is an unusual name of the sun god, mostly known as "Surya" or "Aditya", however.[18]

the form mi-it-ra-, found in an inscribed peace treaty between the Hittites and the kingdom of Mitanni, from about 1400 BCE.[l] between the king of the Hittites, Subbiluliuma, and the king of Mitanni, Mativaza. ... It is the earliest evidence of Mithras in Asia Minor.[18][19]

Iranian Mithra and Sanskrit Mitra are believed to come from the Indo-Iranian word mitrás, meaning "contract, agreement, covenant".[20]

Modern historians have different conceptions about whether these names refer to the same god or not. John R. Hinnells has written of Mitra / Mithra / Mithras as a single deity, worshipped in several different religions.[21]

On the other hand, David Ulansey considers the bull-slaying Mithras to be a new god who began to be worshipped in the 1st century BCE, and to whom an old name was applied.[m]

Boyce, an academic researcher on ancient Iranian religions, writes that even though Roman Mithraism seems to have had less Iranian content than ancient Romans or modern historians used to think, nonetheless "as the name Mithras alone shows, this content was of some importance".[n]