FROM LECTURE 1:

"Constantine's conversion to Christianity, which led to its triumph, was not quite assured for some considerable time. He hesitated a good deal between Mithra and Jesus, because the two religions of Mithraism and Christianity very closely resembled each other. Like Jesus, Mithra was a mediator between God and men whose salvation was assured by a sacrifice. The Mithraists believed in a moral law and a future life as firmly as Christians. Tertullian, who attributed the close resemblance of the two to the artifices of the devil, was specially scandalized by the Mithraic rite of the consecration of bread and wine. Further, many primitive religions believed in the sacrificial death of the god, and the communion meal of the faithful with the divine body was literal and actual whenever the god of the tribes was an animal. By eating an animal, a hero or a god, devotees were believed to acquire their appropriate qualities. Thus the rites of sacrifice and communion which are the very bases of Christianity can be traced to such primitive beliefs."

- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, East and West in Religion; 1933, Bradford & Dickens