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I'll look it up I doubt it has anything historically I haven't already been exposed too. I have a deep interest in the Roman period and in particular the mystery religions that appeared at that time. In fact I'm an archaeologist (not a biblical archaeologist). The historical existence of Jesus the man has very little doubt as there are Jewish, and Roman sources for his existence.

At one time I thought that Christianity was really a bastardized version of Mithraism created by Paul. He was the son of a Roman whose Mother was Jewish. He also grew up in Tarsus which was the center of Mithra worship. If his Father was a worshiper of Mithra and his mother a Jew he would have been exposed to both religions. When he was sent to arrest the Christians (as a Roman citizen and a Jew he was in a special position to execute Roman legal authority) he would have had to have been told the story of Jesus.

Imagine that you have all your life been brought up hearing stories of Mithra born of a Virgin, 12 disciples, died and was reborn, etc etc the same story is that of Jesus. Was Paul thinking this is my father's religion made flesh by my Mother's people.

I thought that maybe Paul who spread Christianity across the empire had possibly made the entire religion up. I was wrong, the religion existed in this form and with most of the story before Paul but Paul was in the right place at the right time. Is it possible Mithraism was God's plan created by God to touch Paul as Roman and Jew. The coincidence is almost unbelievable but they are there. Two religions that are so similar they can almost be interchanged. Paul must have seen this and it struck him like a bolt of Lightning.

Ok my rambling supposition about history is over sorry. :)

Paul was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22.28) but that doesn't mean his father was not Jewish (as well as being a Roman citizen). By this period many people had acquired Roman citizenship who were not descended from the early Romans. If Paul's father had been a pagan Roman, there would probably be some indication of it in the New Testament, because his opponents within the Christian community would have tried to use that against him.

"Imagine that you have all your life been brought up hearing stories of Mithra born of a Virgin, 12 disciples, died and was reborn, etc etc the same story is that of Jesus. Was Paul thinking this is my father's religion made flesh by my Mother's people."

I believe the actual original story of Mithra was that he was born from a rock....the result of this birth left a cave. The addition of the 12 disciples was added later after Mithra became associated with Sol-Invictus (Sun worship)...the 12 disciples were the 12 signs of the zodiac. Along comes Jesus....the Romans, being the masters of assimilating other religions into their own rather than conquering them, begins to associate Christ with Mithra somewhere around 150 AD.

So...here we are 2000 years later, wondering how a Jewish based religion suddenly moved it's Sabbath from the seventh day (as it should be) to the first day of the week that was named for the SUN. (Sol-Invictus) Hmmm.