Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Robert Tulip
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Good information on Ptolemy’s invention of the anthropomorphised Serapis cult as a point of Greek access to Egyptian myth is in Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris, summarised at https://henadology.wordpress.com/theolo ... u/serapis/
The canonical account of the origin of Serapis is told by Plutarch in his On Isis and Osiris (28), which relates that Ptolemy Soter (323-282 BCE) saw in a dream a certain colossal statue, of which he had no prior knowledge, in Sinopê, a city on the southern coast of the Black Sea. The statue spoke to him, urging him to have it brought to Alexandria. Making inquiries, the king learned that such a statue did indeed exist in Sinopê. The statue having been obtained by whatever means, it was brought to Alexandria. This statue, according to Plutarch, showed the God accompanied by a Cerberus dog and a serpent, and was therefore identified as a statue of Pluto by experts Ptolemy consulted, but “took to itself the name which Pluto bears among the Egyptians, that of Serapis,” (362 A). However, Plutarch himself connects Serapis, not with Osiris-Apis, but with Osiris simply, stating that Osiris “received this appellation at the time when he changed his nature,” (362 B) that is, when he was resurrected.

Information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serapis indicates that Serapis existed before his co-option by Ptolemy, but that the Greek cult was based on deliberate choice to define a God suitable for the new ruling class in Egypt. The Graeco-Egyptian syncretism is particularly interesting as resulting from strongly documented political conquest. Serapis presented a way that others could gain access to Egyptian heritage, comparable to how chop suey is an American-Chinese amalgam.

The addition of the Jewish prophetic overlay to Serapis to produce Jesus Christ presents a plausible hypothesis, though naturally heavily suppressed by Christianity. Serapis was a cosmic deity, depicted with the aureole of the zodiac. Judaism saw worship of the sun and moon and stars as a heathen idolatry, but nonetheless there is abundant astral imagery in Christ, always lightly hidden and transformed to accord with the Jewish notion of God as wholly alien and unnatural, and with the apparent Jewish need to present Egypt as an evil empire.

The memetic evolution of the prevailing anthropomorphic modus vivendi from Serapis and Mithras to Christ, as a form of belief available to newly interacting cultures, presents a logical explanation of how Christianity built upon its antecedents. So the Greek naturalism embodied in the zodiac twelve surrounding Serapis was transformed into the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ.

Image
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _TIMEA.jpg
MrMacSon wrote:
GakuseiDon wrote: My question is: is there evidence that ancient people thought that Serapis was "purely invented and acknowledged as such", thereby lacking 'subversive political force of an incarnate messiah'?
Does this help?
…Ptolemy I Soter replaced the cult of Ausar (Osiris) with the newly created cult of Serapis. Serapis’ attributes were drawn from the preexisting indigenous cult of Ausar and the less popular cult of Apis bull, which when combined formed Serapis. Ptolemy I Lagi calculated that the creation of Serapis would ease tension of Greek invasion and unify the Africans and the Greeks in the country…. – the hellenization of ancient Egypt was complete.
…while the Romans conquered ancient Egypt militarily, the ancient Egyptians conquered Rome spiritually…. Dyophysitism is a theological doctrine that recognizes the dual nature of Christ, the divine and the human. …Dyophysitism emerged after the council of Nicaea I, but the Coptic Egyptians who originally introduced the cult of Serapis to Rome utterly rejected dyophysitism because they only recognized the divine Osiris-like characteristics in Serapis, but could not recognize Serapis as human. These Coptic Egyptians who only recognized the divine nature of Serapis, now Christ, were known in history as Monophysites. The council of Nicaea I marked the beginning of a long struggle between the monophysites and the dyophysites. …The monophysites or the heretics, as they were mostly called, occupied the Eastern end of the Holy Roman Empire (i.e., Byzantine Empire - North East Africa and Constantinople) while the dyophysites occupied the Western end of the Holy Roman Empire. .. monophysitism somehow evolved into a new spiritual philosophy called monism. …
http://ajendu.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/soteriology.html
bcedaifu
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by bcedaifu »

Robert Tulip wrote
So the Greek naturalism embodied in the zodiac twelve surrounding Serapis was transformed into the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ.


Thank you Robert, always a pleasure to encounter your submission to the forum. Good stuff.

How to explain the twelve tribes, or, ten tribes plus two other groups? My understanding is that the zodiac preceded the Babylonian captivity. Is there also evidence that it preceded the earliest reference (pottery perhaps?) to the twelve (or ten plus two) tribes of Judaism? Why couldn't the authors of the gospels have written twelve disciples, based upon a Jewish administrative procedure of twelve tribes, rather than upon a visual image of the zodiac, which lacks reference to any tax collection methodology?

Wasn't the zodiac widely appreciated and followed, e.g. Persia, India, China, Japan, long before the earliest evidence of the Silk route--if so, then, why couldn't the authors of the gospels, have been based in any part of the ancient Persian empire, i.e. not necessarily confined to a headquarters in Alexandria, where the Serapis cult had been centered?
Robert Tulip
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by Robert Tulip »

Hello bcedaifu, thanks for these good questions.
bcedaifu wrote:Robert Tulip wrote
So the Greek naturalism embodied in the zodiac twelve surrounding Serapis was transformed into the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ.

Thank you Robert, always a pleasure to encounter your submission to the forum. Good stuff.
How to explain the twelve tribes, or, ten tribes plus two other groups? My understanding is that the zodiac preceded the Babylonian captivity. Is there also evidence that it preceded the earliest reference (pottery perhaps?) to the twelve (or ten plus two) tribes of Judaism?
The sources of evidence on ancient religion are distorted by the delusional supernatural agendas that have suppressed natural traditions. The relation between the one and the twelve is far more ancient than any extant data, because it provides the basic structure of time for life on our planet. The fact that there are twelve lunations within each solar year, and that each month is divided into four weeks by the phases of the moon, provides a basic universal planetary biological measure of time.

Religion has a basic purpose to explain the meaning of natural order. The real natural order is the structure of time, in which the one and twelve are the sun and moon. Objective observation maps the twelve months of the year against the stars of the zodiac.

So the one and twelve is a universal theme, seen in numerous sources including the Serapis cult as well as the tribes of Israel, which Philo and Josephus attest are based on the twelve signs of the zodiac. Clement of Alexandria observed the Gnostics linked the zodiac observation to the myth of Christ and the twelve disciples.
bcedaifu wrote: Why couldn't the authors of the gospels have written twelve disciples, based upon a Jewish administrative procedure of twelve tribes, rather than upon a visual image of the zodiac, which lacks reference to any tax collection methodology?
Religion is based on universal archetypes of natural order. The premise of your question is that the gospels authors used a superficial and arbitrary clerical method from a narrow and isolated cultural tradition. Their actual result matches directly to the universal real natural order known to all. The traditional dogmatic stratagem of excluding universal natural archetypes from the sources of religious ideation is most implausible.
bcedaifu wrote: Wasn't the zodiac widely appreciated and followed, e.g. Persia, India, China, Japan, long before the earliest evidence of the Silk route--if so, then, why couldn't the authors of the gospels, have been based in any part of the ancient Persian empire, i.e. not necessarily confined to a headquarters in Alexandria, where the Serapis cult had been centered?
I did not suggest the Serapis cult was the only source for Christianity. Israel is located at the meeting point of Asia, Africa and Europe, presenting a natural position to give rise to a universal faith integrating core deep wisdom from all directions. Syncretism draws from all different influences, and extends culturally back into linguistic connections, including the well known family links of the whole Indo-European language system.

The power of the Serapis myth includes its deliberate intent to construct a religion that respects the traditions of Greece and Egypt through an anthropomorphic icon, drawing together the Greek reverence for heroes with the Egyptian mystical cosmology of the seasons.

Following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews and their allies needed a new faith that would be able to subvert the dominant paradigm of empire. Christianity served this purpose. The Serapis tradition provided a convenient template for the Alexandrian Therapeuts of Lake Mareotis. The Serapian mystical idea of the presence of the eternal divine within the temporal form of an individual human is an essential precedent for the Christian mythos.

But it seems the Serapis myth was aimed primarily at delivering social and political stability, whereas Saint Paul and Saint Mark’s addition of the Jewish messianic trope of the despised and rejected saviour from Isaiah shifted the idea to one that could seem loyal but in fact was subversive. So it is little wonder that the Hellenistic stability delivered by Serapis as a lunisolar deity could readily be resurrected as the imperial basis of Christendom, lightly covered by a redeeming gloss of sympathy for the poor provided by the addition of the Jewish framework in the Jesus story.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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I am still intrigued by references to Serapis being called Christ (or a version of Christ) or followers of Serapis being called 'Christians' (or a version of Christian).
Who were the chrestianos? 'Chrestus' was a familiar personal name throughout the Roman Empire. It was not, however, Israelite in origin. Instead it was the name of the Egyptian Serapis (Ancient Greek: Σάραπιςa, Graeco-Egyptian god. He was invented during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm, and whose main temple was in Alexandria, Egypt {read: Pausanias, Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις or Description of Greece, 1.18.4, second century CE}. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection) or Osiris who would have a life and death similar to (but not identical with) the Jesus of the New Testament not yet written.

Chrestus and his followers, the chrestianos, were numerous and strong, dedicated and determined. They believed in an afterlife when their god would return riding a wild horse with a sword in hand. They would be numbered among “the elect [or chosen]” and in a rapture of light be appointed to senior positions in the next kingdom of the messiah.

The chrestianos had a large following at Borne, especially among the common people, as it was the common people who demanded a better life and no group other than the chrestianos offered them hope. This hope led the commoners, the poor, to envision a classless afterlife where all would be equal and quickly adopted the Egyptian promise of a life after death where their promise of enjoying the fruits of those save would be found when they would go to a special garden (paradise). In the chrestianos paradise they would find it filled with all earthly delights including unlimited amounts of honey, lamps filled with oil that would stay lit permanently, and ease without the need to work. There sole task was to sing praises and hymns to the Egyptian god once their souls were individually weighed on Resurrection Day (the soul would be on one scale of the balance, and their good deeds the counterweight on the other scale). If their endurance, faith, and good deeds weighed more than their transgressions they would be invited to join in a rapture of unexplainable intensity and fervor.

Egyptian immigrants that flooded into Rome, who were primarily from Alexandria where the cult originated, were unwelcome and quickly received the title of being “evil”: people who could not be trust. From this came the name “gypsies”.

History details the evil repute the The cult of Serapis and Isis had, and it exposed the chrestianos repeatedly to persecution: not merely to political considerations (Rome and Alexandria had been enemies for years), but also to moral and police suspicions and attacks. The lax morality associated with the worship of the Egyptian gods, especially the goddess Isis who married her brother Osiris, and from his dead body conceived a son (Horus), giving foundation to Roman revolution to the incestuous affair that was common everywhere. More exactly it was the fanaticism of the chrestianos worshippers that repelled the Romans, and excited the suspicion that their cultus might be directed against the State. As Cumont noted: “
  • Their secret associations, which were chiefly recruited from the poorer people, might easily, under the cover of religion, become clubs of agitators and the resort of spies. These grounds for suspicion and hatred [!] contributed more, no doubt, to the rise of the persecution than purely theological considerations. We see how it subsides and flames out again according to the changes in the condition of general politics”

    (Burckhardt – Brandenberg, August and Cumont, Franz Valery Marie (1969) Die orientalischen Religionen im römischen Heidentum; nach der vierten franzosischen Aufl. Unter Zugrundelegung der ubersetzung Gerichs. Darmstadt : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969; Cumont, Franz and Sehrich, Georg (1910) Die orientalischen Religionen im römischen Heidentum, Leipzig and Berlin, NP. by Gehrich (1910), p. 98.)
The Roman people called the followers of Serapis-Chrestus “good” because they were precisely the contrary, and thus they damned them with feigned praise.

The problem of the chrestianos is their long and bloody history which they both experienced and caused. In 48 BCE, the Roman Senate ordered that all chapels devoted to Isis and other images of Egyptian gods be broken. The hatred for Egyptians as demonstrated by Roman senators and carried out by Roman born citizens and its military took another sinister turn in 28 CE. In 28 CE, the Roman senate launched another attack upon the Egyptians, excluding all Alexandrian divinities from the limits of the Pomoerium (the sacred boundary of the city of Rome: beyond the walls of Rome, Romans considered the rest to be “just land”)—a proscription that Agrippa extended for an additional seven years and increased the sphere a thousand paces from the city. By 49 CE, the feeling against the Egyptians ran so high, on account of a scandal in which Egyptian priests were involved, that the most drastic proceedings were taken against the followers of Serapis and on any Jew who was from Alexandria (the majority of Jews in Rome came from Alexandria) or other cities in Egypt. Frustrated Romans riled against the rabble whom they labeled as “Chrestiani.” Tacitus stated in Annals, ii, 85, that at that time the proscription of the Egyptian and Jewish religious practices was discussed, and the Senate decided to send “four thousand men infected with their superstitions,” who were from “the class of freedmen,” to the island of Sardinia, to fight bandits in the hope that the unhealthy climate of the island would make an end of them. Josephus confirms this in his Antiquities xviii, 3, 5.

A few years later, under Claudius, “the Senate decreed the expulsion of all “mathematicians” from Italy, though the decree was not put in force” (Tacitus, Annales xii, 52). The mathematicians (actually, astrologers) were, once again, Egyptians and Egyptian Jews, the followers of Chrestus, as Flavius Vopiscus wrote in the letter dictated by the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-in-law Servianus: “Those who worship Serapis are the Chrestians, and those who call themselves priests of Chrestus are devoted to Serapis ..."

https://arthuride.wordpress.com/tag/serapis-god/
Interesting, this guy said in the passage immediately prior to that quoted above
The Pharisees believed that they belonged to this chosen group who would be spared from the wrathful judgment of God and that they would become foot soldiers for the final battle against evil: foreigners in the land of Israel. 'Jesus' was not the man who promised to drive out the foreign occupiers; on the contrary, he told the people of Israel to “love your enemy” –a message not a single Pharisee would understand as, for centuries, the message was “A great Messiah [warrior] will set you free.

Out of this group of Pharisees came the mythological Paul who would transmogrify Christianity so much so that there would be numerous conflicts, bloodshed and wars between chrestianos and christianos who made up the early community of Christians, most desiring martyrdom, or like the Essenes (in modern Hebrew only אִסִּיִים as it did not exist in ancient Hebrew) who were a small group of Israelites who, according to popular convention, lived from the second century BCE until the first century CE and were prepared for martyrdom (the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (died c. 79 A.D.) in his Natural History (N’H,V,XV) argues that the Essenes, as a group of various numbers do not marry, possess no money, and had existed for thousands of generations in Ein Gedi, next to the Dead Sea), while others were waiting for the day that the Emperor would recognize their sect—and some hoping that the Emperor himself would become a Christian, promising him eternal life in heaven and offering him the title of “Saint” (with him being pictured with a halo around his head, similar to the past Roman emperors who were hailed as gods). Constantine (272 – 337 CE) never converted to Christianity, but the followers of Saul/Paul would invent the tale that he converted on his death-bed to give them legitimacy.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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The Hellenes conquer and are conquered by Egypt

The conquest of Egypt by Alexander opened a new era for the cult. In trying to find a religious cult that would unite both Egyptian and Hellenic subjects, Ptolemy Soter crafted the Isis cult as it would be introduced into Greco-Roman society. Osiris was renamed Serapis and identified with a variety of Egyptian and Hellenic gods (Osiris, Apis, Dionysus, Hades). He became a god of healing and the underworld.

http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
Isis was identified with Hellenic deities such as Demeter or Aphrodite. Greek iconography was introduced to the cult which made it visually appealing to the Hellenes. In those days when the provincial city-states of the Hellenic world fell to Alexander's universal empire, the traditional gods of the city-state no longer sufficed. Gods like Isis and Serapis were not connected with any specific town and were truly universal in scope. More importantly, the exotic Egyptian mysticism could offer the Greeks of the Hellenistic age something their own gods could not - a way to cheat fate and death.

Isis and Osiris were honored by Greeks and by Egyptian emigrants as a kind of holy trinity, but always it was Isis who was the dominant member of the trio. Isis became the protector of family (especially women), the protector of newborns, the goddess of fertility and good fortune, and the goddess whose magic could cheat Fate and Death. She was also thought to be a protector of sailors, and sailors sailing from the great port of Alexandria took her cult all over the Mediterranean. Backed by the Ptolemaic regime, the new cult spread throughout the Hellenistic Kingdoms.

The Nile Flows into the Tiber
The Roman Senate was not amused with Ptolemy's attempt to craft a universal religion. When the cult of Isis swept into Rome via Hellenistic sailors and Egyptian emigrants, it became outstandingly popular with women and the lower classes, including slaves. Fearing a religious unification of the lower strata of Roman society, and fearing the loss of piety in the traditional Roman gods of the state, the Senate repeatedly placed restrictions on the new cult. Private chapels dedicated to Isis were ordered destroyed. When a Roman Consul found that the demolition team assigned to him were all members or sympathizers of the cult and refused to destroy their chapel, he had to remove his toga of state and do the deed himself.

Augustus found the cult "pornographic," though the cult was known to proscribe periods of sexual abstinence to its adherents. The real reason for Augustus' wrath was that the cult was linked to Egypt and thus the power base of his rival, Antony. Cleopatra had even gone so far to declare herself Isis reincarnated. Nonetheless, Augustus' scorn did little to stem popular opinion. Officials and servants of the imperial household were members of the cult. It seems even his own infamous daughter was a member; whether her belief was genuine or merely another aspect of her defiance against her father cannot be determined.

Tiberius, upon hearing of a sexual scandal involving the cult, had the offenders crucified and images of Isis cast into the Tiber. But much like Christianity, periodic and sporadic persecutions did nothing to stem the tide. What was death when one's deity promised salvation and resurrection?

As part of undoing the policies of Tiberius, Caligula legitimized the religion. Temples to Isis were permitted construction. Aspects of the Isiac festivals became public and part of the civil calendar (though there were still mysteries celebrated in private). It is also known that Caligula had an Egyptian chamberlain who exerted influence on the emperor and helped him progress in the mysteries of the goddess. Perhaps this even helped play a role in Caligula's infamous promotion of himself as an autocratic, Hellenistic-like ruler. Whatever the truth, Isis was now part of Roman paganism for good.

The emperor Vespasian became acquainted with the cult while serving in the Eastern legions, and seems to have adopted Isis and Serapis as his personal savior deities. Domitian owed his life to fleeing opponents in the garb of Isiac cultists, and continued the family's association with the cult.

Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were friendly to the cult, but most likely not initiates. Commodus, on the other hand, shaved his head bald like the priests of Serapis. He used to beat those around him with a mask of Anubis that was common in the processions of the cult.

Septimus Severus was fascinated with the cult, and his son Caracalla dedicated a giant temple to Serapis that rivaled the one built to Jupiter, Rome's original patron god. The meaning was clear - the gods of the East that had once been maligned by the ruling classes of the Republic were now on equal footing with the traditional gods of the State. Among the common people, they were more important.

Stoic and Neoplatonic intellectuals tried to reinterpret the cult in terms of their own highbrow philosophies, with the deities of the cult serving as metaphors for great cosmic principles. While this may have held some influence in the literate classes, its doubtful it had any impact on the vast majority of followers. To the average person Isis was not a metaphor or concept; she was as real to her followers as the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, is to billions of Christians around the world today. More to the point, she performed much the same function.

The Un-Roman Roman cult
The Cult of Isis was, thanks to Ptolemy, Hellenized to a degree that the Roman mind could understand it, and yet still foreign enough to be exotic and alien.

Unlike most religious structures in the Roman world, the Iseum did not open to the streets or forum where public spectators could view the proceedings inside. The Iseum was walled off from the surrounding world, suggesting a space of inner sanctity. Even within its walls, there was a "sanctuary" much like modern monasteries where only clergy and the initiated could enter. In there rituals involving fire, water and incense were conducted in front of a sacred statuary of the deities concerned. This secret religious life that was set apart from the community and the State is what helped arouse the suspicions of the conservatives back in the days of the Republic.

Not much is known about the details of the inner workings of the mysteries, as they were by definition secret. Prospective initiates were called to the goddess by dreams and visions. Intense preparations of purification and meditation (and abstinence) were followed by exotic rites designed to recreate the myth of Isis and the resurrection of Osiris. By enduring these rituals, the adherent was reconciled to the magic of Isis and effectively granted a favorable afterlife. He or she was in a sense spiritually reborn in a manner common to Greco-Oriental savior religions.

But there were more public festivals too that didn't require initiation. The first was conducted on March 5th. In honor of Isis sailing the seas to find pieces of her lost husband, a colorful procession of costumed people, including especially sailors, marched to port and ritually blessed a boat. The second festival was held October 28th to November 3rd. This was an ancient passion play Again, costumed enactors took to the streets, this time to reenact the death and resurrection of Serapis. Roman conservatives complained the festival was too loud and colorful.

People also had private shrines to Isis and Serapis in their homes.

The subject of the ethics of the cult is a complicated one. We know that Egyptian culture as a whole was free with sexuality compared to Roman culture. Isis was in fact rather popular with courtesans and other such professions, and there are speculations that Isiac cults may have promoted a kind of "positive sexuality" among a more conservative Roman population. Augustus and Tiberius took this as proof of a "pornographic" cult. Yet the Isiac cult also demanded regular periods of sexual abstinence from its adherents for purposes of ritual purification, and even apparently courtesans readily submitted to these observances. Curiously enough, the early Christians who were quick to complain about the degeneracy of pagan cults could not offer as much criticism about Isis as they could about some other cults in the Empire.

Universal Religion
Unlike Mithraism which was confined to a small percentage of "middle class" Roman males, the Isis cult was truly universal. Unlike Mithraism it could be practiced by both men and women, and it was women who perhaps took it up most enthusiastically. Unlike Mithraism it appealed to all classes; the lower classes and slaves were the mainstay of the cult, but as we have seen even those at the very top of the social strata were also adherents. Unlike Mithraism which was mostly confined to the Latin West, Isis was honored in both halves of the empire. Isis was long honored in the Greek East, and penetrated into the Latin West in even barely Romanized areas such as Britain or northwest Gaul. Isis was however a cult of city dwellers; we see little evidence of Isiac cults in rural areas outside of her native Egypt.

There was little danger of the small cult of Mithras, influential though it was, stemming the tide of Christianity and taking over the world. However, the cult of Isis had the numbers and the appeal to mount a serious threat to Christianity. Some scholars assert that the Holy Trinity of Isis, Serapis and Horus were not really defeated - they were merely absorbed into the new Holy Trinity of Christianity. The reverence for Mary among high Christian churches is similar to faith in Isis. We should consider at the very least that many chapels to the Virgin were built purposely on the remains of temples to Isis, and that furthermore the iconography of the Madonna and Christ is quite similar to Isis and Horus.

http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
Robert Tulip
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by Robert Tulip »

MrMacSon wrote:I am still intrigued by references to Serapis being called Christ (or a version of Christ) or followers of Serapis being called 'Christians' (or a version of Christian).
This connection between Christ and Serapis through the chrestianos opens some intriguing questions about why Serapis was not sufficient as a messianic figure.
MrMacSon wrote:
Who were the chrestianos? 'Chrestus' was a familiar personal name throughout the Roman Empire. It was not, however, Israelite in origin. Instead it was the name of the Egyptian Serapis (Ancient Greek: Σάραπιςa, Graeco-Egyptian god. He was invented during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm, and whose main temple was in Alexandria, Egypt {read: Pausanias, Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις or Description of Greece, 1.18.4, second century CE}. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection) or Osiris who would have a life and death similar to (but not identical with) the Jesus of the New Testament not yet written.
This is important background information regarding the emergence of messianic mythology in the broad Levant region, including Egypt and across to Babylon. The need for an invented messiah figure who would serve to underpin the social stability of Greek hegemony under the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, and the naming of that figure as Serapis and Chrestus, provides a social context in which the ‘anointed saviour’ (Christ Jesus) of Biblical fame evolved.

The deficiencies of Serapis included the problem of anti-Egypt prejudice dating back to the Exodus myth and also seen in the ‘fleshpot’ idea. More importantly, the generally recognised political invention of the Greek iconography of Serapis, and hence the impossibility of passing Serapis off as an incarnate messiah, meant that like Superman, Serapis was generally understood as a fantasy rather than as a real person. For the Serapis/ Chrest myth to evolve into a story of the real presence of God on earth, a believable historical romance was needed. This incarnational messianic myth began with Philo's Logos and then Paul and the authors of Hebrews and Revelation, and was fully fleshed out by Mark and John with their detailed placement of the myth into the context of Jewish prophecy.
Chrestus and his followers, the chrestianos, were numerous and strong, dedicated and determined.
A new religion has to rely on mass appeal for success. For the Christ myth, this meant the Egyptian Chrestus meme was both an important ally and a precedent to build upon. Christ built upon Serapis through the evolutionary principle of cumulative adaption, keeping what resonated and adding to it what resonated more with the popular zeitgeist to find a robust meme that would prove durable, stable and fecund.
They believed in an afterlife when their god would return riding a wild horse with a sword in hand. They would be numbered among “the elect [or chosen]” and in a rapture of light be appointed to senior positions in the next kingdom of the messiah.
Here we see the fantasy of messiah as military king, which Christianity was to reject in favour of the more Taoist idea of the weak king who is not even known but is aligned to natural power. Like the Jewish dream of a warrior king, this triumphal Serapis charger vision contrasts to the ‘humble and mounted on a donkey’ prophecy of the messiah as in solidarity with the least of the world.
The chrestianos had a large following at Borne, especially among the common people, as it was the common people who demanded a better life and no group other than the chrestianos offered them hope.
This suggests an evolution of the Serapis myth from an original Ptolemaic invention as providing imperial Hellenistic stability to a capture via the power of the old Osiris Horus element of the God-King as representing the interests of the poor. This idea appears in Luke’s Lazarus and Dives story with the Osiris parallel imagined as El-asar representing the poor.
This hope led the commoners, the poor, to envision a classless afterlife where all would be equal and quickly adopted the Egyptian promise of a life after death where their promise of enjoying the fruits of those save would be found when they would go to a special garden (paradise). In the chrestianos paradise they would find it filled with all earthly delights including unlimited amounts of honey, lamps filled with oil that would stay lit permanently, and ease without the need to work.
The enduring popular dream of pie in the sky when you die bye and bye has a natural allure for the suffering masses whose sense of hope and security rests in the comfort of the dream of a better world to come. It would be interesting to see the ancient sources for such visions of how Serapis as a heavenly saviour inspired stories about the afterlife.
Their sole task was to sing praises and hymns to the Egyptian god once their souls were individually weighed on Resurrection Day (the soul would be on one scale of the balance, and their good deeds the counterweight on the other scale). If their endurance, faith, and good deeds weighed more than their transgressions they would be invited to join in a rapture of unexplainable intensity and fervor.
This is just like the famous Egyptian Hall of Heaven scene with King Osiris on the throne with Anubis, Thoth, Horus, the four sons of Horus, Isis and Nephthys, where the heart of the dead is weighed against a feather to determine the fate of the soul.
Image
Egyptian immigrants that flooded into Rome, who were primarily from Alexandria where the cult originated, were unwelcome and quickly received the title of being “evil”: people who could not be trust. From this came the name “gypsies”.
This image of Egyptians as corrupt and criminal stands in contrast with the Biblical depiction of the Jews as mostly highly principled, although of course all such stereotypes also have contrasting stories as well.
History details the evil repute the cult of Serapis and Isis had, and it exposed the chrestianos repeatedly to persecution: not merely to political considerations (Rome and Alexandria had been enemies for years), but also to moral and police suspicions and attacks. The lax morality associated with the worship of the Egyptian gods, especially the goddess Isis who married her brother Osiris, and from his dead body conceived a son (Horus), giving foundation to Roman revolution to the incestuous affair that was common everywhere. More exactly it was the fanaticism of the chrestianos worshippers that repelled the Romans, and excited the suspicion that their cultus might be directed against the State. As Cumont noted: “
  • Their secret associations, which were chiefly recruited from the poorer people, might easily, under the cover of religion, become clubs of agitators and the resort of spies. These grounds for suspicion and hatred [!] contributed more, no doubt, to the rise of the persecution than purely theological considerations. We see how it subsides and flames out again according to the changes in the condition of general politics”

    (Burckhardt – Brandenberg, August and Cumont, Franz Valery Marie (1969) Die orientalischen Religionen im römischen Heidentum; nach der vierten franzosischen Aufl. Unter Zugrundelegung der ubersetzung Gerichs. Darmstadt : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969; Cumont, Franz and Sehrich, Georg (1910) Die orientalischen Religionen im römischen Heidentum, Leipzig and Berlin, NP. by Gehrich (1910), p. 98.)
In the transition period from Roman Republic to Empire the old gods of the Roman Twelve arguably retained a strong moral identity as providing the basis of Roman triumphant power. The Dei Consentes was the list of twelve major deities, six gods and six goddesses, in the pantheon of Ancient Rome, which remained the dominant official myth of state propaganda, for example seen in Vespasian and Domitian’s reconstructions of the Temple of Capitoline Jove in the late first century AD. The sense that Egyptian religion was corrupt and degenerate meant that Serapis struggled for moral purchase among the imperial elite, whereas the grounding of the Christ Myth in the Jewish Moses story provided a more severe and simple morality with genuine prospects to attain imperial power over time.
The Roman people called the followers of Serapis-Chrestus “good” because they were precisely the contrary, and thus they damned them with feigned praise.
I had always seen that phrase as ‘damned with faint praise’, but ‘feigned’ makes more sense. I suspect that the views on whether Serapis was good were far more various and contested than this account implies.
The problem of the chrestianos is their long and bloody history which they both experienced and caused. In 48 BCE, the Roman Senate ordered that all chapels devoted to Isis and other images of Egyptian gods be broken. The hatred for Egyptians as demonstrated by Roman senators and carried out by Roman born citizens and its military took another sinister turn in 28 CE. In 28 CE, the Roman senate launched another attack upon the Egyptians, excluding all Alexandrian divinities from the limits of the Pomoerium (the sacred boundary of the city of Rome: beyond the walls of Rome, Romans considered the rest to be “just land”)—a proscription that Agrippa extended for an additional seven years and increased the sphere a thousand paces from the city. By 49 CE, the feeling against the Egyptians ran so high, on account of a scandal in which Egyptian priests were involved, that the most drastic proceedings were taken against the followers of Serapis and on any Jew who was from Alexandria (the majority of Jews in Rome came from Alexandria) or other cities in Egypt.
This story illustrates the prominent Jewish presence in Alexandria and the strong connection between Israel and Egypt. An enduring puritanical condemnation of Egypt as corrupted by sensuality and magic can readily be imagined in this Roman hostility to the Isis cult. The contrast between Egyptian hedonistic pleasure and Roman military discipline as moral principles also covers over the Gnostic problem of the conflict between the mystical cosmology of Egyptian astrology and the hierarchical order of Roman social regimentation.
Frustrated Romans riled against the rabble whom they labeled as “Chrestiani.” Tacitus stated in Annals, ii, 85, that at that time the proscription of the Egyptian and Jewish religious practices was discussed, and the Senate decided to send “four thousand men infected with their superstitions,” who were from “the class of freedmen,” to the island of Sardinia, to fight bandits in the hope that the unhealthy climate of the island would make an end of them. Josephus confirms this in his Antiquities xviii, 3, 5. A few years later, under Claudius, “the Senate decreed the expulsion of all “mathematicians” from Italy, though the decree was not put in force” (Tacitus, Annales xii, 52). The mathematicians (actually, astrologers) were, once again, Egyptians and Egyptian Jews, the followers of Chrestus, as Flavius Vopiscus wrote in the letter dictated by the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-in-law Servius: “Those who worship Serapis are the Chrestians, and those who call themselves priests of Chrestus are devoted to Serapis ..."
This really is essential context for understanding the evolution of the Christ myth. The astrological content in the Serapis story informed the Jesus story, helping the construction like formwork helps the erection of a building. But it appears the scaffolding of the cosmology was removed once the Gospel building was finished, since it was seen as extraneous to the task of promoting mass appeal. But the traces of the cosmology are very much present in the New Testament, especially including an accurate astronomical vision of precession of the equinox as the basic scientific structure of the alpha=omega messianic symbolism. The disdain of the Romans for astrology flowed through into modern public views, with a strange disjunction between elite derision and popular acceptance of fatalistic superstitions.
Thanks again MrMacSon for finding and sharing this informative and insightful source.
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by MrMacSon »

Robert Tulip wrote: This connection between Christ and Serapis through the chrestianos opens some intriguing questions about why Serapis was not sufficient as a messianic figure.
I am intrigued with
  • 1. the terminology of 'Serapians' being called Chrestianos or Christianos in the BC/BCE era and early in the AD/CE era; and

    2. god-figures like Osiris & Isis allegedly being termed or called KRST ie. Christ or Chrestus, as outlined by
As you said -
  • The need for an invented messiah figure who would serve to underpin the social stability of Greek hegemony under the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, and the naming of that figure as Serapis and Chrestus, provides a social context in which the ‘anointed saviour’ (Christ Jesus) of Biblical fame evolved.

    .... For the Serapis/ Chrest myth to evolve into a story of the real presence of God on earth, a believable historical romance was needed. This incarnational messianic myth began with Philo's Logos and then Paul and the authors of Hebrews and Revelation, and was fully fleshed out by Mark and John with their detailed placement of the myth into the context of Jewish prophecy.
The passage from the next post (dated Wed Jan 28, 2015 9:04 pm) suggests Serapis was sufficient as a messianic figure for the masses -
  • the Isis cult was truly universal. Unlike Mithraism it could be practiced by both men and women, and it was women who perhaps took it up most enthusiastically. Unlike Mithraism it appealed to all classes; the lower classes and slaves were the mainstay of the cult, but as we have seen even those at the very top of the social strata were also adherents. Unlike Mithraism which was mostly confined to the Latin West, Isis was honored in both halves of the empire. Isis was long honored in the Greek East, and penetrated into the Latin West in even barely Romanized areas such as Britain or northwest Gaul. Isis was however a cult of city dwellers; we see little evidence of Isiac cults in rural areas outside of her native Egypt.

    There was little danger of the small cult of Mithras, influential though it was, stemming the tide of Christianity and taking over the world. However, the cult of Isis had the numbers and the appeal to mount a serious threat to Christianity.

    http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
and I think "why Serapis was 'not sufficient' as a messianic figure" for the hierarchy is explained further down the first passage, here -
  • The problem of the chrestianos is their long and bloody history which they both experienced and caused. In 48 BCE, the Roman Senate ordered that all chapels devoted to Isis and other images of Egyptian gods be broken. The hatred for Egyptians as demonstrated by Roman senators and carried out by Roman born citizens and its military took another sinister turn in 28 CE. In 28 CE, the Roman senate launched another attack upon the Egyptians, excluding all Alexandrian divinities from the limits of the Pomoerium (the sacred boundary of the city of Rome: beyond the walls of Rome, Romans considered the rest to be “just land”)—a proscription that Agrippa extended for an additional seven years and increased the sphere a thousand paces from the city. By 49 CE, the feeling against the Egyptians ran so high, on account of a scandal in which Egyptian priests were involved, that the most drastic proceedings were taken against the followers of Serapis and on any Jew who was from Alexandria (the majority of Jews in Rome came from Alexandria) or other cities in Egypt.

    https://arthuride.wordpress.com/tag/serapis-god/
and also in the passage from the next passage (dated Wed Jan 28, 2015 9:04 pm) -
  • The Nile Flows into the Tiber
    The Roman Senate was not amused with Ptolemy's attempt to craft a universal religion. When the cult of Isis swept into Rome via Hellenistic sailors and Egyptian emigrants, it became outstandingly popular with women and the lower classes, including slaves. Fearing a religious unification of the lower strata of Roman society, and fearing the loss of piety in the traditional Roman gods of the state, the Senate repeatedly placed restrictions on the new cult. Private chapels dedicated to Isis were ordered destroyed. When a Roman Consul found that the demolition team assigned to him were all members or sympathizers of the cult and refused to destroy their chapel, he had to remove his toga of state and do the deed himself.

    Augustus found the cult "pornographic," though the cult was known to proscribe periods of sexual abstinence to its adherents. The real reason for Augustus' wrath was that the cult was linked to Egypt and thus the power base of his rival, Antony. ...

    Tiberius, upon hearing of a sexual scandal involving the cult, had the offenders crucified and images of Isis cast into the Tiber. But, much like Christianity, periodic and sporadic persecutions did nothing to stem the tide. What was death when one's deity promised salvation and resurrection?

    http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
Perhaps it was Constantine's Council of Nicea that put the final nail in the coffin of the cult of Serapis??

I have posted in this thread above references to Serapia being built in the 2nd and 3rd centuries -
ie. there is more archaeological evidence for the expansion of the cult of Serapis in the 2nd & 3rd centuries than there is for the genesis of Christianity!!
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by MrMacSon »

.
re "Perhaps it was Constantine's Council of Nicea that put the final nail in the coffin of the cult of Serapis??"
Constantine and Arius

Constantine the Greek (a.k.a Constantine the Great), Roman Emperor from 306 to 337, is known for being the first Roman emperor to be converted to Christianity [while], strangely enough, Arius of Libya (256-356 AD) ..had a problem with the Roman empire teaching the Africans and the people of Rome to worship a statue and celebrating death. He was considered a heretic, a professed believer (of God), who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church (what the religious authorities usually controlled by government deem as the truth). Because he started attracting so many followers due to his teachings that were contrary to the Romans, Constantine called [a] council by summoning all the bishops to discredit Arius, The Council of Nicaea. During the time when this meeting was called upon, there was no mention of Jesus Christ at all; no man had ever existed by the name JESUS Christ, and an important fact is that this all took place Anno Domino (AD) (which Christians claim means after the death of Christ) but in Latin means ‘in the year of The Lord’. The name Jesus Christ didn’t exist before the meeting was called (read the statements made during that timeframe). It was only after this that they presented to the people the name JESUS CHRIST.

What 'Lord' are they referring to? Kings have always been referred to as Lords or gods.

If Jesus Christ didn’t exist during the time this meeting took place, nor ever heard of, whom are people worshipping today? Serapis Christus? *


Nicean Creed – Jesus Christ is born

Nicean creed which became the statement of the Christian faith was written decreed and sanctified by 318 Roman Catholic bishops at the council in 325 AD (some believe this transformation took place “Council of Chalcedon” 451AD).
  • “We believe in one God the Father all-powerful of all things both seen and unseen one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God the only begotten from the father, that is from the substance of the father, god from god, light from light, true god from true god, begotten not made, consubstantial with the father, through whom all things came to be both those in heaven and those in earth for us humans and for out salvation he came down and became incarnate became human suffered and rose up on the third day went up into the heavens is coming to judge the living and the dead and in the holy spirit” (The origin of the Trinity)
The authorities shut Arius down and threatened him with death to keep his mouth shut. They positioned the [Nicean] creed during the time when people started becoming aware of the lies and deception, and ordered all books to be burned; destroying all ancient writings, “no evidence; no argument”, and the outcome was the transformation from Serapis Christus, which means Christ the Savior, to Jesus Christ by edict of Emperor Constantine in 325 AD.

http://www.unbiasedtalk.com/the-intelle ... ne-romans/
* Given the role of baptism, crucifixion, resurrection-propositions, etc. in the cult of Serapis;
            • ... it seems a reasonable proposition that Jesus Christ is a re-worked Serapis Christ.
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Serapis became very popular in the Greco-Roman world. During Roman times he was often portrayed as the consort of Isis (whose cult was extremely fashionable and beloved throughout the Roman sphere). Great temples—Serapeums—were built throughout Egypt and beyond to venerate the cosmopolitan international deity. Yet Serapis did not transition out of classical antiquity very well. Christians had their own deity of death and resurrection (who had uncomfortable parallels with the older god), and one of the defining moments of transition between the classical and Christian eras was the destruction of the Alexandrian Serapeum in 389 AD.

https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/20 ... 3/serapis/
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by Leucius Charinus »

MrMacSon wrote:
The Hellenes conquer and are conquered by Egypt

The conquest of Egypt by Alexander opened a new era for the cult. In trying to find a religious cult that would unite both Egyptian and Hellenic subjects, Ptolemy Soter crafted the Isis cult as it would be introduced into Greco-Roman society. Osiris was renamed Serapis and identified with a variety of Egyptian and Hellenic gods (Osiris, Apis, Dionysus, Hades). He became a god of healing and the underworld.

http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php
Very interesting and well researched article Mac thanks.

I have cut some bits out ...

Isis was identified with Hellenic deities such as Demeter or Aphrodite.

///

Isis and Osiris were honored by Greeks and by Egyptian emigrants as a kind of holy trinity, but always it was Isis who was the dominant member of the trio. Isis became the protector of family (especially women), the protector of newborns, the goddess of fertility and good fortune, and the goddess whose magic could cheat Fate and Death.

///

To the average person Isis was not a metaphor or concept; she was as real to her followers as the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, is to billions of Christians around the world today. More to the point, she performed much the same function.


///

People also had private shrines to Isis and Serapis in their homes.

///

Isis was however a cult of city dwellers; we see little evidence of Isiac cults in rural areas outside of her native Egypt.

///

Some scholars assert that the Holy Trinity of Isis, Serapis and Horus were not really defeated - they were merely absorbed into the new Holy Trinity of Christianity. The reverence for Mary among high Christian churches is similar to faith in Isis. We should consider at the very least that many chapels to the Virgin were built purposely on the remains of temples to Isis, and that furthermore the iconography of the Madonna and Christ is quite similar to Isis and Horus.

http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php

How (relatively) numerous were the temples of Isis or Demeter or Aphrodite, do you know?

Or how big was the cult in a relative sense? Maybe there is no data.

Are there any statistics on how the (temples) architecture of these cults was distributed around the cities of the Roman Empire in antiquity?



LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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