Hosea 6:1-2, 1 Corinthians 12, and their connection to Osiris and Dionysus

[nightshadetwine]

Hosea 6:1:

Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His presence.

I've mentioned before that this verse reminds me of the death/dismemberment and resurrection/binding of Osiris. The scholar John Day thinks this verse is influenced by the dying and rising god Baal instead of Osiris:

John Day, "Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan":

I hope to demonstrate that the first clear reference to the literal resurrection of the dead in the Old Testament in Dan. 12.2 is a reinterpretation of the verse in Isa. 26.19 about resurrection, which, I shall argue, refers to restoration after exile, rather than literal life after death. Isaiah 26.19 in turn, I shall argue, is dependent on the death and resurrection imagery in the book of Hosea, especially on a reinterpretation of Hos. 13.14. Finally, the imagery of death and resurrection in Hosea (both in chs. 5-6 and 13-14), which likewise refers to Israel's exile and restoration, is directly taken over by the prophet from the imagery of the dying and rising fertility god, Baal...However, in arguing that Hosea takes over the image of Baal's death and resurrection and applies it to Israel, I would not appeal, as some have done, to the reference in Hos. 6.2 to Israel's resurrection on the third day. Some scholars claim that this was derived from a fertility god. Thus, we have evidence of the celebration of the resurrection of the Egyptian god Osiris on the 19th Athyr, two days after his death on 17th Athyr (cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 13.356 C; 19.366 F), and the resurrection of the Phrygian god, Attis, took place on 25th March, three days after his death (22nd March), according to Firmicus Maternus, writing of fourth-century Rome. But these are both very late, and influence from Osiris or Attis on Hosea is most unlikely.

I think I disagree with John Day here. I'm seeing more of a connection to Osiris. As far as I know, Baal wasn't torn to pieces, bound back up, and resurrected like Osiris. Also, the dismemberment and resurrection of Osiris was used as a metaphor for Egypt. So in Hosea the Israelites are torn to pieces, bound up, and raised up to god. In the myth of Osiris, Osiris was seen as Egypt being torn to pieces, bound up and raised to god(Amun).

"Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt" by Jan Assmann:

The four kinds of linen were used in the god’s embalming and burial . 38 In the Ptolemaic Period, the word mrt, “chest” was often understood as ti-mrj, “Egypt.” The “consecration” of the chests was now explained as “leading” (in Egyptian, hrp, which also meant
“to consecrate”) the inhabitants of Egypt. In the accompanying spell, for instance, we read:

Take Egypt, it being united.

You have bound the Two Lands into a whole.

The motif of “binding” explains the “cords” wrapped around the chests.
The word “Egypt” ( ti-mrj ) is a pun on the word “chest” ( mr.t ).

I bring you Egypt,

it being led to Your Majesty.

The land magnifies the fear of you .

Instead of “pulling the mw:/-chcsts for Amun,” the ritual can be called “bringing Egypt to its father Amun .” The four chests can sometimes sym-
bolize the enemies of Egypt...In the context of the Osiris cult, this ritual could also be extended to the limbs of Osiris. The pulling of the four chests symbolized the collecting and uniting of the limbs of Osiris’ body.The Egyptians thus projected the disarticulated body of Osiris onto the
multiplicity of the nomes so as to celebrate, in the ritual of uniting the limbs, the unity, the completeness, and the intactness of the land of Egypt. It seems to me to be an error to think that this is merely a variant on the widespread vegetation myth of the dying and rising seed grain. This motif
was, of course, a part of the original content of the Osiris myth...
On the second level, the limb is explained as the nome and its capital, with the result that the body of Osiris, restored and brought back to life, represents the entirety of the land of Egypt.

So here we have Egypt being torn to pieces, bound up, and then raised or "brought" to god/Amun, just like the Israelites in Hosea.

You also find this concept of a group of people making up the body of the god in Christianity and the cult of Dionysus. Dionysus was another god who was torn to pieces, bound up and resurrected.

From 1 Corinthians 12:

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink [g]into one Spirit. 14 For in fact the body is not one member but many...Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually

Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains By R. Joseph Hoffmann:

...Paul's use of body imagery in his first letter to the Corinthians and the theme of spiritual communion through the incorporation into "the body of Christ"(1 Cor. 12.27f.) is familiar from the language of the Dionysiac mysteries:"Blessed is he who hallows his life in the worship of God, he whom the spirit of God possesseth, who is one with those who belong to the holy body of God"(Euripides, Bacchae 73-75). Pagan critics of the early movement pointed to the fact that Christians addressed Jesus in terms equivalent to those used by the bacchantes(Dionysus' worshipers). Jesus was kyrios(lord) and lysios, redeemer. In the Dionysiac cult, the god redeemed adherents from a world of darkness and death by revealing himself in ecstatic visions and providing glimpses of a world-to-come.

The bodies of all three of these savior gods are associated with salvation and life. Their bodies and blood are used in sacramental rituals like the Christian eucharist.

Osiris:
"Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt" by Jan Assmann:

According to the myth, the annual inundation poured from a wound inflicted on Osiris’ leg by his murderer, Seth. This left leg was for its part
connected with Elephantine. A myth that took tangible form only in the later periods of history identified the forty-two nomes of Egypt with forty- two body parts of Osiris. Like the Pauline concept of the church as the body of Christ, according to this myth, the forty-two nomes of Egypt sym-
bolized the body of Osiris. 21 ’ When the reuniting and revivification of Osiris were celebrated during the annual Osiris mysteries, Egyptians were
reassured of the unity of the land...This was the place where the life juices flowed out of Osiris and flooded Egypt, giving rise to all the means of life. When it was offered to him in the cult, the water of the inundation, which had flowed out of the body of the slain god, made it possible to restore life to him, as well as to all the dead, who were equated with him...The inundation water that flowed from the wound of the god produced
new life; it was a veritable elixir of life that brought forth and nourished all living things in the land. Thus, in many representations of water
flowing out of a libation vessel, the water is depicted as a chain consisting of hieroglyphs for “life”...

It's interesting that in gJohn blood AND water flow from Jesus' wound.

continued:

In the Osiris chapels at Dendara, this procession is depicted in the middle room of the western chapel . 31 Here, we see personifications of the forty-two nomes of the land, led by great and super- ordinate deities, each bringing a vase with a decorated lid (canopus). Each vase contains a limb from the body of the slain Osiris, out of which the body will be ritually put back together. Among the directions for carrying out the festival of Khoiak, there are exact instructions for preparing the limbs of Osiris’ body. They were made of a special dough that was baked in wooden molds. We may thus presume that along with Nile water, each of the vases contained one of these limbs. The accompanying texts repeatedly make mention of the “discharges” of Osiris . 32 In the late stages of Egyptian history, the Nile and its inundation were ever more closely connected with Osiris. In each case, the offering is subjected to a double sacramental explanation. One explanation refers the offering to the specific limb of Osiris’ body that is brought in it as a contribution by the respective nome to the restoration of the god’s body. On the second level, the limb is explained as the nome and its capital, with the result that the body of Osiris, restored and brought back to life, represents the entirety of the land of Egypt.

"Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God" By Bojana Mojsov:

All justified souls were admitted to the community of gods and spirits, modeled after the pattern of earthly society. The giving of the bread and beer that issue from Osiris was not unlike the Christian bread and wine offered at the mass of the Eucharist. Osiris, the Good Being, gave sustenance to the righteous and pointed the way to immortality with the shepherd's crook.

Dionysus:
"Dionysos" By Richard Seaford:

The restoration of Dionysos to life was (like the return of Kore from Hades at Eleusis) presumably connected with the immortality obtained by the initiates...Not inconsistent with this is the possibility that the dismemberment myth was related to the drinking of wine that we have seen to be common in the mystic ritual...wine is earlier identified with Dionysos himself (e.g. Bacchae 284), more specifically with his blood (Timotheos fragment 780).

"Dining with John" by Esther Kobel:

By consuming the animal's raw flesh along with wine, both of which represent the deity, followers shared in the vital forces of their god. They substantially ingested the god...Reading John 6:56-58, which contains strikingly peculiar and graphic vocabulary, in light of these traditions proves to be allusive of these motifs. Whoever chews Jesus's flesh and drinks his blood and therein demonstrates belief in Jesus, is said to attain eternal life...The allusions of theophagy as known from Dionysian tradition may well function as a means of reasserting to believers that Jesus is present among them, even within them, and provides life for them even after his own death.

[Charles Wilson]

Another alternative:

Joe Atwill, Caesar's Messiah, p. 122:

"John 11:1-48

"Notice that in the passage Jesus deliberately waits two days before he starts out to visit Lazarus, thereby allowing a total of four days to pass before he comes to the tomb, a point that Martha specifically mentions. This is different, of course, from the timing of Jesus' resurrection, which occurs three days after his death. The difference between Jesus' and Lazarus' resurrections is significant. During this era, Jews believed that the spirit was irrevocably gone on the fourth day following a person's death. 107 This is why Jesus' resurrection occurs on the third day after his death and makes the meaning of the parallel "good portion" passages clear. Lazarus' resurrection is a joke. Jesus merely raises Lazarus' body from his tomb. Someone who has been dead for four days cannot be restored to life. This also explains why Lazarus never speaks after he is "raised" from his tomb. The dead cannot speak..."

Footnote 107: "107. Hosea vi, ii, P.W. Schmiede, Encyclopedia Biblica, Black, 1901"

[nightshadetwine]

"Notice that in the passage Jesus deliberately waits two days before he starts out to visit Lazarus, thereby allowing a total of four days to pass before he comes to the tomb, a point that Martha specifically mentions. This is different, of course, from the timing of Jesus' resurrection, which occurs three days after his death. The difference between Jesus' and Lazarus' resurrections is significant. During this era, Jews believed that the spirit was irrevocably gone on the fourth day following a person's death. 107 This is why Jesus' resurrection occurs on the third day after his death and makes the meaning of the parallel "good portion" passages clear. Lazarus' resurrection is a joke. Jesus merely raises Lazarus' body from his tomb. Someone who has been dead for four days cannot be restored to life. This also explains why Lazarus never speaks after he is "raised" from his tomb. The dead cannot speak..."

I was just reading about this. Here's some information I found about this concept.

"Empty Tomb, Apotheosis, Resurrection" By John Granger Cook:

Rikk E. Watts argues that the author "cites Hosea 6:2 to describe the purgatorial punishments undergone in the first three days of death to fit one to God's presence". In Apoc. Zech. 4:7 there are angels with "fiery scourges" who "spend three days going around with them[the souls of the ungodly] in the air before they bring them and cast them into their eternal punishment". Several Rabbinic texts assume that the soul hovers around the body for three days after it's death. In Genesis Rabbah, "Bar Qappara taught concerning the height of mourning not being until the third day: until three days [after death] the soul keeps on returning to the grave, thinking it will go back [into the body]; but when it sees that the facial features have become disfigured, it departs and abandons it."

"Metamorphoses of Myth. A Study of the Orphic Gold Tablets and the Derveni Papyrus" by Stian Sundell Torjussen:

In Athens, the final transition from life to death was not even fulfilled by the act of burial, but demanded an additional funeral feast celebrated three days after the burial. This was a banquet shared by the relatives where the deceased was believed to be present. It seems, then, that the soul of the dead was believed to still be in a state of transition for several days after the moment of death. During that period the soul was thought to be neither alive nor fully dead, or at least not to have fully entered the realm of the dead.

It's also interesting that in "Alcestis" by Euripides Heracles resurrects a dead woman who can't speak for three days after she's brought back to life.

Admetos:
O generous son of great Zeus! May you be
blessed [have a good daimôn] and may the father who sired you
protect [sôzô] you! You alone restored her to me.
How did you bring her back to the light from the realms below?
Herakles:
I fought with the one who lords it over the shades. 1140
Admetos:
Where did you join this contest [agôn] with Death?
Herakles:
I lay in wait, and seized him at the tomb.
Admetos:
But why does my wife thus stand speechless?
Herakles:
It is not yet permitted [themis] that you hear
Her voice addressing thee, until she is purified with 1145
offerings to the gods below and the third day has come.
But lead her in: and as you are just [dikaios] in all
Besides, Admetos, see that you reverence strangers [xenoi].
Farewell: I go to achieve the assigned labor [ponos]
For the tyrant [turannos] son of Sthenelus. 1150"

Also, in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts the dead king Pepi(identified with Osiris) doesn't ascend to the sky until the third day after he's been resurrected by Horus.

Egyptian Pyramid Texts by James P Allen Recitation 529:

Raise yourself, father Osiris Pepi, as Anubis of the shrine raises himself.
Your feet are those of the Jackal: so, you will stand up. Your arms
are those of the Jackal: so, you will stand up at the great post, mistress
of the blessed, she in the midst of Hermopolis, whom Geb and
Nut have blessed. You should call for the one who rows over him,162
that he might get for you the sole Dual Crown and you may cross
in it the canals and the hillocks.
Father Osiris Pepi’s cross-over canal has been opened, the Winding
Canal has flooded. So, father Osiris Pepi will call for the helmsman
and for the one who listens (to commands), and they will ferry
father Osiris Pepi to yonder eastern side of the sky. So, father Osiris
Pepi will go to yonder side of the sky, to [yonder] place [where the
gods are born], and father Osiris [Pepi] will be truly born [in
yonder eastern side of the sky], in yonder place where the gods are
born.
When this time comes tomorrow, and the time of the third day (from
now), and father Osiris Pepi is the sole star in yonder eastern side of
the sky, he will govern as a god and hear cases like Horus of the
Akhet.

[Stefan Kristensen]

Hosea 6:1:

Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us to pieces, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His presence.

I've mentioned before that this verse reminds me of the death/dismemberment and resurrection/binding of Osiris. The scholar John Day thinks this verse is influenced by the dying and rising god Baal instead of Osiris:

John Day, "Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan":

I hope to demonstrate that the first clear reference to the literal resurrection of the dead in the Old Testament in Dan. 12.2 is a reinterpretation of the verse in Isa. 26.19 about resurrection, which, I shall argue, refers to restoration after exile, rather than literal life after death. Isaiah 26.19 in turn, I shall argue, is dependent on the death and resurrection imagery in the book of Hosea, especially on a reinterpretation of Hos. 13.14. Finally, the imagery of death and resurrection in Hosea (both in chs. 5-6 and 13-14), which likewise refers to Israel's exile and restoration, is directly taken over by the prophet from the imagery of the dying and rising fertility god, Baal...However, in arguing that Hosea takes over the image of Baal's death and resurrection and applies it to Israel, I would not appeal, as some have done, to the reference in Hos. 6.2 to Israel's resurrection on the third day. Some scholars claim that this was derived from a fertility god. Thus, we have evidence of the celebration of the resurrection of the Egyptian god Osiris on the 19th Athyr, two days after his death on 17th Athyr (cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 13.356 C; 19.366 F), and the resurrection of the Phrygian god, Attis, took place on 25th March, three days after his death (22nd March), according to Firmicus Maternus, writing of fourth-century Rome. But these are both very late, and influence from Osiris or Attis on Hosea is most unlikely.

I think I disagree with John Day here. I'm seeing more of a connection to Osiris. As far as I know, Baal wasn't torn to pieces, bound back up, and resurrected like Osiris. Also, the dismemberment and resurrection of Osiris was used as a metaphor for Egypt. So in Hosea the Israelites are torn to pieces, bound up, and raised up to god. In the myth of Osiris, Osiris was seen as Egypt being torn to pieces, bound up and raised to god(Amun).

"Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt" by Jan Assmann:

The four kinds of linen were used in the god’s embalming and burial . 38 In the Ptolemaic Period, the word mrt, “chest” was often understood as ti-mrj, “Egypt.” The “consecration” of the chests was now explained as “leading” (in Egyptian, hrp, which also meant
“to consecrate”) the inhabitants of Egypt. In the accompanying spell, for instance, we read:

Take Egypt, it being united.

You have bound the Two Lands into a whole.

The motif of “binding” explains the “cords” wrapped around the chests.
The word “Egypt” ( ti-mrj ) is a pun on the word “chest” ( mr.t ).

I bring you Egypt,

it being led to Your Majesty.

The land magnifies the fear of you .

Instead of “pulling the mw:/-chcsts for Amun,” the ritual can be called “bringing Egypt to its father Amun .” The four chests can sometimes sym-
bolize the enemies of Egypt...In the context of the Osiris cult, this ritual could also be extended to the limbs of Osiris. The pulling of the four chests symbolized the collecting and uniting of the limbs of Osiris’ body.The Egyptians thus projected the disarticulated body of Osiris onto the
multiplicity of the nomes so as to celebrate, in the ritual of uniting the limbs, the unity, the completeness, and the intactness of the land of Egypt. It seems to me to be an error to think that this is merely a variant on the widespread vegetation myth of the dying and rising seed grain. This motif
was, of course, a part of the original content of the Osiris myth...
On the second level, the limb is explained as the nome and its capital, with the result that the body of Osiris, restored and brought back to life, represents the entirety of the land of Egypt.

So here we have Egypt being torn to pieces, bound up, and then raised or "brought" to god/Amun, just like the Israelites in Hosea.

You also find this concept of a group of people making up the body of the god in Christianity and the cult of Dionysus. Dionysus was another god who was torn to pieces, bound up and resurrected.

From 1 Corinthians 12:

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink [g]into one Spirit. 14 For in fact the body is not one member but many...Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually

Porphyry's Against the Christians: The Literary Remains By R. Joseph Hoffmann:

...Paul's use of body imagery in his first letter to the Corinthians and the theme of spiritual communion through the incorporation into "the body of Christ"(1 Cor. 12.27f.) is familiar from the language of the Dionysiac mysteries:"Blessed is he who hallows his life in the worship of God, he whom the spirit of God possesseth, who is one with those who belong to the holy body of God"(Euripides, Bacchae 73-75). Pagan critics of the early movement pointed to the fact that Christians addressed Jesus in terms equivalent to those used by the bacchantes(Dionysus' worshipers). Jesus was kyrios(lord) and lysios, redeemer. In the Dionysiac cult, the god redeemed adherents from a world of darkness and death by revealing himself in ecstatic visions and providing glimpses of a world-to-come.

The bodies of all three of these savior gods are associated with salvation and life. Their bodies and blood are used in sacramental rituals like the Christian eucharist.

Osiris:
"Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt" by Jan Assmann:

According to the myth, the annual inundation poured from a wound inflicted on Osiris’ leg by his murderer, Seth. This left leg was for its part
connected with Elephantine. A myth that took tangible form only in the later periods of history identified the forty-two nomes of Egypt with forty- two body parts of Osiris. Like the Pauline concept of the church as the body of Christ, according to this myth, the forty-two nomes of Egypt sym-
bolized the body of Osiris. 21 ’ When the reuniting and revivification of Osiris were celebrated during the annual Osiris mysteries, Egyptians were
reassured of the unity of the land...This was the place where the life juices flowed out of Osiris and flooded Egypt, giving rise to all the means of life. When it was offered to him in the cult, the water of the inundation, which had flowed out of the body of the slain god, made it possible to restore life to him, as well as to all the dead, who were equated with him...The inundation water that flowed from the wound of the god produced
new life; it was a veritable elixir of life that brought forth and nourished all living things in the land. Thus, in many representations of water
flowing out of a libation vessel, the water is depicted as a chain consisting of hieroglyphs for “life”...

It's interesting that in gJohn blood AND water flow from Jesus' wound.

continued:

In the Osiris chapels at Dendara, this procession is depicted in the middle room of the western chapel . 31 Here, we see personifications of the forty-two nomes of the land, led by great and super- ordinate deities, each bringing a vase with a decorated lid (canopus). Each vase contains a limb from the body of the slain Osiris, out of which the body will be ritually put back together. Among the directions for carrying out the festival of Khoiak, there are exact instructions for preparing the limbs of Osiris’ body. They were made of a special dough that was baked in wooden molds. We may thus presume that along with Nile water, each of the vases contained one of these limbs. The accompanying texts repeatedly make mention of the “discharges” of Osiris . 32 In the late stages of Egyptian history, the Nile and its inundation were ever more closely connected with Osiris. In each case, the offering is subjected to a double sacramental explanation. One explanation refers the offering to the specific limb of Osiris’ body that is brought in it as a contribution by the respective nome to the restoration of the god’s body. On the second level, the limb is explained as the nome and its capital, with the result that the body of Osiris, restored and brought back to life, represents the entirety of the land of Egypt.

"Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God" By Bojana Mojsov:

All justified souls were admitted to the community of gods and spirits, modeled after the pattern of earthly society. The giving of the bread and beer that issue from Osiris was not unlike the Christian bread and wine offered at the mass of the Eucharist. Osiris, the Good Being, gave sustenance to the righteous and pointed the way to immortality with the shepherd's crook.

Dionysus:
"Dionysos" By Richard Seaford:

The restoration of Dionysos to life was (like the return of Kore from Hades at Eleusis) presumably connected with the immortality obtained by the initiates...Not inconsistent with this is the possibility that the dismemberment myth was related to the drinking of wine that we have seen to be common in the mystic ritual...wine is earlier identified with Dionysos himself (e.g. Bacchae 284), more specifically with his blood (Timotheos fragment 780).

"Dining with John" by Esther Kobel:

By consuming the animal's raw flesh along with wine, both of which represent the deity, followers shared in the vital forces of their god. They substantially ingested the god...Reading John 6:56-58, which contains strikingly peculiar and graphic vocabulary, in light of these traditions proves to be allusive of these motifs. Whoever chews Jesus's flesh and drinks his blood and therein demonstrates belief in Jesus, is said to attain eternal life...The allusions of theophagy as known from Dionysian tradition may well function as a means of reasserting to believers that Jesus is present among them, even within them, and provides life for them even after his own death.

Hos 6 is extremely interesting with the first person plural: "On the third day we will rise and live before him". Because this could support the notion that the resurrection of Jesus was a collective event, the birth of the Church, the new people of God, or the 'new Israel'. And the passages that speak of Israel's restoration from her exile outside of the promised land are interpreted in the NT as being about God's new people. So when these passages in the OT use the imagery of resurrection it would have been natural to regard Jesus' resurrection as part of this collective restoration of God's people.

Consider for example the Road to Emmaus, Luke 24:21, where the two fellows are speaking to the resurrected Jesus without knowing it:

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

In a way this is now the redemption of 'Israel', on the third day, only they have to read Scripture properly so as to see that the promises by God to Israel is understood as God's promises to the universal 'Israel', i.e. anyone who serves God under the (new) covenant.


The connections with Egyptian myths are all too often forgotten, I think. It's interesting that the Egyptians seem to have had the notion of their nation's unification as a resurrection in the same way as in the OT. There was definately a pool of ideas shared not only in the Semitic Levant but also in Egypt. Ps 104 as inspired by Akhenaton's hymn to the sun seems to be a strong case in point. But what to make of this?

It seems that the Christians of the NT only accepted as truth what had been revealed by divine revelation by God, i.e. Jahve, the one creator of the universe who had historically revealed himself to the nation of Israel as witnessed in Scripture. So I believe that all the ideas which came to form the parts of Christian theology for these early Christians, from Egyptian myths, Greek philosophy, Greco-Roman mystery cults, ANE myths, Persian myths, etc., would not be regarded as such by them, but instead as the truth of God revealed by him through the holy spirit, either directly to the Christians in God's eschatological outpouring of his secret knowledge (the 'wisdom' of the creator), or in Scripture.

With regards to Paul's use of the body-imagery, if you havn't read Dale Martin's "The Corinthian Body" let me recommend it strongly. The concept of 'body' in the Corinthian correspondances is very complex and multifarious, and Paul also draws on a more general idea of the time where society as such was regarded and described as a 'body' with different members that must all be in harmony.

[nightshadetwine]

Hos 6 is extremely interesting with the first person plural: "On the third day we will rise and live before him". Because this could support the notion that the resurrection of Jesus was a collective event, the birth of the Church, the new people of God, or the 'new Israel'. And the passages that speak of Israel's restoration from her exile outside of the promised land are interpreted in the NT as being about God's new people. So when these passages in the OT use the imagery of resurrection it would have been natural to regard Jesus' resurrection as part of this collective restoration of God's people.

Consider for example the Road to Emmaus, Luke 24:21, where the two fellows are speaking to the resurrected Jesus without knowing it:

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

In a way this is now the redemption of 'Israel', on the third day, only they have to read Scripture properly so as to see that the promises by God to Israel is understood as God's promises to the universal 'Israel', i.e. anyone who serves God under the (new) covenant.

Yeah, ideas were taken from the Hebrew scriptures to "create" their new cult. So verses like the ones in Hosea and the concept of the messiah and suffering servant were all added to the life of Jesus after he died to make him a savior king/messiah. These concepts were mixed with the Greco-Roman dying and resurrecting savior motifs, which were influenced by royal mythology which also influenced the concept of the messiah in the Hebrew scriptures.

It seems that the Christians of the NT only accepted as truth what had been revealed by divine revelation by God, i.e. Jahve, the one creator of the universe who had historically revealed himself to the nation of Israel as witnessed in Scripture. So I believe that all the ideas which came to form the parts of Christian theology for these early Christians, from Egyptian myths, Greek philosophy, Greco-Roman mystery cults, ANE myths, Persian myths, etc., would not be regarded as such by them, but instead as the truth of God revealed by him through the holy spirit, either directly to the Christians in God's eschatological outpouring of his secret knowledge (the 'wisdom' of the creator), or in Scripture.

They believed they were receiving "divine revelation" but "divine revelation" back then could just be something like an idea they had or even a dream they had. People who joined mystery cults would have "visions" that they believed were from the god of the mystery cult. So what I think happened is they would read the Hebrew scriptures and concepts from the Hebrew scriptures were combined with motifs from Greco-Roman-Egyptian dying and resurrecting saviors/heroes and they would consider this "divine revelation". It was really easy to see a connection between or combine the Hebrew messiah/king with the Greco-Roman-Egyptian savior/hero because they were both very similar seeing as they were both based on royal mythology and coronation hymns. So the "divine revelation" was just to create a Jewish mystery cult around Jesus.

With regards to Paul's use of the body-imagery, if you havn't read Dale Martin's "The Corinthian Body" let me recommend it strongly. The concept of 'body' in the Corinthian correspondances is very complex and multifarious, and Paul also draws on a more general idea of the time where society as such was regarded and described as a 'body' with different members that must all be in harmony.

I'll check it out.