This was off-topic about Mithras but raises interesting issues.And then the one single thing of mine he does address, he gets wrong in almost every way.
First, I never argued in NIF that “Jesus cannot have been crucified” because Inanna was; in fact I there explicitly say I am not saying the crucifixion of Jesus was inspired by that. Yet Casey imputes to me the other argument. That’s worse than a straw man, because it actually misleads his readers, who will now think I made a ridiculous argument, which in fact I didn’t. Indeed, nowhere in NIF do I even argue that Jesus didn’t exist (to the contrary, NIF consistently assumes he did). He even tries to admit this, but characterizes it as “going back” on myself (7-5994), when in fact it was simply my position, not a retreat from some “other” position (which again basically makes him a liar).
In the passage in question I am explicitly responding to the argument that “no one would worship a crucified deity, therefore Jesus must have actually risen from the dead.” Casey surely rejects such fundamentalist balderdash as I do, yet he does not tell his readers that this is the only context in which I brought up the Inanna narrative. Inanna is an example of a humiliated, killed and crucified deity, who was nevertheless widely worshipped. I seriously doubt Casey can honestly have a problem with that. Because it being true has no bearing on whether Jesus existed–unless you argue that “no one would worship a crucified deity, therefore Jesus must have actually been crucified.” Fortunately Casey doesn’t appear to make that argument. (Because my argument in that case would be correct.) So why my treatment of Inanna concerns him in this book is hard to discern. And he never explains any of this to his readers, who are thus mislead into thinking I argue that Inanna’s tale is an argument against the historicity of Jesus. It’s not. I think it can bear on the subject, but not like that. And I didn’t even discuss that possibility in NIF.
Second, Casey suffers from concrete thinking (see next section), so badly that he thinks Inanna can’t be a crucified deity because she was a vegetation goddess (7-5994). That is a non sequitur. That’s like saying she can’t be a crucified deity because she’s a woman. Or not Jewish. The differences are irrelevant. We unmistakably have a god descending from heaven, into another supernatural realm below (the underworld), being tried, executed, humiliated, and crucified (her naked corpse nailed up), and then rising from the dead three days later and ascending back to heaven (it also has this whole thing being her plan from the start). Scholars therefore cannot claim such narratives did not predate Christianity. They most certainly did. Whether they had any influence on Christianity is a separate question. But it should certainly be relevant that this narrative was part of a major cult in the Middle East still practiced in Christian times and known to the Jews of Judea (as I show in NIF, a fact Casey does not mention).
Third, Casey is such a concrete thinker he cannot fathom that killing someone and nailing them up was ideologically comparable to Roman crucifixion. Thus he declares, absurdly, “It should be obvious that this has nothing to do with the Roman penalty of crucifixion” (7-5994). Not that it should have to (no one argues that Inanna was crucified by Romans). But even so, Casey does not cite or even seem to be aware of any of the scholarship establishing that in fact all the words for “crucifixion” were so variable as to definitely include exactly this sequence of events, that the Romans even highly varied their practice of crucifixion enough to include it, and that Jews also crucified their dead in exactly this way (execution, then hanging on a post). I document this from primary sources and cite the peer reviewed scholarship that agrees with me in my chapter on the burial of Jesus in The Empty Tomb. I add even more in OHJ.
The passage about Inanna being killed from the descent of Inanna is usually translated
or similar. This is the Sumerian version of the myth the Akkadian parallel myth the descent of Ishtar has nothing closely corresponding to this although Akkadian texts are prima-facie more relevant to the NT world than are Sumerian texts.The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook.
The real problem is that the standard translation is a paraphrase literally the text reads
According to Jacobsen in Treasures of Darkness Inanna is (among other things) the spirit of the storehouse. Her descent into death in the underworld is the depletion of the storehouse from its initial rich abundance till all that remains is one last unsavoury lump of meat hanging from a meat hook in a cavern that has become a place of death and sterility though it was once full of life and nourishment..The afflicted woman was turned into a piece of meat. And the piece of meat was hung on a hook.
Jacobsen may be over speculative but he is IMHO closer to the real meaning than are references to the punishment of impalement/crucifixion,
Andrew Criddle
