Accounts of other movements based on dead founders?

[rgprice]

Are there other accounts from roughly the second century BCE through second century CE of any kind movement, religious or otherwise, that spread after the death of some founder?

A comparison that is often used is that of Pythagoras, but he was quite early comparatively. Do we have anything similar to Acts of the Apostles about some other movement?

[Ben C. Smith]

Can you clarify what you are looking for? The founder of every movement in ancient history died at some point.

[rgprice]

Looking for examples of anything even remotely like Acts of the Apostles. Accounts of how political, philosophical, or religious movements spread after their founder died.

[Charles Wilson]

Johanan ben Zakkai

[Ben C. Smith]

Looking for examples of anything even remotely like Acts of the Apostles. Accounts of how political, philosophical, or religious movements spread after their founder died.

Well, the Acts of the Apostles might be kind of unique in that regard. Christians seem to have sort of reworked existing genres into new forms.

Would Judas the Galilean be something like what you are looking for? He started an anti-tax movement, then apparently died, and his movement continued up into the Jewish War. But there is nothing like Acts for him: just the negative portrayal by Josephus.

[Giuseppe]

Judas the Galilean was a scapegoat figure invented by Josephus.
https://vridar.org/2016/04/06/josephus- ... r-the-war/

[GakuseiDon]

Around 160 CE, Alexander of Abonoteichus started a new cult about the snake god Glycon, and it seemed to spread widely throughout the Roman Empire during his life and continued after his death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_of_Abonoteichus

Alexander of Abonoteichus (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Ἀβωνοτειχίτης Aléxandros ho Abōnoteichítēs), also called Alexander the Paphlagonian (c. 105 – c. 170 CE), was a Greek mystic and oracle, and the founder of the Glycon cult that briefly achieved wide popularity in the Roman world. The contemporary writer Lucian reports that he was an utter fraud – the god Glycon was supposedly constructed out of a glove puppet. The vivid narrative of his career given by Lucian might be taken as fictitious but for the corroboration of certain coins of the emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius[1] and of a statue of Alexander, said by Athenagoras to have stood in the forum of Parium.[2][3] There is further evidence from inscriptions.[4]

On the Glycon cult:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycon

By 160, the worship of Glycon had undoubtedly spread beyond the Aegean. An inscription from Antioch of that date records a slogan, "Glycon protect us from the plague-cloud" that is consistent with the description we have from Lucian. Also in that year the governor of Asia, Publius Mummius Sisenna Rutilianus, declared himself protector of Glycon's oracle. The governor later married Alexander's daughter. According to Lucian, another Roman governor, of Cappadocia, was led by Glycon's oracle to his death in Armenia, and even the Emperor himself was not immune to the cult: Marcus Aurelius sought prophesies from Alexander and his snake god.
...
As the cult had an established popularity with the lower social strata,[2] and later several important Roman functionaries and officials were counted among the believers in Glycon and the prophecies of Alexander,[3] including the Emperor at the time, Marcus Aurelius.[4] Such endorsement by the ruling classes coupled with pre existing superstitions of serpents as possessing healing powers, the cult of Glycon likely found no shortage of converts and adherents in new areas of the Roman world.
...
While the cult gradually lost followers after the death of its leader in c.170, it survived for at least a hundred years thereafter, with Alexander being incorporated into its mythology as a grandson of Asclepius. Given the prominence of snake cults as healing divinities in the Mediterranean and surrounding areas, both before and after the rise of Glycon in the region, the spread of the cult continued for some time following the death of Alexander. Some evidence indicates the cult survived into the 4th century.

[MrMacSon]

The cult/s of Antinous started by Hadrian ??

See http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 793#p91793 for a synopsis (+/- other posts in that thread including the OP)

http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 974#p27974

[DCHindley]

Are there other accounts from roughly the second century BCE through second century CE of any kind movement, religious or otherwise, that spread after the death of some founder?

A comparison that is often used is that of Pythagoras, but he was quite early comparatively. Do we have anything similar to Acts of the Apostles about some other movement?

How about Apollonius of Tyana, whose "bio" was recorded (or created) by Philostratus in his Life of Appolonius? He hears the tale, sez he, from the writing of Apollonius' own manservant, Damis, who left a memoir about his travels with the sage. Philostratus admits he polished it up to correct for Damis' naïve ignorance.

It has a number of Acts-like characteristics, such as "sea-we" adventure, some situations like vanishing and reappearing far from where he was last seen, that resemble some accounts in the Gospels or Acts.

It should be available via www.archive.org. G R S Mead also wrote a commentary on Philostratus' Life of Apollonius.

DCH