The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

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nightshadetwine
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The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

Post by nightshadetwine »

The following quote sums up what this post is about:
The stories were devised to convey cosmical history, theogony, anthropogenesis, and finally individual experience of humans in the psycho-physiological development of mortal life. The whole cycle of the history of unfolding divinity in humanity was dramatized for stage enactment in the annual round of Mystery festivals. And portions of this drama have filtered down into the ritualism of practically every religion in the world. The epic of the human soul in earthly embodiment was the theme of every ancient poet and dramatist, and each strove to dress out the elements of the struggle in a new allegorical garb, with a new hero, whether Achilles, Hercules, Horus, Theseus, Aeneas, Orpheus, Jason, Dionysus, Buddha, Ulysses or Jesus, enacting the central role of the divine genius conquering the animal nature...And novelty could be introduced only by the device of depicting the soul’s experiences under a new allegorical situation, symbolizing afresh the old, old story of the immortal spirit’s immersion in the sea of matter. In all, combats with dragons, wrestling with serpents, harassments by brute creatures, enchantments by Sirens, plottings of conspirators, imprisonment in dungeons and struggling through to an ultimate return to the original home of felicity, find their place. In one type of adventure after another the many features of the history of the divine Ego in its progress from earth back to the skies were allegorically portrayed. Every aspect of the experience had its appropriate myth.
I think the story of the savior/hero is an allegory for the incarnation of the soul or spirit into matter. In these stories the savior/hero represents the soul or divine part of all humans and it's "struggles" to stay connected to the divine in the realm of matter. In these stories the savior/hero is usually born to a mortal woman who is impregnated by a god, the mortal woman representing matter and the god representing the divine. So human beings were believed to be made up of matter/body and spirit/soul.

A Story of the Soul’s Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of Authentikos Logos By Ulla Tervahauta:
Both Plato and Aristotle associate form to father, and matter to mother...The active principle (cause, god, or...) is always present in matter, giving it some quality or another...The active and passive aspects and interaction of cause and matter are rooted in Platonic and Aristotelian traditions...many Platonists identified the mother-principle as and considered it corporeal and fundamentally opposite to the incorporeal God...The Timaeus-based mother-matter image can be encountered in works of several Platonists who were active from the first centuries CE onwards.
Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 53:
For Isis is the Female Principle of Nature, and that which is capable of receiving all generation, in virtue of which she is styled by Plato, "Nurse," and "All-receiving,"...wherewith she rejoices and is glad to be impregnated, and to be filled with births—for birth is an image of existence in Matter...
Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 56:
Plato calls the Intelligible "Idea," "Model," "Father," and Matter he terms "Mother," "Nurse," the seat and receptacle of generation; and that which results from both he is accustomed to denominate "Issue," and "Birth," and we may conjecture that the Egyptians [reverence] the most beautiful kind of triangle, because they liken it to the nature of the universe... We must therefore compare the line forming the right angle to the male, the base to the female, the hypothenuse to the child of the two; and the one to be Osiris, as the Final Cause; the other, Isis as the recipient; the third, Horus as the result...
The savior's life is also threatened when they are a child. I think this is an allegory for the soul being in danger of being "overtaken" by matter or "bodily desires". Often the savior/hero is hidden away in a cave or a place away from danger soon after they are born. I think the cave, or in the case of Jesus "Egypt", represents the physical body or physical realm kind of like Plato's cave. I also think that characters in these stories being imprisoned or going down into the underworld and escaping from prisons and the underworld is an allegory for the incarnation of the soul into the "prison" of matter.

A Story of the Soul’s Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of Authentikos Logos By Ulla Tervahauta:
Somewhat later in Phaedo 82E Socrates calls the body akin to a prison or a cage, and in Gorgias 493A and in Cratylus 400B-C the body is the tomb of the soul. In a section starting with Phaedo 82E Socrates explains how the soul must contemplate the realities through the prison of the body...The soul's incarceration is caused by bodily desires, and the prisoner is active in keeping herself imprisoned by submitting herself under the power of these desires...
Philo, Allegorical Interpretation II, 15:
...and as for Isaac, he indeed was not stripped, but was at all times naked and incorporeal; for a commandment was given to him not to go down into Egypt, {16}{#ge 26:2.} that is to say, into the body.
The savior/hero also performs miracles like raising people from the dead and healing the sick. I think the raising of the dead and healing the blind and sick may be referring to the "spiritually" dead, blind, and sick. The divine/higher soul of a person raises them from death in matter, it's what gives them "life". The goal is for the divine nature to "raise up" the lower nature. The savior/hero also usually has to battle monsters or demons which I think represent the lower or physical nature of a person, the side of a person that looses it's connection with the divine/god because it becomes too attached to the physical realm.

Philo, Allegorical Interpretation II, 19:
On this account, too, that part in us which is analogous to the people, and which acts the part of a multitude, when it seeks "the houses in Egypt,"{22}{#nu 21:5.} that is to say, in its corporeal habitation, becomes entangled in pleasures which bring on death; not that death which is a separation of soul and body, but that which is the destruction of the soul by vice.
Finally, the savior/hero dies and resurrects and ascends to heaven which represents the death or sacrifice of the soul when it partakes in the physical realm and it's resurrection back to it's divine status. If a person reconnects to the divine/god the higher/divine element of them has been "reborn" or "resurrected". So the crucifixion of Jesus is an allegory for the crucifixion of the soul/divinity to the cross of matter or the physical body.

Philo, On The Posterity Of Cain And His Exile, 61
That the body must be thought akin to the souls that love the body, and that external good things must be exceedingly admired by them, and all the souls which have this kind of disposition depend on dead things, and, like persons who are crucified, are attached to corruptible matter till the day of their death.
--Plato, Phaedo, 362
...because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body...
Another interesting thing related to the crucifixion is that Plato associated the physical realm with a cube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid:
Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c. 360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube...
If you unfold a cube it forms a cross or crucifix:
Image

In the myths of Osiris and Dionysus they are both torn into pieces. Jesus breaks apart bread that he says is his body. I think this is referring to divinity "splitting" when it creates the "lower" or more physical realms. Divinity starts off as one whole and then multiplies itself in order to create everything. You find this concept in ancient Egyptian and Greek religion and philosophy. So when Jesus breaks his body/bread apart to feed the disciples he's feeding his disciples his divinity.

Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Pinch:
The creator was sometimes referred to as "the One Who Made Himself into Millions" or "He Who Made Himself into Millions of Gods." Creation could be seen as a process of differentiation, in which one original force was gradually divided (without necessarily diminishing itself) into the diverse elements that made up the universe...New Kingdom hymns, such as those preserved in Papyrus Leiden I 350, Explore the idea that all deities are aspects of the creator. They speculate on the miraculous process by which the one creator, usually named as Amun-Ra, was able to divide himself into many...In many Egyptian sources the creation of life involves three elements: the creation of a body, the transfer to that body of some part of the divine essence of the creator, and the animation of the body by the breath of life...The second element, the transfer of the divine essence, eventually led to the concept that all deities,or even all living beings, were not just made by a transcendent creator but were in some sense forms of the creator.
Idea into image by Erik Hornung:
In sum, the monotheism of the Egyptians consists in the belief that in the beginning the divine was one, and that in the cosmogony that was the work of the one, the one became many.
The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson:
The polyvalent logic of Egyptian thought could easily allow an appreciation of the underlying oneness of god to coexist with traditional Egyptian polytheism. He suggests, in fact, that the best evidence for this is actually the phenomenon of syncretism which 'unites the view of god as simultaneously Many and One'.
Tracing Orpheus: Studies of Orphic Fragments edited by Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Eugenio R. Luján Martínez, Raquel Martín Hernández, Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez, Sofía Torallas Tovar:
The Orphic version that we find in this fragment and in column XIII of the Derveni Papyrus reconciles the monist theory with a religious vision, postulating a personal monism. At a culminating point of the cosmogonic process, Zeus appears as only god, and the only existing thing. The whole universe, which he would recreate himself further on, albeit in order, stemming from himself, is absorbed in him. Zeus is, therefore, an immanent divinity. The formulation of a personalized First Principle, of a god who is at the same time the only god and the only existing reality from whom all others stem, responds to a vision in the macrocosm of the problem of the One and the multiple that Milesians took into consideration and aimed at resolving in the microcosm, proposing a single original matter...One of the common threads between Orphism and Pre-Socratic philosophers, whose relation has been long studied and substantiated by many scholars, is the tendency to explain multiplicity from unity...
Part of this concept is the multiple returning back to the whole or one. This is what happens when people became initiated into the cults of Dionysus, Osiris, and Jesus. The members made up the body of the the savior and became "one".

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 possessth, 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 Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook by Meyer, Marvin:
The worshipers of Dionysus acknowledged his presence in the raw flesh of wild beasts as well as the goblet of wine.
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.
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.
Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia By Mark Smith:
The title of this spell is 'Entering in front and going out behind in the midst of those who eat the bread of Osiris'...that of Spell 228 states that when someone who knows the spell proceeds to the god's domain he will eat bread at the side of Osiris, while that of spell 339 promises that knowing the utterance means eating bread in the house of Osiris. The colophon of Spell 1079 states that anyone who knows the names of a group of kneeling deities will be with Osiris for ever and will never perish.
So the story of the dying and resurrecting savior is a story telling what the initiates into these cults experienced. It's an allegory for the ritual that is performed by the initiate and also for the incarnation of the soul or the divine into the body or physical realm and it's rebirth or resurrection when reconnecting to the divine source or becoming initiated. This is why the initiate identifies with the savior god during the initiation ritual.

Dionysos By Richard Seaford:
Given the sentient psyche[soul] in Homer belongs to the next world, and that mystic initiation was a rehearsal of transition to the next world, I suggest that mystery-cult was an important context for the development of the awareness of the sentient psyche in the still-living person. The psyche on the point of death is compared, in a passage of Plutarch, to the experience of mystic initiation (Chapter 5). Mystic initiation, because it was a pre-enactment of death, is experienced by the part of us that survives death, namely the psyche...On another gold leaf, of the mid-fourth century BC, it is the psyche that 'leaves the light of the sun' and--it seems--'became a god'.
The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries By Manfred Clauss:
The mystery-cults shared the conviction that deliverance and salvation are the aim of all human existence on earth, and that they are to be attained by ceremonial replication of the god's experience.
Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians by Courtney Friesen:
Not only does Paul employ language that reflects mystery cults in several places, his Christian community resembles them in various ways.They met in secret or exclusive groups, employed esoteric symbols, and practiced initiations, which involved identification with the god’s suffering and rebirth.
The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era: Exploring the Background of Early Christianity By James S. Jeffers
The initiates also learned the central secret of the group, typically involving how to achieve union with the cult's deity. Another common element of mystery religions was a myth telling how the deity had either defeated his or her enemies or returned to life after death. As the cult member shared in the god's triumph, he or she was redeemed from the earthly and temporal.
Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia By Mark Smith:
But the crucial significance of Osiris for them lay in what he personally had experienced. His life, death, and resurrection were perceived to be particularly momentous in relation to their own fates, and thus they figure more prominently in the textual record than do accounts of the exploits of other divinities. Moreover, because so much importance was invested in the fact that these were events actually experienced by a real individual, and not merely abstractions, personal detail was essential in recounting them.
Last edited by nightshadetwine on Sat Sep 22, 2018 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

Post by GakuseiDon »

Not totally unconnected to the OP: my favourite scene from the original Superman movie (20 secs):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O83e7nagEw

Explaining stories as allegory often tells us more about ourselves than the stories. When I read Origen, Philo and Plutarch describing the meaning of the allegory behind a story, I don't think they necessarily provide insight into the story, but really telling us what is important to the authors.

The success of the old stories depended on whether they could be renewed with a modern meaning for those times. So the Homeric stories went from stories about hands-on gods acting in history, to stories about magic and myths, to stories about daemons, and then finally onto stories that provided allegorical information about life and death. By the First Century, we see a lot of the stories being interpreted as allegories.
nightshadetwine wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 2:42 pmPlato, Phaedrus 250c:
...being permitted as initiates to the sight of perfect and simple and calm and happy apparitions, which we saw in the pure light, being ourselves pure and not entombed in this which we carry about with us and call the body, in which we are imprisoned like an oyster in its shell.
Seriously: what has that got to do with anything? What meaning does this contain relevant to the OP, and what understanding should we draw from it?
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
nightshadetwine
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

Post by nightshadetwine »

GakuseiDon wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 5:37 pm Not totally unconnected to the OP: my favourite scene from the original Superman movie (20 secs):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O83e7nagEw
Haha. Well, the difference is that chewing gum wrappers aren't written to convey religious/metaphysical concepts.
Explaining stories as allegory often tells us more about ourselves than the stories. When I read Origen, Philo and Plutarch describing the meaning of the allegory behind a story, I don't think they necessarily provide insight into the story, but really telling us what is important to the authors.

The success of the old stories depended on whether they could be renewed with a modern meaning for those times. So the Homeric stories went from stories about hands-on gods acting in history, to stories about magic and myths, to stories about daemons, and then finally onto stories that provided allegorical information about life and death. By the First Century, we see a lot of the stories being interpreted as allegories.
This is what I initially thought but I'm starting to think that these myths were actually created to convey spiritual/religious concepts and the Platonists knew it. I think when it came to religion in antiquity, they had their own "language" that was used to convey these concepts. That "language" being allegory, symbolism, and metaphor. I think this may be one of the "mysteries" that was made known to some initiates. I also think the more educated and the "priesthoods" knew the esoteric meanings behind these stories but when speaking to the "common people" they spoke as if these stories were literal.
nightshadetwine wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 2:42 pmPlato, Phaedrus 250c:
...being permitted as initiates to the sight of perfect and simple and calm and happy apparitions, which we saw in the pure light, being ourselves pure and not entombed in this which we carry about with us and call the body, in which we are imprisoned like an oyster in its shell.
Seriously: what has that got to do with anything? What meaning does this contain relevant to the OP, and what understanding should we draw from it?
Oops. That was the wrong quote at the wrong spot. It was supposed to be some other quote about the body being a tomb or prison or.... oyster shell. I think you all get the point though.
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

Post by GakuseiDon »

nightshadetwine wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:54 pm
GakuseiDon wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 5:37 pm Not totally unconnected to the OP: my favourite scene from the original Superman movie (20 secs):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O83e7nagEw
Haha. Well, the difference is that chewing gum wrappers aren't written to convey religious/metaphysical concepts.
I'd argue that a lot of the old stories were also not written to convey metaphorical/allegorical concepts. But that didn't stop people from pulling such concepts out at a later time when finding allegorical interpretations became popular.

I'd also argue that what you are doing is much the same thing: taking parts of texts and pulling out meanings that you find significant for today. But there is a certain number of chewing gum wrappers there, which isn't stopping you from finding the secrets of the universe!
nightshadetwine wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:54 pmThis is what I initially thought but I'm starting to think that these myths were actually created to convey spiritual/religious concepts and the Platonists knew it. I think when it came to religion in antiquity, they had their own "language" that was used to convey these concepts. That "language" being allegory, symbolism, and metaphor.
It's certainly possible. I don't discount that this happened, at least for stories written around the time the Gospels were written. But "the story of the savior/hero is an allegory for the incarnation of the soul or spirit into matter" seems too broad and out-of-place for the older stories. I'd like to see more evidence that that was the intention of the authors. It sounds like a category you want to stick the Jesus story into, so you are recasting pagan hero stories into the same thing.

That's the objection I had with Acharya S, Freke & Gandy, Doherty and Dr Carrier: they tortured the old stories, twisting them to get them to admit to saying something that would convict the Jesus story. I feel you might be doing the same thing. Would you be interested in Philo and Plutarch, the stories of Isis & Osiris, if you didn't want to connect them to your ideas about the Jesus story?
nightshadetwine wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:54 pmI think this may be one of the "mysteries" that was made known to some initiates. I also think the more educated and the "priesthoods" knew the esoteric meanings behind these stories but when speaking to the "common people" they spoke as if these stories were literal.
NO! This idea that the "mystery" of mystery cults was that the stories about the gods that the common people thought literal weren't taken literally by those in the know seems to one only found in mythicist books, and usually to explain why the Gospels were not taken literally by the first "real" Christians. But the "mystery" seems to be related to the initiation process and the experiences induced, possibly via drugs. Though I liked John Allegro's "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross", which explains how Christianity originated as visions induced by eating psychedelic mushrooms.
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
nightshadetwine
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

Post by nightshadetwine »

Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 56:
Plato calls the Intelligible "Idea," "Model," "Father," and Matter he terms "Mother," "Nurse," the seat and receptacle of generation; and that which results from both he is accustomed to denominate "Issue," and "Birth," and we may conjecture that the Egyptians [reverence] the most beautiful kind of triangle, because they liken it to the nature of the universe... We must therefore compare the line forming the right angle to the male, the base to the female, the hypothenuse to the child of the two; and the one to be Osiris, as the Final Cause; the other, Isis as the recipient; the third, Horus as the result...
After re-reading this quote from Plutarch I wonder if this is related to Jesus being dead for three days. Plutarch says that Osiris is the father, Isis the mother, and Horus the result of the two. So:
1. Osiris(spirit) impregnating Isis(matter)
2. Isis(matter) as recipient of Osiris(spirit)/generation
3. Birth of Horus(who was sometimes said to be Osiris reborn/resurrected)

Plutarch says the Egyptians "reverence the most beautiful kind of triangle". One side(spirit) of the triangle goes down into the base(matter) and then out of the base comes the third part(the child of spirit and matter) of the triangle.

Plutarch mentions that Osiris died on the 17th day of Athyr and was found or resurrected on the 19th day.

https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/dis ... and-osiris:
(356C) The detail about the 72 conspirators against Osiris is mentioned in the context of the story of a coffer [larnax] that is made by Seth to fit exactly the dimensions of the body of Osiris. {I note that the setting for the story of the larnax is a sumposion ‘symposium’.} When Osiris enters the larnax, Seth and the conspirators shut it tight, so that Osiris becomes hermetically sealed inside, and then they set it adrift on the river Nile. All this happened on the 17th of the month Athyr(366F) On the 19th day, they go down to the sea. The stolistai ‘keepers of the sacred robes’ and the priests bring forth the ‘sacred chest’ [hiera kistē] which has inside it the golden ‘box’ [kibōtion]. {On kibōtos and kibōtion as words designating a container of texts that are waiting to be activated in performance, see Nagy 1990a:171–172, 431.} Into that they pour some potable water (potimou ... hudatos). Then there is a sacred shout [kraugē], now that Osiris has been ‘found’ [heurēmenou]
Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan By John Day:
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...
So:
Day 1: Osiris(spirit) dies(matter, sowing of the seed)
Day 2: still dead(in matter)/gestation/generation/germination(like a seed)
Day 3: Is found/resurrected(sprouting of the seed)

Osiris' body was thrown into the Nile waters then he is found by Isis and resurrected. This is what happens when the Sun god dies at night and enters the waters of the underworld and then is reborn/resurrected the next morning.

So maybe this relates to the three days of Jesus:
1. Jesus(spirit) dies or is put in a tomb(matter, "the body is a tomb for the soul" - Platonists, sowing of the seed)
2. Jesus(spirit) Gestating in the womb/tomb(matter, the earth)/generation/germination(like a seed)
3. Jesus re-born/resurrected(sprouting of the seed)
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

Post by nightshadetwine »

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...

So:
Day 1: Osiris(spirit) dies(matter).
Day 2: still dead(in matter)
Day 3: Is found/resurrected

Osiris' body was thrown onto the Nile waters then he is found by Isis and resurrected. This is what happens when the Sun god dies at night and enters the waters of the underworld and then is reborn/resurrected the next morning.

So maybe this relates to the three days of Jesus:
1. Jesus(spirit) dies or is put in a tomb(matter, "the body is a tomb for the soul" - Platonists)
2. Jesus(spirit) Gestating in the womb/tomb(matter)
3. Jesus re-born/resurrected
To add to this, the motif of three days I think may have the same meaning when it comes to the Hebrew scriptures. So Jonah being thrown into the waters and being in the belly of a fish for three days would have the same meaning.

1. Jonah(spirit,divinity) thrown into the sea/waters(rebirth, baptism, like Osiris, the sun god, Jesus, etc.) swallowed by the fish(matter, underworld, death)
2. Gestation in the belly of the fish(matter, the tomb)
3. The fish spits out Jonah(rebirth, resurrection)

It's interesting that Hercules was also swallowed by a fish. Although, as far as I know, there's no connection to three days in that story.

Ariadne's Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature By William F. Hansen:
The swallowing of a hero or a prophet by a great sea creature in Greek and Hebrew legendry shows that the motif of the swallowing
of a man by a giant fish is also employed for noncomic effect, even when quite fantastically the man is represented as living
within the creature for several days, as Herakles and Jonah each do.
Hosea 6:2 says:
Israel and Judah are Unrepentant

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. 2After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His presence. 3So let us know—let us press on to know the LORD. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the rain, like the spring showers that water the earth.…
This reminds me of the Osiris myth. He was torn to pieces by Set and then "healed" or "bound" together and resurrected by Isis.

Israel and Judah:
1. Torn to pieces(death, tomb of matter)
2. Gestation
3. Revived and raised(rebirth, resurrection)

You find the same motif in the story of Inanna.

In the World of Sumer: An Autobiography By Samuel Noah Kramer:
These latter fastened upon Inanna their "look of death," whereupon she was turned into a corpse and hung from a stake. So passed three days and three nights...This they did and Inanna revived.
Does anyone know if any scholars have mentioned Inanna as influencing the raising up of Israel? Maybe Ben C. Smith knows?
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

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nightshadetwine wrote: Sat Sep 22, 2018 1:21 pmDoes anyone know if any scholars have mentioned Inanna as influencing the raising up of Israel? Maybe Ben C. Smith knows?
I wish I did. Sorry. There are quite a few who, at least in passing, will remark on the parallels between Inanna and Jesus (Richard Carrier is merely the latest to do this, and in slightly more depth than most), but direct links between Inanna and Hosea 6.2 I am less familiar with.

What I wonder is whether Yahweh himself might not have been viewed as a dying and rising deity. There is no direct evidence for this of which I am aware. It is all a matter of (A) Ba'al being a dying and rising deity and Yahweh being so similar to Ba'al in so many other ways; (B) the cultic cry of "Yahweh lives" in Psalm 18.46, which would make the most sense on the presupposition that Yahweh had previously died; and (C) a dying and rising Yahweh providing a perfect missing link between Ba'al and Jesus.
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nightshadetwine
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Sep 22, 2018 2:22 pm I wish I did. Sorry. There are quite a few who, at least in passing, will remark on the parallels between Inanna and Jesus (Richard Carrier is merely the latest to do this, and in slightly more depth than most), but direct links between Inanna and Hosea 6.2 I am less familiar with.
I haven't come across anything either yet.
What I wonder is whether Yahweh himself might not have been viewed as a dying and rising deity. There is no direct evidence for this of which I am aware. It is all a matter of (A) Ba'al being a dying and rising deity and Yahweh being so similar to Ba'al in so many other ways; (B) the cultic cry of "Yahweh lives" in Psalm 18.46, which would make the most sense on the presupposition that Yahweh had previously died; and (C) a dying and rising Yahweh providing a perfect missing link between Ba'al and Jesus.
I think this is something I'm going to look into.
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

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If you can get hold of it, try Geo Widengren, "Early Hebrew Myths and Their Interpretation," in S. H. Hooke, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Kingship in the Ancient Near East and in Israel.

Also, I suspect you would like a lot of stuff by Margaret Barker. Start with The Great Angel and go from there.
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nightshadetwine
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Re: The Story of the Savior/hero as an Allegory

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Sat Sep 22, 2018 2:22 pm What I wonder is whether Yahweh himself might not have been viewed as a dying and rising deity. There is no direct evidence for this of which I am aware. It is all a matter of (A) Ba'al being a dying and rising deity and Yahweh being so similar to Ba'al in so many other ways; (B) the cultic cry of "Yahweh lives" in Psalm 18.46, which would make the most sense on the presupposition that Yahweh had previously died; and (C) a dying and rising Yahweh providing a perfect missing link between Ba'al and Jesus.
There seems to be some debate about some of the Psalms being influenced by Egyptian hymns to the sun god and Yahweh having solar aspects. I personally suspect that Yahweh is an amalgamation of different gods or that he took on the roles of other gods. So the "Yahweh lives" in Psalm 18 could possibly related to his sun god aspect(if he has one). The sun god was said to die and resurrect so that could be a connection

Ancient Egypt Investigated: 101 Important Questions and Intriguing Answers by Thomas Schneider
In the literature of Egypt’s Late Period (664–332 bce) we find clear parallels to motifs in the oft-cited Psalm 104, the Song of Songs, and the book of Job. Perhaps the best-known example can be seen in Proverbs 22.17–23.14, which borrows from the Instruction of Amenemope, a wisdom text in circulation at least as late as Dynasty 26—that is, the sixth century bce. The atmosphere and character of the Egyptian Late Period is clearly visible in the descriptions of the story of Joseph and Israel’s stay in Egypt, where there are also similar literary motifs, as, for example, the contest between Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians (Exodus 7) and the similar contest between Siosire and the Ethiopian magicians in the Demotic cycle of Setne- Khaemwese. In addition, the criticisms directed at kings in the books of Chronicles find parallels in Egyptian ‘apocalyptic’ works.

Numerous religious concepts also have Egyptian parallels: man as God’s image, the concept of God as shepherd, the weighing of the heart, the forming of men on a potter’s wheel, the discovery of sacred books in order to legitimize religious reform, and so forth. The Hebrew of the Old Testament also displays a certain Egyptian influence in the area of vocabulary and idioms: for instance, ‘face between his knees’ in the story of Elijah; the expression ‘standing and sitting’ in the sense of ‘comport oneself’; the term ‘way of life’; the comparison of the prophet Jeremiah with a ‘bronze wall’; ‘burning coals on the head’ as a metaphor for penitence; and the designation of God as ‘sun of righteousness.’ These literary and linguistic borrowings are part of a much wider cultural influence that Egypt had on Israel, as has been pointed out in recent decades by Othmar Keel.

In addition to textual borrowings, this influence is found in imagery as well, and is especially clear in the iconographic material from Palestine, in particular, representations on seals. One example of Egyptian influence is apparent in the solar symbolism of Yahweh belief in Israel and Judah during the eighth century bce, which incorporated the Egyptian sundisk and Uraeus serpents."
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