yakovzutolmai wrote: ↑Mon Sep 06, 2021 11:41 am
Decius Mundus sounds like "One-tenth of the Earth". It this a reference to tithing? Or perhaps a tithe or tax collector? A player in the story is a freed-woman "Ide". Ides being the day in the month when tax is collected?
Let us say the Paulina story is allegory and comes from whichever mythology sent women up to the tower in Babylon. In this respect, Saturninus can serve as some heavenly consort, and the name Paulina references that she is famous for being someone's daughter.
A completely allegorical interpretation says that the tax collector hijacked the cult.
I have wondered about Sabinus. Josephus sort of implies that he runs off with some of Herod's wealth. Perhaps this explains Archelaus's pitiful position. I've also wondered about Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus, homo novus around that same time and his granddaughter Poppaeia is embroiled in the events surrounding Nero's demise. She is also a liaison with Josephus and the Jews come to Nero to plead their case. Is this the "honest tax collector" mentioned in the gospels and by the Roman historian?
In my scheme of the Ananian-Boethusian rivalry, Sabinus running off with Herod's wealth and later plausibly an ally of the Paulines makes him on the Ananian side.
So the Paulina story, in the frame I've presented, is saying that the Ananian/Poppaeian (Piso, etc.) faction (via the Flavian household) has worn the priestly garment - is masquerading as the true face of Christianity - and is defiling the Holy Sophia.
I've read a paper which finds allusions to Domitian's love of the Isis cult in Paulina. Perhaps the desecration of Christianity by the Flavians/Ananians is being persecuted by Domitian, and this is the era in which the Paulina story was inserted. Domitian would not persecute his beloved Isis cult, so the invocation of Isis is a clever concealment of the true story.
Just a shot in the dark. Paulina is mystifying, but it obviously connects to the Mary/Helen/Panthera/Ennoia spectrum of stories.
Maybe Paulina is esoteric, and is conveying a cultic narrative dressed up as banal Roman gossip.