'Helios' as a Hellenistic Jewish God?

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billd89
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'Helios' as a Hellenistic Jewish God?

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Trying to establish a coherence to the lineage here.

Here is the (3rd C? I think its older) fresco De Julli: Sol Invinctus, called Christos, in the same quadriga w/ same horses as in frescos of Israeli synagogues. Same-same!
Image

Juvenal (c.115 AD) has somewhat lapsed Jews worshipping the 'Numen of Caelus' (Divine Mind), which corresponds to Logos. Caelus may be El-Elyon or Yahweh, unclear.


Notes:
Caelus as a Uranus substitute, sometimes.
Father: Caelus/Ouranos - Son: Jupiter/Zeus
GF: Kronos - F: Aether - S: Caelus
GF: Aether - F: Caelus/Ouranos - S: Mercury/Hermes
F: Caelus/Ouranos (Revolving Heavens) - S: Saturn/Kronos (Measured Time)
F: First God (Caelus), 1st S: Intellect (Saturn), 2nd S: Intelligible (Jupiter)
F: Caelus = El, 1st S: Yahweh ? 2nd S. Numen of Caelus (Divine Mind)
Phaeton-Heliodromus - Caelus, Oceanus, and Tellus

Caelum sows semina rerum ("seeds" of reality) in Cosmos.

Caelus or Coelus was a primal god of the sky in Roman myth and theology, iconography, and literature (compare caelum, the Latin word for "sky" or "the heavens", hence English "celestial"). The deity's name usually appears in masculine grammatical form when he is conceived of as a male generative force, but the neuter form Caelum is also found as a divine personification.

The name of Caelus indicates that he was the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Uranus (Οὐρανός, Ouranos), who was of major importance in the theogonies of the Greeks. Varro couples him with Terra (Earth) as pater and mater (father and mother), and says that they are "great deities" (dei magni) in the theology of the mysteries at Samothrace. ... he has been associated with Summanus, the god of nocturnal thunder, as "purely Roman."[4]

Caelus begins to appear regularly in Augustan art {c.50 AD} and in connection with the cult of Mithras during the Imperial era. Vitruvius includes him among celestial gods whose temple-buildings (aedes) should be built open to the sky.[5] As a sky god, he became identified with Jupiter, as indicated by an inscription that reads Optimus Maximus Caelus Aeternus Iup<pi>ter.[6]

Genealogy
According to Cicero and Hyginus, Caelus was the son of Aether and Dies ("Day" or "Daylight").[7] Caelus and Dies were the parents of Mercury,[8] in what is apparently a departure from the Greek tradition. Caelus was the father with Hecate of the distinctively Roman god Janus, as well as of Saturn and Ops.[9] Caelus was also the father of one of the three forms of Jupiter, the other two fathers being Aether and Saturn.[10] ...

Myth and allegory
Caelus substituted for Uranus in Latin versions of the myth of Saturn (Cronus) castrating his heavenly father, ... In his work On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero presents a Stoic allegory of the myth in which the castration signifies "that the highest heavenly aether, that seed-fire which generates all things, did not require the equivalent of human genitals to proceed in its generative work."[13] For Macrobius, the severing marks off Chaos from fixed and measured Time (Saturn) as determined by the revolving Heavens (Caelum). The semina rerum ("seeds" of things that exist physically) come from Caelum and are the elements which create the world.[14]

The divine spatial abstraction Caelum is a synonym for Olympus as a metaphorical heavenly abode of the divine, both identified with and distinguished from the mountain in ancient Greece named as the home of the gods. Varro says that the Greeks call Caelum (or Caelus) "Olympus."[15] As a representation of space, Caelum is one of the components of the mundus, the "world" or cosmos, ... a place that the other gods inhabit.[17]

The ante-Nicene Christian writer Lactantius routinely uses the Latin theonyms Caelus, Saturn, and Jupiter to refer to the three divine hypostases of the Neoplatonic school of Plotinus: the First God (Caelus), Intellect (Saturn), and Soul, son of the Intelligible (Jupiter).[18]

In art
It is generally though not universally agreed that Caelus is depicted on the cuirass of the Augustus of Prima Porta,[19] at the very top above the four horses of the Sun god's quadriga. He is a mature, bearded man who holds a cloak over his head so that it billows in the form of an arch, a conventional sign of deity (velificatio) that "recalls the vault of the firmament."[20] He is balanced and paired with the personification of Earth at the bottom of the cuirass.[21] (These two figures have also been identified as Saturn and the Magna Mater, to represent the new Saturnian "Golden Age" of Augustan ideology.)[22] On an altar of the Lares now held by the Vatican, Caelus in his chariot appears along with Apollo-Sol above the figure of Augustus.[23]

Nocturnus and the templum
As Caelus Nocturnus, he was the god of the night-time, starry sky. In a passage from Plautus, Nocturnus is regarded as the opposite of Sol, the Sun god.[24] Nocturnus appears in several inscriptions found in Dalmatia and Italy, in the company of other deities who are found also in the cosmological schema of Martianus Capella, based on the Etruscan tradition.[25] In the Etruscan discipline of divination, Caelus Nocturnus was placed in the sunless north opposite Sol to represent the polar extremities of the axis (see cardo). This alignment was fundamental to the drawing of a templum (sacred space) for the practice of augury.[26]

Mithraic Caelus
The name Caelus occurs in dedicatory inscriptions in connection to the cult of Mithras.[citation needed] The Mithraic deity Caelus is sometimes depicted allegorically as an eagle bending over the sphere of heaven marked with symbols of the planets or the zodiac.[27] In a Mithraic context he is associated with Cautes[28] and can appear as Caelus Aeternus ("Eternal Sky").[29] A form of Ahura-Mazda is invoked in Latin as Caelus Aeternus Iupiter.[30] The walls of some mithrea feature allegorical depictions of the cosmos with Oceanus and Caelus. The mithraeum of Dieburg represents the tripartite world with Caelus, Oceanus, and Tellus below Phaeton-Heliodromus.[31]

As the Jewish god
Some Roman writers used Caelus or Caelum[32] as a way to express the monotheistic god of Judaism. Juvenal identifies the Jewish god with Caelus as the highest heaven (summum caelum), saying that Jews worship the numen of Caelus;[33] Petronius uses similar language.[34] Florus has a rather odd passage describing the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem as housing a "sky" (caelum) under a golden vine, which has been taken as an uncomprehending attempt to grasp the presence of the Jewish god. A golden vine, perhaps the one mentioned, was sent by the Hasmonean king Aristobulus to Pompeius Magnus after his defeat of Jerusalem, and was later displayed in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.[35]

MA 2015 diss.
Sol was the Roman name for the Greek god, Helios. He was understood to be the driver of the sun chariot and the only being capable of controlling the horses of the sun. The chief attribute of Sol was his crown of rays and he was often shown wearing a purple raiment. The doors of his palace were thought to be adorned with the twelve signs of the zodiac and a sketch of the entire universe (Fontenros, 1940, p.434). Sol was often portrayed in his quadriga, and is later portrayed with one hand raised in a gesture of power and the other holding a globe, representing his power as ruler of the heavens (Dunbabin, 1982, p. 71). Also referred to as Sol Invictus, “the unconquered sun”.
...
An example of iconic Christian art depicting Sol can be seen in the third century Tomb of the Julii. Located in the Vatican Cemetery underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, the mosaic ceiling was uncovered during the excavations of Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins which began in 1939 (Smothers, 1956, p. 293). The oldest of the mausoleums in the cemetery date circa 125 CE. The Tomb of the Julii, in its Christian context, dates to the third century, though the mausoleum had been used earlier by pagan owners (Smothers, 1956, p.300). The upper portions of the three walls of the vault are decorated with polychrome mosaics, depicting Christian themes. At the center, Christ is depicted in the guise of Sol Invictus. In the mosaic, the Christ figure stands in a chariot which can be presumed to be a quadriga, though the mosaic is not preserved in its entirety. Likewise, he is crowned with rays and raises his arm in a gesture of power, in his other hand, he holds a globe. The image is surrounded by vine tendrils.

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