Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

MrMacSon wrote:

neilgodfrey wrote:Do any of the Roman and Greek myths speak of a sun god -- Helios, Hyperion, Sol, Apollo -- dying and rising?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying-and- ... he_concept

Pagan Parallel "Saviors" Examined

Adonis | Attis | Baal | Bacchus | Balder | Beddru | Devatat | Dionysos | Hermes | Horus | Krishna | Mithras | Orpheus | Osiris | Tammuz | Thor | Zoroaster

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/Jesu ... .htm#Pagan

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexami ... ng-savior/

Can you just tell me which Greek and Roman sun god myths featured a dying and rising sun-god? I'm not doubting they exist, by the way. Just that the myths I know of don't bring the dying/rising theme to mind at the moment.

Death was not understood -
It still isn't , many believe in immortal souls. The French have a term "petit mort", might sleep have been understood as dying and rising?

Death where is thy sting and resurrection are not actually that different a claim, when other tribes did keep grandad sat in the corner ....

For example, on the anthropology of death http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/course ... thropology

Clive wrote:Death was not understood...might sleep have been understood as dying and rising?

The interesting idea here is, "What behaviors do we attach to the linguistic phrase meant by "sleeping"?

Tacitus, Histories, Book 4:

"The murder of Calpurnius Galerianus caused the utmost consternation...By order of Mucianus he was surrounded with a guard of soldiers. Lest his execution in the capital should excite too much notice, they conducted him to the fortieth milestone from Rome on the Appian Road, and there put him to death by opening his veins..."

We do have examples of people "going to sleep..." by opening their veins but consider this awkward comparison:

Acts 7: 58 - 60 (RSV):

[58] Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
[59] And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
[60] And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

I ask the question again (and again...): "Do you fall asleep when you're stoned?"

Death by stoning, the Israelite Death Sentence, would be difficult to be reconciled with "being put to sleep...". "Opening your veins...", a Roman solution IS easily seen as "going to sleep". The language appropriate to the situation forces an analysis on whether the 2 stories are related. They are.

I believe that Acts is written around Tacitus, especially Histories, especially Book 4. Rather than being written around a completely new set of made up stories, the language is written around what Tacitus has proclaimed. What is easy to do is substitute "...was stoned" for "...opened his veins". The author has knowledge of Judaic practices and histories but takes the easy way out by, possibly by intention, to change a few words. The result is awkward but points to the Intentionality of the subject.

This is Interregnum between the Julio-Claudians and the Flavians, of Vitellius and Vespasian. Mucianus holds Imperial Power in his hands and "clears the decks" of any possible Usurpers before handing the reins of government over to Vespasian. Stephen Martyr, the character, may have been taken outside the city and stoned. Galerianus, with "the face of an angel", was taken outside the city to the fortieth mile marker and had his veins opened.

No, you do not "go to sleep" when you are stoned. It must be a gruesome death. This leads to the idea that Stephen Martyr was someone else. He was.

CW

[[Edit]] Before we go "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow", mebbe there's something else at the 40th mile marker.

neilgodfrey wrote:Do any of the Roman and Greek myths speak of a sun god -- Helios, Hyperion, Sol, Apollo -- dying and rising?

MrMacSon wrote: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying-and- ... he_concept

2. Pagan Parallel "Saviors" Examined

Adonis | Attis | Baal | Bacchus | Balder | Beddru | Devatat | Dionysos | Hermes | Horus | Krishna | Mithras | Orpheus | Osiris | Tammuz | Thor | Zoroaster

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/Jesu ... .htm#Pagan

3. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexami ... ng-savior/

neilgodfrey wrote:Can you just tell me which Greek and Roman sun god myths featured a dying and rising sun-god? I'm not doubting they exist, by the way. Just that the myths I know of don't bring the dying/rising theme to mind at the moment.

There are variations within each myth. For example,

Adonis

In classical studies, Adonis has been interpreted as a Greek symbol of the seasonality of vegetable life, the death of plants during cold, and their revival during spring. Despite an original Semitic provenance, there is no native mythology; what we know depends on later Greek, Roman, and Christian interpretations. There are two major forms of the myth: the "Panyasisian" form, and the more familiar "Ovidian" form.

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/Jesu ... htm#Adonis

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung argued that archetypal processes such as death and resurrection were part of the "trans-personal symbolism" of the collective unconscious, and could be utilized in the task of psychological integration.[25] He also proposed that the myths of the pagan gods who symbolically died and resurrected foreshadowed Christ's literal/physical death and resurrection.[25] The overall view of Carl Jung regarding religious themes and stories is that they are expressions of events occurring in the unconscious of the individuals - regardless of their historicity.[26] From the symbolic perspective, Jung sees dying and rising gods as an archetypal process resonating with the collective unconscious through which the rising god becomes the greater personality in the Jungian self.[1] In Jung's view, a biblical story such as the resurrection of Jesus (which he saw as a case of dying and rising) may be true or not, but that has no relevance to the psychological analysis of the process, and its impact.[26]

The analysis of Osiris permeates the later religious psychology of Carl Jung more than any other element.[27] In 1950 Jung wrote that those who partake in the Osiris myth festival and follow the ritual of his death and the scattering of his body to restart the vegetation cycle as a rebirth "experience the permanence and continuity of life which outlasts all changes of form".[28]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying-and- ... he_concept

ie. Some Greek and Roman gods were Egyptian gods, or variations of Egyptian gods

'Chrestus' was a familiar personal name throughout the Roman Empire. It was not, however, Israelite in origin. Instead it was the name of the Egyptian Serapis ( ... god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection) or Osiris [who would have a life and death similar to (but not identical with) the Jesus of the New Testament not yet written].

The chrestianos had a large following at Borne, especially among the common people, as it was the common people who demanded a better life and no group other than the chrestianos offered them hope. This hope led the commoners, the poor, to envision a classless afterlife where all would be equal and quickly adopted the Egyptian promise of a life after death where their promise of enjoying the fruits of those save would be found when they would go to a special garden (paradise). In the chrestianos paradise they would find it filled with all earthly delights including unlimited amounts of honey, lamps filled with oil that would stay lit permanently, and ease without the need to work. There sole task was to sing praises and hymns to the Egyptian god once their souls were individually weighed on Resurrection Day (the soul would be on one scale of the balance, and their good deeds the counterweight on the other scale). If their endurance, faith, and good deeds weighed more than their transgressions they would be invited to join in a rapture of unexplainable intensity and fervor.

https://arthuride.wordpress.com/tag/serapis-god/

Isis was identified with Hellenic deities such as Demeter or Aphrodite. Greek iconography was introduced to the cult which made it visually appealing to the Hellenes. In those days when the provincial city-states of the Hellenic world fell to Alexander's universal empire, the traditional gods of the city-state no longer sufficed. Gods like Isis and Serapis were not connected with any specific town and were truly universal in scope. More importantly, the exotic Egyptian mysticism could offer the Greeks of the Hellenistic age something their own gods could not - a way to cheat fate and death.

http://www.unrv.com/culture/isis.php

[/argued that all myths are echoes of rituals, and that all rituals have as their primordial purpose the manipulation of natural phenomenon

From wiki link above

What if the Christ rising at dawn was an attempt to make sure the sun returned? Isn't that the opposite of astrontheology?

MrMacSon,

Are any of these dying and resurrecting gods solar gods in the Greek and Roman mythologies? I don't think so.

The myths that I recall have the sun god riding his chariot through Ocean on the underside of the world and returning again, or similar -- not dying and returning from death to life.

Might a better categorisation, instead of dying and rising gods, be gods involved in cyclical processes? So that one pushing a rock to the top of a hill counts?

I think that, in those times, they had gone beyond worshipping sun gods per se, and had also gone beyond worshipping gods that died and returned: the people of those times - 200 BC/BCE to 200 AD/CE - sought an afterlife for themselves.

I think it's like asking people today what color model T Ford they'd like, or which barque they'd like to cruise the Pacific in/on.

neilgodfrey wrote:MrMacSon,

Are any of these dying and resurrecting gods solar gods in the Greek and Roman mythologies? I don't think so.

The myths that I recall have the sun god riding his chariot through Ocean on the underside of the world and returning again, or similar -- not dying and returning from death to life.

The Dying and Rising God. Because crops die in winter and return in spring, Dionysus was seen as a symbol of death and resurrection. In another story about his birth, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of crops and vegetation. Hera was jealous of the child and convinced the Titans to destroy him. Although Dionysus was disguised as a baby goat, the Titans found him, caught him, and tore him to pieces. They ate all of his body except his heart, which was rescued by Athena *. She gave the heart to Zeus, who gave it to Semele to eat. Semele later gave birth to Dionysus again. The story represents the earth (Demeter) and sky (Zeus) giving birth to the crops (Dionysus), which die each winter and are reborn again in the spring.

Read more: http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Cr-Dr/D ... z3UP397fvk