Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:15 pm
1) Incorrect. I'm saying what it means to "rise" or "resurrect" is culturally specific and therefore, the fact that a myth seems similar on the surface has no bearing on whether or not it constitutes the *same* or a *parallel* myth elsewhere.
Yes, the way Osiris rises or resurrects is in an Egyptian context of resurrection. Jesus resurrects in a Jewish context of resurrection. The main point though, is that they both overcome death and offer the same to their followers. It's the same concept. This isn't a surface level similarity. This is the main concept/point of their resurrections.
Also the resurrection texts do not literally think that he will physically get up...
It doesn't matter. It's described as the resurrected literally getting up. Of course the mummy didn't really get up and ascend to the sky. Saying that someone who died got up and ascended to the sky was a way of deifying the person.
they were well aware that this is not the same as Jesus, because they continued moving the mummies around.
I don't know what you're talking about here.
Again, that a text says something in narrative does not actually mean that we should take it as a literal belief. The description does not indicate the intricacy of belief. Yes, Osiris conquered and overcame death to the Egyptians. But how he did that is culturally specific and distinct.
You keep getting lost in details. The concept of a deity overcoming death and offering the same to it's followers is not unique to Christianity. This is a fact. It doesn't matter if the resurrection is different. It's the same concept.
2) I completely understand there is a difference between a text description in myth, and how Egyptians literally believed. They knew their kings did not physically get up in this life. They did so in the *afterlife* (this is also why the *dead* king is identified with Osiris directly, whereas the successor becomes identified with Horus).
No, you don't seem to understand. The texts describe the king getting up in their tomb on earth and ascending to the sky in order to get to the netherworld. It doesn't matter if the mummy didn't literally get up and ascend to the sky. Do you think Jesus literally got up out of his tomb? This was a way of deifying someone. They would be said to have resurrected and ascended to heaven. It doesn't mean they literally did, even if people believed they did.
3) He was a deity who overcame death by being alive in death. That is why I say Egyptian resurrection is culturally specific. As Burkert noted, it was a "transcendent life beyond death." In his death, he gains life and so simultaneously is dead and alive, transcending death and overcoming it, while also embodying it. Thus, the dead king is identified with Osiris to come to a transcendent life, while the living king is with Horus. I'd add that Metzger was able to demonstrate that during the time of Christianity, Egyptians clearly believed that Osiris' body was buried in Egypt somewhere (identifying some 20 locations associated with it, actually). Thus, the idea he was bodily resurrected in a physical earthly sense is nuts, demonstrating that there is divide between ritual text (the Pyramid Texts) and actual beliefs. Rituals are often mythologized, but are not direct 1 to 1 beliefs of what happened. We see this same thing in magical texts as well (such as the PGM series) and with propaganda pieces (Marduk Ordeal Text). The mere fact that you can point around to narratives means very little if you aren't applying any critical theory or method and examining what Egyptians actually believed, because myths and narratives are actually widely debated as to whether they represent beliefs... which everyone with a PhD in religious studies has long recognized. My entire point is that while they believed he rose, the narratives we have do not necessarily (in fact we know they don't) have a direct correspondence to what Egyptians believed, especially when we look at text genres. Ritual texts function through a huge amount of metaphor and creative writing, as the Pyramid Texts do. But it is clear from other texts we have, that they did not literally think that a dead king got up and walked around... kind of hard to think that if you are moving their corpse around to safer locations.
You wrote a lot here but didn't really say anything you didn't already say. To the Egyptians, Osiris conquered death and they hoped to conquer death just like him. That's the point. It doesn't matter how he conquered death. You're viewing "death" in a very modern way. The resurrected weren't considered "dead", they were alive.
Alexandrea in Aegypto. The role of the Egyptian tradition in the Hellenistic and Roman periods : ideology, culture, identity, and public life(Leiden University, 2011), Kyriakos Savvopoulos:
In the Egyptian funerary world, the dead can retain frequent contact with the world of the living through post-funerary rites, since he can be resurrected within his body. In general, death and resurrection are two basic components of the Egyptian Culture... There is nothing in the Alexandrian hypogea that implies a change in the ideas about the fate of the deceased. The treatment of the body remains Greek: hence, unlike the Egyptian tradition, there is no resurrection whithin the actual body of the dead. The meeting between the two worlds concerns issues of memory and ancestry rather than actual communication with the resurrected dead, as is the case with Egyptian funerary practices.
Salima Ikram, “Mummification,” in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, ed. W. Wendrich (Los Angeles: 2010)
The ancient Egyptians carried out mummification, the artificial preservation of the body, to ensure the survival of the body after death. They believed that the dead body could be reanimated.
Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt(The American University in Cairo Press, 2003), Salima Ikram:
Pyramid Texts are carved in vertical columns in sunk relief. They are frequently painted green or blue-green, alluding to the Osirian colour of rebirth, as well as to the sky to which the king acends when he enters the eternal divine realm and becomes identified with Osiris. The spells are to aid the king in his ascent to the sky and to his reception into the kingdom of the gods. There are three main types of utterances: protective spells... spells for the deceased to use in the Afterworld... and the last set of incantations which is associated with the execution of funerary rituals, such as the Opening of the Mouth, a ritual that reanimates the mummy and restores it's senses... The lector priest would recite magical spells and prayers, while touching the mummy's nose, mouth, eyes, ears and chest, thereby restoring it's five senses. Once the mummy was reanimated it joined the mourners for one last time in a funerary feast, equivalent to a wake...
Opening of the Mouth: Ceremony which served to reanimate the corpse.
Ancient Egypt: State and Society(Oxford University Press, 2014), Alan B. Lloyd:
Once at the tomb the major rite performed was the ritual of the Opening of the Mouth. This was designed originally to activate statues and bring them to life but was later also transferred to the treatment of coffins and mummies, which, for ritual purposes, amounted the same thing. It's function in the mortuary cult was all-important restoration of bodily functions to the deceased such as speech, sight, hearing, and smell so that the inanimate corpse was converted once more into a living being. From this point it enjoyed the corporeal attributes needed to take the deceased through the journey to the afterlife and maintain them there in the fullness of their earthly being...
During the Greco-Roman era, Osiris and Dionysus became associated with each other. Dionysus was also said to have died and resurrected.
Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets(Routledge, 2007), Fritz Graf, Sarah Iles Johnston
According to one tradition, Rhea brought together the pieces of the dismembered god and then revived him. Philodemus relates this story in the service of explaining why Dionysus is said to have been born thrice: once from “his mother,” he says, a second time from Zeus’ thigh and a third time, after his dismemberment by the Titans, when Rhea collected the pieces and revived him. Philodemus claims that the Hellenistic poet Euphorion “agrees with these things” and that “the Orphics are absolutely fixated on them.” In the first century CE, Cornutus reports that “according to myth” Rhea revived Dionysus after he had been torn apart by the Titans. Similarly, Diodorus Siculus says that Demeter (who was often equated with Rhea from the fifth century onwards, including in Orphic contexts; see n. 32 below) arranged the pieces of Dionysus “from which he was born anew” and that “the teachings set forth in the Orphic poems, which are introduced into their rites,” agree with them, but “it is not lawful to reveal them in detail to the uninitiated.” The following points seem clear, then: at least as early as Euphorion, there was a story that Rhea revived Dionysus after his dismemberment that could be regarded as “Orphic"...
At this point we might ask specifically what the bricoleur has gained by combining the two themes that I have suggested underlie his version of Dionysus’ death: succession and corrupted (i.e., human) sacrifice. Granted that it was important to present Dionysus as Zeus’ failed heir; granted that an attack by Titans solidified the identification between Zeus and Dionysus; and granted that ingestion was a common theogonic motif, nonetheless we must ask why it was desirable to make the Titans consume Dionysus in a sacrificial setting that had no parallel in theogonic myth. What was the advantage of introducing this theme? Two things. First, some victims of human sacrifice, including the two whose stories most closely parallel Dionysus' tale (Pelops and Lycaon's son or grandson) die but are subsequently resurrected, as Dionysus will be.
Depending on which particular version of the story we choose to follow, Dionysus’ revival parallels that of other children who had been sacrificed and then revived (e.g., Pelops); parallels that of Osiris, whose dismembered pieces were cared for by Isis, a goddess similar to Rhea and Demeter; or draws on the motif of creation through ingestion that is found in many Mediterranean cosmogonies and theogonies. Notably, whichever version we take, Dionysus’ revival also serves as an implicit parallel for what the initiates themselves anticipated: they, too, would die but, in somewhat the same fashion as Dionysus, they would win a new existence after death (compare tablets nos. 26 a and b).
Dionysos(Routledge, 2006), Richard Seaford:
Dionysos, like Jesus, was the son of the divine ruler of the world and a mortal mother, appeared in human form among mortals,was killed and restored to life...
Dionysos could be called 'Initiate' and even shares the name Bakchos with his initates, but his successful transition to immortality- his restoration to life and his circulation between the next world and this one- allows him also to be their divine saviour.
Plutarch (Moralia 364) compares Dionysos to the Egyptian Osiris, stating that 'the story about the Titans and the Night-festivals agree with what is related of Osiris- dismemberments and returns to life and rebirths'...The restoration of Dionysos to life was (like the return of Kore from Hades at Eleusis) presumably connected with the immortality obtained by the initiates...
So as you can see, Dionysus and Osiris were associated with resurrection and the overcoming of death. Because of this, they were saviors to their followers and gave them eternal life. Their followers hoped to conquer death and be free of sin and punishment just like they were, and just like Christians. There's a whole lot of other parallels between Osris, Dionysus, and Jesus.
During the Greco-Roman era, there was also the deity Serapis which incorporated Osiris, the Apis bull, Dionysus and Asclepius. Three of those deities die and return to life. The Apis bull was born to a virgin cow. Asclepius was known for healing the blind, raising the dead etc. and so Sarapis was also associated with miraculous healings. Epaphus was also associated with the Apis bull, Osiris, and Dionysus. Epaphus just so happens to also have a virgin/miraculous birth. These are all the same motifs you find in the NT texts. The miraculous aspects of Jesus aren't unique.
"Serapis, Boukoloi and Christians from Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius", Livia Capponi in Hadrian and the Christians(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), Marco Rizzi (ed.) 121-140:
Serapis or Osirapis, a fusion of Osiris and the Apis Bull, was basically the sacred bull of Memphis after its death, a combination god that had existed in Egypt since Pharaonic times as a god of the underworld and a symbol of the annual resurrection of nature. Under the Ptolemies, Apis was assimilated or associated to various Hellenistic deities, including Zeus, Helios, Dionysos, Hades and Asklepios to form Serapis, a Hellenised god of the sun (Helios),fertility (Dionysos), the underworld and healing (Asklepios and Hades), who ended up being the most popular god in Egypt and the patron deity of the city of Alexandria...
In Egypt, indeed, Hadrian built new temples, where Serapis and Isis were worshiped along with Hellenic gods, such as Helios, Zeus Hypsistos, Dionysos, Saturn, Asklepios, Ceres-Demetra-Kore. This was in order to promote the integration of the Alexandrian and Egyptian religion with the Graeco-Roman pantheon , and ultimately, to foster loyalty to the empire. All these gods were deities of the underworld and symbols of resurrection and salvation, and could be associated (at least in the eyes of the pagans) with Christ...
The iconography of Serapis as a Greek bearded god with sun-rays around his head like Helios, ram’s horns like Ammon, a serpent encircling his sceptre like Asklepios, the horn of plenty in his left hand like Pluto, a club like Herakles, a sceptre in his left hand and the right hand raised as a sign of majesty like Zeus, presents strong points of contact with the iconography of Christ. Serapis also appears as a sacrificial bull and, alternatively, a shepherd, which recalls the image of Christ as a sacrificial lamb and as the ‘good shepherd’...
The Egyptian worship of Serapis certainly played a role in preparing a spiritual background for the diffusion of Christianity. The Egyptians, trained to celebrate the annual sacrifice and resurrection of Serapis for the redemption of the sins of the country, became genuinely interested in the story of the resurrection of Jesus, and Christian communities emerged, above all in the area of the Fayum.