Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We are
Speaker 2: heading into the vault for an older episode of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind. This is part two of our
Speaker 2: series on Osiris. This episode originally published April fourth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four.
Speaker 1: All right, let's jump bright in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 2: part two of our discussion of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian
Speaker 2: god of fertility, an embodiment of kingship, especially dead kingship
Speaker 2: and the lord and judge of the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also in agricultural god. There's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: complexity to Osiris, and so in the last episode we
Speaker 1: basically talked about who this figure of Osiris is, where
Speaker 1: and when he emerges from as much as we can
Speaker 1: answer that question, and the basic canon of myths surrounding him.
Speaker 2: And the fact that you were inspired to do this
Speaker 2: topic because we covered the movie Doctor Phibes Rises again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like seventy five percent Doctor Five's maybe twenty
Speaker 1: five percent Easter. So props to Doctor Phibes and Jesus
Speaker 1: for inspiring this episode. Now, before we get into some
Speaker 1: we are going to get into some additional questions that
Speaker 1: we tease last time about comparisons to be made between
Speaker 1: the figure of Osiris and other deities and other religions.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, I want to come back
Speaker 1: to a deity that I mentioned in the last episode
Speaker 1: towards the end of it, and that is the Greco
Speaker 1: Egyptian syncretic deity Serapists. This is the deity that is
Speaker 1: established under the rule of the Ptolemies in Egypt, a
Speaker 1: god that combines elements of Osiris and APIs the Sacred Bull.
Speaker 1: These are both again Egyptian deities, along with various Greek
Speaker 1: deities like Zeus and Hades. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: add a little more context on this because I don't
Speaker 1: think I explained the scenario as well as I could have,
Speaker 1: or didn't go into as much detail as I could
Speaker 1: have in a way that I think benefits our understanding.
Speaker 1: Because we get into this idea again of kind of
Speaker 1: like an amalgam god that is to a certain degree,
Speaker 1: kind of built by committee with a certain purpose in mind.
Speaker 1: And that purpose is not just like, oh, I have
Speaker 1: to figure out who you know, what God is real,
Speaker 1: and I must convene with it and get its blessings.
Speaker 2: Robin our outline. You have attached a photo of a
Speaker 2: sculpture of Serapis seated on a throne or at least
Speaker 2: on a chair, sort of dressed in a robe and
Speaker 2: holding up some kind of wand or maybe a scroll
Speaker 2: of a toon of some some sort of cylindrical object.
Speaker 2: But under his other hand, Oh, there's a very good boy.
Speaker 2: It is the three headed hound of Hades, Cerberus.
Speaker 1: That's right, looking very loyal and very domesticated right there
Speaker 1: by his side. There are various You can easily do
Speaker 1: a Google search on Sirapis that's se r A Pi
Speaker 1: s and you'll find various images that basically fit this.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just the head, sometimes you see the full body.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Cerberus is there, sometimes not. But I do have
Speaker 1: to drive home like the utter greekness of this image,
Speaker 1: because this will be important to come back to later,
Speaker 1: Like this is a very Greek looking god. If you
Speaker 1: didn't know exactly what deity this is or what figure
Speaker 1: this is. You wouldn't have to know much at all
Speaker 1: about iconography and sculpture and depictions of the divine to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this looks very Greek to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's certainly a Greek art style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course ye. And then the three headed
Speaker 1: dog right out of Greek mythology. So come back to
Speaker 1: Sirapis here in a set. But just to back up
Speaker 1: a little bit, I do want to drive home that
Speaker 1: Egypt experienced foreign rule at various points throughout its long history.
Speaker 1: There were the Hixos, which I believe we've talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit on the show before. This is a
Speaker 1: term that means rulers of foreign lands, and they controlled
Speaker 1: the Delta region of Egypt during the seventeenth century BCE.
Speaker 1: These were the first foreigners to rule over part of Egypt,
Speaker 1: and there's much that's not known about them, with various
Speaker 1: theories about their exact origin, though it seems that some
Speaker 1: sort of Canaanite origin is possible, and there has also
Speaker 1: been some evidence to suggest that it was perhaps not
Speaker 1: an outward invasion but an uprising of peoples who had
Speaker 1: previously immigrated to the region. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: scholarly dispute on exactly who these people were and what
Speaker 1: this time period consisted of. Now, subsequent invasions by the Nubians,
Speaker 1: the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Greeks also occurred, but
Speaker 1: pertinent to our discussion here is that in three point
Speaker 1: thirty two BCE, Macedonian King Alexander the Great conquered Egypt
Speaker 1: from the Persians, and after his death. After Alexander's death
Speaker 1: in three twenty three BCE, likely by either poison or disease,
Speaker 1: he was only thirty two at the time, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of arguments for the poison
Speaker 1: theory here. But after he dies, a Macedonian general that
Speaker 1: had served under Alexander by the name of Ptolemy, declared
Speaker 1: himself ruler of Egypt, and the Ptolemy family would rule
Speaker 1: Egypt for three centuries. So in her book Egyptian Mythology
Speaker 1: that I cited in the last episode, Jeraldin Pinch writes
Speaker 1: a little bit about this and points out that the
Speaker 1: Ptolemy's ruled from Alexandria, and that is of course where
Speaker 1: they built the Great Library of Alexandria. Though most of
Speaker 1: its contents, she points out would not have concerned Egyptian culture,
Speaker 1: Egyptian history, and Egyptian mythology. You know, Greek culture was
Speaker 1: very much the focal point of the lost contents of
Speaker 1: this place. Most of the Ptolemies apparently never learned to
Speaker 1: speak Egyptian, but the they did, she says, recognize the
Speaker 1: challenges of governing a multicultural society and keeping powerful Egyptian
Speaker 1: factions content. And this is ultimately where the invention of
Speaker 1: Sirapis comes into play, which she describes as quote a
Speaker 1: symbol of cultural fusion. So Sirapis is often described as
Speaker 1: a patron deity for the Ptolemy capital of Alexandria, so
Speaker 1: again a unifying entity. And also in combining all these elements,
Speaker 1: Serapis becomes a god of not only fertility and the underworld,
Speaker 1: which if you were already loaded in our concept of Osiris,
Speaker 1: but also he becomes the god of the sun in
Speaker 1: the sky, and he sometimes credited in this role as
Speaker 1: Zeus Serapis. And it's interesting that by absorbing these various powers,
Speaker 1: he essentially becomes a god of everything, sort of a
Speaker 1: monotheism by monopoly or something like.
Speaker 2: That, one god among many, increasingly absorbing more and more responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I was trying to think of it in
Speaker 1: terms of, like what's a secular example of like have
Speaker 1: have have team mascots ever been merged into single mascots
Speaker 1: for you know, like the unification of sports teams. Have
Speaker 1: the mascots of of uh? Oh, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know fast food chains ever been utilized in this fashion,
Speaker 1: like well, you know, the shones has been taken over
Speaker 1: by McDonald's, and now the Shonese boy or the Shoneese
Speaker 1: Bear must be combined with elements of of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Ronald McDonald or Grimace or something.
Speaker 2: You know like that that is funny, but that that
Speaker 2: does kind of imply a necessary competition, like between sports
Speaker 2: teams or between competitors within a market space, whereas that
Speaker 2: wasn't always the case for gods. I mean, like you could,
Speaker 2: you know, worship multiple gods and that wasn't usually a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But but here we see this this intentional attempt
Speaker 1: to create a deity and create a followship of this
Speaker 1: deity that has stabilizing political objectives behind it. Oh and
Speaker 1: real quick, just because this plays in something we talk
Speaker 1: about in the last episode is we're stressing that Isis
Speaker 1: remains a separate entity, So it's not like they just
Speaker 1: took everything and threw it into this concept of the god.
Speaker 1: That would be too much, I imagine, But distinct gods
Speaker 1: are combined into this entity now. According to Lauren Murphy
Speaker 1: and Beware Greeks bearing God's Serapis as a cross cultural deity,
Speaker 1: published in the journal Amphora in twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 1: invented God doesn't seem to have unified the people in
Speaker 1: any meaningful way as far as we can tell, but
Speaker 1: it does stand as an example of the diversity that
Speaker 1: was present in Egypt at the time. But it was
Speaker 1: the religion of the ruling class of foreigners and those
Speaker 1: wishing to mix with that ruling class of foreigners. And
Speaker 1: also it seems like there were possible connections to an
Speaker 1: inspiration via a pre Ptolemaic cult of Osiris APIs Is.
Speaker 1: One can see in images of Serapis, he's predominantly depicted
Speaker 1: as a Greek deity. But it does sound like there
Speaker 1: might have already been some fusion of Osiris and APIs previously.
Speaker 1: This would not it would seem not be out of
Speaker 1: character with Egyptian religion. Prior to outside influence. Now, the
Speaker 1: Ptolemaic line would of course end with its last ruler,
Speaker 1: Cleopatra in thirty BCE, as it was, and after this
Speaker 1: point it was absorbed by the Roman Empire. Worship of
Speaker 1: Serapis lived on under Roman rule, but experienced eventual decline
Speaker 1: with the spread of Christianity during the fourth century CE.
Speaker 1: I should say like the top down mandated spread of
Speaker 1: Christianity in particular is the death blow to the cult
Speaker 1: of Serapis. So if Serapis is a kind of monotheism
Speaker 1: by monopoly, he's eventually replaced by actual monotheism. And I
Speaker 1: think there's some discussion of whether the worship of a
Speaker 1: figure like Siapis helped pave the way for the of Christianity.
Speaker 1: I've seen that discussed, But at the very least, it
Speaker 1: seems like there are other factors involved here within the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire and regions affected by the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's enough on si Rapist. Let's get back
Speaker 1: to the original deity, but then also into some of
Speaker 1: these conversations about Osiris's possible connection with other cultural traditions.
Speaker 2: Let's return to Osiris right, So, rob when we were
Speaker 2: Initially looking at this topic, I was asking is there
Speaker 2: anything you wanted me to look into? And what you
Speaker 2: suggested was a question that I had read a little
Speaker 2: bit about before, but I was quite intrigued to go
Speaker 2: deeper into. And this is a question that has been
Speaker 2: widely explored in the comparative study of religion, the connecting
Speaker 2: principle or lack thereof, between Osiris and other gods from
Speaker 2: the ancient world, most controversially the Christian Jesus, who are
Speaker 2: believed to in some way die and then rise again,
Speaker 2: so resurrected gods. This question will take us back to
Speaker 2: our old friend James G. Fraser and his incredibly popular,
Speaker 2: influential and controversial work The Golden Boo, which this was
Speaker 2: a book published in several volumes over the course of
Speaker 2: a couple of decades beginning in eighteen ninety. Fraser was
Speaker 2: a Scottish scholar of religion in folklore who lived eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty four to nineteen forty one, and The Golden Bao
Speaker 2: is his best known work. In this book, Fraser catalogs
Speaker 2: and analyzes a huge number of myths, rituals, and magical
Speaker 2: beliefs from cultures around the world. So He sources these
Speaker 2: observations both from like records of things believed in the
Speaker 2: ancient world and you know, ancient myths and practices in
Speaker 2: the Greco Roman world and so forth. All so he
Speaker 2: sources this from ethnographic observations that people have made of
Speaker 2: just beliefs and magical practices in cultures all around the globe,
Speaker 2: using these observations ultimately to support his broader thesis, which
Speaker 2: include the idea that the ritual and mythic elements shared
Speaker 2: by most ancient religions point back to an originating cult
Speaker 2: practice that involved the ritual sacrifice of a holy king
Speaker 2: or guardian figure, often when his fertility was waning, and
Speaker 2: the linkage of that practice to the seasonal rebirth of
Speaker 2: nature and the crops. So his framework has a core
Speaker 2: of this sacrifice of a divine figure, often a divine king,
Speaker 2: and a cycle of death and rebirth that has some
Speaker 2: implications for nature. You can see why this would be
Speaker 2: relevant to the question at hand. Now, before we get
Speaker 2: into the specifics of Resz directed gods, a couple of
Speaker 2: general notes on Fraser and the Golden Bough. I am
Speaker 2: not at all an expert in religious anthropology, but my
Speaker 2: personal take on The Golden Bough is that it is
Speaker 2: on one hand worth reading because it's important in understanding
Speaker 2: the history of Western scholarship on comparative religion, and it's
Speaker 2: also just a very absorbing and fascinating text. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, this is like one hundred tow one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty year old book making the case for
Speaker 2: a sweeping theory of world religions, and it should be
Speaker 2: read with the caution you might expect for that kind
Speaker 2: of work. So I would not take any of its claims,
Speaker 2: specific or general, at face value without checking for confirmation
Speaker 2: and other sources. I would also be skeptical of his
Speaker 2: core theoretical framework, and I would just warn that from
Speaker 2: research we have done on this book in the past,
Speaker 2: I recall discovering that some of Fraser's presentation of ethnographic
Speaker 2: information about religious practices seems often tailored or cherry picked
Speaker 2: to fit his theories. Now the next general note, I
Speaker 2: don't know if what I'm about to say is completely fair,
Speaker 2: because Fraser doesn't say the following exactly, but I think
Speaker 2: one of the informal conclusions that a reader is likely
Speaker 2: to take away from The Golden Bough is that when
Speaker 2: it comes down to it, all religions are basically the
Speaker 2: same and the differences between them are incidental and superficial,
Speaker 2: which I would argue is not correct. And even if
Speaker 2: that's just an unintended takeaway that people would get from
Speaker 2: this book, I think that's a thing that's a conclusion
Speaker 2: that I would really stress people should resist. I do
Speaker 2: think there are common themes that you will find popping
Speaker 2: up again and again in many religions, but not all.
Speaker 2: And I also think that the differences between religious beliefs
Speaker 2: and practices around the world and throughout history do go
Speaker 2: quite deep. Those differences are significan They're not just superficial
Speaker 2: variations on the same thing, and some religions end up
Speaker 2: serving profoundly different purposes. So personally, I wonder if the
Speaker 2: desire to locate so much sameness or commonality between different
Speaker 2: religions is something that really is. It is not something
Speaker 2: that comes out of the religions themselves, but more emerges
Speaker 2: from the need of scholars to have a theory that
Speaker 2: explains how religions work and where they come from, when
Speaker 2: in fact, it's a very just like, messy, complicated, variegated
Speaker 2: phenomenon that you know, lots of different factors are at work,
Speaker 2: and so it's hard to have a very simple theory
Speaker 2: that explains where they come from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, even like the discussion we just had
Speaker 1: about Serapis and Serapis's origins and all. I mean, that
Speaker 1: doesn't fully capture what this entity may have meant and
Speaker 1: the various additional complexities that may have been involved in
Speaker 1: the genesis of this figure. So, yeah, when you get
Speaker 1: into religion, when you get into belief, and you get
Speaker 1: in to these into a process that often you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a tradition that goes for centuries and
Speaker 1: therefore has all sorts of room for change and alteration
Speaker 1: and transformation and so forth.
Speaker 2: That's right, exactly exactly. But anyway, to come back to
Speaker 2: these resurrected gods, A big part of Fraser's model was
Speaker 2: that many religions of the ancient world commonly shared a
Speaker 2: dying and reviving god, usually a male deity associated with fertility,
Speaker 2: who undergoes a divine marriage to a fertility goddess, who
Speaker 2: is then killed or sacrificed sometimes when his fertility wanes
Speaker 2: in some way, and then rises from death to live again.
Speaker 2: And this resurrection is linked to cycles of loss and
Speaker 2: return in the natural and political world, such as the seasons,
Speaker 2: the death of plants in winter and the rebirth in
Speaker 2: spring and summer, the seasonal inundation of the nile, and
Speaker 2: other natural cycles and political cycles, the death of kings
Speaker 2: and the coronation of their errs. So the question is
Speaker 2: do we really find these dying and rising gods all
Speaker 2: throughout the ancient religions. Unfortunately, if you look into this question,
Speaker 2: I think you find the topic horribly polluted by a
Speaker 2: lot of motivated argumentation, primarily tracing back to the question
Speaker 2: of whether Jesus of Nazareth should be thought of as
Speaker 2: one of these dying and rising deities. So this topic
Speaker 2: is infected by both Christian apologetics and anti Christian polemics.
Speaker 2: So you've got, you know, people who don't like Christianity,
Speaker 2: anti Christian polemicists arguing, look, see how stupid Christianity is.
Speaker 2: Jesus is just a copy of these other dying and
Speaker 2: rising deities. And then you've got Christian apologists arguing that no,
Speaker 2: Christianity is totally unique, it is unlike any other religion
Speaker 2: on earth because it is the one true religion and
Speaker 2: all such comparisons are spurious, so caveat that there is
Speaker 2: a lot of that kind of garbage floating around in
Speaker 2: both directions. I'm trying to do my best to put
Speaker 2: together a clear and what seems to me relatively unbiased
Speaker 2: answer to the question of what similarities exist between these
Speaker 2: alleged dying and rising gods and to what extent Osiris
Speaker 2: and Jesus fit into that mold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the real tragedy is that it just makes it
Speaker 1: almost impossible for these two to ever hang out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, all of Jesus's friends are saying Osiris is
Speaker 2: just trying to be like Jesus, and all of Jesus
Speaker 2: Osirius's friends are saying Jesus is just trying to be
Speaker 2: like him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Will the accusations of copying never stop? But anyway, So,
Speaker 2: of course, the dying and reviving Deity's framework was popular
Speaker 2: with Fraser and his allies, so I think in the
Speaker 2: early twentieth century were sort of associated with Cambridge University.
Speaker 2: So I want to go through a couple of the
Speaker 2: examples that Fraser cites and then we'll get into critiques
Speaker 2: of them. So one example is the god Adonis, a
Speaker 2: figure in Greek myth thought to have been derived from
Speaker 2: other ancient Near Eastern deities, such as the Mesopotamian god
Speaker 2: of agriculture, Tamus or Demuzi. Adonis, in many tellings, began
Speaker 2: as a mortal man famed for his beauty. He was
Speaker 2: sort of the pinnacle of hotness, and he was so
Speaker 2: handsome that when he was young, the goddesses Aphrodite and
Speaker 2: Persephone fought bitterly over whether he would live with one
Speaker 2: of them or the other. More on that myth in
Speaker 2: a minute. But then another story is that later in
Speaker 2: his life Adonis was the lover of Aphrodite until he
Speaker 2: was tragically impaled by a wild bore wild hunting, so
Speaker 2: it gets the tusk right in the guts, and so
Speaker 2: he's out there dying in the in the wilderness on
Speaker 2: the hunt, and the goddess Aphrodite comes and weeps over
Speaker 2: his body, and as her tears fall and Adonis's blood
Speaker 2: runs down into the earth, the ground produces delicate flowers.
Speaker 2: Sometimes a specific type of flower is named, so like
Speaker 2: you know you've got. In some understandings of the story,
Speaker 2: the body fluids of these divine lovers combine upon the
Speaker 2: young man's death and bring forth the fruits of the earth,
Speaker 2: and to try to understand the significance of this figure,
Speaker 2: Fraser starts looking at celebrations of the death of Adonnas.
Speaker 1: There was a.
Speaker 2: Festival or a commemoration of the death of Adonnas that
Speaker 2: was celebrated in the summertime, and Fraser looks at accounts
Speaker 2: of this ritual. So Fraser says, quote, at Alexandria, images
Speaker 2: of Aphrodite and Adonis were displayed on two couches. Beside
Speaker 2: them were set ripe fruits of all kinds, cakes, plants
Speaker 2: growing in flower pots, and green bowers twined with Annis.
Speaker 2: The marriage of the lovers was celebrated one day, and
Speaker 2: then on the morrow, women attired as mourners, with streaming
Speaker 2: hair and bared breasts, bore the image of the dead
Speaker 2: Adonnas to the seashore and committed it to the waves.
Speaker 2: Yet they sorrowed not without hope, for they sang that
Speaker 2: the lost would come back again. And after describing more
Speaker 2: of these rituals, Fraser says, summarizing quote, we may therefore
Speaker 2: accept as probable an explanation of the Adonis worship, which
Speaker 2: accords so well with the facts of nature and with
Speaker 2: the analogy of similar rights in other lands. Moreover, the
Speaker 2: explanation is countenanced by a considerable body of opinion amongst
Speaker 2: the ancients themselves, who again and again interpreted the dying
Speaker 2: and reviving God as the reaped and sprouting grain. Fraser
Speaker 2: also cites Temus, the Mesopotamian god from which Adonis is
Speaker 2: probably derived. Tamus was the consort of the goddess Inana
Speaker 2: and was also linked to crop cycles and apparently images
Speaker 2: of death and rebirth. Among many gods Fraser offers as
Speaker 2: displaying death and resurrection. He also cites the Egyptian god Osiris. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, we already went over the basic myth of Osiris,
Speaker 2: But what does Fraser have to say about the meaning
Speaker 2: of Osiris here? So I'm going to read a couple
Speaker 2: of lengthier quotes from Fraser here on Osiris.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: In the resurrection of Osiris, the Egyptians saw the pledge
Speaker 2: of a life everlasting for themselves beyond the grave. They
Speaker 2: believed that every man would live eternally in the other
Speaker 2: world if only his surviving friends did for his body
Speaker 2: what the gods had done for the body of Osiris. Hence,
Speaker 2: the ceremonies observed by the Egyptians over the human dead
Speaker 2: were an exact copy of those which Annibis, Horus and
Speaker 2: the rest had performed over the dead god. And then
Speaker 2: he goes on. At every burial there was enacted a
Speaker 2: representation of the divine mystery which had been performed of
Speaker 2: old over Osiris, when his son, his sisters, his friends
Speaker 2: were gathered round his mangled remains and succeeded by their
Speaker 2: spells and manipulations in converting his broken body into the
Speaker 2: first mummy, which they afterwards reanimated and furnished with the
Speaker 2: means of entering on a new individual life beyond the grave.
Speaker 2: The mummy of the deceased was Osiris. The professional female
Speaker 2: mourners were his two sisters, Isis and Nepthis Annibis Horas,
Speaker 2: all the gods of the Osirian legend gathered about the corpse.
Speaker 2: In this way, every dead Egyptian was identified with Osiris
Speaker 2: and bore his name. From the Middle Kingdom onwards, it
Speaker 2: was the regular practice to address the deceased as Osiris
Speaker 2: so and so, as if he were the god himself,
Speaker 2: and to add the standing epithet true of speech, because
Speaker 2: true speech was characteristic of Osiris. The thousands of inscribed
Speaker 2: and pictured tombs that have been opened in the Valley
Speaker 2: of the Nile prove that the mystery of the resurrection
Speaker 2: was performed for the benefit of every dead Egyptian. As
Speaker 2: Osiris died and rose again from the dead, so all
Speaker 2: men hoped to arise like him from death to life eternal.
Speaker 2: So there's a kind of in what Fraser is implying here,
Speaker 2: there's a kind of special role for Osiris, especially when
Speaker 2: compared to some of these other examples of allegedly dying
Speaker 2: and reviving gods, where Osiris not only in Fraser's mind,
Speaker 2: dies and then is brought to life again, but by
Speaker 2: re enacting what happens to Osiris, he shows the way
Speaker 2: the people that regular mortals can also be revived again
Speaker 2: after death, though we will add some qualifications to in
Speaker 2: what sense they should be thought of as revived. So
Speaker 2: one thing that of course causes controversy is that among
Speaker 2: many of these examples, Fraser also brings up the example
Speaker 2: of Christ, the Christian Jesus, drawing direct connection between the
Speaker 2: Easter resurrection of Christ and say, the rituals of Adonis.
Speaker 2: This drew scorn from conservative Christians, of course, but you
Speaker 2: might expect that, but the question would remain, were these
Speaker 2: comparisons sound comparisons between all these different figures? And I think,
Speaker 2: after doing some additional reading, I think the answer is
Speaker 2: a little bit but mostly no.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Later in the twentieth century, Fraser's category of dying and
Speaker 2: reviving gods came under what seems to me like quite
Speaker 2: legitimate criticism by other major scholars. One notable name here
Speaker 2: is the American historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith, who
Speaker 2: was affiliated with the University of Chicago and directly addressing
Speaker 2: this question of dying and reviving gods. Smith wrote a
Speaker 2: highly cited entry in the Encyclopedia of Religion edited by Eliade.
Speaker 2: The entry was called Dying and Rising Gods, and in
Speaker 2: this chapter Smith showed that really the category of dying
Speaker 2: and Rising gods is not much of a category, in
Speaker 2: that most of the items Fraser and others placed within
Speaker 2: the class are quote based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly
Speaker 2: late or highly ambiguous texts. In other words, this this
Speaker 2: category emerges from reliance on questionable sources and on tortured
Speaker 2: readings of legitimate source materials to try to fit them
Speaker 2: into the resurrected god box. So how would that be
Speaker 2: given what we just looked at. It seemed like Fraser
Speaker 2: presented some good examples.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Smith says that actually, if you look at the examples
Speaker 2: Fraser sites, there aren't any fully dying and rising gods. Instead,
Speaker 2: you have two distinct categories. One is dying gods. These
Speaker 2: are gods that die but are not said to rise
Speaker 2: again from death. And the other is disappearing gods. Gods
Speaker 2: that disappear and then in some cases reappear, sometimes quote
Speaker 2: with monotonous frequency. But the disappearance is not death and
Speaker 2: the reappearance is not resurrection.
Speaker 1: Okay, well we may have to have some examples of this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, adnnask has got you covered here, so I'm
Speaker 2: going to look in detail at the example of Adonnas.
Speaker 2: Smith says, there are two main myths of Adonnas that
Speaker 2: we know from our sources. One is the one I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, where Adonis is killed by a bore and
Speaker 2: his lover Aphrodite weeps over his body and creates a
Speaker 2: fragile flower. So in this myth, Adonnis dies but he
Speaker 2: does not rise. Fraser sort of allides this by connecting
Speaker 2: the story to the mourning celebration of Adonnas's death with
Speaker 2: sort of the involvement of summer crops and plants and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. But in the story, Adonnas just dies.
Speaker 2: We'll get to the rituals in a second. But in
Speaker 2: the story there's no resurrection, and the festival created by
Speaker 2: Aphrodite to commemorate his death is a festival of mourning.
Speaker 2: The other Adonnas myth to quote Smith here tells of
Speaker 2: quote a quarrel between two goddesses, Aphrodite and Persephone, for
Speaker 2: the affections of the infant Adonis Zeus or Calliope decrees
Speaker 2: that Adonnas should spend part of the in the upper
Speaker 2: world with one I assume with Aphrodite, and part of
Speaker 2: the year in the lower world with the other. I
Speaker 2: assume that would be Persephone. This tradition of by location
Speaker 2: similar to that connected with Persephone and perhaps DEMUSI has
Speaker 2: no suggestion of death and rebirth, So you could argue
Speaker 2: maybe that going into the underworld and then coming back
Speaker 2: to the upper world has like resonance with the idea
Speaker 2: of resurrection. There's some kind of symbolic linkage. It's thematically similar,
Speaker 2: but it is not literally the same thing.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that that becomes obvious when you
Speaker 1: look at any number of stories about characters venturing into
Speaker 1: the underworld, it generally has the flavor of a physical journey.
Speaker 1: And we see that even carried on into literary traditions,
Speaker 1: like even in Dante's Inferno, Like Dante does not die
Speaker 1: and to send into the Inferno. No, he travels there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in some important senses he is changed, but he doesn't.
Speaker 2: He doesn't like have to go through bodily death.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But okay, So Fraser was also looking not just at
Speaker 2: like written versions of the Adonna Smith, but also at
Speaker 2: rituals to see what people believed about him. So what
Speaker 2: about evidence for the resurrection of Adonnas in ritual? In
Speaker 2: terms of ritual, there are later sources possibly linking Adonnas
Speaker 2: to resurrection, but these sources are problematic. According to Jonathan Smith,
Speaker 2: there is one allegedly second century source by Lucien that
Speaker 2: in a pretty sketchy and ambiguous way, describes rituals which
Speaker 2: could be interpreted as celebrating the resurrection of Adonnas, but
Speaker 2: it's not clear at all that this is what Lucian
Speaker 2: is describing. To quote from Smith's summary, Lucian says, quote,
Speaker 2: on the third day of the ritual, a statue of
Speaker 2: Adonnas is quote brought out into the light and quote
Speaker 2: dressed as if alive. And I was thinking, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: but aren't many cult statues addressed as if alive?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, and yeah. You get into a complex area
Speaker 1: of interpretation when you figure out, like what does it
Speaker 1: mean for someone to address a statue of a deity?
Speaker 2: Right, So, a cult statue may have some kind of
Speaker 2: eternal existence that it is connected to, even if it
Speaker 2: is an image of a god who has died, But
Speaker 2: that doesn't necessarily mean if you're like talking to the
Speaker 2: statue that you believe that the god was resurrected again
Speaker 2: from death.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then Smith says that there are other descriptions of
Speaker 2: these rituals which do make unambiguous reference to the resurrection
Speaker 2: of Adonnas, but they only show up later in the
Speaker 2: Roman period, after the spread of Christianity, and they are
Speaker 2: written by Christians in a way that raises questions about them, Like,
Speaker 2: so if Christians are saying that worshippers of Adonnas are
Speaker 2: saying Adonis was raised from the dead, is the resurrected
Speaker 2: God theme of Christianity perhaps having some influence on the
Speaker 2: myth of Adonis by this point, or is the resurrected
Speaker 2: God theme of Christianity influencing the way Christian observers interpret
Speaker 2: the rituals of Roman pagans.
Speaker 1: Hmm, yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 2: So Smith says, quote this pattern will recur for many
Speaker 2: of the figures considered an indigenous mythology and ritual focusing
Speaker 2: on the deities death and rituals of lamentation, followed by
Speaker 2: a later Christian report adding the element nowhere found in
Speaker 2: the earlier native sources that the God was resurrected. I
Speaker 2: think that is a very interesting pattern. So like Christian
Speaker 2: observers look at other religions and they see a dead God,
Speaker 2: and it's quite possible they just assume that a dead
Speaker 2: God is supposed to rise again and kind of read
Speaker 2: that into the ritual.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think then there's probably a case to
Speaker 1: be made, even like the spread of Christianity and like
Speaker 1: the reinterpretation often with you know, an agenda of of tradition,
Speaker 1: local traditions, taking existing religious traditions and sort of reframing
Speaker 1: them in the light of the Christian religion exactly.
Speaker 2: So, but what about the thing about symbolic rebirth. What
Speaker 2: about the the ritual and mythic association that Fraser seems
Speaker 2: to allege between Adonnas and plant life, which you know
Speaker 2: dies in the winter and is quote resurrected in spring.
Speaker 2: Well Smith says, if you look at ancient sources, even
Speaker 2: these symbolic associations are not present in the worship of Adonnas.
Speaker 2: Smith writes, quote, the frequently cited gardens of Adonnas the
Speaker 2: Kepoi were proverbial illustrations of the brief, transitory nature of
Speaker 2: life and contain no hint of rebirth. The point is
Speaker 2: that the young plant shoots rapidly, wither and die, not
Speaker 2: that the seeds have been reborn when they sprout. So
Speaker 2: I thought that was also really interesting, because I would
Speaker 2: just so easily and so naturally look at a sort
Speaker 2: of plant based ritual celebration and assume it had something
Speaker 2: to do with cycles of death and rebirth. But that's
Speaker 2: an assumption that might not be what the people doing
Speaker 2: that practice think it means. So Smith is saying what
Speaker 2: ancient people said about these gardens was not that they
Speaker 2: were to emphasize the theme of resurrection, but to emphasize
Speaker 2: the theme once again of mourning and loss of the
Speaker 2: beautiful youth who died too soon, just like these young
Speaker 2: plant shoots that come up and then wither rapidly. I
Speaker 2: feel like this kind of thing makes me a little
Speaker 2: more cautious about my my myth interpretation goggles that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean absolutely. It even goes back to some
Speaker 1: of the ways that we discussed and cited discussions of
Speaker 1: Osiris in the first episode, you know, thinking about how
Speaker 1: this basic myth matches up with you know, cyclical life
Speaker 1: and death and the agricultural cycles as well.
Speaker 2: But okay, that's a donnas. What about Osiris? It seems
Speaker 2: to me that of all the examples that Smith looks at,
Speaker 2: Osiris comes the closest to being genuinely killed and resurrected
Speaker 2: on a plane reading of the myth. But is he
Speaker 2: really resurrected? Smith argues, no, Osiris is not actually resurrected,
Speaker 2: because remember, of course, Osiris in the story is killed
Speaker 2: and dismembered by Seth or set and then the pieces
Speaker 2: of his body are put back together again and he
Speaker 2: is rejuvenated, but not in this world. Instead, he goes
Speaker 2: on living in the other place, in the underworld, the
Speaker 2: realm of the dead, where he is empowered to become
Speaker 2: the master and judge of the wandering dead. So he
Speaker 2: does not rise from the dead. He goes on living
Speaker 2: in the afterlife. So it almost seems to me that
Speaker 2: his resurrection in the afterlife could be seen as kind
Speaker 2: of anonymous with his enthronement as the lord of the
Speaker 2: dead and his empowerment to serve the role of judgment.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And regarding the ritual reenactment of the story in
Speaker 2: osiris worship practices, Smith says, quote the repeated formula rise up,
Speaker 2: you have not died, whether applied to Osiris or a
Speaker 2: citizen of Egypt, signaled a new permanent life in the
Speaker 2: realm of the dead.
Speaker 1: That's right. Going back to what we said about the
Speaker 1: idea that Osiris is ultimately kind of the opener of
Speaker 1: the way that democratizes or helps propel the already existing
Speaker 1: democratization of the afterlife. It's no longer just for kings.
Speaker 1: It is now something that everyone has access to, provided
Speaker 1: you can have the right mummification procedures performed on your
Speaker 1: body exactly.
Speaker 2: And so this is something that Fraser was saying, where
Speaker 2: I think he was sort of on the right track
Speaker 2: in the case of Osiris. Smith argues that in the
Speaker 2: case of Osiris, there is a clear link between myth
Speaker 2: and ritual. There's the strong connection, which is something that
Speaker 2: Fraser is always trying to emphasize, is the link between
Speaker 2: myth and ritual and myths sort of being the story
Speaker 2: like that the ritual re enacts the myth, and the
Speaker 2: myth in Fraser's telling is often derived from the ritual.
Speaker 2: It's like a narrativizing of the ritual. But whatever the
Speaker 2: actual chain of events there is in this case, there
Speaker 2: is clearly a strong link between the myth and the ritual.
Speaker 2: In that the mythical description of the recovery and reassembly
Speaker 2: of the pieces of the body of Osiris, I believe
Speaker 2: this is by Isis and his allies. This is a
Speaker 2: clear parallel of the funeral rits of Egypt. Smith lists
Speaker 2: these funeral rites quote the vigil over his corpse, then
Speaker 2: the hymns of lamentation, the embalmment usually performed by Annibis,
Speaker 2: the washing and purification of the corpse, the undertaking of
Speaker 2: the elaborate ritual of the opening of the mouth with
Speaker 2: its one hundred and seven separate operations, as well as
Speaker 2: other procedures for reanimation, the dressing of the body and
Speaker 2: the pouring out of libations. So in a way, the
Speaker 2: dead Egyptian would, in a sense, through having the funeral
Speaker 2: rites performed upon their body, become Osiris, and just like Osiris,
Speaker 2: though dead to this world, they would awaken to a
Speaker 2: new life in another world. Smith writes, quote the myth
Speaker 2: and ritual of Osiris emphasizes the message that there is
Speaker 2: life for the dead, although it is of a different
Speaker 2: character than that of the living. What is to be
Speaker 2: feared is in a quote from the Book of Going
Speaker 2: forth by Day. I think this is another name for
Speaker 2: what is sometimes called the Book of the Dead quote
Speaker 2: dying for a second time in the realm of the dead.
Speaker 2: And there are ways that, according to the story, this
Speaker 2: can happen to you, for example, being devoured by the lion, hippopotamus,
Speaker 2: crocodile monster am it in the underworld.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, we've talked a little bit about the
Speaker 1: complexity of the ancient Egyptian afterlife before, where it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not just a it's it's it's not something you
Speaker 1: could compare just sort of like the sort of mainstream
Speaker 1: vision of a Christian heaven. It is a place where
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna need your spells, you're gonna need your followers,
Speaker 1: You're gonna need tools and a plan in order to
Speaker 1: make the best go of.
Speaker 2: It, exactly right, you have to prepare. It's not just
Speaker 2: that you have to be worthy of the good afterlife,
Speaker 2: but like in in some visions, it takes like work
Speaker 2: to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is of course, this is not just
Speaker 1: an ancient Egyptian religion. There are various examples we can
Speaker 1: turn to where like that journey between this life and
Speaker 1: the next is one that is perilous and has to
Speaker 1: go just right an other in order to work right.
Speaker 2: So it seems to me that of the examples Fraser
Speaker 2: brings up o Cyrus maybe comes the closest, or is
Speaker 2: one of the closer ones to being a true dying
Speaker 2: and reviving God. But even in his case, there's a
Speaker 2: pretty strong conceptual distinction of what the new life is
Speaker 2: that makes calling this a resurrection somewhat strained. So, after
Speaker 2: analyzing all of the most prominent cases of alleged dying
Speaker 2: and reviving gods. Smith concludes as follows quote. As the
Speaker 2: above examples make plain, the category of dying and rising
Speaker 2: deities is exceedingly dubious. It has been based largely on
Speaker 2: Christian interest and tenuous evidence. As such, the category is
Speaker 2: of more interest to the history of scholarship than to
Speaker 2: the history of religions. And you know, so that might
Speaker 2: kind of make you think like, ah, well, then who cares?
Speaker 2: But I think it is actually very illustrative that you
Speaker 2: can see this category sort of emerge, where with scholars
Speaker 2: trying to make sense of all these different stories and
Speaker 2: rituals and stuff, and putting all these gods and figures
Speaker 2: from myths into the category, and ultimately, if you look
Speaker 2: really close, it's not a super cohesive category, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the things, maybe all the things put into
Speaker 2: it don't really fit and don't have as much in
Speaker 2: common as the scholar is claiming they do. And if
Speaker 2: Smith is correct here, I find his case pretty convincing.
Speaker 2: If he's correct about this being largely based on Christian
Speaker 2: interest by scholars from Christian cultures, I think that's also
Speaker 2: illuminating that like dominant sort of story themes within your
Speaker 2: culture that seem very familiar to you, just kind of
Speaker 2: naturally manifest when looking at ambiguously similar things in other
Speaker 2: cultural contexts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I mean at times it can be
Speaker 1: a very useful exercise and either helping us to get
Speaker 1: a leg up on understanding another culture or another system
Speaker 1: of beliefs. It can also be a frame of commonality.
Speaker 1: It can be very positive in terms of like seeing
Speaker 1: the similarities rather than differences. But yeah, when you get
Speaker 1: into like this deeper attempt to understand the religion, you
Speaker 1: could see where some of it could cast too much
Speaker 1: of a shadow on your interpretation of this other way
Speaker 1: of looking at the cosmos.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. But then on the other hand,
Speaker 2: I want to come back and say we shouldn't stop
Speaker 2: looking at similarities between religions because there are similarities. Like
Speaker 2: Smith says, Yeah, this dying and reviving god category doesn't
Speaker 2: make a whole lot of sense, But there are these
Speaker 2: other patterns you can see, like dying gods. There are
Speaker 2: a bunch of dying god myths that have interesting things
Speaker 2: in common, and you could kind of look at, like,
Speaker 2: why do they have these things in common that that's
Speaker 2: worth studying. You also have this pattern of the disappearing
Speaker 2: and sometimes reappearing God myth. What does that tell us
Speaker 2: about religions? You can look at these similarities, and so
Speaker 2: it's also not unreasonable to look at similarities between Christianity,
Speaker 2: a religion that certainly does have a dying and reviving God,
Speaker 2: with some of these other religions. And so one source
Speaker 2: that came across that I thought made a very interesting
Speaker 2: point A was a chapter called Resurrection in Ancient Egypt
Speaker 2: by the German egypt ptologist jan Osman, who has plenty
Speaker 2: of his own ideas he's pushing about, like the lineage
Speaker 2: of certain types of resurrection beliefs. I think ultimately he
Speaker 2: thinks that a lot of these beliefs have an original
Speaker 2: source in Egyptian religion and then spread out to other places.
Speaker 2: But regardless of whether he's correct about that, I think
Speaker 2: he makes a very good point about a similarity between
Speaker 2: belief in Christ and the earlier belief in Osiris, which,
Speaker 2: on one hand, you have plenty of differences, like the
Speaker 2: death of Jesus is a one time event that is
Speaker 2: situated within history. It said, like, you know, well, he's
Speaker 2: a man who existed at a certain time and place
Speaker 2: in history, and so it's like his death is a
Speaker 2: historical event, not something that takes place within a kind
Speaker 2: of mythic time or a within a mythic landscape. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, you could look at the deaths
Speaker 2: and revivals of these two god figures, is having a
Speaker 2: lot in common in that, as Osman says quote, through
Speaker 2: his death and resurrection, Christ has paved the way to
Speaker 2: Paradise or Elysium in a way not altogether dissimilar from
Speaker 2: that of Osiris, who also threw his victory over seth
Speaker 2: opened a realm beyond the realm of death. The decisive
Speaker 2: common denominator of Christianity and ancient Egyptian religion is the
Speaker 2: idea of redemption from death, that beyond the realm of death,
Speaker 2: there is an Elysian realm of eternal life in the
Speaker 2: presence of the divine. So in both cases you can
Speaker 2: look at these gods as gods who were killed and
Speaker 2: then in some sense revived. Christ is said to be
Speaker 2: revived onto earth and then ascends into heaven. Osiris is
Speaker 2: revived and made lord, a lord of the underworld and
Speaker 2: judge of the dead. But in both cases they open
Speaker 2: the way for people to have a sort of heaven again.
Speaker 2: Want to put the star on heaven there and say
Speaker 2: it means different things in the two different concepts, but
Speaker 2: it is a positive afterlife that is now available to
Speaker 2: the people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. In both cases, the individual is the opener
Speaker 1: of the way, you know, and the Ptolemies might come
Speaker 1: along and say, you know, we have this guy named
Speaker 1: Serapis and he does all.
Speaker 2: Of this as well, perfect give me all three. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well he's got a dog. Wait now, was he often
Speaker 2: depicted as having Cerberus by his side, like having a
Speaker 2: three headed pup or is that just a unique feature
Speaker 2: of that sculpture.
Speaker 1: I mean, based on the remaining images of Serapis, it
Speaker 1: does seem like it seems like he is sometimes depicted
Speaker 1: with Cerberus, and I believe that that is simply because, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are going to take this character of Osiris,
Speaker 1: who is a god of the underworld, and you are
Speaker 1: going to spin him into this this very Greek themed model,
Speaker 1: well then you're going to drag in Hades, and you're
Speaker 1: going to drag in like this key example of sort
Speaker 1: of in a way summing up this idea of the
Speaker 1: taming of death. Right. So that's my understanding of it.
Speaker 1: But I I certainly have seen other depictions of him
Speaker 1: that don't have the dog present. All right, Well, on
Speaker 1: that note, I believe we're going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: close the book on Osiris here with the caveat that
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the next core episode is going
Speaker 1: to be, but we were throwing around the idea of
Speaker 1: doing something that was still kind of Osiris, but is
Speaker 1: not Osiris Part three, So just I don't know. You'd
Speaker 1: have to see what happens, and we shall see what
Speaker 1: happens as well.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out
Speaker 1: there if you have thoughts on this two parter, if
Speaker 1: you have thoughts on past episodes or potential future episodes
Speaker 1: right in we would love to hear from you. Just
Speaker 1: a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 1: a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, but on Mondays we do listener mail, on
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
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