WEBVTT - The Cult of Osiris, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:14.920 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:16.120 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:19.000 And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:23.400 two of our discussion of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:28.720 of fertility, an embodiment of kingship, especially dead kingship and 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:31.040 the lord and judge of the dead. 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:36.840 Yeah, also in agricultural god. There's a lot of complexity 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.120 to Osiris, and so in the last episode we basically 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:45.279 talked about who this figure of Osiris is, where and 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.360 when he emerges from, as much as we can answer 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:52.080 that question, and the basic canon of myths surrounding him. 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:54.600 And the fact that you were inspired to do this 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:58.720 topic because we covered the movie Doctor Five's Rises again. 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.000 Yeah. Yeah, like seventy five percent Doctor Phibs, maybe twenty 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:05.360 five percent Easter. So props to Doctor Phibes than Jesus 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.959 for inspiring this episode. Now, before we get into some 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:12.360 we are going to get into some additional questions that 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:16.240 we tease last time about comparisons to be made between 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:22.039 the figure of Osiris and other deities and other religions. 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:24.320 But before we do that I want to come back 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.280 to a deity that I mentioned in the last episode 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.200 towards the end of it, and that is the Greco 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:37.080 Egyptian syncretic deity Serapists. This is the deity that is 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.920 established under the rule of the Ptolemies in Egypt, a 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:45.680 god that combines elements of Osiris and APIs, the Sacred Bull. 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.680 These are both again Egyptian deities, along with various Greek 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.760 deities like Zeus and Hades. So I just wanted to 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.000 add a little more context on this because I don't 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.680 think I explained the scenario as well as I could have, 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:00.880 or didn't go into as much detail as I could 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:03.760 have in a way that I think benefits our understanding, 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:06.280 because we get into this idea again of kind of 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.440 like an amalgam god that is, to a certain degree, 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:13.600 kind of built by committee with a certain purpose in mind. 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:15.680 And that purpose is not just like, oh, I have 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.399 to figure out who you know, what God is real 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:20.040 and I must convene with it and get its blessings. 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.120 Rob in our outline, you have attached a photo of 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:26.720 a sculpture of Serapis seated on a throne, or at 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.520 least on a chair sort of dressed in a robe 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:33.520 and holding up some kind of wand or maybe a 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.720 scroll of a toon of some some sort of cylindrical object. 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:39.600 But under his other hand, oh, there's a very good boy. 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:41.919 It is the three headed hound of Hades. 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.480 Cerberus that's right, looking very loyal and very domesticated right 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.840 there by his side. There are various that you can 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:52.639 easily do a Google search on Siapis that's se r 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:57.040 a Pi s and you'll find various images that basically 0:02:57.040 --> 0:02:59.720 fit this. Sometimes it's just the head, sometimes you see 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.600 the full body. Sometimes Cerberus is there, sometimes not. But 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:06.640 I do have to drive home like the utter greekness 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.079 of this image, because this will be important to come 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.960 back to later, Like this is a very Greek looking god. 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.000 If you didn't know exactly what deity this is, or 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.359 what figure this is, you wouldn't have to know much 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.880 at all about iconography and sculpture and depictions of the 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.680 divine to say, oh, this looks very Greek to me. 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:27.959 Yeah, it's certainly a Greek art style. 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:30.960 Yeah, and of course ye, and then the three headed 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:33.680 dog right out of Greek mythology. So come back to 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:37.680 Sorapis here in a second. But just to back up 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:39.040 a little bit, I do want to drive home that 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:44.440 Egypt experienced foreign rule at various points throughout its long history. 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.720 There were the Hisos, which I believe we've talked about 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:49.880 a little bit on the show before. This is a 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.280 term that means rulers of foreign lands, and they controlled 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.360 the Delta region of Egypt during the seventeenth century BCE. 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.640 These were the first foreigners to rule over part of Egypt, 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.160 and there's much that's not known about them, with various 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.320 theories about their exact origin, though it seems that some 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.520 sort of Canaanite origin is possible, and there has also 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.760 been some evidence to suggest that it was perhaps not 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:16.600 an outward invasion, but an uprising of peoples who had 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.400 previously immigrated to the regions. So there's a lot of 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.960 scholarly dispute on exactly who these people were and what 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:28.520 this time period consisted of. Now, subsequent invasions by the Nubians, 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.479 the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Greeks also occurred, but 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.719 pertinent to our discussion here is that in three point 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:40.760 thirty two BCE, Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered Egypt 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.000 from the Persians and after his death. After Alexander's death 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:49.240 in three twenty three BCE, likely by either poison or disease. 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.400 He was only thirty two at the time, so there's 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.919 a lot of arguments for the poison theory here. But 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:59.560 after he dies, a Macedonian general that had served under Alexander, 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.960 by the of Ptolemy, declared himself ruler of Egypt, and 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.560 the Ptolemy family would rule Egypt for three centuries. So 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.080 in her book Egyptian Mythology that I cited in the 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.760 last episode, Jeraldine Pinch writes a little bit about this 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.680 and points out that the Ptolemy's ruled from Alexandria, and 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:17.880 that is the course where they built the Great Library 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.960 of Alexandria. Though most of its contents, she points out, 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.840 would not have concerned Egyptian culture, Egyptian history, and Egyptian mythology, 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.320 you know, Greek culture was very much the focal point 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:32.160 of the lost contents of this place. Most of the 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:36.039 Ptolemy's apparently never learned to speak Egyptian, but they did, 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:40.360 she says, recognize the challenges of governing a multicultural society 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:45.839 and keeping powerful Egyptian factions content and this is ultimately 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:48.760 where the invention of Sirapis comes into play, which she 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:53.040 describes as quote a symbol of cultural fusion. So Sirapis 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.480 is often described as a patron deity for the Ptolemy 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:00.640 capital of Alexandria, so again a unifying entity. And also 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.400 in combining all these elements, Serapists becomes a god of 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.360 not only fertility and the underworld, which, if you know, 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:11.240 we're already loaded in our concept of Osiris, but also 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.400 he becomes the god of the sun in the sky 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:18.680 and he sometimes credited in this role as Zeus Serapis. 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.520 And it's interesting that by absorbing these various powers, he 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.440 essentially becomes a god of everything, sort of a monotheism 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:28.400 by monopoly or something like. 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:34.600 That, one god among many, increasingly absorbing more and more responsibilities. 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:36.839 Yeah, Like I was trying to think of it in 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.480 terms of, like what's a secular example of like have 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:44.320 have team mascots ever been merged into single mascots for 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.200 you know, like the unification of sports teams. Have the 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:52.480 mascots of of Oh, I don't know, fast food chains 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.360 ever been utilized in this fashion, Like well, you know, 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.240 the Shones has been taken over by McDonald's and now 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.560 the Shonese Boy or the Shonese Bear must be combined 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.760 with elements of of you know, the Ronald MacDonald or 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:06.719 Grimace or something. 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.240 You know like that that is funny, but that that 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.600 does kind of imply a necessary competition, like between sports 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.200 teams or between competitors within a market space, whereas that 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.560 wasn't always the case for gods. I mean, like you could, 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.520 you know, worship multiple gods and that wasn't usually a problem. 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:30.040 Yeah, But but here we see this this intentional attempt 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.480 to create a deity and create a followship of this 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:41.280 deity that that has stabilizing political objectives behind it. Owen 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.240 real quick just because this plays. And something we talk 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.320 about in the last episode is we're stressing that isis 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:47.440 remains a separate entity. So it's not like they just 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:50.400 took everything and threw it into this concept of the god. 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:54.000 That would be that would be too much, I imagine. 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:58.840 But distinct gods are combined into this entity now. According 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.760 to Lauren Murphy and Beware Greeks, bearing God's serapis as 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.040 a cross cultural deity, published in the journal Amphora in 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.280 twenty twenty one, the invented God doesn't seem to have 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.680 unified the people in any meaningful way as far as 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:14.640 we can tell, but it does stand as an example 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:17.000 of the diversity that was present in Egypt at the time. 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:20.200 But it was the religion of the ruling class of 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.840 foreigners and those wishing to mix with that ruling class 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.440 of foreigners. And also it seems like there were possible 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:32.720 connections to an inspiration via a pre Ptolemaic cult of 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:37.439 Osiris APIs, as one can see in images of Serapis, 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:40.040 he's predominantly depicted as a Greek deity, but it does 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.800 sound like there might have already been some fusion of 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.880 Osiris and APIs previously. This would not it would seem 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:52.560 not be out of character with Egyptian religion prior to 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.959 outside influence. Now, the Ptolemaic line would of course end 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:01.760 with its last ruler, Cleopatra, in thirty as it was, 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:04.480 and after this point it was absorbed by the Roman Empire. 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.360 Worship of Serapis lived on under Roman rule but experienced 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.760 eventual decline with the spread of Christianity during the fourth 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.400 century CE. I should say, like the top down mandated 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:19.720 spread of Christianity in particular, is the death blow to 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.720 the cult of Serapis. So if Sirapis is a kind 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:28.319 of monotheism by monopoly, he's eventually replaced by actual monotheism. 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.679 And I think there's some discussion of whether the worship 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.199 of a figure like Sirapis helped pave the way for 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:38.400 the rise of Christianity. I've seen that discussed, but at 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:40.760 the very least, it seems like there are other factors 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.560 involved here within the Roman Empire and regions affected by 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:45.480 the Roman Empire. 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:46.400 Interesting. 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.280 But anyway, that's enough on Sirapis. Let's get back to 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:00.679 the original deity, but then also into some of these 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:06.520 conversations about Osirius's possible connection with other cultural traditions. Let's 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:08.440 return to Osiris, right. 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.320 So, Rob, when we were initially looking at this topic, 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:16.120 I was asking, is there anything you wanted me to 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.920 look into? And what you suggested was a question that 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:21.440 I had read a little bit about before, but I 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.240 was quite intrigued to go deeper into. And this is 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.319 a question that has been widely explored in the comparative 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:33.640 study of religion. The connecting principle or lack thereof, between 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:38.000 Osiris and other gods from the ancient world, most controversially 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.800 the Christian Jesus, who are believed to in some way 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:48.560 die and then rise again, so resurrected gods. This question 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.199 will take us back to our old friend James G. 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:56.480 Fraser and his incredibly popular, influential and controversial work The 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.720 Golden Bough, which this was a book published in several 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.240 of over the course of a couple of decades, beginning 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:07.320 in eighteen ninety. Fraser was a Scottish scholar of religion 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.600 in folklore who lived eighteen fifty four to nineteen forty one, 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.480 and The Golden Bough is his best known work. In 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:19.880 this book, Fraser catalogs and analyzes a huge number of myths, rituals, 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.800 and magical beliefs from cultures around the world. So he 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:28.960 sources these observations both from like records of things believed 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:31.280 in the ancient world and you know, ancient myths and 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.840 practices in the Greco Roman world and so forth, but 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:40.560 also he sources this from ethnographic observations that people have 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.200 made of just beliefs and magical practices in cultures all 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:48.920 around the globe, using these observations ultimately to support his 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:53.720 broader thesis, which include the idea that the ritual and 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.960 mythic elements shared by most ancient religions point back to 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:03.719 an originating cult practice that involved the ritual sacrifice of 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.880 a holy king or guardian figure, often when his fertility 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:12.720 was waning, and the linkage of that practice to the 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:16.840 seasonal rebirth of nature and the crops. So his framework 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.920 has a core of this sacrifice of a divine figure, 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.679 often a divine king, and a cycle of death and 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.840 rebirth that has some implications for nature. You can see 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.679 why this would be relevant to the question at hand. Now, 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:36.920 before we get into the specifics of resurrected gods, a 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.559 couple of general notes on Fraser and the Golden Bow. 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.479 I am not at all an expert in religious anthropology, 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.240 but my personal take on The Golden Bough is that 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:51.079 it is on one hand worth reading because it's important 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:55.640 in understanding the history of Western scholarship on comparative religion, 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.160 and it's also just a very absorbing and fascinating text. 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.280 But on the other hand, this is like one hundred 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.800 to two hundred and thirty year old book making the 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:10.080 case for a sweeping theory of world religions. And it 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:12.800 should be read with the caution you might expect for 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.520 that kind of work, So I would not take any 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:19.800 of its claims, specific or general, at face value without 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.400 checking for confirmation in other sources. I would also be 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.240 skeptical of his core theoretical framework, and I would just 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.320 warn that from research we have done on this book 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.599 in the past, I recall discovering that some of Fraser's 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:39.680 presentation of ethnographic information about religious practices seems often tailored 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.520 or cherry picked to fit his theories. Now the next 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:45.559 general note, I don't know if what I'm about to 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:50.319 say is completely fair, because Fraser doesn't say the following exactly, 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.920 but I think one of the informal conclusions that a 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:56.720 reader is likely to take away from The Golden Bough 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.800 is that when it comes down to it, all religions 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:03.200 are basically the same and the differences between them are 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.199 incidental and superficial, which I would argue is not correct. 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.600 And even if that's just an unintended takeaway that people 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:13.480 would get from this book, I think that's a thing 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.319 that's a conclusion that I would really stress people should resist. 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.840 I do think there are common themes that you will 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.360 find popping up again and again in many religions, but 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.960 not all. And I also think that the differences between 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.720 religious beliefs and practices around the world and throughout history 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.600 do go quite deep. Those differences are significant, They're not 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.880 just superficial variations on the same thing, and some religions 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:44.160 end up serving profoundly different purposes. So personally, I wonder 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:49.520 if the desire to locate so much sameness or commonality 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:54.400 between different religions is something that really is not something 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.240 that comes out of the religions themselves, but more emerges 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.800 from the need of scholars to have a theory that 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.480 explains how religions work and where they come from, when 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:08.160 in fact, it's a very just like messy, complicated, variegated 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:11.400 phenomenon that you know, lots of different factors are at work, 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:13.760 and so it's hard to have a very simple theory 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:15.360 that explains where they come from. 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.720 Yeah, I mean, even like the discussion we just had 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.720 about Serapis and Serapis's origins and all, I mean, that 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:27.000 doesn't fully capture what this entity may have meant and 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.680 the various additional complexities that may have been involved in 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.080 the genesis of this figure. So yeah, when you get 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:35.000 into religion, when you get into belief, and you get 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.000 into these into a process that often you know, you're 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:42.840 talking about a tradition that goes for centuries and therefore 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.400 has all sorts of room for change and alteration and 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.040 transformation and so forth. 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.600 That's right, exactly exactly, But anyway to come back to 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:55.640 these resurrected gods, A big part of Fraser's model was 0:15:55.720 --> 0:15:59.240 that many religions of the ancient world commonly shared a 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:05.800 dying and reviving god, usually a male deity associated with fertility, 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:10.000 who undergoes a divine marriage to a fertility goddess, who 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:14.360 is then killed or sacrificed sometimes when his fertility wanes 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.560 in some way, and then rises from death to live again. 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.840 And this resurrection is linked to cycles of loss and 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:25.720 return in the natural and political world, such as the seasons, 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:28.560 the death of plants in winter and the rebirth in 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.880 spring and summer, the seasonal inundation of the nile, and 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:35.640 other natural cycles and political cycles like the death of 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:39.560 kings and the coronation of their heirs. So the question 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:43.400 is do we really find these dying and rising gods 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:47.840 all throughout the ancient religions Unfortunately, if you look into 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:51.720 this question, I think you find the topic horribly polluted 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:55.920 by a lot of motivated argumentation, primarily tracing back to 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:59.840 the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth should be thought 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:02.720 of of as one of these dying and rising deities. 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:07.560 So this topic is infected by both Christian apologetics and 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.320 anti Christian polemics. So you've got, you know, people who 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:15.880 don't like Christianity, anti Christian polemicists arguing, look, see how 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.000 stupid Christianity is. Jesus is just a copy of these 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.800 other dying and rising deities. And then you've got Christian 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.760 apologists arguing that no, Christianity is totally unique, it is 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.679 unlike any other religion on earth because it is the 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:33.280 one true religion, and all such comparisons are spurious, so 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.000 caveat that. There is a lot of that kind of 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.679 garbage floating around in both directions. I'm trying to do 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.119 my best to put together a clear and what seems 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.280 to me relatively unbiased answer to the question of what 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:49.239 similarities exist between these alleged dying and rising gods and 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.920 to what extent Osiris and Jesus fit into that mold. 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.639 Yeah, the real tragedy is that it just makes it 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.840 almost impossible for these two to ever hang out. 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:02.159 Yeah, all Jesus's friends are saying, O Cyrus is just 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:04.840 trying to be like Jesus, and all of Jesus Osirus's 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:06.840 friends are saying Jesus is just trying to be like him. 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:12.359 Will the accusations of copying never stop? But anyway, So, 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:16.120 of course the dying and reviving deities framework was popular 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:18.399 with Fraser and his allies, so I think in the 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.560 early twentieth century were sort of associated with Cambridge University. 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:23.919 So I want to go through a couple of the 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:27.760 examples that Fraser cites, and then we'll get into critiques 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:32.119 of them. So one example is the god Adonis, a 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.960 figure in Greek myth thought to have been derived from 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:40.160 other ancient Near Eastern deities, such as the Mesopotamian god 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:45.320 of agriculture Tamuz or Dmuzi. Adonis, in many tellings, began 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.920 as a mortal man famed for his beauty. He was 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:51.800 sort of the pinnacle of hotness, and he was so 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:55.560 handsome that when he was young, the goddesses Aphrodite and 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:59.160 Persephone fought bitterly over whether he would live with one 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:01.600 of them or the There more on that myth in 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:05.000 a minute. But then another story is that later in 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:09.240 his life Adonis was the lover of Aphrodite until he 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.399 was tragically impaled by a wild bore wild hunting, so 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.960 it gets the tusk right in the guts, and so 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:20.000 he's out there dying in the wilderness on the hunt, 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.840 and the goddess Aphrodite comes and weeps over his body, 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.400 and as her tears fall and Adonis's blood runs down 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:31.200 into the earth, the ground produces delicate flowers. Sometimes a 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.359 specific type of flower is named, so like you know, 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.399 you've got in some understandings of the story, the body 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:41.280 fluids of these divine lovers combine upon the young man's 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:44.080 death and bring forth the fruits of the earth. And 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.800 to try to understand the significance of this figure, Fraser 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.919 starts looking at celebrations of the death of Adonis. There 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.639 was a festival or a sort of commemoration of the 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.720 death of Adonnis that was celebrated in the summertime, and 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.240 raz looks at accounts of this ritual. So Fraser says, 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:07.800 quote at Alexandria, images of Aphrodite and Adonis were displayed 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:11.320 on two couches. Beside them were set ripe fruits of 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:15.480 all kinds, cakes, plants growing in flower pots, and green 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:19.200 bowers twined with Annis. The marriage of the lovers was 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:22.720 celebrated one day, and then on the morrow, women attired 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:26.720 as mourners with streaming hair and bared breasts, bore the 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.080 image of the dead Adonnas to the seashore and committed 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.240 it to the waves. Yet they sorrowed not without hope, 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.359 for they sang that the lost one would come back again. 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:42.680 And after describing more of these rituals, Fraser says, summarizing quote, 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.080 we may therefore accept as probable an explanation of the 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:49.399 Adonnas worship, which accords so well with the facts of 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:54.000 nature and with the analogy of similar rites in other lands. Moreover, 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.880 the explanation is countenanced by a considerable body of opinion 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.800 amongst the ancients themselves, who again and again interpreted the 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.560 dying and reviving God as the reaped and sprouting grain. 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:10.719 Fraser also cites Tamus, the Mesopotamian god from which Adonis 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:14.800 is probably derived. Tamus was the consort of the goddess 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:19.440 Inana and was also linked to crop cycles, and apparently 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:24.040 images of death and rebirth among many gods Fraser offers 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.800 as displaying death and resurrection. He also cites the Egyptian 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:30.919 god Osiris. Now, of course we already went over the 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:33.960 basic myth of Osiris, But what does Fraser have to 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:36.399 say about the meaning of Osiris here? So I'm going 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:39.120 to read a couple of lengthier quotes from Fraser here 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:43.520 on Osiris. Quote in the Resurrection of Osiris, the Egyptians 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.000 saw the pledge of a life everlasting for themselves beyond 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:50.439 the grave. They believed that every man would live eternally 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.760 in the other world if only his surviving friends did 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:56.639 for his body what the gods had done for the 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.960 body of Osiris. Hence, the ceremonies observed by the Egyptians 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:03.960 over the human dead were an exact copy of those 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.560 which Annibis, Horus, and the rest had performed over the 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.720 dead god. And then he goes on. At every burial 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.360 there was enacted a representation of the divine mystery which 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.520 had been performed of old over Osiris. When his son, 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.560 his sisters, his friends were gathered round his mangled remains 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:26.359 and succeeded by their spells and manipulations in converting his 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:31.080 broken body into the first mummy, which they afterwards reanimated 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:33.960 and furnished with the means of entering on a new 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:38.000 individual life beyond the grave. The mummy of the deceased 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:42.000 was Osiris. The professional female mourners were his two sisters, 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:45.840 Isis and Nepthis Annibis Horace, all the gods of the 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:50.720 Osirian legend gathered about the corpse. In this way, every 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:54.359 dead Egyptian was identified with Osiris and bore his name. 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:57.440 From the Middle Kingdom onwards, it was the regular practice 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:00.600 to address the deceased as Osiris so and so, as 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:03.520 if he were the god himself, and to add the 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:08.440 standing epithet true of speech, because true speech was characteristic 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:12.280 of Osiris. The thousands of inscribed and pictured tombs that 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:14.840 have been opened in the Valley of the Nile prove 0:23:14.960 --> 0:23:17.600 that the mystery of the resurrection was performed for the 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:21.520 benefit of every dead Egyptian. As Osiris died and rose 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:24.760 again from the dead, so all men hope to arise 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:27.879 like him from death to life eternal. So there's a 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:31.040 kind of in what Fraser is implying here, there's a 0:23:31.119 --> 0:23:35.280 kind of special role for Osiris, especially when compared to 0:23:35.640 --> 0:23:40.200 some of these other examples of allegedly dying and reviving gods, 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:44.640 where Osiris not only in Fraser's mind dies and then 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:48.320 is brought to life again, but by re enacting what 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:52.560 happens to Osiris, he shows the way that the people 0:23:52.680 --> 0:23:56.760 that regular mortals can also be revived again after death, 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:01.040 though we will add some qualification in what sense they 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:04.359 should be thought of as revived. So one thing that, 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:08.080 of course causes controversy is that among many of these examples, 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:12.840 Fraser also brings up the example of Christ, the Christian Jesus, 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:17.120 drawing direct connection between the Easter resurrection of Christ and say, 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:21.560 the rituals of Adonis. This drew scorn from conservative Christians, 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:24.639 of course, but you might expect that. But the question 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:30.120 would remain, were these comparisons sound comparisons between all these 0:24:30.160 --> 0:24:34.199