Nadene Goldfoot
In the days before Abraham, people believed in many gods. It was a polytheistic world back then, for how could people understand the acts of mother nature to their children? Here are the major Egyptian gods.
Religion also took on something else; mystery. Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates. This shows up with the Essenes where men had to wait 3 years with some groups to be accepted into their group. Other groups had their mysterious religious schooling as well.
Pagan spirituality of the Osiris-Dionysus sects was composed of two components. The Outer Mysteries consisted of Pagan beliefs and practices that were widely disseminated and taught to the general public. The Inner Mysteries were revealed only to those who had been initiated into the Pagan religions. The initiates learned that Osiris-Dionysus was not a historical person. His legends were simply fables containing spiritual and moral teachings.
The Osiris-Dionysus sect is a case of an Egyptian god also becoming or was the same as a Greek god. Usually it's a Greek-Roman connection. This shows how Egyptians and Greeks were also coming together in of all places, Judah.
Mask of Osiris-Dionysus Roman, 200 BCE - AD 200. bronze mask from the handle of a vessel used in the worship of Dionysus, the god of wine. Silver and bronze highlight the eyes, horns, and lips. Once owned by Mead, now held in the British Museum - Image ID: RXWJNT
Osiris-Dionysus, is a deity that arises from the syncretism of the Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek god Dionysus. As early as the 5th century BCE, the two deities had been identified with each other, seen most notably in the historian Herodotus' Histories:
Herodotus , born 484 BCE, was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire. He is known for having written the book, The Histories, a detailed record of his "inquiry" on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars. He found that no gods are worshipped by all Egyptians in common except Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysus; these are worshipped by all alike. Osiris is, in the Greek language, Dionysus.
Dionysus-Osiris was particularly popular in Ptolemaic Egypt, as the Ptolemies claimed descent from Dionysus, and as pharaohs they had claim to the lineage of Osiris. This association was most notable during a deification ceremony where Mark Antony became Dionysus-Osiris, alongside Cleopatra as Isis-Aphrodite.
The Ptolemy name was the 1st Macedonian (Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia) king of Egypt and the originator of the Ptolemaic dynasty; meaning all the kings of which bore this name, and there were many. Ptolemy ruled Egypt from 323 BCE, nominally in the name of the joint kings Philip III and Alexander IV. However, as Alexander the Great's empire disintegrated, Ptolemy soon established himself as ruler in his own right. Ptolemy Lagi Soter reigned from 305 to 285 BCE, conquered Erets Yisrael in 319 to 308 BCE, but withdrew in 315 BCE.
A number of Jews, including the high priest Hezekiah, accompanied him to Egypt, possibly in 311 BCE after a 2nd invasion. He later retook Jerusalem and is then supposed to have deported a large number of Jews to Egypt. He finally subjected Erets Yisrael in 301 BCE.
Judea owed to the Ptolemies an administrative system which was little altered by the Seleucids and Hasmoneans and survived until Roman times.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1930 (accession no. 30.4.157); www.metmuseum.org
Osiris, also called Usir, is one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt. The origin of Osiris is obscure; he was a local god of Busiris, in Lower Egypt, and may have been a personification of chthonic (underworld) fertility. By about 2400 BCE, however, Osiris clearly played a double role: he was both a god of fertility and the embodiment of the dead and resurrected king. Our ancestor, Abraham, was born in about 1948 BCE, so this shows that the belief was way before his time, like 500 years before. This dual role was in turn combined with the Egyptian concept of divine kingship: the king at death became Osiris, god of the underworld; and the dead king’s son, the living king, was identified with Horus, a god of the sky. Osiris and Horus were thus father and son.
Dionysus was the ancient Greek god of wine, winemaking, grape cultivation, fertility, ritual madness, theater, and religious ecstasy. His Roman name was Bacchus. He may have been worshiped as early as 1500-11000 BCE by Mycenean Greeks. He was the son of ZEUS and the mortal, Semele, making Dionysus a semi-device or a hero. He turned out to be more womanish. The god is shown in statues to be a beardless, sensuous, naked or semi-naked androgynous youth.
Semele, in Greek mythology, was the youngest daughter of the Phoenician hero Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.
Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians. The Phrygians (Greek: Φρύγες, Phruges or Phryges) were an ancient Indo-European people, initially dwelling in the southern Balkans – according to Herodotus – under the name of Bryges (Briges), changing it to Phryges after their final migration to Anatolia (part of Turkey) , via the Hellespont (Dardanelles Strait) .
Dionysus, a Greek God (half god-half man) , and Osiris, an Egyptian God were viewed as mythical characters. Osiris may have been the first god-man. His story has been found recorded in pyramid texts which were written prior to 2,500 BCE. These and other saviors were truly interchangeable. Coins have been found with Dionysus on one side and Mithras on the other. A person who was initiated into one of the mysteries had no difficulty switching to another Pagan mystery religion.
In the controversial book The Jesus Mysteries, Osiris-Dionysus is claimed to be the basis of Jesus as a syncretic dying-and-rising god, with early Christianity beginning as a Greco-Roman mystery. The book and its "Jesus Mysteries thesis" have not been accepted by mainstream scholarship, with Bart Ehrman stating the work is unscholarly.
Bart Denton Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers.
These religious beliefs were spread all over the Middle East through wars, trade, and such. Cultures were mixing. These beliefs and practices made their way into the Jewish world as well. We know that the prophets were fighting against pagan beliefs all the time. Not many radical ideas were new under our sun. People had a way of not excluding something they had heard about but incorporating it into their own practices.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus-Osiris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dionysus-Osiris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Osiris-Egyptian-god
https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/dionysus/#:~:text=Dionysus%20was%20the%20ancient%20Greek,11000%20BCE%20by%20Mycenean%20Greeks.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-on Ptolemies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty
The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering
https://www.alamy.com/mask-of-dionysus-osiris-roman-200-bc-ad-200-bronze-mask-from-the-handle-of-a-vessel-used-in-the-worship-of-dionysus-the-god-of-wine-silver-and-bronze-highlight-the-eyes-horns-and-lips-once-owned-by-mead-now-held-in-the-british-museum-image240279364.html
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