The Pagan Myths of Osiris-Dionysus and How People Connect This to Jesus

 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.  

Osiris and the Four Sons of Horus

Osiris and the Four Sons of Horus, tempera on paper facsimile by Nina de Garis Davies and Hugh R. Hopgood, 1915; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; based on a scene depicting Osiris (right) and the sons of Horus from the Tomb of Nebamun and Ipuky at Thebes, Egypt, c. 1400–1352 BCE.

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

Syria-Palaestina, How It Got the Name of Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                         

Herodotus, b: 484 BCE in
 Halicarnassus, Caria (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey

When people talked about "Palestine,"  what were they talking about?

From the time of Herodotus, Greeks had been calling the Jewish Homeland "Syria-Palaestina" or as we called it, Palestine from the Philistines, enemies of the Jewish people such as King Saul and King David.  "The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BC E Ancient Greece, when Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley In the treatise Meteorology . 
                                                                       

The Philistines had been a thorn in the side of the family of Abraham ever since the first period.  They came in waves.   They believed in multiple gods, and Dagon, seen in the form of statue, was the leading one. Others were Astarte and Baal.  The Canaanites of the land were using their gods as well.   Canaanite religion was polytheistic, and in some cases monolatristic. Dagon was also their god.  "

• Dagon, god of crop fertility and grain, father of Ba'al Hadad

1. Pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they conflicted with Abraham and Isaac.   Could have been slightly different from the following Philistines that entered later.                                                              

Rameses II 

2. Second period:  They came from Crete (Greek island, probably the biblical Caphtor) after being repulsed from Egypt by Rameses II in 1194 BCE.  They seized the southern coastal area of Palestine where they founded 5 principalities of 1. Gaza, 2. Ascalon (Ashkelon) , 3, Ashdod, 4. Ekron, 5. Gath of which Achish was king, friend of David.  By nature, they were a fighting people.  They dominated parts of Judah in the period of the Judges.  King Saul at first won battles but was ultimately defeated.  King David ended their era of domination and overran Philistia. (Read Samuel I.)

Note: It was in the ancient Egyptian city of Raameses in the Nile Delta where Jacob and his family settled, told in Gen. 47:11, 27.  Their descendants were compelled to build storehouses for the Egyptian king.  Raameses was the point of departure for the Exodus.
                                                                         

Moses and Ten Commandments (5 things to do and 5 things not to do.)
 1-5: one G-d, no other G-ds, G-d name sacred, Shabbat-day of rest; honor parents
6-10: not to murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness,  nor covet anything.
Imagine what people were like before this list of 10 rules to follow.   

Note: Moses led the Exodus from Egypt at age 80 for 40 years, about from 1311 BCE to 1271 BCE and so entered Canaan in 1271 BCE, superceding the 2nd wave of Philistines by some 77 years by my math.  Philistines were not native Canaanites, but had been a Mediterranean people, thought to have originated from Asia Minor and Greek localities.

3. Third period: Persian and Greek Periods; foreign settlers from the Mediterranean islands, overran the Philistine districts.
                                                                                 

Herod, selected by the Romans to be King of Judea

4. Fourth Roman Period from 63 BCE. Roman invaded and took Syria.  " Herod the Great, Antipater's son, was designated "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BCE: "  So Roman soldiers were in the city of Jerusalem and thereabouts.  Judea had been overcome by Rome for a good 130 years before it fell to them in 70 CE.  That's at least 5 generations of Jews living under oppression.  They could only talk about their own state of Judea in their great great grandfather's days.  It would be like Jews in 1950 talking about their great great grandparents of 1820.  Note how time had changed between just 130 years!  From covered wagons to automobiles and planes for us in this time change, but for our biblical ancestors, not much could have changed except their thinking.

From 6 CE, Rome had become the administrators of Judea, Samaria and Idumea.  .

Judah's " revenue was of little importance to the Roman treasury, but it controlled the land and coastal sea routes to the bread basket Egypt and was a border province against the Parthian Empire because of the Jewish connections to Babylonia (since the Babylonian exile). The capital was at Caesarea (Maritima), not Jerusalem."
                                                                       

Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) gave the name officially to the former land of Judah in 135 CE after fighting General Bar Kokhba for 3 years who had re-taken Jerusalem.  He did this out of anger to get even with the Jews.  He also renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina. This emperor decided to Hellenize the land and had outlawed circumcision amongst other things,  which brought on the rebellion of the Jewish General (Aluf) Bar Kokhba and the war from 132-135.  After winning against the Jews, he received the title of Imperator.  Judea was made a consular province called SYRIA-PALAESTINA.  .  The ruins of Jerusalem were re-built into a pagan city and a statue of Hadrian was erected on the site of THE HOLY OF HOLIES , the inner sanctum which was the most sacred place in the temple, meant only for Aaron and following Cohen  priests.
                                                                       

1920 Palestine

A state of Palestine?  Never.  At the time of the end of World War I in 1917, the Ottoman Empire, who fought against the allies with the Germans, were the losers, and thus lost all their land to the allies.  This was a WORLD-WIDE WAR, and the allies had already decided to give this land to the Jews who had been in meetings with them about it.  Most of the land had no value to anyone.  It was hot there, and either swampy, full of weeds, or a dry desert.  Not many people lived there.  There were Jews whose ancestors had never left after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Then there were more recent Jews who had come mainly from Russia in the 1880s and on, who were building up the land and creating Tel Aviv.   There were Bedouins riding camels and horses, the Princes of the desert, who were mainly raiders of others, and only a few bedraggled landowners who had had a hard existence with the Ottoman Empire representatives who picked up tax money from them.
                                                             

Mehmed VI, last Sultan of Ottoman Empire
from 1918 to 1922

Who were Palestinians?  From the end of WWI to May 14, 1948 when Israel was announced as being born, both Jews and Arabs were Palestinians.  Jews had lost Judea and Arabs had lost nothing but the Ottoman Empire's holdings, and they were only subjects of the Ottoman Empire.  It was the Turks who were working for the Empire and had been for the past 400 years.  .

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines (religion).
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_(Roman_province)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion#Pantheon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_VI
Update: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_name_%22Palestine%22#cite_note-FOOTNOTEJacobson1999-9
Read:  THE Settlers by MEYER LEVIN,  an epic novel following a family's return to the Jewish homeland-once Palestine, now Israel, always Eretz Yisroel.  Set in Palestine at the turn of the century to the Balfour Declaration, covers 1/4 of a century.  Turkish overlords, Jewish pioneers, Arabs.