Oglethorpe University From the SelectedWorks of sbranson@oglethorpe.edu Fall December 31, 2012 Resurrecting Gods Ahissa Branson, Oglethorpe University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/ahissa_branson/1/
ANCIENT ART HISTORY ART 260-01 FINAL RESEARCH PAPER AHISSA BRANSON DECEMBER 18, 2012
RESURRECTING GODS Christianity today is the largest religion in the world, boasting 2 billion adherents to the faith. Their belief centers on the life, death, decent into hell, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a teacher and healer that lived in Palestine during the 1 st century. Christians believe that after his crucifixion by the Romans, and subsequent death, Jesus Christ, the only son of the God of Abraham, rose (resurrected) on the third day after his burial. His death and rebirth thus makes it possible for his followers to be forgiven of their sins and attain eternal life in heaven. According to the Gospels, after Jesus s ascension to Heaven, his faithful disciples spread the good news of his resurrection to Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is considered the foundation of the Christian faith. Furthermore, in order to receive salvation and attain entry into heaven they must first believe in the death and resurrection of Christ (John 3:16). While Christianity requires that a person partake, or abstain, from certain activities (i.e. Ten Commandments and Seven Deadly Sins), at the
core of the Christian dogma is the absolute faith that this event occurred. Moreover, not only faith that the event occurred, but also that it occurred uniquely for the first and only time with Jesus Christ, making him the savior of humankind. However, when compared to religions and faiths that came before the start of Christianity in the 1 st century, it s clear that the persona and characteristics of the savior Christ parallel the persona and characteristics of previous savior gods worshiped in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Jesus Christ, the redeemer that conquered death and hell, is no more than an amalgamation of previous pagan sun and vegetation gods, dating back thousands of years. Yet, unlike other vegetation/sun gods, who in their death and rebirth bring life and growth to nature, Jesus promises eternal life to the believers. Still, the idea of a resurrected god is nothing new and can be traced back to the Neolithic Era. The human species originated in Africa about 200,000 year ago, and sometime around 50,000 years ago they began to exhibit full behavioral modernity, including language, music, abstract thought, symbolism and religion (McHenry). Uniquely adept at utilizing systems of symbolic communication, such as language for self-expression, humans created complex social structures: from families and kinship networks, to tribal
communities. From time immemorial, man has tried to interpret the reality in which he lives, and in his desire to understand, and influence, the environment, he explained, and attempted to manipulated, natural phenomena through philosophy, mythology, science, and religion. The modernistic religious behavior, such as burial rites, of these nomadic people is believed to have emerged during the Upper Paleolithic era, over 30,000 years ago. Intentional burial, particularly with grave goods may be one of the earliest detectable forms of religious practice since it may signify a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life (Liberman), and implies a belief in life after death in some form. Animal worship intertwined with hunting rites, as seen in many cave paintings (some dating back 32,000 years), which depict strange anthropomorphic images of halfhuman and half-animal beasts. Anthropomorphic images and cave paintings suggest that humans in the Upper Paleolithic had begun to believe in supernatural beings (Thames and Hudson). The cave paintings at Chauvet and Lascaux seem to represent religious thought, perhaps animism, the belief that all things have a soul or spirit (Bocco). The images and paintings found on these cave walls indicate shamanistic beliefs and rituals for reaching altered states of
consciousness in order to encounter and interact with the spirit world. Paleolithic man also developed a system of symbolic representation in concrete, material forms (Banea). As religion is often apotropaic (involving sympathetic magic), the stone Venus figurines found throughout Europe, and dating back some 35,000 years, may have been used to ensure success in hunting or to bring about the fertility of the land and women. Another theory is perhaps shamans used the figurines, as representative of female and male spirituality, in the transformation process (Harrod). Starting around 12,000 years ago (10,000 5,000 BCE), verifiable evidence points to an agricultural revolution that transitioned human civilization from a nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of cultivation and settlement. Climatic conditions, very similar to those of the present, directed human activity chiefly to the soil and its fruits. Furthermore, from a religion point-of-view, it led to the gradual desacralization of stone as man s focus turned to the earth (Colombia Encyclopedia). Over the next several millennia, the small mobile groups of hunter-gatherers transformed into sedentary societies based around built-up villages and towns (Pringle).
Çatalhöyük is a very large Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia (modern day Turkey), which existed from approximately 7500 B.C. to 5700 B.C., and is today the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. Çatalhöyük had no apparent social classes, as no homes serving royal or religious purposes have been found. There was also no social distinction based on gender, with both men and women seeming to have equal social status, as was typical of Paleolithic cultures (Gutrie). However, a striking feature of Çatalhöyük is the thousands of figurines (mostly female and animal) found by excavators at the site. Found within storage bins for grain, such as wheat and barley, the figurines are presumed to be of a deity that protects the grain and the harvest. This leads us to the concept of vegetation deities and sun gods. Myths surrounding nature and the cosmos are the earliest forms of religions known today. The vegetation/son deity, whose disappearance and reappearance, (or life, death and rebirth) embodied the growth cycle of plants as well as the movement of the heavens, was a way to understand nature for prehistoric man. Once man was settled, and had learned the art of agriculture (and animal husbandry), the munificence of nature became a constant necessity for man s survival (Viklund). At some point in the distant past, man
began to personify the forces of nature in order to understand the sporadic cycles of plenty and famine. The acts of the vegetation gods obeyed the cycles of nature; when nature dried up and died in late summer, the god was believed to die as well. When the vegetation returned in the spring, the god was believed to be reborn. Along with the worship of the earth came the study of the movements of the sun, moon, stars, and constellations. This practice gave rise to the myths of solar and sky deities. The sun god was believed to be born on the winter solstice and grow throughout the year. He eventually grows weaker and dies, but is reborn again on the winter solstice. A pantheon of vegetation and sun deities made up the polytheistic religions of what is today considered to be the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia. One of the oldest known religions is that of the Sumerians, in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). The Sumerians believed that the universe sat enclosed in a dome, surrounded by a primordial saltwater sea. Anthropomorphic deities, representing cosmic and terrestrial forces in their world, kept the balance of good and evil. In Sumerian mythology, Dumuzi and his sister, Geshtinanna, take turns
spending one half of the year in the underworld and the other half on earth. Each winter, when the vegetation died, Dumuzi was believed to have aloso died. In the spring, when the vegetation returned, Dumuzi had been reborn. His wife, Inanna (the goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare) mourns his decent to the underworld, and her powers of fertility consequently decline. When Dumuzi returns from the underworld six months later, Inanna is fertile once again, and the cycle then repeats. Mesopotamian religion was both polytheistic (worship of many deities) and henotheistic, with their many gods ranked in a hierarchy of superior power and influence, according to their devotees. Although the Mesopotamian gods were anthropomorphic (having humanoid qualities), they were not considered mystical, rather they were to be respected, placated (through sacrificial offerings), and obeyed. Moreover, the deities were often family relations of one another, a trait found in many other ancient polytheistic religions. The ancient Mesopotamians believed in an afterlife that was located in the great below where everyone went after death, irrespective of status, importance, or behavior while alive on earth. In 2330 BCE, the Akkadian King Sargon the Great conquered all of Mesopotamia under his empire, and united the Akkadian and Sumerian people. The Sumerians, in turn, influenced the mythology of the other
Mesopotamian culture groups, such as the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Tammuz is the Akkadian equivalent to the Sumerian shepherd-god Dumuzi, and instead of Inanna, the goddess Ishtar is his consort. Like the Sumerian Dumuzi and Akkadian Tummuz, the Semite vegetation god, Adon, is the ever-youthful and annually renewed god whose nature is tied to the seasons. Adon was worshiped by the Phoenicians in present day Lebanon and Syria, and was eventually adopted into the Greek pantheon of deities, and renamed Adonis. As early as 3000 BCE, the ancient Egyptians, to the west of Mesopotamia, were also creating and worshiping their own pantheon of vegetation deities. To explain and give meaning to the annual flooding, and subsequent ebbing, of the Nile River, the ancient Egyptians created the elaborate and influential myth of Osiris. Osiris, Isis, and Seth were the children of Geb, the sky god, and Nut, the earth goddess. Seth was jealous of his brother Osiris and murdered him. A god of earth and vegetation, Osiris s death symbolized the yearly drought, and his miraculous rebirth (with the help of his sister and wife, Isis) represented the periodic flooding of the Nile River, and the regrowth of grain. Osiris, who in his death had become the
god of the underworld, also represented the sun, with its daily rebirth and death. We know that the Egyptians traded with the Minoans in Crete (c. 2600-1100 BCE), and possibly the Greek mainland. It is also possible that the Egyptians themselves colonized the Greek mainland. According to Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian that lived during the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus in the 1 st century BCE, the first Greeks were Egyptians. Furthermore, according to Diodoru, Kekrops founded Athens as an Egyptian colony of the town of Sais and Athena was actually Neith, the matron goddess of Sais. We can see Egyptian influence in the rigidly stylized postures of early Greek statuary, as well in the early philosophies of the Greeks (Coppens). It was, perhaps, in this ancient colonization of Greece by the Egyptians that the Mesopotamian myths of a resurrected god arrived in Europe. Mystery cults, involving the secret, and usually ritual, worship of specific gods and goddesses, took place primarily in Ancient Greece (and later in Rome). In addition, initiation into these cults was believed to bring one closer to the divine. Initiation sometimes consisted of cleansing rites, fasting, and a shared sacred meal. Orgiastic rites, such as wild and frenzied dancing and self-
mutilation, were sometimes required to attain secret knowledge and rebirth. Notable mystery cults included the Eleusinian mysteries, which centered on the goddesses Demeter and Persephone (Bocco). Traced back to Erechteus, it is believed that the Mysteries at Eleusis (celebrated annually in honor of Demeter and Persephone) were created as a copy of the Egyptian Mysteries of Isis and Osiris (Coppens). In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest; intimately associated with the seasons, she presides over grains and the fertility of the earth. When Hades, the god of the underworld, abducts her daughter, Persephone, Demeter wanders the earth in grief, searching for her precious child. Preoccupied with her loss and anguish, the seasons halt and all living things cease to grow. Although Demeter is eventually reunited with her daughter, a trick played by Hades forces Persephone to live part of the year in the underworld with him. The unfruitful seasons of the Greek calendar coincide with Persephone s time in the underworld, and when she returns to her mother with springtime, the earth is fruitful again.
Another ancient Greek mystery cult, tracing back to Minoan Crete, is that of the god of fertility, wine, madness, and drunkenness: Dionysus. The only god to have a mortal parent, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele. Seen as a purveyor of peace, Dionysus was also a god who suffered, died, and resurrected. Regarded as a god who healed the sick and comforted the dying, Dionysus was known as the Lord, a son of god in human form, the vine, and the true god. As a vegetation god, he is presented as twice-born: first, when the vine is set in the ground and begins to grow, and again when the vine becomes laden with ripe fruits (Viklund). Another version of the twice-born myth is Dionysus being rescued (or born) from the womb of his dead mother, Semele, by Zeus, and born again from Zeus s thigh, where he had been sown in for protection. Thus, Dionysus is born of woman and god. His mystery cult offered personal salvation and life after death to initiates who had experienced his divine rapture. The religion of the Indo-Persian vegetation deity, Mithras, dates back to around 1500 BCE, and appeared in Rome around 67 BCE, when the soldiers of Pompeii brought the religion home. Believed to be a mediator between god and man, the sky and the earth, Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave, where shepherds cared for him,
on December 25 th. A baptism of water delivered the adherents of the religion of their sins, and by shedding the blood of a sacrificial bull his followers were ensured immortality. Entrusted with bringing the souls of the dead to paradise, Mithras was a redeemer and a savior. The Jesus of the Gospels shares many likenesses with cultural gods of the past. The gospels claim Jesus was born of a virgin, who was impregnated by god, thus making him the Son of God. However, Ascelpus, Apollonius, Heracles, Dionysus, and even Buddha all lay claim to that myth hundreds of years before Jesus s birth, and all but Heracles and Mithras cured the sick and expelled evil spirits. However, all of these deities were said to have died, risen from the dead, and ascended to heaven. When the gospels were written around 100 CE, there were already many myths and conceptions of the Son of God, and as they were heavily influenced by Jewish beliefs and prophesies, they were also influenced by non-jewish myths. Two thousand years ago there were many stories told of gods born of virgin, mortal women, made pregnant by god, and of dying gods who rose from the dead, sometimes on the third day. There were many myths of gods who were born on the winter solstice and died at the vernal equinox; and of vegetation deities who followed the cycles of the seasons and sun gods who followed the phases of the cosmos. Jesus Christ shares
many similarities with the vegetation deities of the ancient world and his fantastic and unbelievable story of birth, death, and resurrections is only one more in a long procession of myths and legends.
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