0:06

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

0:08

My name is Robert Lamb.

0:09

And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

0:12

We are heading into the vault for an older episode

0:14

of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is part two

0:17

of our series on Osiris.

0:19

This episode originally published April

0:21

fourth, twenty twenty four.

0:23

All right, let's jump bright in.

0:28

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production

0:30

of iHeartRadio.

0:38

Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

0:40

is Robert.

0:40

Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,

0:42

and we're back with part two of our discussion

0:45

of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian

0:48

god of fertility, an embodiment

0:50

of kingship, especially dead kingship

0:53

and the lord and judge of the

0:55

dead.

0:56

Yeah, also in agricultural

0:59

god. There's there's a lot

1:01

of complexity to Osiris, and so in

1:03

the last episode we basically talked

1:05

about who this figure of Osiris is,

1:09

where and when he emerges

1:11

from as much as we can answer that question,

1:14

and the basic canon of myths surrounding

1:16

him.

1:17

And the fact that you were inspired to do this

1:19

topic because we covered the movie

1:22

Doctor Phibes Rises again.

1:23

Yeah, yeah, like seventy five percent Doctor

1:26

Five's maybe twenty five percent Easter. So props

1:28

to Doctor Phibes and Jesus for

1:30

inspiring this episode. Now, before

1:33

we get into some we are going to get into

1:35

some additional questions that we tease

1:37

last time about comparisons to be

1:40

made between the figure of Osiris

1:43

and other deities and

1:45

other religions. But before we

1:47

do that, I want to come back to a

1:50

deity that I mentioned in the last

1:52

episode towards the end of it, and that is

1:55

the Greco Egyptian syncretic

1:57

deity Serapists. This

2:00

is the deity that is established

2:02

under the rule of the Ptolemies in

2:05

Egypt, a god that combines elements

2:07

of Osiris and APIs

2:09

the Sacred Bull. These are both again Egyptian

2:12

deities, along with various Greek

2:14

deities like Zeus and

2:16

Hades. So I just wanted to add

2:18

a little more context on this because I don't

2:20

think I explained the scenario as

2:22

well as I could have, or didn't go into as much detail

2:25

as I could have in a way that I think benefits

2:28

our understanding. Because we get into this idea again

2:30

of kind of like an amalgam god that

2:33

is to a certain degree, kind of built by

2:35

committee with a certain

2:37

purpose in mind. And that purpose is

2:39

not just like, oh, I have to figure out who you know, what

2:41

God is real, and I must convene with

2:43

it and get its blessings.

2:45

Robin our outline. You have attached a photo

2:48

of a sculpture of Serapis seated

2:50

on a throne or at least on a chair,

2:53

sort of dressed in a robe and

2:56

holding up some kind of wand or

2:58

maybe a scroll of a toon of some

3:00

some sort of cylindrical object. But under

3:02

his other hand, Oh, there's a very good boy.

3:04

It is the three headed hound of Hades,

3:06

Cerberus.

3:07

That's right, looking very loyal and

3:10

very domesticated right there by his side.

3:13

There are various You can easily do a Google search

3:15

on Sirapis that's se r A Pi

3:18

s and you'll find

3:20

various images that basically fit this. Sometimes

3:23

it's just the head, sometimes you see the full body. Sometimes

3:25

Cerberus is there, sometimes not. But

3:29

I do have to drive home like the utter greekness

3:31

of this image, because this will be important to

3:33

come back to later, Like this is a very Greek

3:36

looking god. If you didn't know exactly what

3:38

deity this is or what figure this is.

3:41

You wouldn't have to know much at all about

3:44

iconography and sculpture and depictions

3:47

of the divine to say, oh, this looks

3:49

very Greek to me.

3:51

Yeah, it's certainly a Greek art style.

3:53

Yeah, and of course ye. And then the three headed

3:55

dog right out of Greek mythology. So come

3:58

back to Sirapis here in a set. But

4:01

just to back up a little bit, I do want to drive

4:03

home that Egypt experienced

4:05

foreign rule at various points

4:08

throughout its long history. There

4:10

were the Hixos, which I believe we've

4:12

talked about a little bit on the show before. This

4:14

is a term that means rulers of foreign lands,

4:17

and they controlled the Delta region of Egypt during

4:19

the seventeenth century BCE. These

4:22

were the first foreigners to rule

4:24

over part of Egypt, and there's much

4:26

that's not known about them, with various theories

4:28

about their exact origin, though it seems

4:30

that some sort of Canaanite origin is possible,

4:33

and there has also been some evidence to suggest

4:35

that it was perhaps not an

4:38

outward invasion but an uprising

4:40

of peoples who had previously immigrated

4:42

to the region. So there's a lot of scholarly

4:45

dispute on exactly who these people were

4:47

and what this time period consisted of. Now,

4:50

subsequent invasions by the

4:52

Nubians, the Assyrians, the Persians,

4:55

and the Greeks also occurred, but

4:57

pertinent to our discussion here is

4:59

that in three point thirty two BCE, Macedonian

5:02

King Alexander the Great conquered

5:05

Egypt from the Persians, and

5:07

after his death. After Alexander's

5:09

death in three twenty three BCE, likely

5:12

by either poison or disease, he was

5:14

only thirty two at the time, so there's a lot of

5:17

a lot of arguments for the poison theory here.

5:19

But after he dies, a Macedonian

5:22

general that had served under Alexander

5:24

by the name of Ptolemy, declared himself

5:26

ruler of Egypt, and the Ptolemy family

5:28

would rule Egypt for three centuries.

5:31

So in her book Egyptian Mythology

5:33

that I cited in the last episode, Jeraldin Pinch

5:35

writes a little bit about this and points out that the Ptolemy's

5:38

ruled from Alexandria, and

5:40

that is of course where they built the Great Library of

5:42

Alexandria. Though most of its contents,

5:45

she points out would not have concerned Egyptian

5:47

culture, Egyptian history, and Egyptian mythology.

5:50

You know, Greek culture was very much the focal

5:52

point of the lost contents

5:54

of this place. Most

5:56

of the Ptolemies apparently never learned to speak Egyptian,

5:59

but the they did, she says, recognize

6:02

the challenges of governing a multicultural

6:04

society and keeping powerful

6:07

Egyptian factions content. And

6:10

this is ultimately where the invention of Sirapis

6:12

comes into play, which she describes as quote

6:14

a symbol of cultural fusion. So

6:17

Sirapis is often described as a patron deity

6:20

for the Ptolemy capital of Alexandria,

6:23

so again a unifying entity. And

6:25

also in combining all these elements,

6:27

Serapis becomes a god of not only fertility

6:30

and the underworld, which if you were

6:32

already loaded in our concept of Osiris,

6:35

but also he becomes the god of the sun

6:38

in the sky, and he sometimes

6:41

credited in this role as Zeus Serapis.

6:44

And it's interesting that by absorbing these various

6:46

powers, he essentially becomes a

6:48

god of everything, sort of a monotheism

6:51

by monopoly or something like.

6:53

That, one god

6:55

among many, increasingly absorbing

6:57

more and more responsibilities.

7:00

Yeah, Like I was trying to think of it in terms of,

7:02

like what's a secular example of like

7:04

have have have team mascots

7:06

ever been merged into single mascots

7:09

for you know, like the unification of sports teams.

7:11

Have the mascots of

7:14

of uh? Oh, I don't I don't know fast

7:16

food chains ever been utilized in this fashion,

7:19

like well, you know, the shones

7:21

has been taken over by McDonald's, and now the Shonese

7:23

boy or the Shoneese Bear must be combined

7:26

with elements of

7:28

of uh, you know, the Ronald McDonald or

7:30

Grimace or something.

7:31

You know like that that

7:33

is funny, but that that does kind of imply

7:36

a necessary competition, like between sports

7:38

teams or between competitors within a market

7:40

space, whereas that wasn't always the

7:42

case for gods. I mean, like you could, you know, worship

7:45

multiple gods and that wasn't

7:47

usually a problem.

7:48

Yeah, But but here

7:51

we see this this intentional

7:54

attempt to create

7:57

a deity and create a followship of

7:59

this deity that has

8:02

stabilizing political objectives

8:05

behind it. Oh and real quick, just because

8:07

this plays in something we talk about in the last episode is we're

8:09

stressing that Isis remains a separate entity,

8:11

So it's not like they just took everything and

8:13

threw it into this concept of the god. That would

8:16

be too much, I

8:18

imagine, But distinct gods

8:20

are combined into this entity now.

8:23

According to Lauren Murphy and Beware

8:25

Greeks bearing God's Serapis as

8:27

a cross cultural deity, published in the journal

8:30

Amphora in twenty twenty one, the

8:32

invented God doesn't seem to have unified

8:35

the people in any meaningful way as

8:37

far as we can tell, but it does stand as an example

8:39

of the diversity that was present in Egypt at the time.

8:42

But it was the religion of the ruling class

8:45

of foreigners and those wishing to

8:47

mix with that ruling class of foreigners.

8:50

And also it seems like there were possible connections

8:53

to an inspiration via a

8:55

pre Ptolemaic cult of

8:57

Osiris APIs Is.

8:59

One can see in images of Serapis,

9:02

he's predominantly depicted as a Greek deity.

9:04

But it does sound like there might have already

9:06

been some fusion of Osiris

9:09

and APIs previously. This would

9:11

not it would seem not be out of character

9:15

with Egyptian religion. Prior

9:17

to outside influence. Now,

9:19

the Ptolemaic line would of course end

9:22

with its last ruler, Cleopatra in

9:24

thirty BCE, as it

9:26

was, and after this point it was absorbed by the Roman

9:28

Empire. Worship of Serapis

9:31

lived on under Roman rule, but experienced

9:33

eventual decline with the spread of Christianity

9:36

during the fourth century CE. I should

9:38

say like the top down mandated

9:40

spread of Christianity in particular

9:42

is the death blow to the cult

9:45

of Serapis. So

9:47

if Serapis is a kind of monotheism

9:49

by monopoly, he's eventually replaced

9:51

by actual monotheism. And

9:54

I think there's some discussion of whether the worship

9:56

of a figure like Siapis helped pave the

9:58

way for the of Christianity.

10:01

I've seen that discussed, But at the very least,

10:04

it seems like there are other factors involved

10:06

here within the Roman Empire and regions

10:08

affected by the Roman Empire.

10:10

Interesting.

10:19

But anyway, that's enough on si Rapist. Let's get back

10:22

to the original deity, but then

10:24

also into some of these conversations

10:26

about Osiris's possible connection

10:28

with other cultural traditions.

10:31

Let's return to Osiris right,

10:33

So, rob when we were

10:35

Initially looking at this topic, I was asking

10:39

is there anything you wanted me to look

10:41

into? And what you suggested was a question

10:43

that I had read a little bit about before,

10:45

but I was quite intrigued to

10:48

go deeper into. And this

10:50

is a question that has been widely explored

10:52

in the comparative study of religion,

10:54

the connecting principle or lack

10:57

thereof, between Osiris

10:59

and other gods from the ancient world,

11:01

most controversially the Christian Jesus,

11:04

who are believed to in some way

11:07

die and then rise again, so

11:10

resurrected gods. This

11:13

question will take us back to our old

11:15

friend James G. Fraser and his

11:17

incredibly popular, influential and

11:20

controversial work The Golden Boo,

11:22

which this was a book published in several

11:24

volumes over the course of a couple of decades

11:26

beginning in eighteen ninety. Fraser

11:29

was a Scottish scholar of

11:31

religion in folklore who lived eighteen fifty

11:34

four to nineteen forty one, and

11:36

The Golden Bao is his best known

11:38

work. In this book, Fraser catalogs

11:41

and analyzes a huge number of

11:43

myths, rituals, and magical

11:45

beliefs from cultures around

11:47

the world. So He sources these

11:49

observations both from like records

11:52

of things believed in the ancient world

11:54

and you know, ancient myths and practices

11:57

in the Greco Roman world and so forth. All

12:00

so he sources this

12:02

from ethnographic observations

12:05

that people have made of just beliefs and

12:07

magical practices in cultures all

12:09

around the globe, using these

12:11

observations ultimately to support

12:13

his broader thesis, which include

12:16

the idea that the ritual

12:18

and mythic elements shared by most

12:20

ancient religions point back to

12:23

an originating cult practice

12:25

that involved the ritual

12:27

sacrifice of a holy king or

12:30

guardian figure, often when his

12:32

fertility was waning, and

12:35

the linkage of that practice to

12:37

the seasonal rebirth of nature

12:39

and the crops. So his framework has

12:42

a core of this sacrifice

12:44

of a divine figure, often a divine

12:47

king, and a cycle of death

12:49

and rebirth that has some implications

12:52

for nature. You can see why this would

12:54

be relevant to the question at hand. Now,

12:57

before we get into the specifics of Resz

13:00

directed gods, a couple

13:02

of general notes on Fraser and the Golden

13:04

Bough. I am not at all

13:06

an expert in religious anthropology, but

13:08

my personal take on The Golden Bough is

13:11

that it is on one hand worth

13:13

reading because it's important

13:16

in understanding the history of Western

13:18

scholarship on comparative religion,

13:20

and it's also just a very absorbing and

13:23

fascinating text. But on

13:25

the other hand, this is like

13:27

one hundred tow one hundred and thirty year old book

13:30

making the case for a sweeping theory

13:32

of world religions, and it

13:35

should be read with the caution you might

13:37

expect for that kind of work. So

13:39

I would not take any of its claims,

13:41

specific or general, at face

13:44

value without checking for confirmation

13:46

and other sources. I would also be skeptical

13:49

of his core theoretical framework, and

13:51

I would just warn that from research we

13:53

have done on this book in the past,

13:55

I recall discovering that some of Fraser's

13:59

presentation of ethnographic information

14:01

about religious practices seems

14:03

often tailored or cherry picked to fit

14:06

his theories. Now

14:08

the next general note, I don't know if what I'm

14:10

about to say is completely fair, because

14:12

Fraser doesn't say the following

14:14

exactly, but I think one of the informal

14:17

conclusions that a reader

14:19

is likely to take away from The Golden Bough

14:21

is that when it comes down to it, all

14:24

religions are basically the same and

14:26

the differences between them are incidental

14:29

and superficial, which I would

14:31

argue is not correct. And

14:33

even if that's just an unintended takeaway

14:36

that people would get from this book, I think that's a

14:38

thing that's a conclusion that I would really

14:40

stress people should resist. I

14:43

do think there are common themes that

14:45

you will find popping up again and

14:47

again in many religions, but not

14:49

all. And I also think that the differences

14:52

between religious beliefs

14:54

and practices around the world and throughout history

14:57

do go quite deep. Those differences

14:59

are significan They're not just superficial

15:01

variations on the same thing, and

15:04

some religions end up serving profoundly

15:06

different purposes. So personally,

15:08

I wonder if the desire to locate

15:12

so much sameness or commonality

15:14

between different religions is

15:16

something that really is. It

15:18

is not something that comes out of the religions themselves,

15:21

but more emerges from the need of

15:23

scholars to have a theory that

15:25

explains how religions work and

15:27

where they come from, when in fact, it's

15:30

a very just like, messy, complicated,

15:32

variegated phenomenon that you

15:34

know, lots of different factors are at work, and so it's

15:36

hard to have a very simple theory that

15:38

explains where they come from.

15:40

Yeah, I mean, even like the discussion we

15:43

just had about Serapis and Serapis's

15:46

origins and all. I mean, that doesn't

15:48

fully capture what this entity

15:50

may have meant and the various additional

15:52

complexities that may have been involved in the genesis

15:55

of this figure. So, yeah,

15:57

when you get into religion, when you get into belief, and you

15:59

get in to these into a process

16:01

that often you know, you're

16:04

talking about a tradition that goes for

16:06

centuries and therefore has all

16:08

sorts of room for change and alteration and

16:10

transformation and

16:12

so forth.

16:13

That's right, exactly exactly. But

16:15

anyway, to come back to these resurrected

16:17

gods, A big part of Fraser's model

16:20

was that many religions of the ancient world

16:22

commonly shared a dying and

16:25

reviving god, usually

16:27

a male deity associated

16:29

with fertility, who undergoes

16:32

a divine marriage to a fertility goddess,

16:34

who is then killed or sacrificed

16:37

sometimes when his fertility wanes in

16:39

some way, and then rises from death

16:41

to live again. And this resurrection

16:44

is linked to cycles of loss and

16:46

return in the natural and political

16:49

world, such as the seasons, the

16:51

death of plants in winter and the rebirth in

16:53

spring and summer, the seasonal inundation

16:56

of the nile, and other natural cycles and

16:59

political cycles, the death of kings

17:01

and the coronation of their errs. So

17:04

the question is do we really find

17:06

these dying and rising gods

17:08

all throughout the ancient religions. Unfortunately,

17:12

if you look into this question, I think

17:14

you find the topic horribly polluted

17:16

by a lot of motivated argumentation,

17:19

primarily tracing back to the question

17:21

of whether Jesus of Nazareth

17:24

should be thought of as one of these

17:26

dying and rising deities. So this

17:28

topic is infected by

17:30

both Christian apologetics and anti

17:33

Christian polemics. So you've got,

17:35

you know, people who don't like Christianity,

17:37

anti Christian polemicists arguing, look,

17:40

see how stupid Christianity

17:42

is. Jesus is just a copy of these other

17:44

dying and rising deities. And then you've got

17:46

Christian apologists arguing that no,

17:48

Christianity is totally unique, it is

17:50

unlike any other religion on earth because

17:53

it is the one true religion and all

17:55

such comparisons are spurious, so

17:58

caveat that there is a lot of that kind

18:00

of garbage floating around in both directions.

18:03

I'm trying to do my best to put together a

18:05

clear and what seems to me relatively unbiased

18:08

answer to the question of what similarities

18:11

exist between these alleged dying and rising

18:13

gods and to what extent

18:15

Osiris and Jesus fit into that mold.

18:18

Yeah, the real tragedy is that it just makes

18:20

it almost impossible for these two to ever hang

18:22

out.

18:23

Yeah. Well, all of Jesus's

18:25

friends are saying Osiris is just trying to be like

18:27

Jesus, and all of Jesus Osirius's friends

18:30

are saying Jesus is just trying to be like him.

18:32

Yeah.

18:33

Will the accusations of copying never stop?

18:36

But anyway, So, of course, the dying

18:38

and reviving Deity's framework was popular

18:41

with Fraser and his allies, so I think in

18:43

the early twentieth century were sort of associated

18:45

with Cambridge University. So

18:47

I want to go through a couple of the examples

18:49

that Fraser cites and then we'll get into

18:52

critiques of them. So one

18:54

example is the god Adonis,

18:57

a figure in Greek myth thought

18:59

to have been derived from other

19:01

ancient Near Eastern deities, such as

19:03

the Mesopotamian god of agriculture,

19:06

Tamus or Demuzi. Adonis,

19:08

in many tellings, began as a

19:10

mortal man famed for his

19:13

beauty. He was sort of the pinnacle of hotness,

19:15

and he was so handsome that when he

19:18

was young, the goddesses Aphrodite

19:20

and Persephone fought bitterly

19:22

over whether he would live with one of them or

19:24

the other. More on that myth in a

19:26

minute. But then another story is

19:28

that later in his life Adonis

19:31

was the lover of Aphrodite until

19:34

he was tragically impaled by

19:36

a wild bore wild hunting, so

19:38

it gets the tusk right in the guts,

19:41

and so he's out there dying in the

19:43

in the wilderness on the hunt, and the goddess

19:45

Aphrodite comes and weeps over

19:48

his body, and as her tears

19:50

fall and Adonis's blood runs down

19:52

into the earth, the ground produces

19:54

delicate flowers. Sometimes a specific

19:56

type of flower is named, so

19:58

like you know you've got. In some understandings

20:01

of the story, the body fluids of these divine

20:03

lovers combine upon the young

20:05

man's death and bring forth the fruits of

20:07

the earth, and to try to understand

20:10

the significance of this figure, Fraser

20:12

starts looking at celebrations

20:15

of the death of Adonnas.

20:16

There was a.

20:17

Festival or a commemoration

20:19

of the death of Adonnas that was celebrated

20:22

in the summertime, and Fraser

20:25

looks at accounts of this ritual.

20:27

So Fraser says, quote, at Alexandria,

20:30

images of Aphrodite and Adonis

20:32

were displayed on two couches. Beside

20:34

them were set ripe fruits of all kinds,

20:37

cakes, plants growing in flower pots,

20:39

and green bowers twined with Annis.

20:42

The marriage of the lovers was celebrated one

20:45

day, and then on the morrow, women

20:47

attired as mourners, with streaming

20:49

hair and bared breasts, bore

20:51

the image of the dead Adonnas to the

20:53

seashore and committed it to the waves.

20:56

Yet they sorrowed not without hope, for

20:58

they sang that the lost would come

21:00

back again. And after describing

21:03

more of these rituals, Fraser says,

21:05

summarizing quote, we

21:07

may therefore accept as probable an explanation

21:10

of the Adonis worship, which accords

21:12

so well with the facts of nature and

21:15

with the analogy of similar rights in other

21:17

lands. Moreover, the explanation

21:20

is countenanced by a considerable body

21:22

of opinion amongst the ancients themselves,

21:25

who again and again interpreted the dying

21:27

and reviving God as the reaped

21:29

and sprouting grain. Fraser

21:31

also cites Temus, the Mesopotamian

21:33

god from which Adonis is

21:35

probably derived. Tamus

21:38

was the consort of the goddess Inana

21:40

and was also linked to crop

21:42

cycles and apparently images

21:45

of death and rebirth. Among

21:47

many gods Fraser offers as displaying

21:49

death and resurrection. He also cites

21:52

the Egyptian god Osiris. Now,

21:54

of course, we already went over the basic

21:56

myth of Osiris, But what does Fraser

21:58

have to say about the meaning of Osiris here?

22:01

So I'm going to read a couple of lengthier quotes from

22:03

Fraser here on Osiris.

22:05

Quote.

22:06

In the resurrection of Osiris, the Egyptians

22:08

saw the pledge of a life everlasting

22:10

for themselves beyond the grave. They

22:13

believed that every man would live eternally

22:15

in the other world if only his surviving

22:17

friends did for his body what

22:20

the gods had done for the body of Osiris.

22:23

Hence, the ceremonies observed by the

22:25

Egyptians over the human dead were

22:27

an exact copy of those which Annibis,

22:30

Horus and the rest had performed

22:32

over the dead god. And then he goes

22:34

on. At every burial there was enacted

22:36

a representation of the divine mystery

22:39

which had been performed of old

22:41

over Osiris, when his son, his

22:43

sisters, his friends were gathered round

22:46

his mangled remains and succeeded

22:48

by their spells and manipulations

22:50

in converting his broken body into the

22:52

first mummy, which they afterwards

22:55

reanimated and furnished with the means

22:57

of entering on a new individual

22:59

life beyond the grave. The

23:01

mummy of the deceased was Osiris. The

23:04

professional female mourners were his two

23:06

sisters, Isis and Nepthis Annibis

23:09

Horas, all the gods of the Osirian

23:11

legend gathered about the corpse.

23:14

In this way, every dead Egyptian

23:16

was identified with Osiris and bore

23:18

his name. From the Middle Kingdom onwards,

23:21

it was the regular practice to address the deceased

23:23

as Osiris so and so, as

23:25

if he were the god himself, and

23:27

to add the standing epithet true of

23:30

speech, because true speech

23:32

was characteristic of Osiris. The

23:34

thousands of inscribed and pictured tombs

23:37

that have been opened in the Valley of the Nile prove

23:39

that the mystery of the resurrection was performed

23:42

for the benefit of every dead Egyptian.

23:44

As Osiris died and rose again

23:46

from the dead, so all men hoped

23:49

to arise like him from death to life

23:51

eternal. So there's a kind of in

23:54

what Fraser is implying here, there's a kind of

23:56

special role for Osiris,

23:58

especially when compared to some of

24:00

these other examples of

24:03

allegedly dying and reviving gods, where

24:05

Osiris not only in Fraser's

24:08

mind, dies and then is brought to life

24:10

again, but by re

24:12

enacting what happens to Osiris, he

24:14

shows the way the

24:17

people that regular mortals can also

24:19

be revived again after death,

24:22

though we will add some qualifications

24:25

to in what sense they should be thought of as revived.

24:28

So one thing that of course causes controversy

24:30

is that among many of these examples,

24:33

Fraser also brings up the example

24:35

of Christ, the Christian Jesus,

24:37

drawing direct connection between the Easter

24:40

resurrection of Christ and say, the

24:42

rituals of Adonis. This drew

24:44

scorn from conservative Christians, of course,

24:46

but you might expect that, but

24:49

the question would remain, were

24:51

these comparisons sound comparisons

24:54

between all these different figures? And

24:56

I think, after doing some additional reading,

24:59

I think the answer is a little

25:01

bit but mostly no.

25:03

So.

25:04

Later in the twentieth century, Fraser's

25:06

category of dying and reviving gods

25:08

came under what seems to me like quite legitimate

25:11

criticism by other major

25:13

scholars. One notable name here

25:16

is the American historian of religions

25:18

Jonathan Z. Smith, who

25:20

was affiliated with the University of Chicago

25:23

and directly addressing this question

25:26

of dying and reviving gods. Smith

25:28

wrote a highly cited entry in the

25:31

Encyclopedia of Religion edited

25:33

by Eliade. The entry

25:36

was called Dying and Rising Gods, and

25:38

in this chapter Smith showed

25:41

that really the category of dying

25:43

and Rising gods is not much

25:46

of a category, in that most of

25:48

the items Fraser and others

25:50

placed within the class are quote

25:53

based on imaginative reconstructions

25:55

and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous

25:58

texts. In other words, this this

26:00

category emerges from

26:02

reliance on questionable sources and

26:05

on tortured readings of legitimate source

26:07

materials to try to fit them into

26:09

the resurrected god box. So

26:12

how would that be given what we just looked

26:14

at. It seemed like Fraser presented some good

26:16

examples.

26:16

Well.

26:17

Smith says that actually, if you look at the

26:19

examples Fraser sites, there aren't

26:21

any fully dying and

26:24

rising gods. Instead, you have

26:26

two distinct categories. One

26:29

is dying gods. These are gods

26:31

that die but are not said

26:34

to rise again from death. And

26:36

the other is disappearing gods.

26:38

Gods that disappear and then in some cases

26:41

reappear, sometimes quote with monotonous

26:44

frequency. But the

26:46

disappearance is not death and

26:48

the reappearance is not resurrection.

26:51

Okay, well we may have to have some examples of this.

26:53

Okay, Well, adnnask has got you covered

26:56

here, so I'm going to look in detail at

26:58

the example of Adonnas. Smith

27:00

says, there are two main myths of Adonnas

27:03

that we know from our sources. One is

27:05

the one I mentioned earlier, where Adonis is

27:07

killed by a bore and his lover

27:10

Aphrodite weeps over his body

27:12

and creates a fragile flower. So

27:15

in this myth, Adonnis dies

27:17

but he does not rise. Fraser

27:19

sort of allides this by connecting

27:23

the story to the mourning celebration

27:25

of Adonnas's death with sort

27:27

of the involvement of summer crops

27:30

and plants and stuff like that. But

27:32

in the story, Adonnas just dies. We'll

27:34

get to the rituals in a second. But in the story

27:36

there's no resurrection, and the festival

27:39

created by Aphrodite to commemorate

27:42

his death is a festival of mourning.

27:44

The other Adonnas myth to quote

27:47

Smith here tells of quote a

27:49

quarrel between two goddesses, Aphrodite

27:51

and Persephone, for the affections

27:54

of the infant Adonis Zeus

27:56

or Calliope decrees that Adonnas

27:58

should spend part of the in the upper

28:00

world with one I assume

28:02

with Aphrodite, and part of the year in the

28:05

lower world with the other. I assume that would

28:07

be Persephone. This tradition of

28:09

by location similar to that connected

28:11

with Persephone and perhaps DEMUSI

28:14

has no suggestion of death

28:17

and rebirth, So you could

28:19

argue maybe that going into the underworld

28:21

and then coming back to the upper world has

28:24

like resonance with the idea of resurrection.

28:26

There's some kind of symbolic linkage.

28:29

It's thematically similar, but it is not

28:31

literally the same thing.

28:33

Right, And I think that that becomes obvious

28:35

when you look at any number of stories about

28:38

characters venturing into the underworld,

28:40

it generally has the flavor of a physical

28:43

journey. And we see that even carried on into

28:45

literary traditions, like even in Dante's Inferno,

28:47

Like Dante does not die and to send

28:50

into the Inferno. No, he travels

28:52

there.

28:53

Yeah, in some important senses he is changed,

28:55

but he doesn't. He doesn't like have to go through

28:57

bodily death.

28:59

Right.

29:09

But okay, So Fraser was also looking

29:11

not just at like written versions of the Adonna

29:14

Smith, but also at rituals to see

29:16

what people believed about him. So what

29:18

about evidence for the resurrection of Adonnas

29:21

in ritual? In terms of ritual,

29:23

there are later sources possibly

29:26

linking Adonnas to resurrection, but these

29:28

sources are problematic. According

29:30

to Jonathan Smith, there

29:32

is one allegedly second

29:35

century source by Lucien that

29:37

in a pretty sketchy and ambiguous

29:39

way, describes rituals which could

29:42

be interpreted as celebrating

29:44

the resurrection of Adonnas, but it's

29:46

not clear at all that this is what Lucian is

29:49

describing. To quote from Smith's

29:51

summary, Lucian says, quote, on

29:53

the third day of the ritual, a statue of

29:55

Adonnas is quote brought

29:57

out into the light and quote

30:00

dressed as if alive. And

30:02

I was thinking, wait a minute, but aren't many

30:05

cult statues addressed as if

30:07

alive?

30:08

Yeah? Yeah, and yeah. You get

30:11

into a complex area of interpretation when

30:13

you figure out, like what does it mean for someone to

30:15

address a statue of a deity?

30:17

Right, So, a cult statue may have some kind

30:19

of eternal existence

30:21

that it is connected to, even if it

30:23

is an image of a god who has

30:25

died, But that doesn't necessarily mean

30:28

if you're like talking to the statue that you

30:30

believe that the god was resurrected

30:32

again from death.

30:34

Yeah.

30:35

And then Smith says that there are other

30:37

descriptions of these rituals which do

30:39

make unambiguous reference to the

30:41

resurrection of Adonnas, but they only show

30:43

up later in the Roman period, after

30:46

the spread of Christianity, and they are written

30:48

by Christians in a way

30:50

that raises questions about

30:52

them, Like, so if Christians

30:54

are saying that worshippers

30:56

of Adonnas are saying Adonis was raised

30:59

from the dead, is the resurrected

31:01

God theme of Christianity perhaps

31:03

having some influence on the myth

31:05

of Adonis by this point, or

31:08

is the resurrected God theme

31:11

of Christianity influencing the way Christian

31:13

observers interpret the rituals

31:15

of Roman pagans.

31:17

Hmm, yeah, that's a very good point.

31:19

So Smith says, quote this pattern

31:21

will recur for many of the figures considered

31:24

an indigenous mythology and ritual

31:26

focusing on the deities death and

31:28

rituals of lamentation, followed

31:31

by a later Christian report adding

31:33

the element nowhere found in the earlier

31:35

native sources that the God was resurrected.

31:39

I think that is a very interesting pattern.

31:41

So like Christian observers look

31:43

at other religions and they

31:45

see a dead God, and it's

31:48

quite possible they just assume

31:50

that a dead God is supposed to rise

31:52

again and kind of read that into the

31:54

ritual.

31:56

Yeah. Yeah, I think then there's probably a case to be made,

31:58

even like the spread of Christianity

32:00

and like the reinterpretation often

32:02

with you know, an agenda of

32:04

of tradition, local traditions, taking

32:08

existing religious traditions and sort of reframing

32:11

them in the light of the Christian

32:13

religion exactly.

32:14

So, but what about the thing

32:17

about symbolic rebirth. What about

32:19

the the ritual and mythic association that

32:21

Fraser seems to allege between

32:23

Adonnas and plant life, which

32:25

you know dies in the winter and is quote resurrected

32:28

in spring. Well Smith says,

32:30

if you look at ancient sources, even

32:32

these symbolic associations are not present

32:35

in the worship of Adonnas. Smith writes,

32:37

quote, the frequently cited gardens

32:40

of Adonnas the Kepoi were

32:42

proverbial illustrations of the brief,

32:45

transitory nature of life

32:47

and contain no hint of rebirth.

32:49

The point is that the young plant shoots

32:52

rapidly, wither and die, not

32:54

that the seeds have been reborn when

32:57

they sprout. So I

32:59

thought that was also really interesting, because

33:01

I would just so easily and

33:03

so naturally look at a

33:06

sort of plant based ritual celebration

33:08

and assume it had something to do with cycles

33:11

of death and rebirth. But that's

33:14

an assumption that might not be what the people doing

33:16

that practice think it means. So

33:19

Smith is saying what ancient people said about

33:21

these gardens was not that they

33:23

were to emphasize the theme of resurrection,

33:26

but to emphasize the theme once again of

33:28

mourning and loss of the beautiful youth

33:30

who died too soon, just like these young

33:32

plant shoots that come up and then wither

33:35

rapidly. I feel like this kind of thing

33:37

makes me a little more cautious about my my

33:39

myth interpretation goggles that.

33:42

Yeah, I mean absolutely. It even goes back

33:44

to some of the ways that we discussed and

33:47

cited discussions of Osiris in the first

33:49

episode, you know, thinking about how

33:52

this basic myth matches

33:55

up with you know, cyclical life

33:57

and death and the agricultural

34:00

cycles as well.

34:01

But okay, that's a donnas. What about Osiris?

34:04

It seems to me that of all the examples

34:06

that Smith looks at, Osiris

34:09

comes the closest to being

34:11

genuinely killed and resurrected

34:13

on a plane reading of the myth. But

34:16

is he really resurrected? Smith

34:19

argues, no, Osiris is not actually

34:21

resurrected, because remember, of

34:23

course, Osiris in the story is killed

34:26

and dismembered by Seth or set

34:29

and then the pieces of his body are put

34:31

back together again and he is rejuvenated,

34:34

but not in this world. Instead,

34:36

he goes on living in the other place,

34:39

in the underworld, the realm of the dead,

34:42

where he is empowered to

34:44

become the master and judge of

34:46

the wandering dead. So he

34:48

does not rise from the dead. He

34:51

goes on living in the afterlife.

34:54

So it almost seems to me that his

34:56

resurrection in the afterlife could be seen

34:59

as kind of anonymous with his enthronement

35:02

as the lord of the dead and his empowerment

35:05

to serve the role of judgment.

35:07

Yeah.

35:07

Absolutely, And regarding the ritual

35:10

reenactment of the story in osiris worship

35:12

practices, Smith says, quote the repeated

35:14

formula rise up, you have not

35:17

died, whether applied to Osiris

35:19

or a citizen of Egypt, signaled

35:21

a new permanent life in

35:24

the realm of the dead.

35:25

That's right. Going back to what we said about the idea

35:28

that Osiris is ultimately kind of the opener

35:30

of the way that democratizes

35:32

or helps propel the already

35:35

existing democratization of the afterlife.

35:37

It's no longer just for kings. It

35:39

is now something that everyone has

35:42

access to, provided you

35:44

can have the right mummification procedures

35:47

performed on your body exactly.

35:49

And so this is something that Fraser was

35:51

saying, where I think he was sort of on the right track

35:53

in the case of Osiris. Smith

35:56

argues that in the case of Osiris,

35:58

there is a clear link between myth

36:00

and ritual. There's the strong connection, which

36:02

is something that Fraser is always trying to emphasize,

36:05

is the link between myth

36:07

and ritual and myths sort of being the

36:09

story like that the

36:12

ritual re enacts the myth, and

36:14

the myth in Fraser's telling is

36:16

often derived from the ritual. It's like a narrativizing

36:19

of the ritual. But whatever the actual

36:21

chain of events there is in

36:24

this case, there is clearly a strong link between

36:26

the myth and the ritual. In

36:29

that the mythical description of the recovery

36:31

and reassembly of the pieces of the body

36:33

of Osiris, I believe this is by Isis

36:36

and his allies. This

36:38

is a clear parallel of the funeral

36:40

rits of Egypt. Smith lists

36:43

these funeral rites quote the vigil over

36:45

his corpse, then the hymns

36:47

of lamentation, the embalmment usually

36:49

performed by Annibis, the washing

36:52

and purification of the corpse, the undertaking

36:54

of the elaborate ritual of the opening

36:57

of the mouth with its one hundred and seven

36:59

separate operations, as well

37:01

as other procedures for reanimation, the

37:03

dressing of the body and the pouring out

37:05

of libations. So

37:08

in a way, the dead Egyptian would,

37:10

in a sense, through having the funeral

37:12

rites performed upon their body, become

37:15

Osiris, and just like Osiris,

37:18

though dead to this world, they would awaken

37:20

to a new life in another world. Smith

37:23

writes, quote the myth and ritual of Osiris

37:26

emphasizes the message that there

37:28

is life for the dead, although it is of

37:30

a different character than that

37:32

of the living. What is to be feared is

37:35

in a quote from the Book of Going forth by Day.

37:38

I think this is another name for what is sometimes called the

37:40

Book of the Dead quote dying

37:43

for a second time in the realm

37:45

of the dead. And there

37:47

are ways that, according to the story,

37:49

this can happen to you, for example, being

37:52

devoured by the lion, hippopotamus,

37:54

crocodile monster am it in the underworld.

37:57

Yeah, I know, we've talked a little bit about the complexity

37:59

of the ancient Egyptian

38:02

afterlife before, where it's it's it's

38:04

not just a it's it's it's

38:06

not something you could compare just sort of like the

38:09

sort of mainstream vision of a Christian heaven.

38:12

It is a place where you're probably gonna need

38:14

your spells, you're gonna need your followers, You're gonna

38:16

need tools and a plan in

38:19

order to make the best go of.

38:20

It, exactly right, you have to prepare.

38:22

It's not just that you have to be worthy of

38:24

the good afterlife, but like in

38:27

in some visions, it takes like work to

38:29

get there.

38:30

Yeah, and this is of course, this is

38:32

not just an ancient Egyptian religion. There are

38:34

various examples we can turn to where like that journey

38:37

between this life and the next is one that is

38:40

perilous and has

38:42

to go just right an other in order

38:44

to work right.

38:46

So it seems to me that of the examples

38:48

Fraser brings up o Cyrus maybe

38:51

comes the closest, or is one of the closer

38:53

ones to being a true dying

38:55

and reviving God. But even

38:57

in his case, there's a pretty strong conceptual

39:00

distinction of what the new life

39:02

is that makes calling this

39:04

a resurrection somewhat strained.

39:07

So, after analyzing all of the most prominent

39:09

cases of alleged dying and reviving

39:11

gods. Smith concludes as follows

39:14

quote. As the above examples

39:16

make plain, the category of dying and rising

39:18

deities is exceedingly dubious.

39:21

It has been based largely on Christian

39:23

interest and tenuous evidence.

39:26

As such, the category is of more interest

39:28

to the history of scholarship than

39:30

to the history of religions. And

39:34

you know, so that might kind of make you think like, ah,

39:36

well, then who cares? But I think it is

39:38

actually very illustrative that

39:41

you can see this category sort of emerge,

39:43

where with scholars trying to make

39:45

sense of all these different stories and rituals

39:48

and stuff, and putting all these gods

39:50

and figures from myths into the category,

39:53

and ultimately, if you look really

39:55

close, it's not a super cohesive

39:58

category, and a lot of the things, maybe all

40:00

the things put into it don't really

40:02

fit and don't have as much in common

40:04

as the scholar is claiming

40:07

they do. And if

40:09

Smith is correct here, I find his case pretty

40:11

convincing. If he's correct about this being

40:14

largely based on Christian interest

40:16

by scholars from Christian cultures, I

40:18

think that's also illuminating that like dominant

40:21

sort of story themes within your

40:23

culture that seem very familiar

40:26

to you, just kind of naturally

40:28

manifest when looking at

40:30

ambiguously similar things in other

40:32

cultural contexts.

40:34

Yeah, yeah, and I mean at times it can be a very

40:36

useful exercise and either helping us to get

40:39

a leg up on understanding another culture

40:41

or another system of beliefs. It can also be a frame

40:44

of commonality. It can be very

40:46

positive in terms of like seeing the similarities

40:48

rather than differences. But yeah,

40:50

when you get into like this deeper attempt to understand

40:53

the religion, you could see where some of it could

40:55

cast too much of a shadow on your

40:58

interpretation of this other way of looking

41:00

at the cosmos.

41:01

I think that's right. But then on the other hand, I want

41:03

to come back and say we shouldn't

41:06

stop looking at similarities between

41:08

religions because there are similarities.

41:11

Like Smith says, Yeah, this dying and

41:13

reviving god category doesn't make a whole

41:15

lot of sense, But there are these other patterns

41:17

you can see, like dying gods. There

41:19

are a bunch of dying god myths

41:22

that have interesting things in common,

41:24

and you could kind of look at, like, why do they

41:26

have these things in common that

41:27

that's worth studying. You also

41:30

have this pattern of the disappearing

41:32

and sometimes reappearing God myth. What

41:34

does that tell us about religions? You can

41:36

look at these similarities, and so it's also

41:40

not unreasonable to look at similarities

41:42

between Christianity, a religion that certainly

41:45

does have a dying and reviving God,

41:47

with some of these other religions. And so one source

41:50

that came across that I thought made a very interesting

41:52

point A was

41:54

a chapter called Resurrection in Ancient

41:57

Egypt by the German

41:59

egypt ptologist jan Osman, who

42:02

has plenty of his own ideas he's pushing

42:05

about, like the lineage of certain types of resurrection

42:07

beliefs. I think ultimately he thinks that a

42:09

lot of these beliefs have an

42:11

original source in Egyptian religion

42:15

and then spread out to other places. But

42:18

regardless of whether he's correct about that, I

42:20

think he makes a very good point about a similarity

42:23

between belief in Christ and the

42:25

earlier belief in Osiris, which,

42:28

on one hand, you have plenty of differences, like the death

42:30

of Jesus is a one time

42:32

event that is situated within history.

42:34

It said, like, you know, well, he's a man who

42:36

existed at a certain time and place in history,

42:39

and so it's like his death is a historical

42:41

event, not something that takes place

42:43

within a kind of mythic time or

42:45

a within a mythic landscape.

42:48

But on the other hand, you could look at the deaths

42:50

and revivals of these

42:52

two god figures, is having a lot in common

42:55

in that, as Osman says quote,

42:57

through his death and resurrection, Christ has

43:00

paved the way to Paradise or Elysium

43:02

in a way not altogether dissimilar

43:05

from that of Osiris, who also threw

43:07

his victory over seth opened

43:10

a realm beyond the realm of death.

43:13

The decisive common denominator of Christianity

43:15

and ancient Egyptian religion is the idea

43:17

of redemption from death, that beyond

43:20

the realm of death, there is an Elysian

43:22

realm of eternal life in the

43:24

presence of the divine. So

43:27

in both cases you can look at these gods

43:29

as gods who were killed and

43:31

then in some sense revived. Christ

43:34

is said to be revived onto earth and then

43:36

ascends into heaven. Osiris

43:39

is revived and made lord, a lord of

43:41

the underworld and judge of the dead. But

43:43

in both cases they open the way

43:45

for people to have a sort of

43:47

heaven again. Want to

43:50

put the star on heaven there and say it means

43:52

different things in the two different concepts,

43:55

but it is a positive afterlife

43:57

that is now available to the people.

44:00

Yeah. Absolutely. In both cases, the individual is the

44:02

opener of the way, you know, and the Ptolemies

44:04

might come along and say, you know, we have this

44:06

guy named Serapis and he does

44:08

all.

44:09

Of this as well, perfect give

44:12

me all three. Yeah, well he's got

44:14

a dog. Wait now, was

44:16

he often depicted as having Cerberus

44:18

by his side, like having a three headed pup or

44:21

is that just a unique feature of

44:23

that sculpture.

44:24

I mean, based on the remaining

44:27

images of Serapis, it does

44:29

seem like it seems like he is sometimes depicted with Cerberus,

44:32

and I believe that that is

44:34

simply because, Yeah, if you are going to take

44:37

this character of Osiris, who is a god

44:39

of the underworld, and you are going to

44:42

spin him into this

44:44

this very Greek themed

44:46

model, well then you're going to drag in Hades,

44:48

and you're going to drag in like this key

44:51

example of sort of in a way

44:54

summing up this idea of the taming of death. Right. So

44:58

that's my understanding of it. But I I certainly

45:00

have seen other depictions of him that don't have the

45:02

dog present. All right, Well,

45:04

on that note, I believe we're going to go ahead and close

45:06

the book on Osiris here

45:09

with the caveat that I'm not sure

45:11

what the next core episode is going to be, but

45:13

we were throwing around the idea

45:16

of doing something that was still kind of

45:18

Osiris, but is not Osiris Part

45:20

three, So just

45:22

I don't know. You'd have to see what happens, and

45:24

we shall see what happens as well.

45:26

Okay.

45:27

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you

45:29

have thoughts on this two parter,

45:32

if you have thoughts on past episodes or potential future

45:34

episodes right in we would love to

45:36

hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff

45:38

to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast

45:41

with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

45:43

but on Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays

45:45

we do a short form episode, and on Fridays we set

45:47

aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

45:50

movie on Weird House Cinema.

45:52

Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

45:54

producer JJ posway. If you would

45:56

like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

45:59

or any other, to suggest us to topic for the future,

46:01

or just to say hello, you can email us

46:03

at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

46:05

dot com.

46:13

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.

46:16

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

46:18

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

46:20

wherever you listen to your favorite shows.