The Myth of Osiris'...

[loCAtek]

Resurrection



First of all in nutshell, leaving out many tangents this whole tale has; here's the origins of Osiris;

The original form of the myth states that Osiris was killed by a wooden sarcophagus secretly being made to his measurements by Seth, who was jealous of Osiris's position as king, and so plotted to kill him and take his place. A party had been held where the coffin was offered to whoever could fit inside. A few people tried to fit in, but to no avail. Osiris was encouraged to try, but as soon as he lay back, the lid slammed on him and was locked. It was then sealed with lead and thrown into the Nile. Upon hearing that Osiris was gone, Isis set out to look for him. She was afraid that without proper ceremonies and burial Osiris would not be able to go to the place of the dead. She later learned that the coffin had floated down the Nile river up to the coast of Byblos (now in modern day Lebanon) and became embedded in the trunk of a cedar tree. She also learned that the cedar tree had been taken and used as a pillar to support a palace for the king of Byblos. When traveling back, along the Nile River, she left the coffin in an area of marshland. Set, while hunting, finds Osiris' coffin and dismembered him into 14 parts, scattering them across the land of Egypt. Each part represented one of the 14 full moons (each year has 12 to 14 full moons).[1]

Once again Isis set out to look for the pieces and she was able to find 13 of the 14 parts, with the help of Nephthys, Set's sister-wife, but was unable to find the 14th, as it had been eaten by a fish. Instead, she fashioned a phallus out of gold and sang a song around Osiris until he came back to life.

Osiris was resurrected. He could have proper ceremonies and burial. [Other legends say, he only had enough life put into him impregnate Isis with their son Horus]

Due to this experience, Osiris became Lord of the Dead, and the Afterlife. [2].

Already, it seems like a big stretch to compare this to the Christ Resurrection.

From Wiki;


David J. MacLeod argues that the resurrection of Osiris differs from Jesus Christ, saying:

Perhaps the only pagan god for whom there is a resurrection is the Egyptian Osiris. Close examination of this story shows that it is very different from Christ's resurrection. Osiris did not rise; he ruled in the abode of the dead. As biblical scholar, Roland de Vaux, wrote, 'What is meant of Osiris being "raised to life?" Simply that, thanks to the ministrations of Isis, he is able to lead a life beyond the tomb which is an almost perfect replica of earthly existence. But he will never again come among the living and will reign only over the dead. This revived god is in reality a "mummy" god.'... No, the mummified Osiris is hardly an inspiration for the resurrected Christ... As Yamauchi observes, 'Ordinary men aspired to identification with Osiris as one who had triumphed over death. But it is a mistake to equate the Egyptian view of the afterlife with the biblical doctrine of resurrection. To achieve immortality the Egyptian had to meet three conditions: First, his body had to be preserved by mummification. Second, nourishment is provided by the actual offering of daily bread and beer. Third, magical spells were interred with him. His body did not rise from the dead; rather elements of his personality - his Ba and Ka - continued to hover over his body.*'[27]

My monitor is color challenged, but the above image should be correct. All the descriptions of Osiris say he was green-skinned and wore mummy bandages, because he was a dead corpse. Not resurrected to life, but magically animated if you will, and it took far longer than three days. Further legends also say, he as well as any other being having once entered the afterworld, could not leave it. The Egyptians believed that dead was dead, even for the gods.

Often what's left out of many tellings of this Myth of Osiris and Isis is: what Isis brought fourth was just a part of Osris' soul: his Ba;

From Wiki

The Ancient Egyptians believed that a human soul was made up of five parts: the Ren, the Ba, the Ka, the Sheut, and the Ib. In addition to these components of the soul there was the human body (called the ha, occasionally a plural haw, meaning approximately sum of bodily parts). The other souls were aakhu, khaibut, and khat.

...

In the Coffin Texts one form of the Ba that comes into existence after death is corporeal, eating, drinking and copulating.

Without all eight pieces of your soul and bodily parts, according to the Egyptians, you were not alive.

Isis only revived a piece of Osiris' essence in order to conceive her child. The Ba was thought to look like this;




Furthermore, it was said Isis taught this ability to mummify, and preserve your body for it's trip to the underworld to all Egyptians. It became a central part of their religion and culture, to tend to the needs of their 'souls'. So, this wasn't considered a divine ability, or miracle. Everyone had(has) a Ba.


The ba of Queen Nefertari,

[loCAtek]

Lastly to add, Osiris was killed by suffocation, not crucifixion.

The claim to crucifixion is this amulet said to be a crucified god;



Freke and Gandy use it on the cover of their book The Jesus Mysteries;




They say it reads 'Orpheus Bacchus' and some say that's a reference to 'Osiris Dionysus'

...which is odd because those are all four different gods, none of whom were crucified.

Maybe, this is a good topic for another 'The Myth of...' thread?

Unfortunately not, because...















It's a fake

not only is the cover of The Jesus Mysteries probably a fake, but at least one author of the book knew this and kept quiet about it.

[Sean]

They say it reads 'Orpheus Bacchus' and some say that's a reference to 'Osiris Dionysus'

...which is odd because those are all four different gods, none of whom were crucified.

I'll respond fully when I have more time but in the meantime...

It's worth researching things of which you have absolutely no knowledge before leaping in: Bacchus & Dionysus are two names for the same God (the Greek God of Wine). Orpheus and Osiris were both strongly associated with the underworld. Orpheus founded the cult of Dionysus.

[loCAtek]

I said I hadn't researched it; the point is: that's irrelevant since the amulet is fake.

[Sean]

Nice to see that it is proclaimed to be a fake by an unbiased source...

The aim of Bede's Library is show how a person from a scientific background came to Christianity and has had his faith strengthened rather than weakened by argument and reason.

He is also absolutely, 100% sure that it is a fake.

I found that the amulet is almost certainly a fake.

The first half of this article outlines how we know that the amulet is probably a fraud.

Funny, the more he writes, the less convinced he seems...

Until this little snippet of incontrovertible evidence:

The amulet originated in Italy (from whence so many fakes have come).

Bazinga! It's almost like saying that as there are pimps and child-snatchers from Russia, anybody who comes from Russia is therefore a pimp and/or a child-snatcher.




A Russian yesterday.

[loCAtek]

Nice to see that it is proclaimed to be a fake by an unbiased source...

Absolutely.

Until this little snippet of incontrovertible evidence:

The amulet originated in Italy (from whence so many fakes have come).

Well, snipping off the rest of the paragraph does leave off the unbiased source(s);

The amulet originated in Italy (from whence so many fakes have come). It was purchased by one E. Gerhard whose entire collection ended up in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. There, it was studied by the German epigrapher Otto Kern who included it in his seminal collection of Orphic fragments in 1922. Its inclusion in this book meant that several other scholars assumed that it was genuine including the English historian of Greek religion, W.K.C. Guthrie whose Orpheus and Greek Religion came out in 1935. Kern himself reviewed Guthrie’s book on pages 473 – 8 of a German journal called Gnomon that same year. Guthrie had discussed the amulet at some length in his book (see page 265 of the second edition from 1952) where he dismisses the idea that there was a tradition of a crucified Orpheus. He points out, rightly, that Justin Martyr in his First Apology (chapter 55), writing in the second century, had specifically ruled this out (a passage tendentiously not quoted by Freke and Gandy). However, unknown to Guthrie, an article had appeared in a journal called Aγγελος (issue 2, 1926, pp. 62ff). The title of this journal is Greek for messenger from which we get our word angel) analysing the amulet and coming to the conclusion that it was almost certainly a fake.

It evidently escaped [Guthrie’s] notice that the amulet with the image of the crucifix and the inscription ΟΡΦΕΟΣ ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟΣ in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin is almost certainly a fake. One must grant credibility to such outstanding connoisseurs of this material as Joh. Reil and Rob. Zahn, who asserted this [i.e. that the amulet is a fake] in Aγγελος 2, 1926, 62ff., and one must not be put off by the fact that this Italian counterfeiter, like so many--the amulet is from Italy and came from E. Gerhard's estate to the museum in Berlin--possessed some learning and knew of the connection of Orpheus to Bacchus. (translated from the German here)

Following the link;

ΟΡΦΕΟΣ ΒΑΚΚΙΚΟΣ

Thus reads the inscription of an amulet that is preserved in Berlin's Kaiser Friedrich Museum (cf. _Museen zu Berlin. Beschreibung der Bildwerke der christlichen Epochen, 3. Band: Altchristliche und mittelalterliche byzantinische und italienische Bildwerke, arranged by Oskar Wulff 1 1909 p. 234 Nr. 1146). Above the inscription a crucifix is depicted (see illustration, from an enlarged photograph of a plaster cast; also in Hans Achelis's Das Christentum in den ersten Drei Jahrhunderten 1925 Table V 2). In recent times, this amulet has often been the subject of discussion, since Otto Kern placed it in a larger context (Orphicorum fragmenta 1922 p. 46 Nr. 150). Most recently, Robert Eisler made reference to the "cylindrical seal" (Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg. II. Vorträge 1922-1923. II. Teil 1925 p. 338f). Age, meaning, authenticity of this piece are difficult to judge. I therefore asked two specialists for their opinions: Prof. Dr. Robert Zahn of Berlin, as an expert in gems, and Pastor Dr. Johannes Reil in Chemnitz, as an expert in ancient Christian depictions of the crucifixion. I thank both gentlemen for their cordial responses. Robert Zahn sent a long letter on January 28, 1926, and permitted its reprinting. Johannes Reil contributed an essay on December 13, 1924. As Hans Achelis informed me, Erwin Panofsky had already expressed doubts about the authenticity of the Berlin amulet on December 13, 1924, in a letter directed to Achelis.


...
Prof. Dr. Robert Zahn writes;

Therefore I cannot escape according the greatest suspicion to this [depiction on the cone]. [J Dölger Ichithys] p. 334 discusses counterfeiters of Christian engraved gems around the middle of the previous century.


Translated from German

Prof. Dr. Robert Zahn, a scholar of classical archaeology and director of the Staatliche Museum in Berlin

[Sean]

So apart from expressing 'great suspicion' and 'doubt' is there anybody apart from you categorically stating that it's a fake?

Take your time...

[loCAtek]

Swimming in De Nile;


What a crock!


How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

[Sean]

Yes, that helps to strengthen your argument.

[loCAtek]

Just having fun, crikey he's cranky, that croc!


However, I have been researching. On the assumption that if one 'Orpheus Amulet' exists then there must be others? There were large sects all over Greece calling themselves
οἱ Ὀρφικοί, orThe Orphic Brotherhood.

The Dionysus with whose worship the Orphic rites were connected was Dionysus Zagreus, closely connected with Demeter and Cora (Persephoné). The Orphic legends and poems related in great part to this Dionysus, who was combined, as an infernal deity, with Hades; and upon whom the Orphic theologians founded their hopes of the purification and ultimate immortality of the soul. But their mode of celebrating this worship was very different from the popular rites of Bacchus. The Orphic worshippers of Bacchus did not indulge in unrestrained pleasures and frantic enthusiasm, but rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life and manners, abstaining from meat, though not from wine, dressing in white, practising frequent purifications, expiations, and incantations, and professing a creed, in which the doctrine of the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis) held an important place. This sect degenerated by the time of the early Roman Empire into a mere fraternity of jugglers, and died out finally amid general contempt.

So, if the amulet ...correction seal, was genuine it would have read, 'Orpheus Dionysus', and not 'Orpheus Bacchus'.

Dionysus Zagreus

Also, if the sect faded away in the days of the early Roman empire, why does everyone agree that the art on this seal is 3 Century CE era?

CE? Christian Era? This seal, or reproduction of a seal, was made three hundred years after the Crucifixion of Christ? That would mean the Orphic Brotherhood copied Christ's Crucifixion, not the other way 'round. ...but didn't the Orphic orders fade away in the early days of the Empire, while Christ died on the cross during the last days of the Romans?

in any case, the Orphics didn't believe their god had been crucified at all;

The specific Orphic Myth however was that of Orpheus and Eurydice. Here Orpheus's bride, following a fatal dalliance with a thinly disguised Lord of the Animals, descends into the underworld. Orpheus (as the hunter son of Apollo and Urania) follows in an attempt to rescue her. He escapes himself but does not succeed in his quest. Afterwards he becomes an ascetic rejecting all women and is finally torn apart by the Maenads. This is obviously a reworking of a pagan fertility myth, but Orphics interpreted the underworld as the material one and the world above it as heaven. Some have seen references to an, at best, homoerotic or, at worst, a puritanical misogynistic aspect of Orphism in this myth

Two grave errors: using Bacchus, instead of Dionysus; and a crucified Orpheus which didn't happen.

I can see why there aren't any other seals like this.


If you can find one, please post it.



*


*BTW The authors of the Jesus Mysteries did alter this image. You can find this original drawing on page 24 of Joseph Campbell's Creative Myths, published in 1991, ten years before.

[Sean]

Busted? You make great leaps and assumptions and consider it busted?

Oh look everyone, Locatek has proven what scholarly types couldn't! Is there a Nobel Prize for retardation?

And CE stands for Common Era you dolt! Not everything is about religion no matter how much you wish it was...
In polite society we don't use the ridiculous BC and AD anymore.

[loCAtek]

Wki: Anno Domini is sometimes referred to as the Common Era, Christian Era, or Current Era (abbreviated as C.E. or CE).

No other Orpheus Crosses, yet?

[Sean]

Depends which wikipedia page you look at doesn't it. Here's another:

Common Era is also known as Christian Era and Current Era, with all three expressions abbreviated as CE. (Christian Era is, however, also abbreviated AD, for Anno Domini.

And why should I be required to prove or disprove your inanity and poor research? Here's a clue: I'm not.

Using your twisted 'logic' however...

I can find no evidence (because I can't be arsed looking) for the existence of more than one Locatek. This unequivocably proves that the Locatek we know of is a fake, a fraud and a fucktard.

Hmmm... maybe you've got a point after all.

[Sue U]

You can draw whatever parallels you want -- or not -- betweeen the ancient cults; it is beyond question that neighboring cultures exerted influenece on each other in developing cosmologies and mythologies, and how much cultic evolution may be syncretic, novel, or a wholesale co-opting of others is a venerable academic parlor game.

However:

Christ died on the cross during the last days of the Romans

is simply factually incorrect. The Roman Empire was in its earliest phase at that time, and would continue for nearly another 500 years (in the West) -- and this is following about 500 years of the Roman Republic. (And that's not even counting Byzantium, which arguably extended the "Roman Empire" another thousand years, well into the Middle Ages.)

Also, "Third Century CE" would encompass the years commonly known as 200 to 299 (201 to 300 for pedants).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Andrew D]

Also, "Third Century CE" would encompass the years commonly known as 200 to 299 (201 to 300 for pedants).

Thanks for the nod.

[thestoat]

it is beyond question that neighboring cultures exerted influenece on each other in developing cosmologies and mythologies

I don't think loca finds it beyond question ...

[loCAtek]

it is beyond question that neighboring cultures exerted influenece on each other in developing cosmologies and mythologies

I don't think loca finds it beyond question ...

Well, in this case where there is no evidence that Osiris was crucified, nor that Orpheus was crucified, on a pre-Christian seal or amulet; no.


That the amulet in question, is the influence of Christianity upon neighboring beliefs, and not the other way 'round; yes.

That this influence has any bearing on the existence of a factual Christ; no.

The Jesus Mysteries authors tried to use this amulet or seal as if it was forensic archeology, which it is not.

[Sean]

Numpty!

Nobody is actually claiming that Osiris was crucified.

As far as the ressurection similarities go, all you are doing is cherry-picking quotes that support your view and ignoring the rest.

Here's some from your favourite website that you overlooked...

"The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the powers of evil, that after a great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous also might conquer death...In Osiris the Christian Egyptians found the prototype of Christ, and in the pictures and statues of Isis suckling her son Horus, they perceived the prototypes of the Virgin Mary and her child."

...Christ Myth proponent George Albert Wells refers to Plutarch's account and asserts that Osiris dies and is mourned on the first day and that his resurrection is celebrated on the third day with the joyful cry "Osiris has been found". He also argues that St. Paul's comparison of bodily resurrection with a seed being planted, and corn then growing (1 Cor 15:35-38), is based on Ancient Egyptian concepts in which the germinating seeds in Osiris beds represent resurrection

Egyptologist Erik Hornung observes that Egyptian Christians continued to mummify corpses (an integral part of the Osirian beliefs) until it finally came to an end with the arrival of Islam and argues for an association between the passion of Jesus and Osirian traditions, particularly in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus and Christ's descent into Hades. He concludes that whilst Christianity rejected anything "pagan" it did so only at a superficial level and that early Christianity was "deeply indebted" to Ancient Egypt.

Some believe that the close maternal relationship between Isis and Horus presented in ancient Egyptian imagery were incorporated into later Christian iconography.[16][32] In particular, the depictions of Mary and Jesus from Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the Black Madonna of Częstochowa share many similarities to extant ancient Egyptian art depictions of Horus and Isis.[33] Egyptologist Erik Hornung wrote that "There was an obvious analogy between the Horus child and the baby Jesus and the care they received from their sacred mothers; long before Christianity, Isis had borne the epithet 'mother of the god.'"

Easy innit?

[loCAtek]

Numpty!

Nobody is actually claiming that Osiris was crucified.

Easy innit?

Then, what is the connection to the 'Jesus Mysteries' amulet? None then? No claims of connection at all?



ThX you for making my point: Jesus and Osiris are not connected.

[Sean]

You dickhead! The amulet featured Orpheus, not Osiris. How can you expect credibility when you can't even get that much right?

Oh yeah,

They say it reads 'Orpheus Bacchus' and some say that's a reference to 'Osiris Dionysus'

And that's the extent of your point "They say" and "some say".

Well I don't know about the rest of the world but I'm convinced !