The Flavian Hypothesis

Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus (30 December 39 AD – 13 September 81 AD)

John,

 ...

I’m going to freewheel through this, which is often a good way of developing a frame for a more detailed discussion. Hard to know where to start, since there are several possible starting points.

I’ll start with Eusebius. You suggested to me that we did not know why Eusebius wrote his works. But we do know why he wrote what he did, since the texts contain the motive and purpose of his writings, from his own pen. The title of his Preparation for the Gospel says exactly what it is for. It is based on the idea that all ancient peoples, and all ancient religions, were in darkness, and struggling for the light before the arrival of Christianity. And the Christian gospels (and other related writings) represent the final arrival of the human race at a point where their engagement with God is soundly based. Christianity is a religion in which it is possible to live a good and moral life, unlike former religions, which embraced barbarity and sin, on a daily basis.

Few now read Eusebius apart from historians of Christianity, since most of the quotations and summaries of earlier works have been extracted, and collected together elsewhere (Isaac Preston Cory was one of the first to produce a collection of ancient fragments in the early nineteenth century). We have evidence however that he was not making these earlier documents up (He quoted from the Babyloniaka, a three volume work by the former high priest of Bel in Babylon, who moved to Athens in the fourth century BCE. These quotations are consistent with what we find in the tablets from Mesopotamia. So Eusebius had access to either the Babyloniaka itself, or summaries of its contents, as late as the early fourth century CE), though the use to which he put them was to suggest that Christianity was on the way, and that these earlier works were foreshadowings of the gospels, and of the Christian church. That interpretation of the worth of earlier documents was something which Eusebius (and other scholars)  constructed, and which was used as a frame  to select the relevant evidence.

I came across the detail of the Flavian hypothesis relatively recently, but I find the concept that the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus were written by Roman and Greek scholars credible, and that they were written in order to counter messianic Judaism, which was almost out of control at the time the gospels were composed. And that this was to be achieved by creating a messianic figure who urged peace, ‘turning the other cheek’, and ‘rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar’s’. And furthermore, one who had already lived, rather than one who was yet to arrive.

Joseph Atwill’s paralleling of Titus’s campaign’s in Judaea (which appear in the writings of Josephus, who was an adopted son of the Flavian family) with the movements of Jesus is particularly compelling.

   

So it can be understood as a very sophisticated piece of propaganda to further the ends of the Imperial family, and of Rome. The Flavian propaganda used techniques similar to those familiar to religious scholars and priests, particularly in Judaea, where later compositions used earlier writings and stories as their basis. The earlier writings, when paired with the later ‘types’ in the later writings, communicated information about the meaning of the more recent texts (if you have a polyglot Bible, you can see the lengths to which this procedure can be taken). That’s what the authors of the Gospels and other New Testament books were doing. And in a sense, that is also what Eusebius was doing, but without much reverence for the pagan past.

 Stepping a little sideways for a moment, when I was fifteen I attempted to read Isaac Asiimov’s Foundation trilogy. I got the general idea of the human race experiencing a cultural crisis from which they needed to be shielded, but it was hard to understand why the psychohistorians did this by restructuring history and culture. And why Asimov had written these books. Asimov is known mainly for his science fiction, but he also wrote many books on history. I did not find that out until recently also. And then I came across a quotation from him, concerning the writing of the trilogy. He said that at the time he was ‘cribbin’ Gibbon.’

Suddenly everything lit up. Asimov had read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and understood that Gibbon’s account of the interaction between the Roman Empire and Christianity (in particular) contained materials which suggested a sophisticated set of fabrications, and literary and cultural manipulation. A historical fraud of immense proportions.

I haven’t read the entirety of Gibbon’s epic work ,so I don’t know whether Asimov figured this out himself from Gibbon’s account, or whether Gibbon himself knew. I suspect that the latter is the case, since his account portrays the rise of Christianity in negative terms (He regarded all forms of religion as contrary to reason).

The point here is that the idea that there is fabrication at the root of Christianity is not a new one. The Flavian hypothesis puts a lot more flesh on the bones however. If Gibbon did know (and he read all of the relevant materials, including Josephus) it would have been difficult or even impossible for him to publish his book. There is a Ph.D thesis in it for someone to critically examine Gibbon’s text for clues as to whether or not he was writing around something that he dare not say.

I will write a little later about ‘chrest’ and Roman imperial ideas of the divine.

Hope you are well,

Best,

Thomas

Egypt in the Shadows

An interesting response from a doctoral student (Benjamin Murphy, studying philosophical theology, Oxford) on the question of whether or not the Greeks were the first to practice philosophy, or whether philosophy was first practiced by the Ancient Egyptians, and also in ancient India. The response, which appeared originally on the Quora site,  reveals a great deal about the presumptions western scholars bring to bear on such questions.

He begins by referencing Frederick Copleston on the question. Frederick Copleston wrote a voluminous History of Philosophy, the first volume of which was published in 1944. As he says, it was one of the most widely used histories of philosophy for decades. There was, and still is, nothing quite as comprehensive available to scholars, though the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is perhaps its nearest rival. Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is short in comparison, and in some cases covers important subjects rather crudely, and with much important detail missing. All three are focussed on Western philosophy, and aren’t much concerned to establish connections with bodies of thought elsewhere.

Murphy tells us that Copleston ‘…considers the claim that Greek philosophy was derived from Egyptian, Indian or Chinese Philosophy and rejects it.’ He gives some reasons for Copleston’s rejection of the notion that Greek philosophy owed something to other cultures:

Copleston explains that the idea that Greek philosophy was derived from Egyptian philosophy originated in Alexandria during the Hellenistic era. (As I’m sure you know, Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle, Aristotle taught Alexander the Great whose conquests inaugurated the Hellenistic era, and who founded the city of Alexandria in Egypt). As Copleston also points out, Philo, a Jewish writer who lived in Alexandria during the Hellenistic era claimed philosophy was a Jewish invention, because Moses was a philosopher, and the Torah is a work of philosophy. In other words, when the prestige of Greek philosophy was established, people from other cultures liked to claim “Of course, we invented that first”, and they could point to old writings and say “See, that is philosophy.” But of course, the Torah isn’t philosophy. 

The argument that Greek philosophy was a phenomenon which owed something to Egyptian philosophy, and perhaps Moses, is an old one, and it is true that there was a great deal of competitiveness between cultures during the Hellenistic era. The Babylonian priest of Bel, Berossus, wrote an extensive work, the Babyloniaka, in order to show the antiquity of Babylonian civilisation by means of a kinglist stretching back many thousands of years, and quoted stories to illustrate the sophistication of that civilisation.

Among these stories we find a description of the Babylonian myth of the Creation, and an account of how man came to acquire useful knowledge from a Divine sage (apkallum). Unfortunately the Babyloniaka has been lost for at least fifteen hundred years, possibly more, but the Christian scholar Eusebius made extensive excerpts from it. The general accuracy of the account of Eusebius is confirmed by the fact that we now have access to original Mesopotamian cuneiform texts which describe the Babylonian creation.

The Egyptian scholar Manetho also produced a chronology of Ancient Egypt during the same period, which covered a notional timescale of 432 thousand years, and the thirty dynasties he describes, which (apart from the earliest, which are regarded as entirely mythical) now form the basis of the chronology used by Egyptologists. Again, Manetho’s chronology has come down to us largely via the pages of Eusebius. This list of dynasties, at least in its later phases, also bears some relationship to the chronology as represented in papyri and inscriptions found in Egypt. The Persian invaders in the 5^th century (including Darius) are represented as pharaohs by Manetho, and also by the Egyptian records which survive.

In addition, Plato tells us in the Timaeus that his ancestor Solon visited Egypt, and spoke with Egyptian priests, who told him that the Greeks were very young, and did not possess knowledge ‘hoary with age’. Herodotus mentions that the names of some of the Greek gods came from Egypt. The philosopher Isocrates, a contemporary of Plato, refers explicitly to Egyptian philosophy in his Busiris. Pythagoras travelled around the Levant and the Ancient Near East collecting knowledge from priests and philosophers, including those in Egypt. Plato himself in his Protagoras describes philosophy as a very old practice, and tell us that it was practised in Sparta and in Crete - both territories which received an influx of people from north Africa and Egypt in the middle to late 2^nd millennium BCE.  

But intense cultural competitiveness is insufficient to explain the persistence of the idea that the Egyptians were philosophers. Copleston had not studied Egypt, and pulled this idea out of the air. 

Many Greek words have plausible etymologies from Egyptian. Some of the concepts used by Aristotle in his philosophical writing were known to Egyptians nine hundred years before his time, such as the idea of completion (it is connected with the idea of birth in Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Aten, which dates to the fourteenth century BCE).

As for the claim that the Jews practiced philosophy, this cannot be written off as an empty claim by Philo Judaeus. There is abundant evidence for the existence of philosophical thought among the Jews in the books of the Old Testament.  Yahweh is described as ‘the first and last, and beside me there is no God’. His name (minus the vowels) is a variant of the verb ‘to be’, which suggests that his isolation is due to the fact that he was understood to be Being itself. In the third chapter of Malachi, Yahweh says ‘I do not change’, which is a characterisation of the nature of Being which would have been familiar to philosophers and sages around the Mediterranean and the Near East. It is an explicitly philosophical description of Being itself, since Being cannot be what it is, if it is subject to change.

What we don’t have from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Hebrew Kingdoms is recorded philosophical discussions which closely parallel the writings of Greek philosophers. There is nothing strange in that. What is strange is that we have philosophical arguments from Greece, since both Plato and Aristotle distinguished two forms of teaching: exoteric and esoteric. The exoteric teaching was suitable for anyone to hear, but the esoteric teaching was of a different nature, and was restricted to those who were capable of understanding it. Which means that they were discussing matters relating to the gods, and to divine things. So in the versions of these discussions which were circulated, there is often elision, obfuscation, misdirection, and alternative terminology. Plato does not refer to the ‘one true thing’ as god, but as ‘the good’, for this reason. Arguments which are not resolved in the course of discussion, are deemed to ‘necessarily’ be the case, for otherwise communion with the gods would be impossible, or motion would be impossible, etc. The genealogy of the gods is not discussed, as too complicated a matter, and those who claim to have divine ancestors (says Plato), should know the truth of the matter better than anyone else.

In the 2nd century CE, the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria wrote:

Philosophy, then, with all its blessed advantages to man, flourished long ages ago among the barbarians, diffusing its light among the gentiles, and eventually penetrated into Greece. Its hierophants were the prophets among the Egyptians, the Chaldeans among the Assyrians, the Druids among the Galatians, the Sramanas of the Bactrians, and the philosophers of the Celts, the Magi among the Persians….  and among the Indians the Gymnosophists, and other philosophers of barbarous nations.

— Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.15.71 (ed. Colon. 1688 p. 305, A, B).

Alexander himself consulted the Gymosophists when he arrived in India, and we have what purports to be some of their conversation together in Plutarch’s life of Alexander. The idea that only the Greeks practiced philosophy was not what he had been taught by Aristotle. Aristotle argued that philosophy began when there existed a leisured class with time to think and conjecture (by which he probably had in mind the fully professional class of priests in Egypt). Diogenes Laertius also mentioned that there was a school of thought in existence which argued that philosophy originated outside Greece. 

One of the comments by Caleb Beers following the article,  articulates the important question:

…. define “philosophy.” Are alchemical texts philosophy? Is divination (an attempt at?) philosophy? Is a discourse on mystical states philosophy? Is mythology philosophy? You can argue that there are philosophical dimensions to all of these things. The Bhagavad Ghita certainly waxes philosophical, and some sections are oddly reminiscent of Parmenides (or Parmenides is reminiscent of the Ghita).

Is there nothing philosophical in this passage from a hymn to the Sun-God from Egypt?

Grant that I may come into the everlasting heaven and the mountain where thy favoured ones dwell. Let me join myself to those who are holy and perfect in the divine Underworld, and let me appear with them to behold thy beauties at eventide. I lift my hands to thee in adoration when thou the living one dost sets. Thou art the Eternal Creator and art adored at thy setting in heaven.

[From the Papyrus of Ani *1]

It is a passage which expresses a desire for union with the divine, the creator of the world. Union with what is holy and perfect. And expresses adoration for what is beautiful in heaven when it (the living one) meets the limit of what it is. Is that not something like Plsto's conception when he talks about the philosopher ascending to the Good via the Forms?

Murphy in fact redefines what he will accept as philosophy, in a manner reminiscent of James Frazer: he embraces what is practical and useful. Which is not how philosophy was understood in antiquity. Ironically the possibility of an Egyptian contribution to the development of philosophy is sometimes dismissed by modern scholars because they consider that Egyptians dealt in concrete practicalities and useful things, and were simply not capable of abstract thought. 

He says:

...Greece is the starting point for what would become a strictly logical philosophy based on reasoning and empiricism. There’s some stuff about gods and afterlives in Plato, of course, but by the time you get to Aristotle, you find elaborate theories on the external world using what is not yet a rigorously scientific method but still draws on observation of the world around us to draw general conceptual conclusions using reasoning.

He concludes
:

...Greece is credited - rightfully, in my opinion - with giving birth to the philosophy that would later become science. That, I think, is what ultimately makes us defer to the Greeks.

1. The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript created c. 1250 BCE.  Egyptians compiled an individualized book for certain people upon their death, called the 'Book of Going Forth by Day', containing declarations and spells to help the deceased in the afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani.

This papyrus was (shockingly) stolen from an Egyptian government storeroom in 1888 by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, which theft he describes in By Nile and Tigris, for the collection of the British Museum. Before he shipped the manuscript to England, Budge cut the seventy-eight foot scroll into thirty-seven sheets of nearly equal size, damaging its integrity.

Concerning Cult Images

The following text was an appendix to the 2004 draft of what became The Sacred History of Being. Some informative texts from antiquity (such as this one) survive in part as quotations by other writers. In this case the original author was Porphyry, and it was quoted in an extensive work (the Preparation for the Gospel) by the industrious christian apologist Eusebius in the 4th century C.E. As I've shown elsewhere, Porphyry knew about the doctrine of wholes and totalities also understood by Pythagoras and Plato and others, and so he was well informed, and so gives an insight into the real significance of the practice of idolatry in the ancient world.

I first read this text around 1993, and it gave shape to a good deal of the writing which went into The Sacred History of Being during the next ten or so years. Eusebius' purpose in quoting the text was to show that much of the nature of earlier religion was a mere foreshadowing of the Christian revelation. My purpose in including the text as an appendix was to show that there was still much known of the nature of 1st millennium idolatry up until the closure of the philosophical schools in 529 C.E., and that their knowledge pointed to quite a different understanding of polytheism than the one we commonly associate with the history of Israel and its religious struggles, and the later Christian objections to the 'abomination' of polytheism. 

The appendix was removed while I was writing the final draft of the book between 2011 and 2014, in order to keep the text within manageable limits.

TY, July 22, 2017 

Appendix E: Concerning Cult Images (Porphyry) – extracts preserved in Eusebius’ the Preparation for the Gospel

fr. 1 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.7.1

I speak to those who lawfully may hear:

Depart all ye profane, and close the doors.

The thoughts of a wise theology, wherein men indicated God and God's powers by images akin to sense, and sketched invisible things in visible forms, I will show to those who have learned to read from the statues as from books the things there written concerning the gods. Nor is it any wonder that the utterly unlearned regard the statues as wood and stone, just as also those who do not understand the written letters look upon the monuments as mere stones, and on the tablets as bits of wood, and on books as woven papyrus.

fr. 2 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.7.2-4

As the deity is of the nature of light, and dwells in an atmosphere of ethereal fire, and is invisible to sense that is busy about mortal life, He through translucent matter, as crystal or Parian marble or even ivory, led men on to the conception of his light, and through material gold to the discernment of the fire, and to his undefiled purity, because gold cannot be defiled.

On the other hand, black marble was used by many to show his invisibility; and they moulded their gods in human form because the deity is rational, and made these beautiful, because in those is pure and perfect beauty; and in varieties of shape and age, of sitting and standing, and drapery; and some of them male, and some female, virgins, and youths, or married, to represent their diversity.

Hence they assigned everything white to the gods of heaven, and the sphere and all things spherical to the cosmos and to the sun and moon in particular, but sometimes also to fortune and to hope: and the circle and things circular to eternity, and to the motion of the heaven, and to the zones and cycles therein; and the segments of circles to the phases of the moon; pyramids and obelisks to the element of fire, and therefore to the gods of Olympus; so again the cone to the sun, and cylinder to the earth, and figures representing parts of the human body to sowing and generation.

fr. 3 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.9.1-5

'Now look at the wisdom of the Greeks, and examine it as follows. The authors of the Orphic hymns supposed Zeus to be the mind of the world, and that he created all things therein,containing the world in himself. Therefore in their theological systems they have handed down their opinions concerning him thus:'

Zeus was the first, Zeus last, the lightning's lord,

Zeus head, Zeus centre, all things are from Zeus.

Zeus born a male, Zeus virgin undefiled;

Zeus the firm base of earth and starry heaven;

Zeus sovereign, Zeus alone first cause of all:

One power divine, great ruler of the world,

One kingly form, encircling all things here,

Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day;

Wisdom, first parent, and delightful Love:

For in Zeus' mighty body these all lie.

His head and beauteous face the radiant heaven

Reveals and round him float in shining waves

The golden tresses of the twinkling stars.

On either side bulls' horns of gold are seen,

Sunrise and sunset, footpaths of the gods.

His eyes the Sun, the Moon's responsive light;

His mind immortal ether, sovereign truth,

Hears and considers all; nor any speech,

Nor cry, nor noise, nor ominous voice escapes

The ear of Zeus, great Kronos' mightier son:

Such his immortal head, and such his thought.

His radiant body, boundless, undisturbed

In strength of mighty limbs was formed thus:

The god's broad-spreading shoulders, breast and back

Air's wide expanse displays; on either side

Grow wings, wherewith throughout all space he flies.

Earth the all-mother, with her lofty hills,

His sacred belly forms; the swelling flood

Of hoarse resounding Ocean girds his waist.

His feet the deeply rooted ground upholds,

And dismal Tartarus, and earth's utmost bounds.

All things he hides, then from his heart again

         In godlike action brings to gladsome light.

Zeus, therefore, is the whole world, animal of animals, and god of gods; but Zeus, that is, inasmuch as he is the mind from which he brings forth all things, and by his thoughts creates them. When the theologians had explained the nature of god in this manner, to make an image such as their description indicated was neither possible, nor, if any one thought of it, could he show the look of life, and intelligence, and forethought by the figure of a sphere.

But they have made the representation of Zeus in human form, because mind was that according to which he wrought, and by generative laws brought all things to completion; and he is seated, as indicating the steadfastness of his power: and his upper parts are bare, because he is manifested in the intellectual and the heavenly parts of the world; but his feet are clothed, because he is invisible in the things that lie hidden below. And he holds his sceptre in his left hand, because most close to that side of the body dwells the heart, the most commanding and intelligent organ: for the creative mind is the sovereign of the world. And in his right hand he holds forth either an eagle, because he is master of the gods who traverse the air, as the eagle is master of the birds that fly aloft - or a victory, because he is himself victorious over all things.

fr. 8 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.11.22-44

The whole power productive of water they called Oceanus, and named its symbolic figure Tethys. But of the whole, the drinking-water produced is called Achelous; and the sea-water Poseidon; while again that which makes the sea, inasmuch as it is productive, is Amphitrite. Of the sweet waters the particular powers are called Nymphs, and those of the sea-waters Nereids.

Again, the power of fire they called Hephaestus, and have made his image in the form of a man, but put on it a blue cap as a symbol of the revolution of the heavens, because the archetypal and purest form of fire is there. But the fire brought down from heaven to earth is less intense, and wants the strengthening and support which is found in matter: wherefore he is lame, as needing matter to support him.

Also they supposed a power of this kind to belong to the sun and called it Apollo, from the pulsation (palsis) of his beams. There are also nine Muses singing to his lyre, which are the sublunar sphere, and seven spheres of the planets, and one of the fixed stars. And they crowned him with laurel, partly because the plant is full of fire, and therefore hated by daemons; and partly because it crackles in burning, to represent the god's prophetic art.

But inasmuch as the sun wards off the evils of the earth, they called him Heracles (Heraklês) (from his clashing against the air (klasthai pros ton aera) in passing from east to west. And they invented fables of his performing twelve labours, as the symbol of the division of the signs of the zodiac in heaven; and they arrayed him with a club and a lion's skin, the one as an indication of his uneven motion, and the other representative of his strength in "Leo" the sign of the zodiac.

Of the sun's healing power Asclepius is the symbol, and to him they have given the staff as a sign of the support and rest of the sick, and the serpent is wound round it, as significant of his preservation of body and soul: for the animal is most full of spirit, and shuffles off the weakness of the body. It seems also to have a great faculty for healing: for it found the remedy for giving clear sight, and is said in a legend to know a certain plant which restores life.

But the fiery power of his revolving and circling motion, whereby he ripens the crops, is called Dionysus, not in the same sense as the power which produces the juicy fruits, but either from the sun's rotation (dinein), or from his completing (dianuein) his orbit in the heaven. And whereas he revolves round the cosmical seasons (hôras) (and is the maker of "times and tides,") the sun is on this account called Horus.

Of his power over agriculture, whereon depend the gifts of wealth (Plutus), the symbol is Pluto. He has, however, equally the power of destroying, on which account they make Sarapis share the temple of Pluto: and the purple tunic they make the symbol of the light that has sunk beneath the earth, and the sceptre broken at the top that of his power below, and the posture of the hand the symbol of his departure into the unseen world.

Cerberus is represented with three heads, because the positions of the sun above the earth are three-rising, midday, and setting.

The moon, conceived according to her brightness, they called Artemis, as it were (aerotemis), "cutting the air." And Artemis, though herself a virgin, presides over childbirth, because the power of the new moon is helpful to parturition.

What Apollo is to the sun, that Athena is to the moon: for the moon is a symbol of wisdom, and so a kind of Athena.

But, again, the moon is Hecate, the symbol of her varying phases and of her power dependent on the phases. Wherefore her power appears in three forms, having as symbol of the new moon the figure in the white robe and golden sandals, and torches lighted: the basket, which she bears when she has mounted high, is the symbol of the cultivation of the crops, which she makes to grow up according to the increase of her light: and again the symbol of the full moon is the goddess of the brazen sandals.

Or even from the branch of olive one might infer her fiery nature, and from the poppy her productiveness, and the multitude of the souls who find an abode in her as in a city, for the poppy is an emblem of a city. She bears a bow, like Artemis, because of the sharpness of the pangs of labour.

And, again, the Fates are referred to her powers, Clotho to the generative, and Lachesis to the nutritive, and Atropos to the inexorable will of the deity.

Also, the power productive of corn-crops, which is Demeter, they associate with her, as producing power in her. The moon is also a supporter of Kore. They set Dionysus also beside her, both on account of their growth of horns, and because of the region of clouds lying beneath the lower world.

The power of Kronos they perceived to be sluggish and slow and cold, and therefore attributed to him the power of time (chronou): and they figure him standing, and grey-headed, to indicate that time is growing old.

The Curetes, attending on Chronos, are symbols of the seasons, because time (Chronos) journeys on through seasons.

Of the Hours, some are the Olympian, belonging to the sun, which also open the gates in the air: and others are earthly, belonging to Demeter, and hold a basket, one symbolic of the flowers of spring, and the other of the wheat-ears of summer.

The power of Ares they perceived to be fiery, and represented it as causing war and bloodshed, and capable both of harm and benefit.

The star of Aphrodite they observed as tending to fecundity, being the cause of desire and offspring, and represented it as a woman because of generation, and as beautiful, because it is also the evening star -

"Hesper, the fairest star that shines in heaven." *[1]

And Eros they set by her because of desire. She veils her breasts and other parts, because their power is the source of generation and nourishment. She comes from the sea, a watery element, and warm, and in constant movement, and foaming because of its commotion, whereby they intimate the seminal power.

Hermes is the representative of reason and speech, which both accomplish and interpret all things. The phallic Hermes represents vigour, but also indicates the generative law that pervades all things.

Further, reason is composite: in the sun it is called Hermes; in the moon Hecate; and that which is in the All Hermopan, for the generative and creative reason extends over all things. Hermanubis also is composite, and as it were half Greek, being found among the Egyptians also. Since speech is also connected with the power of love, Eros represents this power: wherefore Eros is represented as the son of Hermes, but as an infant, because of his sudden impulses of desire.

They made Pan the symbol of the universe, and gave him his horns as symbols of sun and moon, and the fawn skin as emblem of the stars in heaven, or of the variety of the universe.

fr.10 Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.11.45-.13.2

The Demiurge, whom the Egyptians call Cneph, is of human form, but with a skin of dark blue, holding a girdle and a sceptre, and crowned with a royal wing on his head, because reason is hard to discover, and wrapt up in secret, and not conspicuous, and because it is life-giving, and because it is a king, and because it has an intelligent motion: wherefore the characteristic wing is put upon his head.

This god, they say, puts forth from his mouth an egg, from which is born a god who is called by themselves Phtha, but by the Greeks Hephaestus; and the egg they interpret as the world. To this god the sheep is consecrated, because the ancients used to drink milk.

The representation of the world itself they figured thus: the statue is like a man having feet joined together, and clothed from head to foot with a robe of many colours, and has on the head a golden sphere, the first to represent its immobility, the second the many-coloured nature of the stars, and the third because the world is spherical.

The sun they indicate sometimes by a man embarked on a ship, the ship set on a crocodile. And the ship indicates the sun's motion in a liquid element: the crocodile potable water in which the sun travels. The figure of the sun thus signified that his revolution takes place through air that is liquid and sweet.

The power of the earth, both the celestial and terrestrial earth, they called Isis, because of the equality (isotêta), which is the source of justice: but they call the moon the celestial earth, and the vegetative earth, on which we live, they call the terrestrial.

Demeter has the same meaning among the Greeks as Isis amongs the Egyptians: and, again, Kore and Dionysus among the Greeks the same as Isis and Osiris among the Egyptians. Isis is that which nourishes and raises up the fruits of the earth; and Osiris among the Egyptians is that which supplies the fructifying power, which they propitiate with lamentations as it disappears into the earth in the sowing, and as it is consumed by us for food.

Osiris is also taken for the river-power of the Nile: when, however, they signify the terrestrial earth, Osiris is taken as the fructifying power; but when the celestial, Osiris is the Nile, which they suppose to come down from heaven: this also they bewail, in order to propitiate the power when failing and becoming exhausted. And the Isis who, in the legends, is wedded to Osiris is the land of Egypt, and therefore she is made equal to him, and conceives, and produces the fruits; and on this account Osiris has been described by tradition as the husband of Isis, and her brother, and her son.

CHAPTER XII

At the city Elephantine there is an image worshipped, which in other respects is fashioned in the likeness of a man and sitting; it is of a blue colour, and has a ram's head, and a diadem bearing the horns of a goat, above which is a quoit-shaped circle. He sits with a vessel of clay beside him, on which he is moulding the figure of a man. And from having the face of a ram and the horns of a goat he indicates the conjunction of sun and moon in the sign of the Ram, while the colour of blue indicates that the moon in that conjunction brings rain.

The second appearance of the moon is held sacred in the city of Apollo: and its symbol is a man with a hawk-like face, subduing with a hunting-spear Typhon in the likeness of a hippopotamus. The image is white in colour, the whiteness representing the illumination of the moon, and the hawk-like face the fact that it derives light and breath from the sun. For the hawk they consecrate to the sun, and make it their symbol of light and breath, because of its swift motion, and its soaring up on high, where the light is. And the hippopotamus represents, the Western sky, because of its swallowing up into itself the stars which traverse it.

In this city Horus is worshipped as a god. But the city of Eileithyia worships the third appearance of the moon: and her statue is fashioned into a flying vulture, whose plumage consists of precious stones. And its likeness to a vulture signifies that the moon is what produces the winds: for they think that the vulture conceives from the wind, and declares that they are all hen birds.

In the mysteries at Eleusis the hierophant is dressed up to represent the demiurge, and the torch-bearer the sun, the priest at the altar the moon, and the sacred herald Hermes.

Moreover a man is admitted by the Egyptians among their objects of worship. For there is a village in Egypt called Anabis, in which a man is worshipped, and sacrifice offered to him, and the victims burned upon his altars: and after a little while he would eat the things that had been prepared for him as for a man.

They did not, however, believe the animals to be gods, but regarded them as likenesses and symbols of gods; and this is shown by the fact that in many places oxen dedicated to the gods are sacrificed at their monthly festivals and in their religious services. For they consecrated oxen to the sun and moon.

CHAPTER XIII

The ox called Mnevis which is dedicated to the sun in Heliopolis, is the largest of oxen, very black, chiefly because much sunshine blackens men's bodies. And its tail and all its body are covered with hair that bristles backwards unlike other cattle, just as the sun makes its course in the opposite direction to the heaven. Its testicles are very large, since desire is produced by heat, and the sun is said to fertilize nature.

To the moon they dedicated a bull which they call Apis, which also is more black than others, and bears symbols of sun and moon, because the light of the moon is from the sun. The blackness of his body is an emblem of the sun, and so is the beetle-like mark under his tongue; and the symbol of the moon is the semicircle, and the gibbous figure.

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[1] Homer, Iliad 22:318

Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind

 

The Babylonian writer Berossus (possibly a Greek form of the name Bēl-uşur), took up residence in Athens, after having been a priest of Bel in Babylon in the late 4^th century/early 3^rd century B.C.E. He wrote a three volume work, Babyloniaka, unfortunately now lost, which was a study on the culture and history of Babylonia. Alexander Polyhistor made an abridgement of this work in the first century B.C.E., also lost. However this abridgement was available to the christian writer Eusebius (4^th century C.E), and also Josephus in the first century C.E. The passages which they quoted from Polyhistor and a few other authors survive. As Black and Green write, “Akkadian mythological and historical texts found in modern excavations have largely confirmed the authenticity of the tradition represented by Berossus.”  [1]  This includes the tradition of the Seven Sages, preserved in the account by Berossus (in his first book) of the eight creatures, beginning with Oannes and concuding with Odakon, which emerged from the sea bringing to man the civilising arts, including agriculture. His second book covered the history of Babylonia from the ‘ten kings before the flood’, through the Flood itself.

The Babylonian tradition is indeed that seven apkallu or sages lived before the flood. Their names are given in Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian ritual texts, as well as the seven cities from which they are supposed to come, though there are differing traditions within Mesopotamia about the sages and their origins which are difficult to reconcile.

Apollodorus has preserved a fragment of Berossus, which tells us that the first of the Chaldean Kings was Alorus of Babylon, followed by Alaparus and also Amelon who came from Pantibiblon, followed by Ammenon the Chaldean. In the reign of Ammenon, the sage Oannes appeared from the sea.  [2]  Polyhistor gives us detail drawn from Berossus about this appearance, after Berossus describes the Babylon of those times as: a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldaea, and lived without rule and order like the beast of the field’:

In the first year there made its appearance, from a part of the Erythraean sea which bordered upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called Oannes. (According to the account of Apollodorus) the whole body of the animal was like that of a fish; and had under a fish’s head another head, and also feet below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.

The fishtailed images found upon the slabs of Assyrian Palaces and on cylinder seals are representations of this first sage, preserved even until our own much later day. The appearance of Oannes in ritual contexts with the King or the Sacred Tree, or both together, tells us that the earliest days of mankind are being recalled, and that an element of re-enactment or revitalisation is being invoked in these images.

Polyhistor’s account of Berossus’ first book continues:

This Being in the day-time used to converse with men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and every kind of art. He taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to collect fruits; in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize mankind. From that time, so universal were his instructions, nothing material has been added by way of material improvement. When the sun set it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep; for he was amphibious.

Creatures which were amphibious were of interest in antiquity because they could inhabit more than one world, as Oannes does here. Not only can he live and breathe under water, and converse with man in the daytime, but he is equipped with what is clearly divine knowledge – the knowledge of writing and of various sciences and arts, house-building, the founding of temples (and implicitly the worship of the gods), law, geometry, botany. The order of the sciences and arts is interesting here, in that house-building comes before the founding of temples, and knowledge of the law comes after the knowledge of the founding of temples. This reflects a conflation of a likely sequence – men will have built houses before they embarked on temples and the development of law and geometry – with a theoretical sequence of the founding of temples and the worship of the gods, the knowledge of whom will have given rise to the knowledge of law and its importance, and the application of the idea of law to the measuring and demarcation of space using the techniques of geometry. The development of botanical knowledge, and the division of the parts of nature, represents the application of the idea of demarcation to the world of plants, as the precursor to agriculture.

The softening of manners is not the thing of principal importance here, but something which is absolutely necessary – it is impossible to have an organised population, subject to reason and the law, able to build houses and temples, and most importantly worship the gods, if they are not free of the daily struggle for survival, in which they are not distinguished in any significant way from the beasts of the field.

The instructions which came from Oannes are described as ‘so universal’, that nothing of any significance ‘has been added by way of material improvement’. These instructions are clearly divine and the product of divine knowledge, and came from the gods by way of the Sage Oannes, who rests in the sea. Recalled here is the shrine of the god Ea/Enki, the ‘broad-eared’ one of wide learning, which is at the bottom of the Apsu, among the sweet waters. The image of the obverse of our world is doubled by associating the return of Oannes to the deep at sunset, where the sun leaves our world in darkness. The human race is illuminated only when Oannes is on land, and conversing with us. It is also of some significance that the point is made that Oannes does not eat ‘at that season’, but receives his sustenance at some other time – implicitly while he is below the waters of the deep, in the place of Ea/Enki, in the Abyss, where all good things which may be had have their ultimate origin.

Polyhistor’s account also tells us that ‘Oannes wrote concerning the generation of mankind; of their different ways of life, and of their civil polity’. Berossus gives the purport of what he said:

There was a time in which there was nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a two-fold principle. Men appeared with two wings, some with four and with two faces. They had one body but two heads; the one of a man, the other of a woman. They were likewise in their several organs both male and female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats. Some had horses’ feet; others had the limbs of a horse behind, but before were fashioned like men, resembling hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, and the tails of fishes. Also horses with the heads of dogs: men too and other animals, with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures with the limbs of every species of animals.

Here Berossus describes the properties of the Abyss. It is unilluminated and full of waters which contain beings whose characteristics and properties are not defined by any of the rules which apply on the earth – men have the feet of horses, some have wings, some have two heads, male and female. Bulls have the heads of men, horses have the heads of dogs, etc. These are not ‘seeds of the earth’, but of a realm in which the demarcations and separations in the animal kingdom of the earth are collapsed together and mixed to an infinite degree. In some ways the situation can be paralleled with the disorder in the life of man before the appearance of Oannes from the waters of the sea: the fact that this description follows on immediately from that account suggests this quite strongly. And as the beasts of the field were the precursors of a humanized mankind, so the Abyss is the precursor of another creation, in which order is given to the ‘seeds of the earth’. Berossus says that these creatures, plus ‘fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other wonderful animals…..assumed each other’s shape and countenance’  my emphasis . This is an image of a dynamic chaos, in which everything is intermingled; all possibility is here, and nothing is absolutely separate from anything else.

This is the abyss from which Oannes emerged. And emerging from this, he instructed mankind. This implies some kind of connection between the state of the abyss and the knowledge of the sciences and the arts, and of the nature and worship of the gods. Berossus concludes this passage by saying that ‘Of all these were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon’, so there was obviously some constructive point to the contemplation of these composite animals, and the condition and properties of the abyss. Unfortunately this temple was taken to pieces by Alexander during his brief stay in the city, so we cannot look at these images in particular.  [3]  We should not forget that Oannes is himself a composite creature, with the head of a fish and the head of a man, the body and tail of a fish, and the feet of a man – the body and head of a fish mark him as an inhabitant of the sea and the abyss, which is a reflection of his access to the knowledge of the sciences and the arts. He has the voice of a man, and so can communicate with the inhabitants of the earth.

Why should the abyss be accounted the source of knowledge about the sciences and the arts? If the abyss is an approximation, another image of the telos, of the final nature of reality in which all things are contained, and from which all things unfold (even if through the mediation of a copy, a moving image of eternity), then it is all too obvious why the sciences and arts should be associated with the abyss. Ultimately everything which the human race wishes to know and to understand is already present in potential form in the primary reality. Access to it is the question, not whether or not it exists.

This is one of the principal reasons why the teleological perspective on the world has held such a fascination for the powerful and the educated throughout history. The concept of the telos suggests that all things are possible, and that all knowledge is accessible to man, through ritual, through contemplation, and through study. It also suggests that knowledge and understanding can be formalised (a concept with which we are now estranged), so that it is possible to determine the will of the divine, and to arrange the world according to a divine order.

It is also worth pointing out that not only is this understanding that human knowledge is the result of communion with the divine through repeated and enhanced access to the cause of causes, the telos, but the account of the gift of the sciences and the arts which Berossus gives is itself an image which, through the act of its contemplation, amplifies access to the telos.

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[1]   ‘Berossus,’ in Black, Jeremy, and Green, Anthony - Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, British Museum Press, 1992. The text of Berossus can be found collected together in I. P. Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 2^nd edition, 1832.

[2] The passage is lexically interesting: Berossus says that in the time of Ammemnon… ‘appeared the Musarus Oannes the Annedotus from the Erythaean sea.’ ‘Musarus’ and ‘Annedotus’ do not appear to be Greek words.

[3] It was Alexander’s intention to rebuild it, but he died before the rebuilding began.