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Resurrection in the second century

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R
By John, on August 28th, 2010
0

In describing how statues were made and used in the first centuries of this era, we have been using terms such as
resurrection, Greek magic and ritual, and related them to the Antinous cult of Hadrian and the concept of the

messiah.

Pygmalion and Galatea, oil on canvas by Franois Boucher (1703 1770)


In Book X of the M
by O
(43 BCE 17 or 18 CE), P
is the king of Cyprus who carved a woman out of ivory,
fell in love with its beauty and through a kiss, brought the statue to life. This basic plot has been reworked in various media down through
the ages and as a Transformational myth, may be compared to both H
A
, and to the H
of J
C
.
Lef : Bust of Antinous From Patras, (National Archaeological Museum of Athens). In October 130,
according to Hadrian, cited by Dio Cassius 1, "Antinous was drowned in the Nilus" on the day and in
the place Egyptians believed Osiris was drowned (before being resurrected).
On the third day, Hadrian recovered the body of his catamite and as P
of the College of Pontiffs), made a blessing and declared him to be divine.

(high priest

In Ovid's story, Pygmalion is a sculptor who is not interested in women. He kissed his ivory statue and
thought the kisses were returned. He talked to it with words of love, and brought to it the kind of gifts
that are thought would please, such as shells and pebbles, little birds, and flowers of all colours.
Besides all this, he also draped it with robes, put rings upon its fingers, and a necklace around her
neck. By night, Pygmalion put the statue on a bed, called it the consort of his bed, and rested its head
upon soft pillows.

Which feel

He k no ' i madne , e he m
ado e,
And ill he mo e he k no i , lo e he mo e:
The fle h, o ha o eem , he o che of ,
o moo h, ha he belie e i of .

Pygmalion and Hadrian both find women sexually loathsome, but love their own, divine creations.
We at History Hunters International are studying the divine men of Classical Antiquity, from Buddha and Khrshna to Alexander the god,
Apollonius of Tyana and Pythagoras, to Jesus Christ. Though some of them may have an historiographical existence in earlier times, in
the late-first and early-second centuries of this era and especially in the Alexandrian cities of the panhellenic world, these figures of
ancient cultural heritage were resurrected in divine form.
Statues were made and through the appeal of

, divine intervention was sought to resurrect the dead. In the minds of those

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, or the beholders of such statues, at least, these statues now contained the
themselves.

of the dead and were now divine in

The Argonauts Castor and Pollux capture Talos, the bronze giant who guarded the island of Crete.
Red-figured vase, 5th cent. BCE from Apulia (Museo Jatta in Ruvo di Puglia)
The story of the breath of life in a statue has parallels in the examples of Daedalus, who used quicksilver to install a voice in his statues;
of Hephaestus, who created automata for his workshop; of Talos, an artificial man of bronze; and, according to Hesiod, Pandora, who was
made from clay at the behest of Zeus.

The discovery of the A


suggests that such rumoured animated statues had some grounding in contemporary
mechanical technology. The island of Rhodes was particularly known for its displays of mechanical engineering and automata Pindar,
one of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, said this of Rhodes in his seventh Olympic Ode:
The anima ed fig e

and

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Ado ning e e p blic


ee
And eem o b ea he in one, o
mo e hei ma ble fee .
The roots of the Pygmalion tale run deep.

Priests of Anubis, The guide of the dead and the god of tombs and embalming, perform the "Opening of the Mouth" ritual
The O
was an ancient Egyptian ritual described in funerary texts such as the Pyramid Texts. The ritual
involved the symbolic animation of a statue or mummy by magically opening its mouth so that it could breathe and speak. There is
evidence of this ritual from the Old Kingdom to the Roman Period.
Ancient Egyptians believed that ritual existed which would bring sensory life back to the deceased s form, enabling it to see, smell,
breathe, hear, and eat, and thus partake of the offering foods and drinks brought to the tomb each day. Priests would recite hymns such
as this one, for Pa-nefer:
A ak e!..Ma o be ale a a li ing one, ej
p o ec ion being a o nd o e e da .

ena ed e e

da , heal h in million of occa ion of god leep, hile he god p o ec

o ,

Temple of Dendur commissioned by Emperor Augustus and built by the Roman governor of Egypt, Petronius, around 15 BCE.
Dedicated to Isis, Osiris, as well as two deified sons of a local Nubian chieftain, Pediese ("he whom Isis has given") and Pihor ("he who
belongs to Horus"). 2
Under Augustus, deification by drowning had provided the rationale for the native hero cults at the temple of D
, but Hadrian s
Egyptianising cult of Antinous was extended throughout the empire. The receipt by Antinous of traditional rituals (opening the mouth")
was recorded in hieroglyphs on the last commissioned obelisk, thereafter erected in Rome 3.
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Notes:
1. Dio Cassius 69.11
2. Dieter Arnold, Temples of the Last Pharaohs. Oxford University Press. pp. 244. (1999)
3. M. W. Daly, Carl F. Petry, The Cambridge History of Egypt: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517. Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of
Egypt, Cambridge University Press, 1998
S

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(14.2)

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II: D
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August 28th, 2010 Tags: Alexander the god, Antinous, Archaeology, Christianity, divine men, divinity, Egyptology, Greek magic, Hadrian,
messiah, Osiris, religion, resurrection, The History of Antiquity Category: Archaeology, Roman Empire, The History of Antiquity, Theurgy Edit
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I hope this is of interest.
The purpose of the Ritual of Opening the Mouth was to ensure that life would re-enter into a deceased person so that he gained
life in the Hereafter.
Man-made statues, temple buldings and deceased persons could, by Egyptian thought, be imbued with life anew. But though the
ritual was performed preferrably by the king, a sem-preist or another deputy priest, it was the Creator god himself who made it
possible for this to happen. It was him who had:
"made the images that are on earth, by means of instruments he himself made".
"Thus the gods entered the bodies made of wood, minerals, clay and all the other things that grow and in which they took form."
1. Purification by the 'Lords of Purification'.
2. A priest impersonates the god Ptah, another one the god Sokar. Ptah takes his chisel to open the mouth of the statue and
Sokar opens the eyes.
3. A priest presents a wavy wand with a rams head on top. (this is called 'Taking the Sorcerer' [wr-kh3w], we dont know what
was done more).
4. Next the priest was 'Presenting the Finger of Gold'.
5. Then the 'Adze of Yinepu' was presented to the statue.
6. The head officiant [s3-mry-f], son-whom-he loves, now 'opens' the eyes with this adze, and touches the mouth with four small
stones [`bwt]with the words: "I perform the Opening of the Mouth upon this your mouth so that
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you may speak in the Afterlife".


The adze was made from meteoric iron found in the desert, and made especially for ritual purposes.
7-9. Slaughtering of animals (oxen, gazelles, goose). These sacrifices were probably symbolical and had probably been made in
advance, as no killing was usually allowed in front of a deity, lest he should take offense. It was also a matter of practicality, to
have the offerings of various kinds ready to arrange on the offering table and be presented.
10. The great oblation of bread, beer and meat was presented.
11. Opening the Mouth of Throne-of-the-Protector-of-his-Father. (This probably adhered to the officiants now going round to the
other parts of the temple)
12. All halls and rooms, with reliefs were now undergoing the same ritual: Censing its cult-chambers and purifying its chapels.
13. Sokar feeds the priesthood from the oblation, 'gladdening their hearts with their largess'. At a Consecration Ceremoy, this was
a great meal from the offerings in which not only the priesthood and officiants partook but also craftsmen and workers who had
been active in building the temple.
14. Ceding Wetjset-Hor to His Majesty. When the meal was over, the temple building was ready to be 'Handed over to its Lord' by
which means by the King himself. It could now function to celebrate services and festivals in.
This next part is particular relevance to Hadrian, with his project manager of Aeila Capitolina, Aquila, who is also supposed to
have made the translation into Greek - Septuagint - of the Hebrew Bible.
A

'O

'

<img align="left" border="0" height="366" hspace="4"


src="http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/egypt/images/reli40b.jpg" width="400">Tefnut, in the Great Pyramid, observed
the western sky, where Pharaoh was reborn: Nut, the king's mother, gave birth to him in the Occident. Pharaoh was seen in the
constellation of Cygnus. Deneb was his head, and Wega his heart in a white alabaster canope. Pharaoh, in Cygnus, traveled
through the liquid fields, where he encountered the Celestial Serpent Draco, whose head was the Judgment Hall of Osiris. In this
hall Pharaoh' heart would be weighed against Maat's feather. Would he survive and become a god? Would he be true of voice?
Would his heart be light, or heavy with sin? Would he be devoured by the crocodile Amemait, his soul and shadow burnt by the
snake Aaruthankut? Fortunately the king could rely on the help of Tefnut. She was his purifying fire; she guided him across the
sky and protected his heart (Wega) against the heavenly snake (Draco); and if the king were still attacked by the snake, she
could save him by wielding Aquila, which follows Cygnus. In the constellation of Aquila was seen the magic device used for the
ritual opening of the mouth. According to a modern physician, this mysterious device, a small adze, was actually used by
Egyptian doctors to force open the tracheas of scorpion sting or snakebite victims: and if the king were attacked by the Celestial
Serpent, Tefnut would employ it to save his life.
Lef : "Opening of the Mouth" Tool Kit. Instruments such as these were used to restore the senses of the deceased. They were
derived from sculptors' tools. Near the end of the Graeco-Roman Period, the tool kit usually contained only miniature versions of
tools.
When Atair in Aquila rose above the western horizon, Tefnut in the pyramid looked towards Pharaoh's southern hand (zaeta
Cygni) while reaching for his northern hand (iota and kappa Cygni): ... and Tefnut takes his hand in order to install him at the head
of the two Enneads and the gods Tefnut 1 (Cygnus as Pharaoh, Deneb his head, Wega his heart, Draco as the Celestial Serpent,
Atair in Aquila rising above the western horizon; Tefnut reaching out for the king's northern hand, guiding him safely across the
sky, protecting his heart, and receiving him back in the pyramid) / Tefnut 2 (Osiris in the Judgment Hall, together with Maat,
further deities, and a large snake; from the funerary papyrus of the priestess Nesitanebetisheru, ca. 900 BC) / Tefnut 3 (Atair and
Aquila as the device used for the ritual opening of the mouth)
- Evidence in the Great Pyramid : Chamber shafts, statues, pyramidion, a hidden chamber, A Vision of Early Egypt by Franz
Gnaedinger, Zurich

1 ear ago

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Nick: thank you and yes, the content of your post if of interest.

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The post ended "The receipt by Antinous of traditional rituals (opening the mouth") was recorded in hieroglyphs on the last
commissioned obelisk, thereafter erected in Rome" and you added: "In the constellation of Aquila was seen the magic device
used for the ritual opening of the mouth."

The ritual sacrifice by Hadrian of Antinous must be viewed in the context of Greek magic, as practised in Egypt in this period and
this included Ptolemaic astrology.

To that I would like to add this:


A

by Wim van den Dungen

It seems unlikely for a processional & ritual construction as the Osireon, not to have been used for a netherworldy Osirian
mystery drama. As no other evidence of the sort of papyrus Leiden 32 T has (yet) been found, no final conclusions are at hand.
But even if these Egyptian initiation rituals were historical, they would differ from the Greek mysteries and should neither be
confused with Hermetic and other cross-cultural syncretisms (like the cult of Serapis). In these, native Egyptian thought was
Hellenized and modified to satisfy the Greek "noetic"mentalities (just as the Torah was Hellenized).
Under the Ptolemies, the original, native context had been lost for over eight centuries (namely at the beginning of the Third
Intermediate Period, ca. 1075 BCE), although the cultural pattern and its sacral core continued to remain operation long after
Pharaonic Egypt -in Greek guise- had finally come to an end with the suicide of Queen Cleopatra VII (30 BCE).
the Hellenistic reconstruction : Ancient Egyptian religion, after having influenced the Greeks, was eventually Hellenized. The cults
of Osiris and Isis, as well as Hermetism, evidence the survival of Hellenized forms of the native Egyptian ways. But the Greeks
intermixed their somber views of the hereafter with the extended Egyptian funerary rituals. Their extatic, "away from the body"
mystery traditions was escapist. The role of Anubis as "guide of the dead" and initiator and Osiris as "king of the dead" was
reinterpreted in terms of the Greek religious attitude.

...the Egyptian view on their mysteries and secrets was Oriental. The Egyptians loved life and saw death as the gate to an even
more richer life. After purification in the Netherworld, the final transformation of the soul takes place, initiating the spirit-state. The
rituals guaranteed a two-way communication between the spirit-world and the material plane : the false door in the tomb is a way
to leave the tomb but also a way to return to it. In the spiritual economy of the Old Kingdom funerary temples, this return of the
spirit to the tomb was crucial. Thanks to the funerary magic of the tomb, the deceased could make his family benefit from his (or
her) invisible powers and liberty of movement, free of shadow and extremely fast. In this way, magic could be accumulated and
passed on to future generations...
In the Graeco-Roman mind, nobody returned to Earth, the escape was final. Death brought rupture and disconnection. When, for
literary reasons or to close a play with a "deus ex machina", a spectre of the dead or a deity appeared, then surely only vaguely
and mostly to announce something bad or worse.
1 ear ago

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L
<

="
="

://
="4"

"

=""

="

-1931"
/2010/09/

="236"
-300 236.

="4"
"

="

"

="300">Lef : an artistically colored drawing made from the bas-relief at Phalae. Here Osiris-Npra is shown

sprouting corn from his mummified body. The correlation between the symbol, language, and imagery of seeds and verdant
gardens was carried into the earliest Christian treatises on resurrection. There is a strong link in Egyptian theology and magic
between the resurrection of divine men and the sprouting of seeds.

While much of the fourth century debates on the Christian Eucharist centered on the issue of leavened vs. unleavened wheat
bread offerings and therefore possessed an essential Judaic theological frame of argument, there exists a second century and
largely panhellenic-Egyptian aspect of wheat, water, and wine offerings associated with the sacrificed and resurrected Osiris.
From a liturgical point of view, it is a very short step from performing rites involving sacred wheat, water, and wine before the
image or statue of a panhellenic deity and performing the same or similar ritual in the name of a Christian Sotor. The
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comparisons between Christ and Osiris are now ubiquitous within the digital historiography of the internet; however, the actual
relationships between ritual, magic, liturgy, and image, where they may be demonstrated to exist, receive insufficient attention.

Liturgies within cults in both ancient Egyptian religion and emergent Christianity centered around rituals utilizing water, wine,
wheat, and bread.

1 Co in hian : 35-49:

But some man will say: How do the dead rise again? Or with what manner of body shall they come? 36 Senseless man, that
which you sow is not quickened, except it die first. 37 And that which you sow, you sow not the body that shall be: but bare
grain, as of wheat, or of some of the rest. 38 But God gives it a body as he will: and to every seed its proper body. 39 All flesh is
not the same flesh: but one is the flesh of men, another of beasts, other of birds, another of fishes. 40 And there are bodies
celestial and bodies terrestrial: but, one is the glory of the celestial, and another of the terrestrial. 41 One is the glory of the sun,
another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differs from star in glory. 42 So also is the resurrection
of the dead. It is sown in corruption: it shall rise in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonour: it shall rise in glory. It is sown in
weakness: it shall rise in power. 44 It is sown a natural body: it shall rise a spiritual body. If there be a natural body, there is also
a spiritual body, as it is written: 45 The first man Adam was made into a living soul; the last Adam into a quickening spirit. 46 Yet
that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: afterwards that which is spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth,
earthly: the second man, from heaven, heavenly. 48 Such as is the earthly, such also are the earthly: and such as is the
heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. 49 Therefore, as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the
image of the heavenly.

These texts of the late first and early second century depend in their resurrection imagery on Pauline metaphors of
seeds and first fruits. But they do not mean at all what Paul means. By and large these images stress not the
change from corruption to incorruption, or the difference between natural and spiritual, between the dry, the dead
seed and flowering sheaf; rather, they make the world to come a grander and more abundant version of this world.
Expressing enormous optimism about the goodness of creation, they draw such a close analogy between
resurrection and natural change that they either make resurrection a process set in motion by the very nature of
things, or they make all growth dependent on divine action. (Souce:Ca oline B n m, The Re

ec ion of he bod

in We e n Ch i iani , 200-1336, (Columbia University Press, 1995) p. 24)

The eminent historian Caroline Bynum has written so much of value pertaining to positioning medieval Christian theology and
doctrine into sharply defined historical contexts that one finds it difficult to quickly pick out from this large treasure of work just
one jewel to work into the tapestry of our argument. However, in The Re

ec ion of he bod in We e n Ch i iani , 200-1336

(Columbia University Press, 1995), she comes as close as she ever has to discussing elements of ancient religious belief related
to the doctrine of resurrection during the period we at HHI are exploring during our present series of posts.

In The Re

ec ion of he bod in We e n Ch i iani , Bynum cites 1 Co in hian 15: 35-49. Without contesting Bynum s

views of the dates of the first century texts (this is open to serious question), her overall point concerning the second century is
important: the shift in the doctrine of resurrection represents a shift within the power structure backing emerging Christianity.

It is noteworthy that this shift appears to occur at the end of the second and beginning of the third century CE. P46, about which
we wrote in brief detail in The Gospels According to Hadrian, Part III: The Aelian Canon and the Main Hand of God contains
our earliest canonical physical artifact attesting to 1 Co in hian and this second century view of the material resurrection of the
body after death.

That the author of 1 Co in hian also relates this resurrection to a, shall we say, sliding scale of heavenly bodies, some of which
are named, links this text to second century astrology and suggests that part and parcel to determining ones level of immortality
depended to a certain extent on the nature of one s personal relationship to the stars and how Christ interceded to make this
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celestial relationship more effective.

Careful study of the images used in major treatises on the resurrection from the years around 200 reveals that the seed metaphor
continues but in a sense almost antithetical to Paul s. It often now expresses a rather crude material continuity. Such
continuity, sometimes understood as the continuity of particles or atoms, is both a defense against and an articulation of the
threat of decay, which is understood as absorption or digestion. (p. 27)

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The science and stagecraft of feeding condemned criminals and enemies of the state to wild beasts was well-developed by the
second century CE.

One of the most detailed and graphic illustrations of this practice may be found in the Z

(lef ). For those condemned

who were deemed worthy of a quick death, exposure to a large carnivore was considered a humane means of dispatch. For
, exposure to smaller beasts was the sentence and elaborate delivery
mechanisms existed to place the victim before the animals and, with an eye toward showmanship, keep the condemned in the
center of the arena where the execution could be seen by all. The Zilten mosaic dated to circa 200 CE, was found not far from
Leptus Magna, birthplace of the emperor Septimus Severus.

, particularly the act of dismemberment and ingestion by wild beasts, as Bynum calls

attention to later in this same passage quoted above when discussing the martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch, is not a simple
act of cruelty, but part of the public and symbolic theological dialogue amongst the hostile factions contending for political,
economic, and religious authority in the empire. The martyrdom by beasts in the arena thus worked on a variety of levels: for the
masses enjoying the blood spectacle, this was perhaps merely entertainment; however, we should not be too quick to dismiss
the blood symbolism inherent in the ritual of the arena itself.

For educated panhellenes of the elite classes, particularly those who held proto-Rabbinical and pre-Christian views of bodily
resurrection, the practice of Imperial authorities of ritually feeding members of a sect espousing bodily resurrection to wild beasts
who would leave little left to resurrect, was both an answer, a challenge, and an insult on supremely theological grounds. This
was a world very different from our own and martyrdom by wild beast in the areas of the empire represented a kind of religious and
scientific experimental proof. It s clear object was to undermine the proto-Rabbinic and early Christian doctrines of resurrection.

As Bynum notes throughout the course of her work on Resurrection, there is an observable dividing line between the second and
third centuries within Christian treatises on the doctrine of resurrection: in the second century resurrection is more material in
aspect; after the second century, resurrection is fundamentally spiritual in doctrine. Bynum goes one to present: [b]y the later
part of the second century, the concerns Ignatius expresses here: [resurrection though his body is disarticulated and digested by
beasts] are couched in much more crudely literal language.

Two of the earliest second century treatises on resurrection Justin Martyr s and Athenagoras s have been
labeled apocryphal by some scholars partly because of the presence in them of certain technical scientific
arguments (such as the chain consumption argument) that concentrate on material continuity and are sometimes
thought [by scholars] to be later. I accept these treatises, both because they are accepted in some recent
scholarly considerations and because many study of metaphors establishes that the technical arguments at stake
are compatible precisely in their materialism with contemporary treatises known to be authentic. With the
exception of some fragments recently attributed to one Josipos and the Epistle to Rheginos (both of which see
resurrection as largely spiritual), the major discussions of the resurrected body from the second half of the second
century use predominantly organic metaphors but express through them material continuity. (The Re

ec ion of

he bod in We e n Ch i iani , 200-1336, (Columbia University Press, 1995) pp.28-29).

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Christianity has its own metaphors expressing immortality through the imagery of living stones. This idea is rooted in the idea of
a holy city and this theological concept is alien to neither Panhellenism nor Judaism.

By the early fourth century, in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, the church edifice itself is associated with the living stones of a
celestial Jerusalem or heavenly kingdom. Augustine, Sermon 66, part of the Mass of Dedication for new churches since 10th
century: Then I a , a he end of he o ld hall he
end he hole edifice ma be b il b

one be joined o he fo nda ion, li ing

ha Ch ch, ea b

hi

Ch ch hich no

ing

one , hol

he ne

one , ha a he

ong, hile he ho

e i in

b ilding.

There are numerous hymns based on the link of a church edifice s stones with the living stones of transcendent spiritual church.
One such hymn from the 7th century CE based on Augustinian theology is composed thus:

Blessed City of Heavenly Salem/Vision Dear of Peace and Love/Who of living stones upbuilded/Art the joy of Heaven above/And,
with angel cohorts circled/As a bride to earth doth move./From celesital realms descending/Bridal glory round her shed/By her
Lord shall she be led:/All her streets, and all her bulwarks,/of pure gold fashioned./Bright with pearls her portals glitter,/They are
open evermore/And by virtue of his merits/Thither faithful souls may soar,/Who for Christ's dear name in this world/Pain and
tribulations bore. (Source: U b Bea a Je

alem, Sc ip

al and Pa i ic So ce , Epheme ide Li

gicae 70 (1956), pp. 238-41)

While professor Bynum's work focuses in the main on the medieval period, her scholarship touches on points where the history
and artifacts of ancient religion quite literally come alive. Here is a link to a long but very interesting discussion on, among other
topics, the miracle host of Wilsnak as well as the miracles performed by medieval Christian statues and icons. We would do well
to consider just how far back such forms of religious expressions extend in time into the pre-orthodox Christian traditions of the
ancient world.

://

? ...

Professor Caroline Bynum on Miracles in the Later Medieval Period

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J
Lancelotto, Members and Guests:

The 'living stones' theology of Christianity seems to be based on the same Greek magic used to 'animate' panhellenic statues, of
which those made by order of Hadrian for the resurrected Antinous are an example.

Christian liturgy must, perforce, also be based on magical ritual.

The statues of Buddha and other divine men of the panhellenic world - Antinous being an obvious example - seem to share a
theological basis with the consecration of Christian churches.

The archaeology of 'living stones' has much to tell us.

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John
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S
The 'li ing

one ' heolog of Ch i iani

eem

o be ba ed on he ame G eek magic

hich ho e made b o de of Had ian fo he e


M

ec ed An ino

ed o 'anima e' panhellenic

a e , of

a e an e ample.

Is there are any difference between them? Theologians say yes, that in religion (usually hei ), their god works through the
magician (priest, supplicant, etc.). Theological power comes from their god, not the magician/priest. There is a post on Evidence
(and wh it's important) which addresses such terminology and the supernatural. Empirical knowledge of the supernatural does
not exist and therefore there is no language with which to describe it.
A religious ritual is the same as a magical ritual. A prayer is the same as a magical spell. Any supposed difference is imaginary differences are cultural and have no basis in science (archaeology and historiography). That is, whatever differences may exist
are only in the heads of those who believe in them.
Of course later religions are drawn on earlier. Of course Greek magic is the basis of Coptic Christianity. Of course Lancelotto is
correct when he describes how the religion created by Hadrian is the father of the children, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.
There has long been much archaeology to describe this and the sole problem is in recognising it. People's heads are full of the
stuff and nonsense placed there by parents, priests and not-very-good teachers: old wives' tales.
<img border="0" height="343" src="http://crushevil.co.uk/blogimgs/inuittupilak.jpg" width="500">
Carving of a tupilak (spirit), Eskimo, collected in Angmagssalik, E. Greenland, 1931-2. National Museum of Denmark, Department
of Ethnography
The theology of 'Living Stones' is just sophiscated animism: a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist
not only in humans but also in animals, plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as
mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment.
Eskimos traditionally find a stone and take it into their igloo for the winter night. In the dark and using touch, they discover the
inner spirit of the stone and then carve it so that the stone takes the form of the spirit. This is 'living stone' and not the pretty
things made for tourists.

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J
Lancelotto: Ch i iani

ha i

he idea of a hol ci

and hi

o n me apho

e pe

ing immo ali

h o gh he image

of li ing

one . Thi idea i

oo ed in

heological concep i alien o nei he Panhelleni m no J dai m.

<img border="0" height="387" src="http://historyhuntersinternational.org/wp-content/gallery/helios/nysa.jpg" width="550">


Nysa, Anatrofi, Nymphs, Tropheus, Ambrosia, Hermes and Dionysus, Nektar and Theogonia
(Paphos Mosaics)

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19/03/2012

Resurrection in the second century

History Hunters International

According to Sir William Jones, philologist and scholar of ancient India:


Meros is said by the Greeks to have been a mountain in India, on which their Dionysos was born, and that Meru, though it
generally means the north pole in Indian geography, is also a mountain near the city of Naishada or Nysa, called by the Greek
geographers Dionysopolis, and universally celebrated in the Sanskrit poems.

In the founding myth, the name of the town Paphos is linked to the goddess, as the eponymous Paphos was the son of
Pygmalion (Pygmalion's father was Belus, simply "lord" - as in "Baal") and his ivory cult image of Aphrodite, which was brought
to life by the Goddess as "milk-white" Galatea.

<img border="0" height="388" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Paulspillar.jpg/220pxPaulspillar.jpg" width="220">


"St Paul's Pillar" in Paphos.

Christian tradition for Saul/Paul in Paphos is intriguing.

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