Divining Man: A Belief in the Absurd or Just Absurd?
It is a wonder to me that people today can scoff at Pagan divine birth stories but accept without a blink the details of Jesus’ birth as given in Matthew and Luke (Mark wasn’t interested in where or how Jesus was born and John had a different conception altogether – pardon the pun).
In Matthew (1:18-2:23, Mary gets knocked up and Joseph figures she has been sleeping around and he’s going to dump the tramp until he has a dream that says the Holy Spirit is responsible. They get married; Jesus is born.
In Luke (1:4-2:40), it’s a bit more fantastic: Here an angel tells Elizabeth, a cousin of Mary, and who happens to be barren, that she will give birth to John (the Baptist). Apparently, the Holy Spirit is responsible (at least for making it possible for a barren woman to give birth). An angel also appears to Mary (not Joseph) and tells her that the Holy Spirit is going to knock her up personally and that she will give birth to the Son of God.
It gets more bizarre, rather like a bad Broadway play: Mary visits Elizabeth, who is six-months pregnant at the time, and the little tike leaps in her womb because the “Lord” has come into the room (via Mary’s tummy). Mary suddenly starts singing like Maria in Sound of Music. John comes popping forth, and Liz’s hubby, Zechariah, has a spontaneous fit of prophecy. Finally, Jesus himself is born.
Believable? You tell me. Christians don’t even blink. But if they get a whiff of anything faintly miraculous from the Pagan side of the aisle and eyebrows go up. Suddenly it is absurd (far too absurd to be given any credence) – and a myth.
An example of this attitude comes in an otherwise excellent book, Anthony Everitt’s Augustus (2006) – and this is just one example out of many thousands. The author makes some statements that you are unlikely to find being made about Jesus’ birth:
Dio preserves an unconvincing tale that echoes one told of Alexander the Great’s mother and was no doubt designed to encourage a divine comparison. When Julius Caesar decided to make Octavian his heir, he was influenced by “Atia’s [his mother’s] emphatic declaration that the youth had been engendered by Apollo, for while sleeping in his temple, she said, she thought she had intercourse with a serpent, and it was this that caused her at the end of her pregnancy to bear a son.”
On the day of Octavian’s birth, Atia dreamed that her intestines were raised up into the sky and spread out all over the earth, and during the same night her husband, Octavius, thought that the sun rose from her womb. The following day the elder Octavius came across a learned expert on divination, Publius Nigidius Figulus, and explained what had happened. Figulus replied, “You have begotten a master over us!” (201-202).
Now, I ask you, the reader, to tell me how one of these stories is any more fantastic than the other? Does it matter if a snake or a spirit makes you pregnant? Is one more believable than another?
The only difference is Christianity. Because there is only one God, only one of the stories can be true, even though it’s as patently ridiculous as those same Christians claim these Pagan birth stories to be.
It is perhaps significant here that there are incredible similarities between the language used of Jesus and that used for Augustus. It is almost as though the early Christians used the cult of Augustus (the Imperial Cult) as a model for their own religion. One little known example is found in Luke 24:13 (and remember, Luke was an educated Greek speaker). Luke’s account of the risen Jesus bears a striking resemblance to the report of the appearance of the deified Romulus in Dion. Hal. II.63.3f, and Livy I.16.5f .
It is downright eerie when you get down to details, which is what I will proceed to do now.
Son of God
Augustus was the Son of God (“divi filius“) before Jesus (the only difference – if it can be called that – being that Augustus was son of one of many gods and Jesus was seen as son of the “only” god). Augustus was already the Son of God before Jesus was even conceived.
In Greek, his official title was “Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of god.” An inscription from Pergamum reveals Augustus as “The Emperor Caesar, son of god, Augustus, ruler of all land and sea.” A coin of Tiberius reads “Son of the Divine Caesar, the Divine Augustus.”
Christians have tried to differentiate between Augustus as “son of god” and Jesus as “son of god” but Robert L. Mowery (“Son of God in Roman Imperial Titles and Matthew,” Biblica 83 (2002), 100-110) argues that “this Roman imperial formula exactly parallels the distinctive Christological formula in three Matthean passages (14,33; 27,43.54)” and that “the Matthean formula qeou=ui(o/j would have evoked Roman imperial usage for at least some members of Matthew’s community.”
He was spoken of in messianic terms, as the savior of Rome. Virgil wrote in his fourth eclogue,
The firstborn of the New Ages is already on his way from high heaven down to earth
With him, the Iron Age shall end and Golden Man inherit all the world.
Smile on the Baby’s birth, immaculate Lucina [goddess of childbirth];
your own Apollo is enthroned a last.
Anthony Everitt (2006:115-116) believes the child spoken of was the predicted offspring of Augustus and Scribonia. Augustus had from the beginning identified himself with Apollo. It is a bit of a no-brainer.
We have here a god made man but still god himself, and an immaculate birth as well – and the dawn of a new age (analogous to the waited-for “kingdom of god/heaven”).
All this, needless to say, predates Christianity by a long margin: Virgil wrote that poem almost forty years before Jesus was born.
The Star of…
But there is more. Everyone is familiar with the famous “star of Bethlehem.” But Augustus had a star first. The star (or comet) became a symbol of Augustus early on and can be seen on these coins from 17 B.C.E. This star is an appeal to the comet that appeared during the games Augustus held in honor of Caesar (in July 44 B.C.E.) and was thought to mark the ascent of Caesar to the divine abode (unlike the star of Bethlehem, we know this comet to be real – it is documented by Chinese astronomers).
Just as the “Star of Bethlehem” emphasizes Jesus’ divine origins, so the Star of Augustus emphasized his – but again, Augustus was there first.
The Gospel of…
Augustus was not deified until Tiberius did so, and it is Tiberius who is “largely responsible for propagating the cult of the Divine Augustus.” As Larry Kreitzer writes, “Tiberius was emperor during the public ministry of Jesus.” (“Apotheosis of the Roman Emperor,” The Biblical Archaeologist 53 (1990), 211-217) Significant, don’t you think, that all this imagery should be there for the Gentile Christians to see when they co-opted Jesus the Jewish seditionist cum messiah as their god?
Kreitzer calls this period “one of the most formative in terms of the development of Christianity” and he is absolutely correct. It is also quite clear that the Romans did not get their idea of man as god from Christianity as it has a long history in ancient Near Eastern cultures (as it did in the Far East – see Samping Chen, “Son of Heaven and Son of God: Interactions Among Ancient Asiatic Cultures regarding Sacral Kingship, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 12 (2002), 289-325). As Brian Bosworth writes, (“Augustus, the Res Gestae and the Hellenistic Theories of Apotheosis” JRS 89 (1999), 1-18), “Augustus used motifs which had become familiar during the previous centuries, emphasizing simultaneously the protection of the gods, and his own godlike status” and this is noticeable in his Res Gestae, Augustus’ formal report of his achievements to the people of the empire – the good word, or his “gospel” one might say.
And so it was, as advertised by the Provincial Assembly (koinon) of Asia in 9 B.C.E. (again, Jesus had not even been conceived yet) spoke of the “good tidings” or “evangelion” (that word sound familiar to you?). And so you have it, from before Jesus’ birth: The Gospel of Augustus.
It might be argued that they had identical origins. The imperial cult (to which there was a temple in Caesarea – significant to early Gentile Christian history) was very much “in your face” in the first decades of the first century – a period during which original Jewish Christianity was destroyed (when Jerusalem fell in 70 C.E.) and Gentile Christianity replaced it (by the 90s C.E.). It is no surprise – and no mystery – where Paul of Tarsus got his ideas. He could not possibly have missed what amounted to big neon signs about the new messiah, Augustus and his gospel.
Kreitzer claims that “The Roman concept of apotheosis moved a man from earth toward heaven, whereas the Christian concept of incarnation moved God from heaven toward earth” but that is not strictly true when you claim divine descent, as Augustus did. This claim also conflates the various early Christian concepts of Jesus into the later orthodox idea perpetrated by John. The divine status of Jesus is missing altogether from Mark and Matthew and Luke had quite different conceptions of Jesus – in Matthew Jesus was not literally the Son of God and in Luke it is possible that originally it did not read as if Jesus was “born” as the Son of God. In the earliest manuscripts Luke 3.22 reads, “You are my son, today I have begotten you” when John baptizes Jesus (see note below). In other words, Jesus did not become incarnate until that moment (see the discussion in Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted (2009): 39-40).
A Fulfillment of Prophecy
Early Christian apologists (like Matthew where everything about Jesus is a fulfillment of scripture) were keen to show that Jesus’ coming had long been foretold. So, too, as it happens, had that of Augustus, at least according to Vergil, who has Anchises the Dardanian say that “prophecies of Augustus’ coming are already causing panic, over a millennium before his actual birth” (Aen. 6.798-9). Needless to say, this was written before Jesus’ birth and the mad scramble to find prophecy about his coming. According to Anchises, “Augustus will revive the golden age of Saturnus and bring felicity to Latium – and indeed to the human race in so far as it came under his sway” (Bosworth, 6).
The hopes of the early Jewish and Christian apocalypticists come readily to mind – a Golden Age, a Kingdom of God on Earth, the restoration of Israel for the Jews, a restoration of Rome for the Romans.
What comes across is a sense of inferiority complex – the early Christian writers were anxious to compare Jesus – who compared unfavorably – with Augustus, whose own accomplishments were more in line with the messianic aspirations of the time (see for various ideas of what the messiah would be like, Jacob Neusner, William S. Green, Ernest Frerichs, ed. Judaisms and Their Messiahs At the Turn of the Christian Era (1987).
It is perhaps no coincidence that both Vergil and the Gospels are strongly Hellenic in character and both written in Greek. Language is, after all, a reflection of the culture that created it. As Bosworth says, Vergil places emphasis on “conquest, deliverance, and benefaction”(Bosworth, 9) – three elements quite familiar to apocalypticism and indeed, the New Testament.
Bosworth points to 9 B.C.E. and the koinon of Asia (already mentioned above) which proclaimed Augustus god (Bosworth, 12): “Since the providence that has divinely ordered our existence…has brought to life the most perfect good in Augustus, whom she filled with virtues for the benefit of mankind, bestowing him upon us and our descendants as a savior – he who put an end to war and will order peace, Caesar, who by his epiphany exceeded the hopes of those who prophesied good tidings (evangelion), not only outdoing benefactors of the past, but also allowing no hope of greater benefactions in the future…”
Sounds pretty Christ-like to me – and two years before the earliest postulated birth date for Jesus.
Summary
Is the idea of a God-man improbable, as Kierkegaard asserts (Christian faith being necessarily a belief in the absurd)? (see the discussion in Robert Herbert, “The God-Man,” Religious Studies 6 (1970), 157-174). For Christians, yes, given their conception of the divine; for polytheists? Not at all. The apotheosis of Augustus has at least as much to recommend it as that of Jesus as it eventually came (under the auspices of orthodoxy) to be conceived.
What is of paramount importance in all this is that all the ideas of Christianity are more pre-existent than their savior. Every element of Christianity can be found previous to Jesus’ birth – including John’s logos, which is Pagan in origin and dates from the 6th century B.C.E. – a logos which, incidentally, is not found in the other three Gospels.
Augustus is just one example, one small slice of the pie. Everything is already there, in the first century – a century of faith indeed – but Pagan – and no intolerance of other forms of belief are part of the equation. All beliefs can be true, and they can coexist peacefully, without strife, without war, without inquisitions, and without burning books, witches, or heretics.
If the truth is not quite the golden age Augustus and his court poets advertised, it still has something to recommend it on that basis alone. Universal tolerance may be a logical impossibility, but that does not mean we cannot strive for tolerance – as much tolerance as a functioning society can manage. But for the discourse on tolerance to have any meaning, it must appeal to the facts, and not simply to pious history “as it should have been” and it must not privilege one set of miracles over another.
In speaking of god become man and man become god, I have used deliberately provocative language. Such language is fitting for what is a provocative subject. The ancients understood that it was no trivial detail, the degree to which an individual might partake of the divine. It was a powerful message Augustus and his publicists put out, just as it was again a powerful message the Gentile Christian publicists put out in the name of Jesus decades later.
I’m not saying the idea of divine birth or apotheosis is impossible. As Bart Ehrman points out, that is not the domain of the historian but of the theologian. My point is that many historians, Christian themselves, accept without criticism the story of Jesus’ birth but still speak of similar (and far older) stories told of Pagans as absurd or mythical or openly propagandistic and self-serving.
What I am saying is that miracles are miracles. You cannot classify one set of miracles as more possible than another. If you are going to accept miracles about Jesus, you have to accept miracles about Apollonius of Tyana – and about Augustus and Alexander and others. And if there is to be a discourse between Pagans and Christians it cannot be on the basis of “my religion is better than yours.” We need to agree either that all miracle stories are equally absurd or equally likely – or at least possible. That’s a big leap for the folks who claim to have sole possession of the truth, while it’s much less a problem for those who understand that there are many truths.
In the end, we Pagans can make the approach, but discourse is possible only with a willing audience and acknowledgment that there is room for more than one iteration of “good tidings.”
Note:
With regards to Jesus’ apotheosis Luke actually offers three methods (I chose one above for the sake of argument):
Acts 13.32-33: Upon his resurrection (also Acts 2.36)
Luke 3.22: Upon his baptism by John (noted above)
Luke 1.35: Via virginal conception by the Holy Spirit (also Luke 2.11)
Hrafnkell Haraldsson is the author of A Heathen’s Day, which since 2005 has addressed the life and thoughts of a modern day Heathen. He maintains a second blog, Digital Gods (www.digital-gods.com) which focuses on polytheism for the digital age. He is also the founder of the Mos Maiorum Foundation (www.mosmaiorum.org) which is dedicated to the study and support of Paganism as ethnic religion. 
You know, this brings to mind something I read about YHWH in “Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible” ( Karel van der Toorn). Apparently some reputable scholars believe that at an early stage YHWH may have been a prominent tribal leader or chief who, by his accomplishments, eventually became deified by his followers.
As for the logos not being found outside of John’s gospel, scholars generally agree that that particular gospel was the last one to be written, and therefore the one most likely to have been altered (and the least accurate historically). Thus, sayings unique to it, so prized by the Church, such as “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (3:16) are later interpolations.
No, the connections between Jesus and pagan Gods has been taken out of proportion by some unqualified writers (“The Jesus Mysteries” is a good example). However, you are right that his story isn’t new. In “The New Testament: A Student’s Introduction” (the standard textbook for New testament studies in universities here in Canada), the author points out the common points between Jesus and Dionysos, and asserts that early Christians took the historical Jesus and modified his story according to the already existent myths of their time.
And, of course, there are parallels between the stories of
Jesus and Osiris-Dionysus. And others. All of which makes an excellent case for religious pluralism.
Naturally, Christian apologists have an answer for this sort of discussion–they will point out that the parallels between the stories of Jesus and Augustus (or Osiris, or others) are not exact (and therefore that their story is completely true and the others are false), and/or that all of the pre-Christian stories are “foreshadowings.” It’s circular reasoning, of course, but there it is.
Another thought–or, in this case, an opinion. You write, “Universal tolerance may be a logical impossibility, but that does not mean we cannot strive for tolerance – as much tolerance as a functioning society can manage.” I would suggest that tolerance is not good enough. I can tolerate something that I don’t particularly like. How about respect? That, it seems to me, would be more to the point.
I’ve read that suggested too – YHWH’s origins – euhemerism – the very same charge leveled against the Pagan gods by Lactantius (of course, thanks to Euhemerus!). I’ve also seen it suggested that he was a tribal god of Moses or that he is a Midianite god of NW Arabia (Sinai) brought into Israel by Midianite merchants.
I’m with you to the degree that some authors (not scholars, as far as I know – for example the book you mention) go way overboard and sensationalize things but the similarities are there and legitimate; it’s more a matter of degree than anything. Bart Ehrman also points out that a lot of the information we discuss here is known to pastors because they teach it in seminary – the pastors just keep the congregation in the dark.
Though early communities might have been centered around the older Jewish groups within eastern cities, many of the newer converts tended to be Pagans, and they had their own ideas about worship, some of them influenced by the mystery religions they had converted away from. As Cabiniss says, “These inevitably influenced the Christian liturgy of the first century.” By the time of Ignatius of Antioch, the Eucharist was very much a Pagan cult meal and not the seder, or Passover Supper of Jesus and the disciples.
Though some scholars like to take a conservative position with regard to Christianity’s Pagan influences, for example Bruce Metzger’s call for a “high degree of caution in evaluating the relation between the Mysteries and early Christianity,” Helmut Koester asserts that the story of the Eucharist is “technically a cult narrative.”
And no caution or warning changes the fact that Justin Martyr (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66), who did not have the scholar’s advantage of hindsight, felt compelled in his First Apology, to defend the liturgy of the Church from the charge that it was an imitation of the Mithraic rites. Celsus also writes that there was nothing new about Christianity in his True Doctrine.
Bruce M. Metzger, “Considerations of Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity,” HTR 48, (1955), 20
Helmut Koester, “Written Gospels or Oral Tradition?” Journal of Biblical Literature 113 (1994), 293.
Allen Cabiniss, “Liturgy-Making Factors in Primitive Christianity” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan, 1943), 52.
I was going to say that regardless of who YHWH was, he took on all the characteristics of El – the Canaanite god.
Just like Allah, who was the supreme God of the Pagan Arabs before Islam. Also, El, in Canaan, was considered to be a Father God, and his name (simply meaning “God”), was expropriated by the monotheists. Either that, or, more simply, the monotheists, Jewish or Muslim, simply removed all the other Gods and just kept the main one. A good book I read on Judaism and Canaanite religion is “Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel” by F.M. Cross. It really sheds new light on the topic, showing that in fact Judaism was not a unique faith, but in fact was a product of its environment.
Makarios, here are my thoughts on toleration – damn near a blog post in itself (I apologize in advance but I go where my thoughts take me!):
This is one of the most difficult issues I’ve ever wrestled with, and I love moral and ethical dilemmas. The basic problem with the idea of toleration is that the very idea implies the existence of something that is understood to be evil or wrong – it implies that there are things which we may then tolerate the existence of. Toleration has an element of condemnation built into its meaning.
We might therefore conclude that one of our problems is with semantics. We speak of the tolerance shown by the Roman Empire but without implying that this tolerance was of things it didn’t necessarily approve of. On the contrary, Christianity has shown that you can be intolerant of things that cannot be shown to be harmful, simple because it’s different (the whole concept of the constructed other). Rome tolerated other forms of religion – it didn’t matter to the Romans as long as the empire was at peace. It DID matter to the Christian Roman Empire even if these other religions did not threaten the peace of the empire. So you can be tolerant of benign things and intolerant of benign things.
So it toleration “mere” toleration? Is toleration a good thing or can we do better? Or is toleration a bad thing to begin with?
Of course, there are different ways of viewing tolerance. I’ve seen it argued that tolerance in the Roman Empire was not so much tolerance as “indifference.” Anything that did not threaten the peace of the province was “tolerated” in that the Roman authorities were indifferent to it. But is tolerance the same thing as indifference? Does indifference imply “having no feelings either way” as I’ve seen argued? If so, the Romans were more than indifferent because you can be damn sure they had feelings about other religions. They thought Egyptian Paganism was absurd, many of them – but they did nothing to stomp it out, to convert the Egyptians or any other action. They left the Egyptians alone to worship as they pleased. So is this indifference, tolerance, or some other commodity altogether?
One of the keys here, when speaking of Pagan vs. Christian toleration is that Pagans see multiple truths and Christians see only one. Pagans understand, being people of the place, that their beliefs might be true for them but not true for others. They don’t tolerate other truths then, nor are they necessarily indifferent to them; they simply understand that there are multiple truths right for different groups. I am perfectly willing to accept, for example, that Christian doctrine is true for Christians; I’ve no problem with them having their heaven or their hell. I tolerate them thinking I’m subject to their doctrines as long as they’re not forcibly holding my head under water to baptize me, or worse. But I’m far from indifferent because what they believe does impact me, directly and indirectly due to the disinformation and propaganda they spread about Paganism.
Am I intolerant of them because I write rebuttals of their claims? Is my book, “Give Us Back Our Religions!” a show of intolerance on my part? I don’t see it as such but they might. I’m operating from the belief that those who surrender the terms of the debate also surrender its outcome. You cannot let lies be told without rebutting them. So I will tolerate their beliefs (within the above mentioned limits) but I will not tolerate their lies?
Or was Locke being intolerant of say, Catholicism, when he argued that morality is possible outside of a religious context? If we have a natural right to liberty, as Locke argued, then (as our Founders argued) I have the right to believe what I want in a religious context. Of course, even Locke limited his own toleration – refusing to extend it to Catholics. So apparently even a universal right to liberty can be forfeited by apparent disloyalty – a subject which makes me think of the US under the Bush administration, or McCarthyism.
But if the Romans were tolerant (or indifferent) monotheism seems by nature to be intolerant. They have sole possession of the truth and it being revealed religion, they also feel their god has told them to spread the truth – at whatever cost to the recipient. Polytheism, as Jan Assmann argues, instead translates across cultural borders – an “ecumene of nations” he calls it. When I think about polytheism I think about Mill, who believed that variety was a good thing. The ancient world was full of variety and nobody was killing each other over it. Over other things yes, but we’re still killing each other over those other things and over variety too.
Is universal religious tolerance then possible? Tolerance in pre-Christian societies was widespread; as long as it did not threaten the political order. Thus the prohibitions on those who cast spells (and the relevance of this point depends on how much a part of religion you see magic being – opinions differ. To archaeologist William G. Dever, all religion is by its very nature magic).
That said, yes, give us some damn respect. That will be harder to get out of them than tolerance, whatever that means.
Metatron, absolutely. Like any ethnic religion, the Canaanite religion was religion of the place and the Jews people of the place – Pagans. I am familiar with the Cross book you mention and I agree. These are the sorts of books I think the Pagan community needs to embrace – not Llewellyn. We need scholarship – and desperately. I’ve seen such vast gulfs of ignorance among some Pagans as to make me want to weep.
I have little to quarrel with in terms of the details of this post. The parallels which you present here between Rome and the Christians are news to noone who has studied Ancient History and Literature. But I do wish to indicate a few problems:
For one thing, Vergil’s fourth Eclogue does not in fact prophesy the birth of a god (Apollo) as a man. The narrator says “your own Apollo” (tuus…Apollo) which need only be a symbol of the child’s godlikeness and youthful beauty. That it may have been tken by Augustus to justify his own reign as Emperor in a culture which had long fought against the rule of kings, has little to do with what Vergil himself meant. And that meaning is still highly debated – there is quite a broad discussion of this topic in the scholarship, beyond the one author whom cite.
In fact, Kreitzer is correct in his description of the difference between the “Roman” and Christian conceptions of apotheosis. The fact that Augustus identified himself with Apollo does not necessitate or even imply that he believed himself to be a physical incarnation of Apollo. It was quite common for Roman and Greek figures to claim identification with a god by way of descent from that God’s lineage. It would have been the height of impiety to claim to be a god, as the Emperor Caligula (considered mad by his contemporaries) did. Furthermore, one of the most frequent criticisms levelled against Christians by polytheists was that it was abominable to think that a God would willingly confine itself in our limitations – the very Porphyry whom you frequently cite makes this very criticism. It is also implicit in the numerous similar remarks made by Ancient philosophers even though they may not be directed explicitly at Christians.
You write “What comes across is a sense of inferiority complex – the early Christian writers were anxious to compare Jesus – who compared unfavorably – with Augustus, whose own accomplishments were more in line with the messianic aspirations of the time”. There is no necessity for this interpretation. It is rather more plausible that the early Christians used the imperial terminology in an attempt to convince the Romans that they had misunderstood their messianic prophecies. Similar tactics have been used by others. For example, implicit in Vergil’s “Aeneid” is the notion that though the Greeks had made great progress in philosophy, it is only the Romans who know how to put it to proper use.
You write “It is perhaps no coincidence that both Vergil and the Gospels are strongly Hellenic in character and both written in Greek.” What you say about Vergil here is manifestly false. Vergil is not written, rather he is an author and he certainly did not write in Greek, rather he wrote in Latin and his vision of the cosmos is a distinctly Roman one. Where did you get your information about Vergil?
@Scholar:
Scholar says: Vergil’s fourth Eclogue does not in fact prophesy the birth of a god (Apollo) as a man. The narrator says “your own Apollo” (tuus…Apollo) which need only be a symbol of the child’s godlikeness and youthful beauty. That it may have been tken by Augustus to justify his own reign as Emperor in a culture which had long fought against the rule of kings, has little to do with what Vergil himself meant. And that meaning is still highly debated – there is quite a broad discussion of this topic in the scholarship, beyond the one author whom cite.
Response: There is quite a bit that can be said about any subject that is discussed – by me here or by anyone else, including scholars in peer reviewed journals. My post was about similarities between Jesus and Augustus and between Christianity and the Imperial Cult – it was not specifically about Vergil or about his Fourth Eclogue.
For example:
Vergil is talking about Christ.
Vergil is talking about Augustus and Scribonia’s son
Vergil is talking about Pollio’s son Asinius Gallus (according to Gallus)
Vergil is making a Mithraic or Orphic reference
Vergil is making a reference to Sibylline oracles now lost
All these have been suggested by scholars over the years. E. Marion Smith (whom I also did not discuss) saw Catullus in Vergil’s work (his 61st poem, verses 214-218; 64th poem, verses; 338-364). “Echoes of Catullus in the Messianic Eclogue of Vergil,” The Classical Journal 26 (1930), 141-143. I could not write an article covering all that has been said of the messianic elements of this eclogue because it would be too long for a post – and I’ve written some long posts.
I would also point out that Vergil was a “court poet” of the Augustan regime and that while it may have been taken by Augustus to justify his rule, Augustus may have been right to do so. Because Anthony Everitt’s point of view is is just one of many does not make it unlikely or even less likely.
I would also point out that Augustus was not really emperor, technically speaking. Much of the time he acted as a private citizen through his own auctoritas (authority) with the tacit approval of the senate (after all, he also had 20 legions at his beck and call) but the Romans did distinguish between power (imperium) and authority and Augustus ruled through a number of innovations over the years and his place was not always secure, as he knew well (compared with, for example, the rule of Tiberius). First Citizen (princeps) is a more accurate term than emperor.
Scholar says: In fact, Kreitzer is correct in his description of the difference between the “Roman” and Christian conceptions of apotheosis. The fact that Augustus identified himself with Apollo does not necessitate or even imply that he believed himself to be a physical incarnation of Apollo.
Response: It is no part of my argument that Augustus considered himself to literally be Apollo. And I obviously disagree with both Kreitzer and yourself with regards the differences of Roman and Christian conceptions of apotheosis. The New Testament is not a monolithic document; many points of view are given in its pages about the status of Jesus. If Jesus became divine upon his death and resurrection, his becoming a god was little different than that of a prominent Roman like, say, Caesar in that to become divine, he had to die. Porphyry himself saw Jesus in this way, a divine man, a category above mere mortals and below the gods (like Herakles) who was “raised up” to this category.
Scholar says: It was quite common for Roman and Greek figures to claim identification with a god by way of descent from that God’s lineage.
Response: Yes it is. It is no part of my argument that it was not.
It would have been the height of impiety to claim to be a god, as the Emperor Caligula (considered mad by his contemporaries) did.
Augustus claimed to be the Son of God and was spoken of as such. And some people in the empire took the claim more literally than others – for example, in the East. He was not deified until his death (by Tiberius – who, incidentally, was not deified). But there are two points that you are missing here:
1. It does not matter if Augustus believed he was a god or claimed to be a god. The point is that he was spoken of as such and the language used provided a model for the Christians to adopt and adapt.
2. A second point is that Jesus also did not claim to be God. He claimed to be the “Son of God” (and of course, that can simply mean a man in high standing with god and not literally a divine being himself).
Scholar says: Furthermore, one of the most frequent criticisms levelled against Christians by polytheists was that it was abominable to think that a God would willingly confine itself in our limitations – the very Porphyry whom you frequently cite makes this very criticism. It is also implicit in the numerous similar remarks made by Ancient philosophers even though they may not be directed explicitly at Christians.
Response: Yes, but there is a vast difference between the Christian “God” and the gods. The intellectual Pagans (Porphyry included) are thinking in terms of the Neoplatonic One, of a creative force above the gods themselves (who are in turn above divine men like Hercules – and Jesus according to Porphyry) who are in turn above us in the “divine pyramid.” Augustus did not make such a claim. To claim to be the Son of Apollo is not the same as claiming to be the son of YHWH. They are apples and oranges. And as I said, this tradition is ancient one in the Near East (and Far East) and that some took it more literally than others. It was not blasphemy for Cleopatra to call herself Isis. Not at all. She was seen as the incarnation of Isis. Romans might scoff; Egyptians might believe. But nobody in Rome was charging Cleopatra with blasphemy that I’ve seen.
Scholar says: You write “What comes across is a sense of inferiority complex – the early Christian writers were anxious to compare Jesus – who compared unfavorably – with Augustus, whose own accomplishments were more in line with the messianic aspirations of the time”. There is no necessity for this interpretation. It is rather more plausible that the early Christians used the imperial terminology in an attempt to convince the Romans that they had misunderstood their messianic prophecies.
Response: Later yes. But these ideas about Jesus gained currency before the Christian apologists appeared on the scene and a more complex Christian theology came about. The Christian religion (I speak of the Gentile version here, created by Paul) came into being in this milieu – with the very ideas spoken of in my post all around them. While my interpretation is not necessary (or the only one possible) it is just as likely as your interpretation – and I would argue more likely on the basis I noted above.
Christian theology in Paul’s day (the 50s) was quite simple – there was none beyond the atoning death of Jesus. Faith in his death and resurrection saved you. Period. No trinity, no other trappings, no concern over his deeds, teachings, words or the nature of his being. Nothing about a logos. Paul would have been aghast at the outcome of the Council of Nicaea.
By the time the Gospels came to be penned (the 70s to 90s) things had changed. Christian theology became more complex (one of the ways in which literary criticism can detect forgeries in Paul’s name). By the second century, they had changed further. The Christians who wrote the Gospels were influenced by what had come before. They adopted it and they adapted it to their own ends. The similarities are glaring, as I argued.
Scholar says: Similar tactics have been used by others. For example, implicit in Vergil’s “Aeneid” is the notion that though the Greeks had made great progress in philosophy, it is only the Romans who know how to put it to proper use.
Response: It is well known that the Romans made excellent use of and improved upon what had originated in other cultures. The Romans knew it, Vergil knew it. But that does not indicate that the Christians had that purpose in mind when they began to develop their own theology. The more likely explanation is that which I gave.
Scholar says: You write “It is perhaps no coincidence that both Vergil and the Gospels are strongly Hellenic in character and both written in Greek.” What you say about Vergil here is manifestly false. Vergil is not written, rather he is an author and he certainly did not write in Greek, rather he wrote in Latin and his vision of the cosmos is a distinctly Roman one. Where did you get your information about Vergil?
I did not mean to say Vergil was written in Greek, but in a Greek cultural milieu, and I apologize for not catching that error before posting. And yes, Vergil is obviously an author and obviously his works were written. That seems quite clear in what I wrote.
And no, his cosmos is not distinctly Roman. Not at all. The Romans, as they themselves recognized, became plugged into the Hellenistic world – and Hellenism – in the second century (Livy). Augustus himself was heavily influenced by things eastern. He called his study on the Palatine “Syracuse” (a Greek city) and his house had Egyptian motifs. He was awestruck by Alexandria and modeled his restoration of the city of Rome on what he saw there. The Roman gods themselves are interpretations and borrowings from the gods of the Hellenes. The messianic idea is not Roman either – it is from the East – all a result of religious and cultural syncretism. If Vergil had been writing in a distinctly Roman cosmology, there would be no mention of a messianic figure at all, however you interpret him.
Thank you again for the continued history lesson. As I mentioned before, what you say is not new to me or to anyone who has studied the history and literature. I was not quarreling about the similarities in terminology, as you presume. I thought that I made that clear.
It did seem, in fact, that you were claiming that Augustus called himself a god when you wrote “We have here a god made man but still god himself”. This would seem to indicate that you think that Augustus claimed to “literally be Apollo”, don’t you think? This is what I was concerned about, not about calling oneself Apollo or Isis. Your language seems to imply what you deny that (as do I) that the pagans would have accepted. You clarified that point – thank you.
You claim that “It is well known that the Romans made excellent use of and improved upon what had originated in other cultures. The Romans knew it, Vergil knew it. But that does not indicate that the Christians had that purpose in mind when they began to develop their own theology. The more likely explanation is that which I gave.” Why is your explanation more likely? It seems that it is because you say so. You show no concrete relationship that I can see. In fact, if you think that the early Christians were clever enough to recognize Imperial terminology and its uses, then why wouldn’t they be clever enough to put it to a similar use? By all accounts, Paul himself was a very clever fellow: if the biblical account is to be trusted, he debated with Stoics and other philosophers on the Areopagus. In any case, there is much subtlety (whatever one thinks of his doctrines) in his writings. And the fact that Christianity was much simpler theologically does not make it less likely that their leaders (like Paul) were clever enough to make use of Imperial terminology as I suggested. Your interpretation is no more plausible than what I have suggested.
I would beware of using arguments relying solely on supposed “inferiority complexes”, from the simple fact that these could be turned against your own project (and any project which is developed in reaction to an “Other”). This is a difficult case to make for an entire culture (whether newly arisen or firmly entrenched) as it is for individuals, and it never tells the whole story (it may indeed be one factor among many).
As for your claim that Vergil’s cosmos is not distinctly Roman. I am unaware of what necessity requires that when one borrows from another culture, it necessarily abandons any claim to one’s own. Does America renounce all claim to a distinct culture when it borrows elements from others? To think that their was no distinctly Roman way of relating to the cosmos is patently absurd. Without question, there are close relationships between the Roman point of view and Eastern points of view – it would likewise be absurd to think otherwise. But the Aeneid could not have been written by a Greek, nor could it have been written by a Chaldean, Persian, etc. No one claimed that the messianic vision was distinctly Roman – in any case, Vergil’s “messianic” vision (if you want to call it that) is distinctly Roman. Jupiter’s auctoritas alone, in Vergil’s conception of it, is radically different from Greek conceptions of the attributes of Zeus.
And thank you for showing that you are aware of the different versions of the interpretation of Vergil’s Eclogue. The way in which you originally presented it suggests that their was one interpretation and that its certainty was secure. In doing so, you were painting a rather misleading, one-sided picture of the issue.
Oops. I forgot about apotheosis. You may be correct about the literal reading of apotheosis in the New Testament. I can’t claim to know for certain. When you wrote “Christian apotheosis” I automatically though in terms of later Christian theology. In any case, there remains one difference, namely the resurrection of the body. I doubt that the Romans or any pagans thought well of this notion. It was, however, present in the works of Philo of Alexandria (in his Life of Moses for example), who was a near contemporary of Christ.