Dying and Rising Gods? Scholars are Divided

The Egyptians again differed from the Greeks in that they were interested less in the immortality of the soul than in the resurrection of the body. . . . 

From the account given us by Plutarch it is clear that the ‘Seeking and Finding’ (zetesis and heuresis) of the body of Osiris, annually commemorated for a week at the end of October and beginning of November, was in his day not so much a hidden mystery as a public performance. Certainly the priests carried out certain gloomy ceremonies, such as shrouding a golden calf with a black linen veil as an emblem of mourning Isis. But they went out of the temple and down to the sea on the final night. It was a public occasion, marked in the Roman calendar with the name Hilaria. ‘Osiris has been found’ – so the crowd shouted for joy, while various ministers brought forth the god’s sacred ark. Another variation of the formula was ‘We have found, and rejoice’. Even though the ceremony did not take place in daytime it was open to view, just as when a show was arranged on the night before the death of the Emperor Caligula and in it Egyptians and Ethiopians gave a quasi-Isiac representation of the Underworld. We may plausibly believe that the ritual of the ‘Seeking and Finding’ was elaborated in the Ptolemaic age in conformity with the closer associations between Isis and Demeter. We must remember, however, that it was not conducted in strict secrecy, for it was an undisguised pageant of the resurrection of Osiris performed by Isis, a drama out of doors. . . . .

Like every other religious leader in history Paul was a child of his times, ‘a complete member of the Greek world’s where his preaching tours took him. Nobody now doubts his familiarity with the terminology and perhaps the actual practices of the mystery faiths. Like the Founder of the religion he proclaims, Paul uses mystery both singular and plural whenever it suits his purpose: in connection with knowledge (gnosis) and wisdom (sophia) with the Christian revelation and resurrection and once along with the technical name for stewards at the Sarapeum. He boasts that he has been ‘initiated in every possible thing – the full and the empty stomach, having more than enough and being without. Through him who gives me the power (i.e. dynamis) I can do all things.’ Not only could Paul do all things: he could also become all things to all men, a description which to the eye of the vigilant reader in the Graeco-Roman world would invite comparison with the power attributed to Isis Myrionymus, a title she bore in Cilicia, the province of Paul’s birth. He could introduce Greeks into the Jewish temple and call himself (in the passage already cited from his Epistle to the Romans) a borrower both from them and from ‘the barbarians’. To the Greeks (as to his own fellow Jews) he could preach the gospel that Christ was the Power (dynamis) and Wisdom (sophia) of God.

(Witt, 139, 162-63, 256)

And Merkelbach (translation):

Isis Heals Her Sick Child

§32 The child Horus fell ill multiple times; however, Isis knew all the medicines and spells and healed the illnesses. We know of these events from inscriptions and papyri, which we refer to as  “magical.” For example, it is told: Horus had been burned; Isis then prepared a healing ointment (with its ingredients specified precisely), dressed the wound, and spoke: “The fire shall retreat.” If a human child is burned, its mother should follow the example of Isis, prepare the same ointment, apply it, and say a blessing. Thus, this is not a myth told for its own sake—as a beautiful story—but rather the myth is told to share the ointment’s ingredients, to instill confidence that the ointment will work, and to validate the wound treatment through the mythical example. There were corresponding mythical stories not only for burns and fevers, but also for scorpion and snake bites, headaches, stomachaches, and for the use of various medicines.

§33 According to Diodorus, Isis discovered the means to immortality (αθανασίας φάρμακον); for once the Titans, followers of Seth-Typhon, had ambushed Horus, killed him, and thrown him into the Nile. Isis found him floating in the water; she restored his breath of life (ψυχή), resurrected him (άναστήσαι), and made him partaker of immortality.⁸

⁸ Diodor I 25,6 εύρειν αυτήν και το της αθανασίας φάρμακον, δι’ ου τόν υίόν ‘Ωρον, υπό των Τιτάνων έπιβουλευθέντα και νεκρόν ευρεθέντα καθ’ ύδατος, μή μόνον άναστήσαι, δουσαν την ψυχήν, άλλα και της άθανασίας ποιήσαι μεταλαβειν. [= She discovered the medicine of immortality, through which she not only resurrected her son Horus, who had been ambushed by the Titans and found dead in the water, giving him back his breath of life, but also made him partake of immortality.]

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The Parisian Immortality Liturgy

§341 A second priestly initiation, which refers more to Greek-philosophical concepts, is preserved in a Parisian papyrus. The god in whose service the ceremonies were performed is called Aion. In Alexandria, Aion was another name for Serapis (see § 136). 

The ceremony takes place in a temple that represents a model of the universe. It is called “Immortalization” (άπαθανατισμός), and here Aion-Serapis is the lord over fate and makes the spiritual (“pneumatic”) part of the initiate immortal. 

The model of the cosmos is the Ptolemaic one: in the center rests the Earth, surrounded by the spheres of the seven planets; above these is the eighth sphere, the firmament of fixed stars. At the north and south poles, as celestial mechanics were conceived, there were two holes; in these holes rested the pivots of the world axis, which rotates the universe. This rotating movement is always the same and occurs with necessity; and likewise, everything that happens within the hollow sphere enclosed by the firmament of fixed stars is necessary. A different situation prevails beyond the shell of the fixed star firmament: there is freedom from the compulsion of the stars.

First, the candidate for initiation sheds all that is corporeal, everything composed of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire), and retains only the fifth element, the spirit (πνεύμα). The spirit ascends through the spheres of the seven planets to the firmament of fixed stars and breaks through the firmament at that hole located at the north pole. There, he is supposed to see the supreme god, Aion, be reborn in spirit (πνεύμα), and receive a new birth constellation (γένεσις). 

In this ceremony, a priest was introduced to a higher rank; he was now a new man in spirit; his spiritual part had overcome fate and had become immortal.

§342 This priestly initiation was performed as a grand sacred theater, using theatrical machines to present lightning and thunder, shooting stars, earthquakes, a flight through the air, and various appearances of gods. The latter were likely depicted through mirror effects or puppets. Alexandria was, in Hellenistic and Roman times, the center for all practical sciences; in particular, mechanics was highly advanced.

§343 The sequence of the initiation will be summarized. 

The ceremony takes place at night in a dark room; a light shines at one point, representing the sun disk. The candidate sits on a pedestal, which is raised during the ceremony. He recites a prayer: 

“First birth constellation (γένεσις) of my birth” and states the positions of the seven planets at his birth; then he continues: 

“First beginning of my beginning.”

and then utters “P” and “Sch” three times, that is, he invokes the god Pschai-Agathos Daimon, the dispenser of fate. Then he calls upon the four elements from which his body is formed: air, fire, water, earth, and prays:

“You have decided to grant me that birth constellation which is immortal. After the pressing tribulation I am about to endure, I will behold that beginning which leads to immortality, in immortal breath (πνευμα), in immortal water, in an air that is entirely firm. I will be born again in spirit in a new form; the sacred breath of life will blow within me; I will marvel at the holy fire; I will observe the dreadful primordial waters in the East; the ether, which engenders all life and encompasses us all, will hear me. Today, I, a mortal born from a mortal mother’s womb, will be elevated to a higher rank through the powerful force and the imperishable right hand (of God). With immortal eyes and in immortal breath, I will behold the immortal Aion, the lord of the fiery crowns. At that moment, the power of the human soul will leave me briefly. But after the bitter compulsion I now face, I will receive it back again according to the unalterable decree of God, and then I will no longer be burdened by necessity. Remain behind, mortal human nature, and then receive me back whole after the unavoidable, greatly burdensome tribulation.” . . . . 

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The Afterlife according to Diodorus 

§415 Diodorus (I 96-97) follows Egyptian priests and says that Orpheus brought the mystical initiations and myths about things in the underworld from Egypt; for what he tells about Dionysus and Demeter is the same as what the Egyptians reported about Osiris and Demeter. He introduced the punishments of the impious, the fields of the blessed, and the widely circulated stories about apparitions in imitation of Egyptian burial rites.

§416 At the burial of the Apis bull in Egypt, according to ancient custom, the soul guide Hermes leads the body of the bull to a certain point and then hands it over to the one (priest) who wears the mask of Kerberos (Anubis). After Orpheus introduced this among the Greeks, Homer described in the last book of the Odyssey how Hermes led the dead suitors to Hades (24 1-2, 11-14):

Hermes the Cyllenian was calling out the souls
of the suitors, and he held a rod in his hands …
And they went beside the streams of Ocean and the White Rock,
and past the gates of the Sun and the land of Dreams.
They swiftly came to the asphodel meadow,
where the souls, the phantoms of the dead, dwell. . . . .

All this, say the Egyptian priests, is full of reminiscences of things that actually exist in Egypt: 

(a) The river Oceanus is, for the Egyptians, the primordial waters Nun, which is identical with the Nile; thus, it refers to a crossing over the Nile; 

(b) the gates of Helios refer to the city of Heliopolis; 

(c) the meadow where the souls of the dead dwell is the area around the “Acherusian Lake,” which is near Memphis, where there are wonderfully beautiful meadows, swamps, lotus flowers, and reeds; and it is quite right that the dead dwell there, for there are the most beautiful burial places of the Egyptians, and the dead are ferried there over the river and the Acherusian Lake.

§417 The dead are still actually ferried across the Nile in a boat by the Egyptians today, whereas the crossing is only mythology for the Greeks; the boat is called “baris” in Egyptian, a coin is given to the ferryman as payment, and the ferryman is called “Charon” in the Egyptian language.

§418 In the region of Memphis, there are also the gates of Cocytus (the river of lamentation) and Lethe (the river of forgetfulness).

§419 In “Akanthon Polis” (Acacia City), located 120 stadia (approximately 25 km) west of Memphis, there is a barrel with holes, to which the Egyptian priests bring water from the Nile every day: this is the reality behind the Greek myth of the Danaids, the maidens from Egypt, who, according to the Greek story, must perpetually draw water into a barrel with holes in the afterlife.

§420 The story of Oknos, the rope-braider, is also Egyptian. According to the Greek story, the unfortunate old man must eternally braid a rope, which a donkey standing behind him constantly eats. In Egypt, the reality is found: at a great festival near Akanthon Polis, a man must braid a rope, and many men standing behind him continuously unravel the rope.

A Tomb Monument from Abydos

§ 421 The notion that Greek underworld myths should be located in Egypt is also found in a Greek grave epitaph from Abydos. A 16-year-old man from Lykopolis named Apollos died in Alexandria. His parents buried him in Abydos and erected his grave stele there. In Abydos, the sacred head of Osiris was also buried, and a burial at this place meant that the deceased continued to live in the splendid fields reserved for those pious individuals who had been acquitted before the judgment of the dead. 

On the stele (Fig. 193), Anubis is depicted leading the not yet fully grown Apollos before Osiris; in the pediment of the stele, a winged sun disk and two sacred snakes are depicted, both symbols of rebirth. Under the figures, it says:

My homeland is the city of the Lycans, and I am Apollos,
In the land of Egypt, I perished
as a child. I was snatched away in the sixteenth year
of my untimely youth, as the month was passing by.
Now I attend the throne of Abydene Osiris,
and I did not tread the house of the dead,
the destiny assigned to me has brought me to the Elysian Field of the blessed,
where Hermes the Cyllenian, carrying me among the children of the gods,
established me, and I did not drink the stream of Lethe. . . . .

The remarkable thing about this monument is that the Greek soul guide, Hermes of Mount Cyllene, in the epitaph, and the Egyptian soul guide Anubis on the accompanying relief, are considered identical. The Elysian fields of the Greeks are also equated with the blessed regions of the Egyptian underworld; it is located here in the necropolis of Abydos. There, the two springs of Orphic afterlife teachings, the spring of memory (Mnemosyne) and of forgetfulness (Lethe), are also situated.

The Egyptian priests truly claimed that the Greek concepts of the afterlife originated from Egypt and that the places themselves could be identified in Egypt, and people believed them.

(Merkelbach, 19, 178, 232-35)

Of course, another very plausible origin for the concept of Christ’s resurrection is the notion of being rescued from the grave that we find both explicitly and implicitly in Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Psalms and Daniel.