Merging Maccabean
and Herodian ages.
Part Three: The “King”
(iv, b) A portentous star
by
Damien F. Mackey
“The birth of the Star of Antinous also may be connected to
the star of Jesus that the wise men saw in the sky”.
http://www.antinopolis.org/star.html
Given my identification of Antiochus ‘IV’ Epiphanes with
king Herod in this series, and also, elsewhere, my identification of Herod with
the emperor Hadrian, see e.g.:
Herod and Hadrian
then it may not be entirely surprising to find that the
emperor Hadrian’s reign would coincide with the appearance of a portentous star,
just as had the reign of that infant-murdering (Antiochus IV =) Herod, who was
informed by sages (Magi) of such a star (Matthew 2:1-2). In an article, “The
Star of Antinous”, we read: http://www.antinopolis.org/star.html
"Hadrian
declared that He had seen a star which he took to be that of Antinous, and
gladly lent an ear to the fictitious tales woven by his associates to the
effect that the star had really come into being from the spirit of Antinous and
had then appeared for the first time."
-Cassius
Dio, Epitome of Book 69
According to the
Gospel (Matthew) account, though, it was the Magi who had seen and interpreted
the Star, not the king’s “associates”.
It is not even so surprising to find that Antinous has come
down in time as a Jesus figure, miracle working, dying for a greater good,
divinised (Man-God), etc.
For instance we read at: https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/antinous-the-man-god-who-rivaled-jesus-in-the-2nd-century-ce/
Posted on October 28, 2016 by hiramcrespo
1,886 years ago, in Oct 28 of the year 130
of Common Era [sic], a young man from Bithynia (in today’s northwestern Turkey)
drowned in the Nile while touring all the provinces of the Roman Empire under
the wing of his lover, the then most powerful man on Earth: Emperor Hadrian.
If Antinous had not been the emperor’s
lover, if he had not been as beautiful as Adonis, and if he had not died
by drowning in the Nile on the day of Osiris’ passion and death, his death
would have been uneventful and quickly forgotten. But the priests of Egypt
believed that anyone who drowned in the Nile was a demi-god, and his
death during Osiris’ festival prompted the immediate syncretism of the new
Man-God with Osiris. Also, Hadrian was so moved with grief that he “cried like
a woman”, and a few days later established on the banks of the Nile where his
young lover had died, the city of Antinoopolis as a cult center for the
new Man-God.
….
Within a few years, thanks to Hadrian’s
very active promotion of the cult, the face of Antinous became the best
preserved–and probably the most beautiful–face from antiquity that we can still
behold via sculpture. The Antinous Mondragone is still considered one of
the most beautiful and highly-appraised sculptures on Earth. The remains
of one ancient, Roman Antinous bust recently sold for 23 million dollars,
and coins and other paraphernalia to this gay icon remain in circulation now
that Antinous has been re-sacralized and has a small following of modern
polytheists.
Many Christians (and others)
have questioned the sincerity of ancient faith in Antinoos, but the
fact is that his cult was in actuality serious competition for early
Christianity, and that it survived for centuries long after the death of
Hadrian in the year 138 [sic]. If the faith had been feigned out of fear of the
emperor, the cult would not have enjoyed such a long-standing history after
Hadrian was gone.
Some of the ancient Christians who
criticized Antinous’ cult for its “debauchery” (code for the homosexual nature
of Hadrian and Antinous’ relationship), admitted the supposed miracles of the
god and had to resort to peculiar kinds of apologetics, a fact which
demonstrates a vitality and credibility that other Pagan cults apparently
lacked. Origen even admitted that Antinous was a real spirit (though not a god)
who could perform miracles, and that his followers merely had not had the
“luck” to know Jesus. Trevor Thompson, in the conclusion of his Antinoos,
The New God, said:
The cult of the new god Antinoos swept
across the Mediterranean basin in less than a decade and continued to exist
into the fourth century. For Origen, Antinoos was a real “daimon” with actual
power. Belief in Antinoos or Jesus depended in most cases on the circumstances
of one’s birth and the training received. Very few have the opportunity to
examine religious claims. Most believe what they have been told.
The pagan philosopher Celsus also
criticised it for what he perceived as the debauched nature of its Egyptian
devotees, arguing that it led people into immoral behaviour, in this way comparing it to the cult of Christianity,
which demonstrates that both the Jesus and the Antinous cults were perceived in
a similar light.
….
One of my initial assertions in this article was that Antinous
represented a real and legitimate threat and competition to early
Christianity. I realize that this may be unthinkable to some people today, but
one piece of archaeology remains to be considered here. This relief from the
Man-God’s holy city demonstrates the extent to which the highly-syncretistic
cult in Antinoopolis wove both Dionysian elements (the grapes on his left
hand, and keep in mind that Dionysus was believed to have
been resurrected like Osiris and Jesus) as well as Christian
elements (the cross on his right hand) into itself. Here, we see the
youthful Antinous (identifiable by his typical hairstyle) holding both
symbols. It seems like, for some time, the versatile Antinous was
also being interpreted as a Christ figure. In fact, all the resurrected
Men-God were considered Savior figures who secured afterlife benefits for their
followers who were initiated into their mysteries. ….
[End of quote]
But Antinous is not the only supposedly historical figure who is considered
to be a Jesus type.
Another is the Buddha, who - though largely based upon Moses - see e.g. my multi-part
series beginning with:
Buddha just a re-working of Moses. Part One: The singular greatness of Moses
has some incredible likenesses also to Jesus Christ, even to the extent,
perhaps, of:
Magi incident absorbed into Buddhism?
Another striking example of a supposed
Jesus type is:
Jesus Christ appropriated by Greece as Apollonius of Tyana
A comment: It is interesting
how so many of these supposed ‘Greek’ appropriations of Hebrews (Jews) are supposed
to have hailed from the approximate region of Ionia (Anatolia): namely, Thales,
Heraclitus, Apollonius, Antinous, etc.
“Scientists have long debated the identity of
the mysterious star that led the Magi to Bethlehem. …. Many have attempted to explain the appearance of the star as a
natural phenomenon. Perhaps the Magi saw a meteor shower, or an especially
bright star or planet, such as Saturn or Venus. The most popular view
identifies the star as a planetary conjunction: a close meeting or passing of
two celestial bodies that had special meaning to astrologers of that day.
Others say it might have been a comet or a supernova, or perhaps a combination
of two or more of these phenomena” [,]
so it is with the star
of Antinous (Antinopolis.org site above):
The controversy continues whether
it was a Super Nova, or a Comet that heralded the deification of Antinous as a
heroic god of the celestial sphere. Did a Supernova occur, the birth of a star,
at the high water mark of the Nile inundation, or did a comet appear suddenly
in the early morning hours of the winter sky.
It is our
belief that the miraculous star of Antinous was a Super Nova, and not a comet.
Chinese astrologers recorded a comet to have occurred in the region of the
constellation Aquila in the year 131-134 AD, however ancient astrologers would
have known the difference between a stationary Super Nova and a moving comet,
and as the comet would have been seen in what would have been the last hour of
the early morning February sky, it seems unlikely that this would have been
taken as a sign of anything as extraordinary and significant as the Star of Antinous is
represented to have been understood. ….
My own thinking is that Antinous was no more a real historical character
than was the Buddha, than was Apollonius of Tyana. The fact that Antinous could
be depicted with a cross in his hand would suggest that his cult had emerged
some time after the death of Jesus, whereas Hadrian was – according to my
historical reconstructions – an historical character reigning during the
infancy of Jesus.
Antinous is simply a made-up Greco-Roman, and highly regarded, cult figure,
for whom the historical template was, to a profound degree, the life and
actions of Jesus Christ.
And, sadly, wouldn’t you know it? The supposed city Antinoopolis has “since
vanished”:
“When
the Byzantine Empire was overrun by the Moslems, Antinoopolis was abandoned, and
vanished from history. No one knows why Antinoopolis was eventually abandoned,
but most likely it was because for civilized (albeit Christian) Greeks,
Antinoopolis was no longer defensible. It is known that the Caliph brought the
heavy bronze doors of the Temple of Antinous to his new city of Cairo, but the doors
have since vanished”.
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