ph2ter

I will in this (maybe too long) post try to sketch the main mythical elements from which some important aspects of the Christ myth originated. Some of ideas which I will present here are derived from comparative analysis of different Indoeuropean and Semitic mythologies. Some of them are speculative. The conclusions made in the field of comparative mythology and mythography are not so sure, so they must be taken with caution. Nevertheless, I believe that the overal picture is correct and very interesting.

I will concentrate on the Christian belief that in the ritual of the Eucharist the bread becomes the body of Christ. I will present here some clues for the motivation of that strange belief.
The idea is in his root in conformity with the main staples of mythology of the area.
The main ingredient of bread is flour, which was produced from grains of wheat in the process of grinding by the spinning millstone. The mills are important in mythology, because according to the ancient belief the spining millstones push out the thunderbolts (the stone arrows). Many cultures preserved traditions linking the thundergod with grinding. Thunderbolt is a weapon of supreme god who is usually also the god of thunder.

The millstones and the wheat play important role in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Although the rituals at Eleusis were kept secret, some features of the rite can be deduced indirectly. Mysteries performed there certainly have had agricultural background. One of the Eleusinian attendants of the goddess Demetera was Trokhilos who seems to have presided over the sacred mill-wheel. His son was Triptolemos, the 'husk-pounder' who presided over the sowing and the milling of wheat.
Behind the Eleusinian Mysteries is also the myth of Persephone abduction by Ploutos. Both were childs of Demeter and accordingly they were brother and sister. Abduction of the bride by the groom from the bride's family is essentially a description of an ancient marriage, so this myth actually speaks about divine wedding. Divine wedding is important in all Indoeuropean and Semitic mythologies. It is usually a wedding of brother and sister and sometimes they are even the twins, the children of the supreme god and godess.

According to the Church Father Hippolytus writing in the early third century, the ear of wheat was in the center of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In some representations of the Eleusinian rites Ploutos appears in the form of child holding a cornucopia (horn of plenty or harvest cone). Demeter bore him after lying with the hero Iasion in a thrice-ploughed field. He is in one of representations labelled as Eniatos (Year) and is is also found on some of representations at all stages of life, coresponding to the cycle of vegetation. According to all that clues, he was probably understood as a personification of wheat. The presence of a sacred mill-wheel assumes that the grinding of wheat was certainly an important part of secret rites at Eleusis. Similarly, a central rite in the Hittite celebration honoring the thundergod involved the breaking of a sacred pithos (equivalent of cornucopia) and the grinding and milling of its contents („but when in spring it thunders, they open the pithos and pound and grind it“). Accordingly, the grinding of wheat was probably on the mythical level by the old Greeks understood as the killing of Ploutos by the thunderbolts i.e. the stone arrows. Killing Ploutos with the thunderbolts is never mentioned, probably because of the secrecy accompanied with the Eleusian rites, but some other deaths of the same kind are mentioned, like the Phaeton one or the Iasion one, who was the father of Ploutos. Also, Ploutos counterparts in some other Indoeuropean mythologies are killed with the thunderbolts.
The Great Mysteries at Eleusis were performed at the end of summer when the harvest was finished and when the crops (and Ploutos) were put in earth's underground hidden stores. Accordingly, Persephone was with Ploutos in the underground next part of the year. Her annual return to the earth in March was marked by the Lesser Mysteries at Eleusis. The stay in the underworld was understood as death, and accordingly Ploutos and Persephone died immediately after the wedding. Annual return when the grain sprouts is actually rebirth of those two deities, so in the heart of Eleusian Mysteries was annual rebirth.

In Semitic mythologhies Ploutos counterpart was Tammuz. Tammuz' death occurred at the end of spring. He is killed in a violent way by a wild boar or a lion (maybe some connection with the Psalm 22: „A gang of evil-doers has encircled Me. Like a lion they are at My hands and My feet.“ Or in the other version: „They pierced my hands and my feet.“ – Both versions are in concordance with the myth. The fact that this Psalm is used by Christians in connection with the crucifiction of Christ is certainly not accidental). The death and raising of Tammuz occurs every year and corresponds with the natural cycle of vegetation. The texts suggest that, in Assyria, Tammuz was basically viewed as the power in the grain, dying when the grain was milled. There exists an extraordinary testimony of an Arabic writer of the tenth century. In describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different seasons of the year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says that 'in the middle of the month Tammuz is the festival of the weeping women, and this is the Tammuz festival, which is celebrated in honour of the god Tammuz. The women bewail him, because his lord slew him so cruelly, ground his bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the wind. The women (during this festival) eat nothing which has been ground in a mill, but limit their diet to steeped wheat, sweet vetches, dates, raisins, and the like’. These mourning ceremonies were observed even in Jerusalem, to the horror of the Israelite prophet Ezekiel: "Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto to me, 'Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these." Ezekiel 8:14-15.
Scattering the bones of Tammuz by the wind evokes the formula mentioned in the Didache:
„Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom; for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.“
The parts of broken bread are here equivalent to the scattered broken body parts of Tammuz. The gathering of that parts is equivalent to the rebirth of Tammuz. Here this picture is applied to the Church which is actually the body of Christ. (The same picture appears in the myth of Osiris who was killed by his brother, chopped up into pieces and scattered throughout Egypt. The goddess Isis collected and reassembled his parts and brought hi back to life.)
Killing someone with the thunderbolts, which were believed to be the stone arrows, was sometimes understood as a petrification (by the way, this is probable source of Mithra's birth out of solid rock, because that presupposes petrification at the end of his life the previous year).
The grain symbolism can also be found in Paul and in the Gospel of John:
"What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body." Paul I Corinthians 15:36:38.
„Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit“. John 12:24

"For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed (delivered up) took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes" (I Corinthians 11:23- 26).
The eating of bread i.e. his body is the proclamation of his death, because the breaking of his body in the form of bread is equivalent to the killing of the corn deity between the millstones i.e. by the thunderbolts. Thunderbolts are made of stone arrows, so the appearance of crucifiction in connection with Christ is not surprise, because arrows make exactly the same wounds.
Christ in Paul in this interpretation is not betrayed, but rather delivered up for the grinding i.e. for the piercing by the thunderbolt arrows or by a wild beast. Flour which was the result of that act is the only ingredient of the bread, which is believed to represent the body of Christ.

Toto

I thought this deserved it's own thread.

andrewcriddle

One problem with this is that it may be confusing Ploutos the brother of Persephone and God of wealth and abundance with Hades AKA Pluto God of the dead and Uncle and Husband-by-Abduction of Persephone.

There may arguably be some connection, IIUC some have suggested that Ploutos is an aspect of Hades, but I think the connection has to be established not assumed.

Andrew Criddle

ph2ter

You are correct, but that does not change the overall picture. It can be deduced that the wheat cycle was in the center of the Eleusinian rites. Probably one of the Greek gods was understood as a personification of wheat. Which one is not certain and is difficult to establish, maybe because of secrecy accompanied with the Eleusinian Mysteries. The god of vegetation is in IE mythologies usually a son of thundergod. He is abducted by the underworld god immediately after the birth, but returns to the upper world when the wheat sprouts. He marries his own sister at the time of harvest. Then he is killed by the thunderbolts. Atfer that he is in the underground (stores) till the next birth when he again shortly goes above in the sowing time. He actually follows the wheat cycle throughout the year. The Greek pantheon is somehow strange because in it the role of vegetation god is shared between Dionysos, Apollon and also Ploutos. Hades surely occupies the role of the underworld god but shares also some aspects of vegetation god.

GakuseiDon

Cicero hints towards something along these lines, though I've never had the chance to follow up yet:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Cic...s/0040_Bk.html

But there are many other divinities to which on account of their great services a status and a name have been given, not without reason, both by the wisest men of Greece and by our own ancestors, for they thought that whatever conferred great advantage upon the human race did not come into existence except by divine benevolence towards men. And so they used sometimes to describe the object produced by the god by the name of the god himself, as when we speak of corn as Ceres, and wine as Liber...

When we speak of corn as Ceres, and of wine as Liber, we use, it is true, a customary mode of speech, but do you think that any one is so senseless as to believe that what he is eating is the divine substance?

andrewcriddle

Could you give examples of IE mythologies clearly fitting this pattern ?

Thanks.

Andrew Criddle

ph2ter

Slavic mythology is the best fit (Jarilo). Also, Baltic is very similar to Slavic. Balts and Slavs are primarily farmer populations and are formed as a distinct group in the area or close to the area which is believed to be the homeland of IE. They probably preserved most of the original IE mythology. The elements of the pattern can also be found in all other IE mythologies, but the climate factors which were different surely affected their mythologies.

ph2ter

I will continue with 'the spinning millstones myth' which again shows productive, this time in respect to the donkeys.
The upper millstone was called onos (chamor), because when it was of great size it was usually turned by an ass (or horse). The ass can be in that picture perceived as an agent which provokes the shooting of the thunderbolts and in doing so, causes piercing of the victim located between the millstones. The ass can be also understood as a pierced victim because it is located in front of millstones.
So, appearance of an ass in connection with the crucifixion would be consistent with the belief that the spinning millstones push out the thunderbols in the form of stone arrows.
And actually there exist some real examples going both ways.

Crucified ass appears in Alexamenos graffito and is usually interpreted as depiction of crucified Christ or one of the Egyptian gods. The accusation that Christians practiced onolatry have been common at the time. The fact that the letter Y placed near the crucified figure has also been found on a tablet relating to the worship of Seth lead some researchers to conclude that Alexamenos of the graffito belonged to the Sethian sect.
Regarding the Egyptian connection there exist some data which really points that way. The Egyptian goddess Isis tells Lucius that the donkey is the most hateful to her of all beasts, because it is sacred to the god Set, who in Egyptian mythology is the murderer of Osiris. Plutarch recorded an Egyptian festival in which donkeys were triumphantly pushed over cliffs in vengeance for Osiris’ murder.
Osiris plays the role of vegetation god in Egyptian mythology. He was killed by Seth on the same day that grain was planted in the ground. While in hunting for a wild boar Seth discovers the dead body of Osiris which Osiris' sister Isis has hidden in a cave. Then hacks it into pieces and scatters them along the Nile. Egyptians also practised the ritual in connection with that myth. The wheat paste models were made for each dismembered piece of Osiris and then taken to the temple and buried. The sacred grain for these cakes only grown in the temple fields. After the murder of Osiris Isis tried to hide from Set, but he found her and imprisoned her in a spinning-mill and left her to weave her husband´s funeral linen.
Here we have the same picture: Seth, which is sometimes depicted as a wild boar or black pig pierced Osiris body into pieces. This is equivalent to the process of grinding in which the wheat grains are milled into small pieces by the spinning millstones.

There exist also the record which says that the Jews reverenced the head of a golden ass, to which every seven years they sacrificed a foreigner, whom they abducted for that purpose, and cut his flesh into small pieces. Here again we find the cutting into pieces which is in consistence with the myth.
In the Purim procession Jews were wont to ride on a donkey in honor of Mordechai's victory over Haman, which is also ridiculed as an hunged and cursed ass.
The Jewish Messiah is also associated with a ‘donkey’.
Dionysus is also sometimes depicted riding in a triumphal procession on an ass while a crowd waving ivy branches.

It seems that all that elements can be explained with the help of the spinning millstones.

Toto

Jewish Encyclopdia calls this a calumny. :huh:

ph2ter

I didn't want to say that Jews really worshiped the ass. This was not my intention. My intention here is to explain different mythical elements which appear in connection with the ass.