Jesus as mediator and model: connections with Middle Platonism, demigods/heroes, and mystery cult saviors

[nightshadetwine]

In Middle Platonism the logos or demiurge (there was a lot of overlap between the two) became something like a divine model for philosophers. The logos/demiurge was seen as a mediator between the transcendent god and humans. This also isn't all that different to how some of the heroes and mystery cult saviors were viewed. In fact, Heracles was seen as a model by some of the philosophers and was even associated with the logos. In the Bacchae Dionysus is described as being a preexistent god who takes on human form to bring salvation to humanity through his mysteries. Even though the logos/demiurge of the philosophers never takes on flesh, there's still a similar function in that it becomes a way for humans to gain some form of connection to the divine and eternal life. This is very similar to what Jesus becomes for Christians - especially in the Pauline epistles and the Gospel of John. Jesus becomes a mediator between humanity and God like the Middle Platonic logos/demiurge, and the demigods (= heroes and mystery cult saviors).

Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 26.361b:

Then again, Hesiod calls the worthy and good demigods "holy deities" and "guardians of mortals" and: "Givers of wealth, and having therein a reward that is kingly". Plato calls this class of beings an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men, in that they convey thither the prayers and petitions of men, and thence they bring hither the oracles and the gifts of good things.

Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets (Brill, 2008), Alberto Bernabé Pajares, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal:

The accomplishment of the rites of the mysteries marks the separations between initiates and non initiates, and determines the happy destiny of the former, who will live next to the gods, compared to the suffering that awaits the latter: 'It could be that those who instituted the initiations for us were not inept, but that in reality it has long been indicated in symbolic form that whoever arrives in Hades uninitiated and without having carried out the rites "will lie in the mud", but that he who arrives purified and having accomplished the rites, will live there with the gods...and these are none other than the true philosophers.' By means of symbolic interpretation (which we must consider biased and invented by the philosopher), Plato seeks to modify a more elementary scheme, in which a better life is simply promised to whoever is initiated. Another testimony, likewise Platonic, also tends in the same direction: 'In Hades, however, we will pay the penalty for whatever crimes we may have committed here, either we ourselves, or else the sons of our sons". "But my friend", he will say in a calculating way, "also very great is the power of the initiations and of the liberating gods, as it said by the most important cities and the sons of gods who have become poets and prophets of the gods, who attest for us the reality of these facts".

"The sons of gods who have become poets and prophets of the gods" are obviously Orpheus, Musaeus, and other poets like them. Plato seems to imply that these poets and their followers (the Orpheotelests) promise liberation from the punishments of Hades without any other prerequisite than the celebration of specific practices... the promise of a better fate after death, and the differentiation between initiates and non-initiates are also characteristic of the mysteries of Dionysus.

So even Plato and his followers seem to have thought of some of the demigods or "sons of gods" as being liberators and bringers of gifts from the higher gods. In other words, they were something like mediators between humanity and the gods.

One demigod in particular became a model for the Stoics and Cynics.

“Heracles and Christ: Heracles Imagery in the Christology of Early Christianity” by David Aune in Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe, Edited by David L. Balch (Fortress Press, 1995):

Pindar, who regarded Heracles as the embodiment of heroic humanity, expressed this ambiguity by designating Heracles as a “hero-god” (Nem. 3,22)—that is, “a hero who has become a god in reward for his sufferings and prowess.”... Heracles’ attainment of immortality was regarded in the tradition as a consequence of the successful completion of the Twelve Labors (Lucian Deorum Concilium 6). Consequently, the message conveyed was that through toil and suffering, a human being can become a god. This is perhaps the central reason for the great popularity of Heracles; according to W. K. C. Guthrie, “the career of Herakles offered new hope to the ordinary man.”...

"Deification for merit was a Stoic topos,” and one that cohered with a Euhemeristic interpretation: “Human experience moreover and general custom have made it a practice to confer the deification of renown and gratitude upon distinguished benefactors. This is the origin of Hercules, of Castor and Pollux, of Aesculapius, and also of Liber [= Dionysus]” (Cicero De nat. deor. 2.24.62; trans. Rackham in LCL)...

Like Heracles, the Cynic lived simply and endured pain and suffering in order to be liberated from the constraints of physical life. Cynics proclaimed this message of liberation to all who would listen. When Dio Chrysostom describes the exile of the Cynic sage Diogenes from Sinope, he has Diogenes describe his hunger, thirst, and poverty and then describes the labors of Heracles. The audience would naturally see the implicit comparison with Dio’s own experience of exile by Domitian (Or. 8). The Cynic emphasis on “frank speech,” is a characteristic also found in Heracles (Philo Quod omn. prob. 99, with a citation from Euripides). Heracles, though at one time a slave of Syleus, also acted as if he were free, and even acted as if he were the master of Syleus (100-104). Philo compares the Xanthians to Heracles: “Now these to escape the merciless cruelty of tyrannical enemies chose death with honour in preference to an inglorious life, but others whom the circumstances of their lot permitted to live, endured in patience, imitating the courage of Heracles, who proved himself superior to the tasks imposed by Eurystheus” (120; trans. Colson in LCL). Begging was approved by Cynics so that the proceeds could be used to do the sort of things Heracles did (Ps.-Diogenes Ep. 10.1 [Hercher, Epistolog. Graec. p. 238]). Cynics were encouraged to see parallels between themselves and Heracles: “But as for you, consider the ragged cloak to be a lion’s skin, the staff a club, and the wallet land and sea, from which you are fed. For thus would the spirit of Heracles, mightier than every turn of fortune, stir in you” ( Ep. 26 [Hercher, p. 241]; trans. Malherbe)...

Cynics and Stoics alike used Heracles as a symbol for the human desire to achieve final peace and reward after great toil... Antisthenes was a prolific writer who wrote three or four lost treatises on Heracles that probably depicted the hero as an example of the Cynic emphasis on mastering human frailties. He perhaps continued the allegorical treatment of Heracles found in the writings of such Sophists as Herodorus and Prodicus. Prodicus had earlier produced an epideictic speech entitled “The Training of Heracles by Virtue” (Xenophon Mem. 2.1.34), in which the hero’s education in virtue was presented as an allegorical story of a choice between two roads, the path of virtue or the path of vice (2.1.21-33)... Heracles, Odysseus, Socrates, and Musonius Rufus were widely tauted as moral examples (Origen C. Cels. 3.66). Those who died a noble death—Heracles, Asclepius, and Orpheus—were also held in high esteem (7.53).

Cynic propaganda concerning Heracles had several objectives. First, it attacked the traditional view of Heracles as suffering against his will (Sophocles Trachiniae; Euripides Hercules Furens), though voluntary suffering was acceptable (Dio Chrys. Or. 8.35; Epictetus 3.22.57; 3.26.31). Second, it attacked the popular conception of Heracles as a muscle-bound moron, athlete, glutton, and boor (as he was depicted in comedy, satyr plays, and Euripides’ Alcestis ). Third, Heracles is understood from an individual ethical point of view, with divine sonship referring to proper moral training (Dio Chrys. Or. 4.29, 31; Diogenes Laertius 6.70-71)...

Several such christological traditions in Hebrews exhibit themes and motifs that are associated with ancient conceptions of Heracles. Two of the central christological metaphors of Hebrews are son and high priest. The author sometimes uses the title Son of God when speaking of Jesus as a preexistent divine being (1:2), but at other times he suggests that Jesus became the Son of God at the end of his earthly career (1:4—5; 2:9; 5:5; 6:20; 7:28). The Stoic philosopher Cornutus, in the first century A.D., describes Heracles as “the Logos permeating everything, giving nature its force and cohesion.” Seneca, a contemporary of Cornutus, claims that God, the divina ratio who is the author of the world, can be called by many names, including Heracles (De beneficiis 4.7.1-8.1). Seneca, who wrote two tragedies with the “historical” Heracles as the protagonist (Hercules Furens and Hercules Oetaeus), thus puts himself in the position of implying a kind of doctrine of incarnation for Heracles.

Now on the Platonic logos/demiurge:

We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology (Walter de Gruyter, 2012), M. David Litwa:

But to share Christ’s body (or bodily substance) is to share Christ’s divine identity. Identification begins in baptism, when Christians receive a “dose” of the pneuma of Christ (1 Cor 12:13). A fuller identification comes at death or the parousia, when believers will receive bodies fully made up of the substance of this life-giving divinity. It is this kind of corporeal assimilation to and identification with the pneumatic Christ that leads to incorruptibility and immortality (basic divine qualities). It is this complex of ideas that I am calling a Pauline form of deification. Paul, when speaking of the pneumatic body, does not propound conformity to “divinity” in general but to a specific divine being, namely Christ. Christ, already pneuma (1 Cor 15:45), models the glorious, celestial, and divine existence for human beings...

Paul’s picture of the divine world, I would argue, is another variant of the graded divinity paradigm. He acknowledges a transcendent deity “from whom” everything exists and a mediate deity “through whom” everything exists (1 Cor 8:6). He envisions, in other words, a Prime Mediate demiurgic deity—Christ—and a primal God called “the Father.”...

Although in classical formulations of Plato’s anthropology the soul is tripartite, a basic dividing line still appears between the higher and lower parts of the self. It is the mind (located in the head) which controls both the “spirited” and “desiring” parts (located in the chest and belly, respectively). In the interpretation of the Middle Platonist Plutarch,

"The human soul, since it is a portion or a copy of the soul of the universe and is joined together on principles and in proportions corresponding to those which govern the universe, is not simple … but has as one part the intelligent and rational, whose natural duty it is to govern and rule the individual, and as another part the passionate and irrational, the variable and disorderly, which has need of a director. This second part is again subdivided into two parts, one of which, by nature ever willing to consort with the body and to serve the body, is called the desiring; the other, which sometimes joins forces with this part and sometimes lends strength and vigor to reason, is called the spirited part. And Plato shows this difference chiefly by the opposition of the reasoning and intelligible part to the desiring and spirited part, since it is by the very fact that these last are different that they are frequently disobedient and quarrel with the better part." (Virt. mor. 3 [Mor. 441e-442a]; cf. Philo, Leg.1.69 – 70)

Perhaps the most famous image of the tripartite soul functioning in a dualistic way is the image of the charioteer. In brief, the “spirited” and “desiring part” are depicted as two horses, and both are reined in by the charioteer or mind (Phaedr. 246a-254e; cf. Philo, Leg. 3.118, 127 – 28, 138). The spirited and desiring parts are essentially related to the needs and urges of the body, whereas the rational mind alone can transcend this mortal life, catching a glimpse of transcendent Beauty. So even though the parts are three, the deep structure of Platonic anthropology posits a basic dualism between (1) the parts of the self interwoven with the body and its desires, and (2) the mind which can (with practice and good breeding) transcend the lower (bodily) self. As Plato writes in the Laws:

"There are two elements that make up the whole of every person. One is strong and superior, and acts as master; the other, which is weaker and inferior, is a slave; and so a person must always respect the master in him in preference to the slave." (726a3 – 6; trans. Trevor J. Saunders, modified)

It is natural for the mind to rule because it is superior and divine. When the mind does not rule, the soul is mastered by the passions... The overall goal of practicing virtue is not, however, simply self-mastery. It is self-transcendence. The ultimate goal, in other words, is to transcend the lower, false self. Justice is the chief virtue which produces self-transcendence, freeing the mind from slavery to the passions and lusts, and thus molding it for a higher divine life. The mind does not spend all its time controlling heart and belly. When the passions are tamed, the mind can soar above them. The roots of the mind are in heaven. That is, the mind (or soul) is thought of as having kinship with the divine. This idea is pervasive in Plato, and nicely illustrated in the following passage:

"It is necessary to think about the most sovereign form of our soul in this way, namely that God has given it as a daimon to each person. We say, first, that this [daimon] dwells in the top part of our bodies; and secondly that it lifts us up away from earth and toward our kinsfolk [or kind] in heaven. We declare most rightly that we are a plant not earthly but celestial." (Tim. 90a)

In this text, the highest part of the human self is not even properly human, but daimonic. This is the part of the self that is directly connected to the divine by a kind of kinship... The mind as akin to the divine becomes a fairly standard idea in first-century Stoic and Platonic philosophy. Philo writes that “every person, in respect to the mind, is allied to the divine Reason [or the divine Logos], having come into being as a copy or fragment or effulgence of that blessed nature” (Opif. 146; cf. 135; Leg. 3.161). Seneca says that the only difference between divine and human nature is that in humans the “better part” (melior pars) is mind (animus), whereas God only has “the better part.” He is all mind (totus est ratio) (Nat Q. Pref. §14; cf. Epict., Diatr. 1.12.26; 1.14.11). Stoics conceived of God as pure, immanent mind or Reason. Platonists liked to distinguish the primal unknowable and transcendent God from a mediate divinity who is or expresses God’s mind, such as the Logos (who often has demiurgic functions). Assimilation to God thus does not compromise (the high) God’s transcendence, because it is conceived of as assimilation to the mediate God, or the Logos.

For both Platonists and later Stoics, the goal of the virtuous life is the persistent approximation of this divine Mind... In a passage we have already seen before, but well worth emphasizing, Plutarch says that the souls of virtuous human beings

"ascend from men to heroes, from heroes to demi-gods, and from demigods, after they have been made pure and holy, as in the final rites of initiation, and have freed themselves from mortality and sense, to Gods, not by civic law, but in very truth and according to right reason, thus achieving the fairest and most blessed consummation." (Rom. 28.6 – 8; cf. Def. Orac. 10 [Mor. 415a-c])

Here we are clearly talking about post-mortem deification. Although self-transcendence through virtue belongs partly to this life, the “most blessed consummation” occurs when one has left the body behind. It occurs when the mind (or self) becomes so purified that it becomes (a) God.

Do Paul’s ethics at all resemble the ethics of deifying virtue in Stoic and Platonic philosophy? On first blush, Paul does not present a theory of deifying virtue (or of virtue at all). That is, he does not present mind, the rational faculty, as naturally divine and thus the key to self-transcendence and deification. Upon further reflection, however, Paul does preach his own “technology of the self” enabling self-transcendence. In his version, however, the divine is not naturally within, but comes from outside and begins to control the passions of the lower self. “We have,” says Paul, “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). He means, if I can interpret the saying, that the pneuma of Christ has come into the self of believers and functions much as the naturally divine mind in the Platonic and Stoic systems of thought. It functions, that is, as a higher self which controls and transcends the lower self...

In popular Platonism and Stoicism, the mind is the divine part of the self ruling over the non-divine part. Stoics called the mind a “fragment of God” (Epict., Diatr. 1.14.6; 2.8.2), or the “God within” (Sen., Ep. 41.1). Philo is willing to maintain this terminology to express his Jewish understanding of humans in the image of God (e. g., Opif. 146; Det. 86 – 87, 90). My point, however, is not that the infused divine pneuma and the innate divine mind are the same thing in Pauline and popular Stoic ethics. Rather, I argue that they have a similar function. Both Christ’s divine pneuma and the naturally divine mind, that is, control and eventually transcend the lower self (the passions and desires).

From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE–100 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2017):

So, in spite of some implicit stabs at Stoicism for not endorsing the immortality of the soul, Plutarch can draw support from an alliance with this school of thought for a strong case in favor of Providence.

Thus, in this context, the divinity humans are supposed to imitate and follow is none other than the Demiurge from the Timaeus in his relational aspect (550D–E). It is now this god who sets himself up as a paradigm for human virtue or excellence. Expanding on the point made in the Timaeus that the Demiurge, who is good, wanted everything to be like himself as much as possible (29e), Plutarch states that in his act of ordering disorderly nature into a kosmos, he made the world resemble and participate in the form and excellence or virtue that pertain to him, not merely to the paradigm of Being. Humans are meant to order their souls by observing and imitating the orderliness of the heavenly bodies, as the Timaeus in fact does claim (see earlier). But in doing so they also imitate the beauty and goodness of the Demiurge who orders the world, Plutarch states, and in this crucial respect the passage goes beyond the Timaeus. Plato does not set the Demiurge up as a model to be followed by human beings, and he does not apply the language of justice to the Demiurge’s relation with the kosmos as such (even though the Demiurge in his speech does reveal the “laws of fate,” 41e)

Gaining Virtue Gaining Christ: Moral Development in Paul's Letters (Brown University, 2014), Laura B. Dingeldein :

Ultimately, Paul’s program of moral progress most closely resembles those of contemporary Middle Platonists. Like the Middle Platonists, Paul conceives of moral progress as entailing the ontological transformation of Christ followers as they assimilate to the divine. Christ followers’ moral progress does not merely require following or imitating Christ: Christ followers actually become like the divine, resurrected Christ. Beginning their lives in bodies made of flesh, soul, and human pneuma, non-Jews receive the divine pneuma upon baptism and undergo a material transformation that, upon resurrection, results in their possession of an entirely pneumatic body. Paul’s emphasis on the materiality of Christ followers’ resurrected bodies is distinctly non-Platonic, but his notion of divine assimilation is characteristic of Middle Platonic ethics. Paul’s association of the fleshly body with corrupt emotions, appetitive desires, and vice most closely resembles Middle Platonic ethics as well...

It may also be that part of Paul’s attraction to Middle Platonic philosophical concepts comes from the Middle Platonic conception of the divine. Whereas the Stoics conceive of something like a pantheistic God who is one and the same as Nature and Reason, and the Epicureans conceive of gods who, in their supreme blessed and happy states, have nothing to do with mortal affairs, the Middle Platonists conceive of a supreme God who is wholly transcendent and an intermediate God who is concerned with human affairs. This Middle Platonic conception of the divine in many ways maps well onto Paul’s notion of the God of Israel and his son, Jesus Christ...

Both Paul and the Middle Platonists write of progress in virtue (rather than progress toward virtue, as the Stoics aver). Both Paul and the Middle Platonists also partially attribute vice and sin to the fleshly condition of humans. Paul and the Middle Platonists consider the moderation of corrupt emotions and desires as a necessary step in moral progress, and it appears that Paul might also follow the Middle Platonists in considering eradication (for Paul, crucifixion) of the corrupt emotions and desires as something achieved by the most virtuous of humans. Perhaps most importantly, both Paul and Middle Platonists conceive of the end goal of moral progress as assimilation to the divine. For Middle Platonists, this means that humans must undergo an ontological change that results in them becoming like the mediating, second God. For Paul, this means that humans must undergo an ontological change that entails a transformation of their bodies and minds into that which resembles the body and mind bestowed by God upon son, Jesus Christ... it is highly likely that the alignment between Paul’s thought and Middle Platonic ideas is also related to the similarities between Paul’s conception of the God of Israel and Middle Platonists’ ideas about the Supreme One: both High Gods are wholly other and transcendent, and this necessarily informs the way in which divine assimilation is conceived.

So Paul and the Middle Platonists both have a mediating figure that acts as a model. For Paul it's Jesus, and for Middle Platonist it's the Logos/demiurge. For early Christians Jesus becomes something comparable to the Greco-Roman divine mediators (such as the heroes/demigods and mystery cult saviors who undergo some kind of suffering, death, and resurrection/rebirth and become models for their followers) and the Middle Platonic Logos/demiurge who mediates between god and humans.

I've already shown that Stoics and Cynics seem to have looked to Heracles as a model and even associated him with the logos.

"The Worship of Jesus and the Imperial Cult", Adela Yarbro Collins in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism (Brill, 1999):

Herakles was the best known of the Greek heroes, although he was not a typical hero at all. The popular tales about him were known everywhere, and thus his cult extended throughout the Greek world and beyond. He was the son of Zeus, but mortal. Suffering dreadful torment, he immolated himself on a pyre and then ascended through the flames to the gods. He was remembered as a benefactor of humanity and was frequently invoked as an omnipresent helper. He is also the prototype of the ruler who, by virtue of his divine legitimation acts for the benefit of humankind, is rewarded by being taken into the company of the gods after his death. He is also the model for the ordinary person who can hope for the life among the gods as a reward for an upright life of drudgery. The complex of traditions about Herakles thus provide a striking analogy to the second and third stages of the Philippian poem: a human being suffers for the good of humankind and is, therefore, given a divine nature and status.

Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras (Brill, 2008), Jaime Alvar:

Triumph over destiny and admission to eternal felicity were however only possible through divine suffering. That is why the mysteries needed divinities who had had some experience of something like the human condition, had themselves lived historically, so that they could function as models. Their adherents might suffer pain and torment, but with the god's aid they could overcome them...

It is typical of the gods of the oriental cults that they have some experience of human existence characterised by direct contact with death. Some indeed suffered it themselves, which would be unthinkable for the Olympian gods, whose manifold experiences do not include their own deaths... Moreover, the mystery gods’ direct experience of death is fundamental to what they were subsequently able to achieve: life can triumph only because they have gained immortality. Death brings them close to human beings, while the rebirth they offer has a grandeur about it unattainable by the traditional gods of the Graeco-Roman pantheon... In my view, however, the triumph over Fate remains a constant; and, from a certain point in the High Empire, salvation in the other world came to be a deep conviction shared among many of the adherents of the oriental cults. The main reason for thinking this is that their central rituals, to which I shall later devote more particular attention, are in fact initiatory, and were replete with the symbolism of death and resurrection. Since this symbolism is so transparent, it seems perverse to deny the centrality of the belief in these cults.

Of course, it is not merely the fact that they have lived that defines these gods as mystery-divinities. There can be nothing more anthropomorphic than the Homeric gods, with their enviable vices and virtues. However the most striking peculiarity of those traditional deities was that they had no share in one of the most private of human experiences, death. They were immortal. By contrast, the gods of the oriental cults shared with their adherents in one way or another the ultimate rite of passage, the transition from being to not-being. Thanks to this experience they acquired a special claim to be able to attend to the problems, anxieties and needs of human beings, so much so that these concerns are to all appearances the main preoccupations of the divine world. This was certainly the case in the first three centuries AD.

It's interesting that Plutarch describes both Osiris and Dionysus as the Logos.

The Gospel of Thomas and Plato: A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel (Brill, 2018), Ivan Miroshnikov:

There is, however, at least one Middle Platonist source which provides us with a perfect parallel to Philo’s doctrine of Logos: Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. In this text, Plutarch expounds a Middle Platonist exegesis of Egyptian mythology. He explicitly identifies Horus, Isis, and Osiris with the γένη τριττά of Tim. 50a–b, “that which comes to be, that in which it comes to be, and that after which the thing coming to be is modeled, and which is the source of its coming to be" (trans. D.J. Zeyl)... Osiris, is in himself unmixed and unaffected reason (373b). Osiris is thus identified with Logos. Furthermore, Plutarch’s Osiris has two aspects, the transcendent and the immanent. He is present both in the body and in the soul of the world: in the soul of the world, Osiris is mind and reason (νοῦς καὶ λόγος), and in its body, he is “that which is ordered and established” (371a–b). In other words, in his immanent aspect, Osiris is “the force of cosmic order and stability.”...

The double role of Plutarch's Osiris is determined by his intermediary status: in order to act as an intermediary between the transcendent God and the world, he needs to participate in both transcendence and immanence. The very same double role is ascribed to Logos in Philo: according to Mos. 2.127, the cosmic Logos deals with both "the incorporeal and paradigmatic forms" and the visible objects that imitate these forms. The fact that Philo's Logos and Plutarch's Osiris are functionally identical and that Osiris can also be called Logos demonstrates that Philo's philosophy of Logos was part of a larger Middle Platonist tradition and that this tradition as a whole should be recognized as a possible background for the Johannine Logos

Defining Orphism: The Beliefs, the ›teletae‹ and the Writings, (Walter de Gruyter, 2020), Anthi Chrysanthou:

This is attested by Plutarch, who was a priest at Delphi for many years, in a passage where he mentions Dionysos Zagreus and the myth of dismemberment in relation to Delphic rites of transformation, and he identifies Dionysos and Apollo as being the same entity. These things, as he says, are only known to the enlightened... Apart from being identified with Phanes and the sun, Dionysos is also connected with creation. The latter is also proposed by Plutarch who suggests that Dionysos’ dismemberment represents the creation of the world through him:

"The more enlightened, however, concealing from the masses the transformation into fire, call him Dionysus Apollo because of his solitary state, and Phoebus because of his purity and stainlessness. And as for his turning into winds and water, earth and stars, and into the generations of plants and animals, and his adoption of such guises, they speak in a deceptive way of what he undergoes in his transformation as a tearing apart as it were, and a dismemberment. They give him the names of Dionysus, Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes; they construct destructions and disappearances, followed by returns to life and regenerations – riddles and fabulous tales quite in keeping with the aforesaid transformations. To this god they also sing the dithyrambic strains laden with emotion and with a transformation that includes a certain wandering and dispersion." (Plutarch, De E apud Delphos, 388f-389a)

In this passage Plutarch says that Zagreus’ dismemberment is an allegorical representation of creation through the flowing of the light/aether throughout the cosmos... According to Plutarch, this dismemberment is recreated during transformative rites accompanied by the dithyramb.

Continued below

[nightshadetwine]

Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman kings also acted as mediators between the divine and humans. Some of them were even said to be preexistent and were associated with the logos like Jesus.

How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (Yale University Press, 2019), M. David Litwa:

Appealing to native Jewish mythology, commentators often compare the incarnate Logos with the figure of Wisdom. Wisdom is a female being who existed with God before the world began. She was the means of creation, as is the Logos in the fourth gospel (Prov. 8; John 1:3). She tried to dwell among humans but—like the goddess Justice in Greek mythology—was driven away by human sin (Sirach 24; 1 Enoch 42). The Logos also came to his own people, but his own did not receive him ( John 1:11). By making Wisdom into Logos, the author of John may have been translating Jewish mythology into Greek terms. Jesus as Logos expressed the thought and mind of the father deity, just like Wisdom of old. But Wisdom, according to Jewish mythology, was never made flesh.

In the Hellenistic world, it was more common to conceive of the Logos as the god Hermes. Hermes was called Logos not only because his works expressed the reason of God but also because he was the interpreting god. He explained the will of his father, Zeus. Christ the Logos is also a god, intimately related to the high God. When John’s Logos takes on flesh, his mission is specifically to interpret or explain his divine father ( John 1:1, 18).

Zeus often sent his son Hermes on missions... As a god, Hermes has human form; yet there are certain “historical missions” in which he assumes a tangible human body. Hermes also became manifest in a distinctly historical figure. Around 30 BCE, the Roman poet Horace told of terrible prodigies afflicting the city of Rome: snow squalls, lightning electrifying the citadel, and the yellow Tiber overrunning its banks. The Romans were terrified at the signs of divine wrath and supposed that the age of Pyrrha had returned (the time of the great flood). The people were afflicted by a horrible curse. Warring Romans battled not their enemies but themselves. In desperation, the poet asked, “What divinity are the people to call upon to restore the fortunes of their collapsing power? . . . To whom will Jupiter [the Roman Zeus] give the task of atoning for the crime?” As candidates, Horace considered Apollo wrapped in a cloud, smiling Venus, and blood-stained Mars. Surprisingly, he settled on the “winged son of kindly Maia,” or Mercury (the Roman Hermes). Fitting it was for this divinity to lay down his wings and “take on the shape of a young man on earth”—no less than the Roman emperor Augustus. What was initially introduced as hypothetical in the poem swiftly becomes reality. Mercury did indeed come to earth and arrived in space and time as the flesh-and-blood emperor. The historical emperor was really Hermes clothed in flesh. Thus all the benefactions of Augustus were really the gifts of a god. The poet duly prayed to the descended deity: “May it be long before you return to heaven; may you dwell happily with Romulus’s folk [the Romans] for many a year, and may no breeze come too soon and carry you on high [to heaven], alienated by our sins.”

Although this particular myth owes much to Horace’s fancy, it is worth taking seriously. It well exemplifies how an ancient Mediterranean person conceived of an extraordinary benefactor in mythic terms. The benefactor is not a normal human being but a subordinate deity who arrives in flesh. He comes from heaven in a time of crisis. By virtue of his divine nature, he becomes a leader or king. He brings peace on earth, a purifying act of atonement, and then rises—all too swiftly—back to his heavenly home.

Humans themselves could not atone for their crime. Therefore a god, agent of the high God, performs it for them... To atone for the ancient crime, Mercury came in human form, obeying the commands of his divine father. He came as ruler and peace bringer. For Horace, Mercury was not just a poet’s patron or a tradesman’s deity. He was the one bringing reconciliation, truces, and terminations of civil war; he was the preservation—indeed salvation— of the Roman people. He was incarnated, moreover, in a real, well-known, historical human being mentioned in the third gospel: Caesar Augustus.

Politics and Divinization in Augustan Poetry (OUP Oxford, 2022) By Bobby Xinyue:

Horace’s apparently eccentric identification of Augustus with Mercury has attracted significant scholarly attention over the years. Amongst the wide ranging views, seeing the motif as a spontaneous poetic invention has many proponents. However, in many ways Mercury is particularly suited to being associated with Augustus. Mercury/Hermes is well known throughout ancient literature for his ability to adopt different guises, which Horace alludes to with the phrase mutata . . .figura (1.2.41); and Augustus’ public image certainly undergoes transformation after the civil war, as suggested by his accelerated maturation from iuvenis (41) and Caesaris ultor (44) to pater atque princeps (50). Moreover, as the messenger of the gods and mediator of human-divine relations, Mercury’s traditional image can be used to convey Augustus’ importance to Rome as the facilitator of pax deorum...

While Augustus is more frequently associated with Apollo or Jupiter, evidence of the assimilation between Augustus and Mercury is not lacking. We find this motif on the official coinage and private art of the early Principate, even if the latter probably only circulated narrowly. More significant perhaps is the suggestion offered by Nisbet and Hubbard: that the comparison of ruler with Mercury appears to have a Ptolemaic origin, since we have not only Ephippus’ report of Alexander dressing up as Hermes (cf. Athenaeus 537e) but also the assimilation of Ptolemy V to Hermes/Thoth on the Rosetta Stone. The commentators go on to say: ‘The idea could have come to Rome at any time after Caesar’s dictatorship, yet it might be relevant that Octavian had recently conquered an Antony–Osiris in Egypt.’ What is strongly implied by Nisbet and Hubbard is that Augustus’ victory over the last husband of the last of the Ptolemies could have heightened Horace’s sensitivity to the Ptolemaic practice of identifying a ruler with Hermes (or a cognate deity). By presenting Augustus somewhat unexpectedly as Mercury incarnate, Horace could thus be suggesting that the victory over Antony–Osiris and the annexation of Egypt have turned Augustus into a new Ptolemaic divine ruler.

"Art and royalty in Sparta" by Olga Palagia in HESPERIA 75 (2006):

A slightly under-life-size portrait head of Ptolemy III in Parian marble (Fig. 6) must date from the same period (226/5-223/2 B.C.)... The head is crowned by a royal diadem; wings grow from the hair, indicating assimilation to Hermes. The representation of Ptolemaic rulers with divine at tributes may indicate ruler cult, as attested not only in Egypt itself but also in Egyptian dependencies. The Ptolemies began to assume the symbols of Hermes probably in the reign of Ptolemy III... The association of the Ptolemaic rulers with Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, is documented by the priests' decree of 196 b.c. honoring Ptolemy V, inscribed on the Rosetta Stone. In this decree Hermes-Thoth is the dispenser of justice who triumphs over his enemies. The Seleukids may in fact have anticipated the Ptolemies in assimilating the ruler to Herm.

The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs (Harvard University Press, 2003), Jan Assmann:

In terms of cult practice, specifically animal cults, the Ptolemies also referred to earlier traditions and extended them. Up to the threshold of the Ptolemaic era, animal cults had been a secondary phenomenon rather than the vital nerve center of Egyptian religion. Secondary phenomena can be indispensable, of course, and as early as the New Kingdom animal cults were already an integral feature of Egyptian religion. But the Ptolemies placed the animal cult at the very inmost heart of Egyptian religion. Every cult now had a triangular base:

cosmic/solar manifestation = (Re form) e.g., Apis-Osiris
living incarnation = (animal form) e.g., Apis bull
transfigured immortalization = (mummy as Osiris figure) e.g., Osiris-Apis.

Because the kings also saw themselves as living incarnations of the supreme deity, they occupied the same theological category as the sacred animals. Perhaps this explains their consuming interest in the animal cult... The Ptolemies spared no effort to rule the country in accordance with Egyptian ideas and practices. They instituted the annual priestly synod to discuss and adopt important political decisions. They also issued the "philanthropa" decrees, in which they presented themselves as law-abiding kings in the ancient Near-Eastern sense, as protectors of the weak and saviors of the poor.

So the Ptolemies seem to have associated themselves with the animal cult of the Apis bull because the king and the Apis bull were preexistent incarnated beings. The Apis bull was born to a cow without sexual intercourse and was said to be the incarnation of a deity, usually Osiris.

Herodotus, Hist. 3.27-28:

When Cambyses was back at Memphis, there appeared in Egypt that Apis whom the Greeks call Epaphus; at whose epiphany the Egyptians put on their best clothing and held a festival... The rulers told him that a god, wont to appear after long intervals of time, had now appeared to them; and that all Egypt rejoiced and made holiday whenever he so appeared... he said that if a tame god had come to the Egyptians he would know it; and with no more words he bade the priests bring Apis. So they went to fetch and bring him. This Apis, or Epaphus, is a calf born of a cow that can never conceive again. By what the Egyptians say, the cow is made pregnant by a light from heaven, and thereafter gives birth to Apis.

Death and afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001), John H Taylor:

Apis was believed to be incarnate in a bull, born to a virgin cow which was supposed to have been impregnated by Ptah through the agency of fire from heaven.

The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003), Richard H. Wilkinson:

Mythologically, it was said that the Apis bull was born to a virgin cow that had been impregnated by the god Ptah... In this context the living Apis bull itself was sometimes called the "ba" [=physical manifestation] of Osiris, and the process of assimilation with other deities also led to the composite Osiris-Apis-Atum-Horus.

The Egyptian pharaohs were said to be preexistent and existed before creation similar to Jesus.

Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), Christopher B. Hays:

As an example of the way in which Egyptian creation myths were most commonly expressed, a spell of the pharaoh Pepi I from the Pyramid Texts claims that he was born from Atum “when the sky had not yet come into being, when the earth had not yet come into being, when people had not yet come into being, when the gods had not yet been born, when death had not yet come into being” (Pyramid Texts, 1466). Since the pharaoh expected to be a god in his afterlife, this was no great theological stretch.

The pharaoh Akhenaton associated himself with the deity "Shu" who was the first-born son of the creator god. Shu represented "life" and filled the cosmos.

The Egyptian World (Routledge, 2007), Toby A. H. Wilkinson:

Maat’s role in creation is expressed in chapter 80 of the Coffin Texts (c.2000 BC) where Tefnut, the daughter of Atum, is identified with maat, the principle of cosmic order, who, together with Shu, the principle of cosmic ‘life’, fills the universe (Faulkner 1973: 83–7; Junge 2003: 87–8). Maat is, therefore, one of the fundamental principles of the cosmos, present from the beginning, like the personification of Wisdom in the later Biblical tradition (Wisdom of Solomon 7, 22; 7, 25; 8, 4; 9, 9). This concept of creation and the role of maat has also been likened to that found in Plato’s Timaeus (30a–b), where the creator demiurge forms a cosmos governed by reason by replacing disorder with order (Junge 2003: 88)...

Even the ‘monotheist’ Akhenaten, while aiming to abandon all myths in favour of a single divine concept of the Aten, still mobilized some very old mythical constellations in order to enhance his claim to the throne. He declared himself the sole son of his god, and his ka and representative on earth (Silverman 1995: 74–9), while presenting himself – in both text and image – as Shu, the firstborn son of the Heliopolitan creator god Atum... The triad of Atum, Shu and Tefnut is significant; there is reference to the time when Atum ‘became three’ (Coffin Texts II, 39c–e). His ka (‘vital power’) is present in his two children (Pyramid Texts 1652a–1653a). During the reign of Akhenaten, the iconography of the king, his queen Nefertiti and the Aten reflects that of Shu, Tefnut and Atum...

The Pyramid Texts trace the king’s birth back to the time of the primordial creator god. He is said to have been born from the self-impregnated sun god Ra or Atum; or even from Nun. An inscription in Theban Tomb 49 reads ‘The king was born in Nun before heaven and earth came into being’. The Memphite Theology united the king with Ptah.

The concept of the logos seems to go back to Egyptian texts. Remember what David Litwa said in the quote above:

Paul’s picture of the divine world, I would argue, is another variant of the graded divinity paradigm. He acknowledges a transcendent deity “from whom” everything exists and a mediate deity “through whom” everything exists (1 Cor 8:6). He envisions, in other words, a Prime Mediate demiurgic deity—Christ—and a primal God called “the Father.”.

So in 1 Cor 8:6 God is a deity "from whom" everything exists, and Jesus is a mediate deity "through whom" everything exists. Compare that to the following:

"The Shabaka Stone: An Introduction", Joshua J. Bodine in Studia Antiqua 7, no. 1 (2009):

The descriptions of the “relations between Ptah and Atum,” opines Iversen, “were not attempts to elevate one at the expense of the other, but purely theological attempts to define the difference between creator and demiurge.”... —Ptah was creator while Atum was demiurge (second god) who was a Memphite deity and “not his Heliopolitan counterpart and namesake.” Looked at in context with other Egyptian conceptions of creation—where there was an “immaterial creator responsible for creation as such,” who is “projected . . . into a second, sensible god” who carries out material creation—the Shabaka text was simply a treatise explicating the local Memphite version of creation... After some initial introductions about Ptah (lines 48–52b), the Memphite Theology starts by declaring that “through the heart and through the tongue something developed into Atum’s image.” This something that took shape in the form of Atum was the result of none other than the “great and important . . . Ptah, who gave life to all the gods . . . through this heart and this tongue"... It is through Ptah that all the gods were born, “Atum and his Ennead as well,” and that all things came into existence (lines 53–56, 58):

"Thus it is said of Ptah: “He who made all and created the gods.” And he is Ta-tenen, who gave birth to the gods, and from whom every thing came forth, foods, provisions, divine offerings, and all good things. Thus it is recognized and understood that he is the mightiest of the gods. Thus Ptah was satisfied after he had made all things and all divine word. . . . Indeed, Ptah is the fountain of life for the gods and all material realities."

The Memphite Theology was clearly setting forth the idea of creation as a combination of both immaterial and material principles, with Ptah serving as the connection between the two. Creation, according to the Shabaka Stone, was both a spiritual or intellectual creation as well as a physical one. It was through the divine heart (thought) and tongue (speech/word) of Ptah as the great causer of something to take shape in the form of the physical agent of creation Atum, through which everything came forth... It did not take scholars long to recognize that in the ideas of the Memphite Theology there was an approach similar to the Greek notion of logos. The so called “Logos” doctrine is that in which the world is formed through a god’s creative thought and speech—Logos meaning, literally, “Word.” The parallels with the creation account in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, or with the opening chapter of the Gospel of John in the Christian New Testament, are obvious

So everything came forth "from" Ptah, and "through" Atum as demiurge. Ptah = god, Atum = Jesus.

“The Celestial Realm,” James P Allen in Ancient Egypt, ed. by D.P. Silverman (Oxford University Press, 2003):

THE WORD OF GOD: When the creator utters his command, Ptah transforms it into the reality of the created world.. This concept of a divine intermediary between creator and creation is the unique contribution of the Memphite Theology. It proceeded the Greek notion of the demiurge by several hundred years; it had it's ultimate expression a thousand years later: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'.

The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2005), David Leeming:

In Egyptian mythology the goddess Maat, the wife of Thoth, a god associated with wisdom, and daughter or aspect of the high god Atum, is at once a goddess and an idea, the personification of moral and cosmic order, truth, and justice that was as basic to life as breath itself which in the Coffin Texts Maat also seems to personify... Maat gives breath itself - life - to the kings, and so is depicted holding the symbol of life, the ankh, to their noses. Maat represents the proper relationship between the cosmic and the earthly, the divine and the human... It is she who personifies the meaningful order of life... Maat might be seen as a principle analogous to the Logos, divine reason and order. As Christians are told "In the beginning the Word [Logos] already was"(John 1:1), Atum announces that before creation, "when the heavens were asleep, my daughter Maat lived within me and around me."

Romer, T.C., 2013, "Yhwh, the Goddess and Evil: Is “monotheism” an adequate concept to describe the Hebrew Bible’s discourses about the God of Israel", Verbum et Ecclesia 34(2), Art. #841:

Another evolution is the personification of ‘wisdom’ in the first chapters of the book of Proverbs. In Proverbs 8, Hokmah presents herself in the same way as does Yhwh (and the other gods). She is said to have been created by Yhwh in the beginning (Pr 8:22), but she precedes the creation of the world; she is even presented as Yhwh’s craftswoman... But the idea of a goddess who assists the creator God, makes sense and reminds of the Egyptian couple Ra and Maat.

"Some Notes on Biblical and Egyptian Theology" by John Strange in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World. Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford,(Brill Academic Pub, May 2004) edited by Gary N. Knoppers:

And this borrowing from Egyptian wisdom is not superficial, as can be seen in Proverbs 1-9, in which a long praise of Lady Wisdom culminates in her own speech (chapter 8). She says that she is created as a kind of goddess, the firstborn of creation, and herself a collaborator in creation... The personification of wisdom is also found in Job 28, Sir 24:1-22, obviously partly modeled on Proverbs; Wis 7:7-9:18... It is impossible not to think of the goddess Ma'at and Egyptian concepts of wisdom...

The most profound influence from Egyptian theology on Biblical and Christian theology is to be found in creation theology... Already Breasted saw that the Shabaka-text contained a conception of the world and its creation which was the root of the later Greek notions of "nous" and "logos,"... He [Ptah] was the fount of divinity, comprising all the other gods who were parts of his immaterial body. His first creation act was Atum, a second god together with Ptah turned intelligible creation into sensible creation, thus creating the All, i.e., the sensible body of the creator, in which Atum functioned as the heart and the tongue, i.e. the thought and the word expressing the will of the creator... When we last approach the New Testament counterpart to the creation story in Genesis 1, the prologue to the Gospel of John (chap. 1), it should be taken into account that the Gospel of John uses a number of ideas which bear a very close resemblance to Hermetic literature (Dodd 1953:10-53). This is the more significant as the Gospel of John is possibly written in the Jewish Christian community in Egypt... Now there are a number of striking similarities between some statements in the prologue and passages in wisdom literature. Dodd (1953:274-75) demonstrates that "while the Logos of the prologue has many of the traits of the Word of God in the Old Testament, it is on the other side a concept closely similar to that of Wisdom, that is to say, the hypostatized thought of God projected into creation"...

Finally, by making the creative word of God incarnate in Messiah, "the Son of God who was to come" (John 11:27), the Son of David, and the King of Israel, John in his prologue links the royal ideology from the Old Testament to the New Testament Christ, and we find a combination of royal ideology and creation theology. Christ is king and creator, like the kings from the temple in Jerusalem and like the Kings in Egypt. There is thus a nexus between the creation theology of Egypt, the legacy in Hellenism expressed in the Hermetic literature and Philo of Alexandria, and in the Bible, both in the creation story of Genesis and in the latest gospel, the Gospel of John.

Plutarch also describes Romulus as preexistent. Romulus was the first king of Rome.

Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), M. David Litwa:

In Plutarch’s expanded account, we learn that Proculus was traveling on the road when he saw “Romulus coming to meet him, beautiful and large to the eye as never before, and arrayed in flashing and fiery armor.” Proculus was terrified, but still asked to know why Romulus had abandoned the Roman people (leaving the patricians prey to accusations). Romulus replied, “It was the pleasure of the Gods, Proculus, from whom I came, that I should be with humankind only a short time, and that after founding a city destined to be the greatest on earth for empire and glory, I should dwell again in heaven.”... the followers of the hero learn that he is preexistent. Romulus came from the gods, is incarnated for a specific mission, and returns to heaven (cf. John 3:13; 20:17).

According to Adela Yarbro Collins and John Collins in their book "King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), the Davidic king was portrayed as being preexistent:

Both highly regarded scholars, Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins argue that Jesus was called “the Son of God” precisely because he was believed to be the messianic king. This belief and tradition, they contend, led to the identification of Jesus as preexistent, personified Wisdom, or a heavenly being in the New Testament canon. However, the titles Jesus is given are historical titles tracing back to Egyptian New Kingdom ideology...

Paul sometimes speaks of Jesus as preexistent. At times he does so by identifying Christ with preexistent, personified wisdom (1 Cor 8:5-6)... John differs from the Synoptic Gospels in its elaboration of the divine sonship of Jesus by identifying him with the "word" in the sense of the Middle Platonic "logos". This "logos" is akin to preexistent, personified wisdom. Wisdom was portrayed both as the first creature of God (Prov 8:22-23; Sir 24:9) and as begotten by God (Wis 8:3; Philo, On Flight and Finding 9 48-50). She is also portrayed as an eternal emanation or effulgence of God and as God's image (Wis 7:26)...

After the demise of the monarchy, it was easier to speak of a future messianic king in purely ideal terms. Messianic expectation, in the sense of hope for the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, has left some traces in the prophetic literature of the Persian era, but these oracles do not impute divinity in any degree to the future king. There is more extensive evidence for messianic expectation in the Hellenistic period, especially after the usurpation of the monarchy by the Hasmonean line. Many of the references to a future "messiah" in the dead sea scrolls are minimal and refer to him only as the "shoot of David" who will arise in the last days. But a significant number of texts in this period impute to the messianic king a superhuman status. The Greek translation of the Psalms shows no inhibitions about referring to the king as son of God (Psalms 2, 89), begotten by God (Psalm 110) or addressed as God (Psalm 45). Moreover, the idea that the king is preexistent is introduced into Psalm 110 and possibly implied in Psalm 72.

In the Republic (508a) Plato seems to describe the sun as the child of the Good and the physical manifestation of the Good in the world, similar to the logos:

Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear?

You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say...

And this is whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind.

You find a similar concept in the Egyptian deity Amun-Re. Amun is considered to be the hidden unmanifested aspect, while the sun god Re is the manifested aspect.

"Amun and Amun-Re" by Vincent A Tobin in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt: Volume 1 (2002):

During the New Kingdom, the theology of Amun-Re at Thebes became very complex. His position as king of the gods increased to a point that approached monotheism. In Amun-Re's most advanced theological expressions, the other gods became symbols of his power or manifestations of him- he himself being the one and only supreme divine power. This absolute supremacy of Amun-Re was eloquently expressed in the sun hymns found in the eighteenth dynasty tombs at Thebes. As Amun, he was secret, hidden, and mysterious; but as Re, he was visible and revealed. Although for centuries Egyptian religion had been flexible and open to contradictory mythological expressions, the Theban theology of Amun-Re came close to establishing a standard of orthodoxy in doctrine.

Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 1997), David P. Silverman:

Chapter two hundred identifies Amun, who exists apart from nature, as unknowable... As he exists outside nature, Amun is the only god by whom nature could have been created. The text recognizes this by identifying all the creator gods as manifestations of Amun... The consequence of this view is that all the gods are no more than aspects of Amun. According to chapter three hundred: “All the gods are three: Amun, the sun and Ptah, without their seconds. His identity is hidden as Amun, his face is the sun, his body is Ptah.” Although the text speaks of three gods, the three are merely aspects of a single god. Here Egyptian theology has reached a kind of monotheism: not like that of, say, Islam, which recognizes only a single indivisible God, but one more akin to that of the Christian trinity. This passage alone places Egyptian theology at the beginning of the great religious traditions of Western thought.

The sun god was also a model for Egyptians (along with Osiris).

The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2001), Jan Assmann:

The nightly journey of the sun as a descensus ad inferos brought the sun god into constellations with the inhabitants of the netherworld, the transfigured dead. His light, and in particular his speech, awoke them from the sleep of death and allowed them to participate in the life-giving order that emanated from his course. But in this, the god himself experienced the form of existence of the transfigured dead and set an example for them by overcoming death...

The icon of sunset represents the cosmic process in such a way that it can be the archetype of the fate of the dead. It invests actions and events in the divine realm with a formulation that makes them comprehensible on the level of the mortuary cult. The same is true of the morning icon, which symbolizes the overcoming of death and the renewal of life, rebirth from the womb of the sky goddess. Connected with it are Isis and Nephthys, the divine mourning women, whose laments and transfigurations raise the dead into the morning constellation of the course of the sun... The icons give the course of the sun a form that makes it possible to relate it to the world of humankind, for they bring to light a meaning in the sun's course that is common to both levels, the cosmic level and that of the fate of the dead; that is, events on both levels can be explained by means of them... Just as the icons of evening and morning sketch out the archetype of a successful outcome for individual's hopes for immortality, so the midday icon of overcoming the enemy lends archetypal form above all to society and its interest in health, life, and well-being... The course of the sun was at the same time the pulse-beat of the world, which filled the cosmos with life force by means of the cyclic defeat of the enemy and of death

The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs (Harvard University Press, 2002), Jan Assmann:

These hymns-as-commentaries elucidate aspects of the cosmos in terms of three different dimensions of meaning. In the governmental and political dimension of rule, the salutary aspect of the circuit of the sun lies in its affirmation of order over chaos through the victory of light over darkness and motion over standstill. In the social dimension, the salutary meaning of the course of the sun lies in the love with which god infuses the world. On the individual plane, it is the cycle of death and rebirth, aging and rejuvenation that makes the course of the sun the model of hope for the hereafter. The circuit of the sun thus stands as an aggregate model for earthly life...

It is the salvational efficacy of this process that gives it meaning in the first place and that marks the linguistic accompaniment as an interpretation. Of central moment is the idea of a dual overcoming: the overcoming of evil, personified by Apopis threatening the bark with standstill, and the overcoming of death. Both are manifestations of chaos, two aspects of the same process. The overcoming of evil is the active, transitive aspect, directed at the external world. In this dynamic, the sun god figures as the god of the world, whose word creates order, speaks law, ensures livelihood, and "drives out evil."...The overcoming of death is the passive or intransitive aspect of the nightly journey. This process takes the form of a life span that the sun god traverses, aging and dying in order to be reborn. The mystery of solar rebirth is in fact the central salvational element in Egyptian religion... The visual recognition of the circuit of the sun becomes an act of understanding by identification. Human beings recognize themselves in the cosmos. It is their death that is overcome, their ambivalence about good and evil that is oriented toward the good

The sun god brings light, life, and love into the world very similar to Jesus in the Gospel of John.

So in this post I have shown that mediating deities were common throughout ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture. Humans needed some type of mediator and model to show them how to connect with god/s or the divine. It's no surprise that Jesus became a preexistent being associated with Wisdom and the Logos or word of god, and a model for his followers. Kings seem to have especially been considered to be the incarnation of a preexistent deity. You had mediators like demigods/heroes/mystery cult saviors, the middle Platonic logos and demiurge, Wisdom, etc. which all share traits with Jesus.

[dbz]

1. I have shown that mediating deities were common throughout ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture.
2. Humans needed some type of mediator and model to show them how to connect with god/s or the divine.
3. It's no surprise that Jesus became a preexistent being associated with Wisdom and the Logos or word of god, and a model for his followers.

• Kings [being attested sovereigns—both legendary and historical i.e. those attested with a contemporary historical credibility] seem to have especially been considered to be the incarnation of a preexistent deity.
• You had mediators like
  • demigods/heroes/mystery cult saviors,
  • the middle Platonic logos and demiurge,
  • Wisdom,
  • etc.
  which all share traits with Jesus.

So we question how much religious syncretism did the original Lord ΙΣ ΧΣ (IS XS) cultus engage in?

I think scholarship on this has a way to go, but the most significant current scholarship might well be M David Litwa's books:

• Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God
• The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea
• Carpocrates, Marcellina, and Epiphanes: Three Early Christian Teachers of Alexandria and Rome
• Early Christianity in Alexandria: From its Beginnings to the Late Second Century
• Found Christianities: Remaking the World of the Second Century CE
• Simon of Samaria and the Simonians: Contours of an Early Christian Movement
• The Naassenes: Exploring an Early Christian Identity
• Desiring Divinity: Self-deification in Early Jewish and Christian Mythmaking

[dbz]

Now on the Platonic logos/demiurge:

We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology (Walter de Gruyter, 2012), M. David Litwa:

Perhaps the most famous image of the tripartite soul functioning in a dualistic way is the image of the charioteer. In brief, the “spirited” and “desiring part” are depicted as two horses, and both are reined in by the charioteer or mind (Phaedr. 246a-254e; cf. Philo, Leg. 3.118, 127 – 28, 138). The spirited and desiring parts are essentially related to the needs and urges of the body, whereas the rational mind alone can transcend this mortal life, catching a glimpse of transcendent Beauty. So even though the parts are three, the deep structure of Platonic anthropology posits a basic dualism between (1) the parts of the self interwoven with the body and its desires, and (2) the mind which can (with practice and good breeding) transcend the lower (bodily) self.
[...]
In popular Platonism and Stoicism, the mind is the divine part of the self ruling over the non-divine part. Stoics called the mind a “fragment of God” (Epict., Diatr. 1.14.6; 2.8.2), or the “God within” (Sen., Ep. 41.1). Philo is willing to maintain this terminology to express his Jewish understanding of humans in the image of God (e. g., Opif. 146; Det. 86 – 87, 90). My point, however, is not that the infused divine pneuma and the innate divine mind are the same thing in Pauline and popular Stoic ethics. Rather, I argue that they have a similar function. Both Christ’s divine pneuma and the naturally divine mind, that is, control and eventually transcend the lower self (the passions and desires).

Part of the Soul	Early Platonism	Middle Platonism
MIND (Rational Thought/Intellect)	Highest and most important, responsible for reason	Nous, or intellect
HEART Spirited	Responsible for courage, will, and ambition	Psyche, or soul
BELLY Appetitive	Responsible for desires, passions, and bodily appetites	Pneuma, or spirit (ghost-wind in the shell)

IMO per Plato_2.0, Pneuma is the invisible power that imparts motion to humans like the invisible wind in a ship's sail causes a ship to have motion. Literally a ghost-wind that causes humans to move, eat, etc. when present and drop dead when absent (imagine how they explained a sudden massive heart attack or stroke as taking the "wind" out of a person's "sails", and whom had no other discernible health issues).

[dbz]

We Are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul’s Soteriology (Walter de Gruyter, 2012), M. David Litwa:

Paul does preach his own “technology of the self” enabling self-transcendence. In his version, however, the divine is not naturally within, but comes from outside and begins to control the passions of the lower self. “We have,” says Paul, “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). He means, if I can interpret the saying, that the pneuma of Christ has come into the self of believers and functions much as the naturally divine mind in the Platonic and Stoic systems of thought.

"...the divine is not naturally within" .. thus Paul's Lord Redeemer is the devotee's new divine ghost-in-the-shell IF the devotee is in the Lord, or rather IS XS is literally in the devotee! Perhaps symbolized by christing perfumed chrism on the head of said devotee.

[nightshadetwine]

IMO per Plato_2.0, Pneuma is the invisible power that imparts motion to humans like the invisible wind in a ship's sail causes a ship to have motion. Literally a ghost-wind that causes humans to move, eat, etc. when present and drop dead when absent (imagine how they explained a sudden massive heart attack or stroke as taking the "wind" out of a person's "sails", and whom had no other discernible health issues).

Christian Beginnings: A Study in Ancient Mediterranean Religion (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), Stanley Stowers:

There have been numerous apologetic attempts to construe Paul’s idea of divine pneuma as purely Jewish, but these attempts fail badly and the apologetic strategy of using the idea of a pure Judaism to protect Christianity from “pagan” influence is now well known and critically deflated. Paul certainly draws on ideas of God’s breath and divine breaths from the LXX and Judean literature, but interprets these with Stoic features as Engberg-Pedersen has shown. I cannot argue a case about the relation of the Judean traditions to the Stoic here, but some brief points are in order. The Judean ideas are far from uniquely Jewish, but versions of folk beliefs about the role of wind/air/breath in the way that the world works, especially regarding human life, the nature of gods, and their “breaths.” These beliefs were common to all cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and West Asia. These folk beliefs were the starting point for what Greek philosophers, beginning with the Presocratics, said about pneuma and would theorize about pneuma. The folk uses in the Hebrew Bible and LXX, mostly in narrative literature, are hardly philosophical theorization and they are open to numerous interpretations...

As Engberg-Pederson has emphasized, Paul’s language about the materials of the universe features pneuma. Jesus Christ was refashioned in the resurrection from pneuma and Christ followers will receive a body of pneuma when Christ returns. The pneumatic body that Paul suggests will have qualities similar to or superior to the stars and planets will replace a body made from earthy material. This “pneuma of God” or “holy pneuma” is clearly higher and distinct from the pneuma related to ordinary consciousness and cognition that all human beings possess. So Paul assumes something like differing qualities of pneuma – at least two – divine and human. He also writes of the “pneuma of the cosmos” as opposed to divine pneuma...

In sharp contrast to the Stoic moral psychology, which stresses psychophysical holism, Paul has a parts-based psychology. In Romans 7, the “I” constructed with the rhetorical technique of προσωποποιία disassociates itself from its own flesh, that is, body, earlier called “body of sin” (6:6). The true self in a rebellious body of flesh does not do what it wants to do (7:14–20). In fact, it does what it hates. No good lies in the true self’s flesh (7:18). In other words, the true self has been so overpowered by appetitive desire (ἐπιθυμία) and passions (πάθη) that it no longer controls what the body does. The condition is worse than simple ἀκρασία. The true self has been taken captive, enslaved and lives in a “body of death” (7:24). As is typical with a parts psychology, Paul constantly attributes features of mind to the irrational soul or body. Wasserman has shown that from Plato to Philo, Plutarch and Galen, Platonists employed metaphors and images of captivity, attack, enslavement and so on to depict the emotions and appetites, the irrational soul, when unchecked by the mind.

[MrMacSon]

Middle Platonism

Pneuma, or spirit (ghost-wind in the shell)

IMO per Plato_2.0, Pneuma is the invisible power that imparts motion to humans like the invisible wind in a ship's sail causes a ship to have motion. Literally a ghost-wind that causes humans to move, eat, etc. when present and drop dead when absent (imagine how they explained a sudden massive heart attack or stroke as taking the "wind" out of a person's "sails", and whom had no other discernible health issues).

Christian Beginnings: A Study in Ancient Mediterranean Religion (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), Stanley Stowers:

... The Judean ideas are...versions of folk beliefs about the role of wind/air/breath in the way that the world works, especially regarding human life, the nature of gods, and their “breaths” ... These folk beliefs were the starting point for what Greek philosophers, beginning with the Presocratics, said about pneuma and would theorize about pneuma ...

As Engberg-Pederson has emphasized, Paul’s language about the materials of the universe features pneuma. Jesus Christ was refashioned in the resurrection from pneuma and Christ followers will receive a body of pneuma when Christ returns. The pneumatic body that Paul suggests will have qualities similar to or superior to the stars and planets will replace a body made from earthy material. This “pneuma of God” or “holy pneuma” is clearly higher and distinct from the pneuma related to ordinary consciousness and cognition that all human beings possess. So Paul assumes something like differing qualities of pneuma – at least two – divine and human. He also writes of the “pneuma of the cosmos” as opposed to divine pneuma ...

Apparently Yahweh was pronounced <[gentle] inspiration><[gentle] expiration>

Iesous was pronounced Yay-soos : if done gently enough, it can be similar to <[gentle] inspiration><[gentle] expiration>

(My body of work on this will be a 2-page book, 'The Spirituality of Breathing',* which will be out soon )
(* maybe titled, 'The Pneumantics of Breathing')

[dbz]

1. I have shown that mediating deities were common throughout ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture.
2. Humans needed some type of mediator and model to show them how to connect with god/s or the divine.
3. It's no surprise that Jesus became a preexistent being associated with Wisdom and the Logos or word of god, and a model for his followers.

As I understand (perhaps incorrectly?), Linssen argues that the early MSS evidence attests that Jesus wasn’t the Christ/Messiah/Anointed (Gr:ΧΡῙΣΤΌΣ/χρῑστός:chrīstós) but the ΙΣ ΧΣ (Lord IS XS).

IMO which translates to “Lord Redeemer the Chrism Bringer”, a middle-platonic intermediary power. The significance of all this for the origins of Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ as Logos, mediator, creator, etc scarcely needs to be pointed out, Cf. Godfrey, Neil (2 December 2010). “The Second God among Ancient Jewish Philosophers and Commoners”. Vridar.

Linssen plumps for the pre-christian IS XS as something totally different that later became the christian “Christ the Anointed”.

My speculation is that a philosophy (with six degrees of separation) from an oriental religion like Doctrine of the Enlightened One took root in the Greek world and then evolved into a Greco-Roman mysteries cultus that promoted Lord IS XS the Redeemer and Chrism Bringer.

• So we question how much religious syncretism did the original Lord ΙΣ ΧΣ (IS XS) cultus engage in?

The thing is there isn't all that much that says XS is the Messiah explicitly compared to the gospels and Acts
Evidence occurs around the Marcionite area where we find a bunch that uses the same texts and doesn't think XS is the Messiah
So one can argue, right or wrong, the epistles didn't originally see XS as the Messiah just like the Marcionites, who used the same texts, didn't.

[nightshadetwine]

1. I have shown that mediating deities were common throughout ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture.
2. Humans needed some type of mediator and model to show them how to connect with god/s or the divine.
3. It's no surprise that Jesus became a preexistent being associated with Wisdom and the Logos or word of god, and a model for his followers.

As I understand (perhaps incorrectly?), Linssen argues that the early MSS evidence attests that Jesus wasn’t the Christ/Messiah/Anointed (Gr:ΧΡῙΣΤΌΣ/χρῑστός:chrīstós) but the ΙΣ ΧΣ (Lord IS XS).

IMO which translates to “Lord Redeemer the Chrism Bringer”, a middle-platonic intermediary power. The significance of all this for the origins of Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ as Logos, mediator, creator, etc scarcely needs to be pointed out, Cf. Godfrey, Neil (2 December 2010). “The Second God among Ancient Jewish Philosophers and Commoners”. Vridar.

Linssen plumps for the pre-christian IS XS as something totally different that later became the christian “Christ the Anointed”.

My speculation is that a philosophy (with six degrees of separation) from an oriental religion like Doctrine of the Enlightened One took root in the Greek world and then evolved into a Greco-Roman mysteries cultus that promoted Lord IS XS the Redeemer and Chrism Bringer.

• So we question how much religious syncretism did the original Lord ΙΣ ΧΣ (IS XS) cultus engage in?

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you think before there was any idea of a Jesus on earth, there was first a Middle Platonic like intermediary power that at some point was said to incarnate as Jesus on earth? If so, there does seem to be evidence of early Christians linking Jesus with other figures like the heavenly Son of Man. So if there was a belief in a Middle Platonic like intermediary power among Jews then it would definitely be possible that Jesus was eventually associated with this power/figure. Jews at this time period were pretty Hellenized so there likely would have been a lot of syncretism going on.

King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins:

The most important development regarding the divinity of the messiah in ancient Judaism, however, was the reinterpretation of messianic expectation in light of Daniel’s vision of “one like a son of man” (Dan 7:13). In the Similitudes of Enoch, the Son of Man is a heavenly, preexistent figure, not a descendant of David, who is seated on a throne of glory as eschatological judge. But he is also called “messiah,” in a passage that alludes to Psalm 2 (1 Enoch 48:10: “for they have denied the Lord of Spirits and his Anointed One”)... The messiah is also depicted as a “son of man” figure, who comes on the clouds, in 4 Ezra 13. He is also called “my son,” and much of the imagery of the chapter is derived from Psalm 2. 4 Ezra, however, persists in identifying this figure as “from the posterity of David” (4 Ezra 12:32), even though it is not apparent why a descendant of David should come on the clouds.

The reinterpretation of the messiah as heavenly “son of man,” in accordance with Daniel’s figure, places the traditional language about the king/messiah as “son of God” in a new light. It must be seen in the context of affirmations of the preexistence of the messianic king in the Greek psalter and also in the context of the expectation of heavenly, angelic, savior figures, such as we find in 11QMelchizedek.

By the Same Word: Creation and Salvation in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity (Walter de Gruyter, 2009):

We began with a question: From where came the cosmological tradition attested by 1 Cor 8:6, Col 1:15–20, Heb 1:1–4, and the Johannine prologue? To answer this question we made a brief survey of the Vorleben of these passages, beginning with the generally accepted views and moving to less familiar possibilities. This survey allows us to make three assertions. First, the NT writings were not alone in claiming such an agent. The Hellenistic Jewish writings of Philo and Wisdom of Solomon as well as the Gnostic writings of Poimandres and Apocryphon of John conceive of their respective intermediaries in similar fashion and in fact shed light on the language employed in the comparatively more terse NT passages. Second, while biblical sapientialism provided all of these writings a valuable paradigm in personified Wisdom and while Genesis provided the warrant of a cosmogonical myth, neither can adequately explain the phenomenon of a divinely related agent of creation.

Our third assertion is that Middle Platonism provides a reasonable explanation for this type of an agent. As we saw, Middle Platonism espoused an intellectual system that would explain how a transcendent supreme principle could relate to the material universe. The central aspect of this system was an intermediary, modeled after the Stoic active principle, which mediated the supreme principle’s influence to the material world while preserving that principle’s transcendence. Furthermore, Middle Platonism exhibits a religious sensitivity and a compatibility with mythological constructs that would make its conceptual system quite conducive to Hellenistic Jewish self-definition.

This last assertion is the foundation of the study that follows. In this study we shall examine how, having similar concerns as Middle Platonism, writings from three religious traditions from the turn of the era (Hellenistic Jewish sapientialism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism) appropriated Middle Platonic intermediary doctrine as a means for understanding their relationship to the Deity, to the cosmos, and to themselves...

The study will conclude with a synthesis of the cosmological and soteriological approaches we have encountered in chapters three through five. This synthesis will help us to understand and appreciate the influence that Middle Platonism had on the formation of Jewish, Christian and Gnostic views about creation and salvation. By placing writings from these three religious groups against the same backdrop we will also be able to understand better their similarities and differences.

So we have:

* Preexistent mediators or heavenly figures such as the Middle Platonic Logos, the Jewish Wisdom figure (both are also found in the writings of Philo), and the heavenly Son of Man. Also the Davidic king may have been believed to have been preexistent.

* Jewish prophets and Greco-Roman kings and hero-savior-benefactor-demigods who act as mediators and models for their followers and did things for the benefit of humanity (benefaction would lead to immortality or being raised to heaven). Some of them were preexistent and believed to be the incarnation of a deity and were associated with Hermes (the Greek logos). A lot of these demigods experience suffering, death, and rebirth/resurrection like Jesus (Heracles, Dionysus, Osiris, Asclepius). Elijah, Enoch, Moses, and Romulus (who was also preexistent) were all said to have ascended to heaven at the conclusion of their lives.

* You also have passages in Hebrew scriptures that feature suffering like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah and the Righteous Sufferer of the Psalms. You also find the exile and restoration of Israel being described using death and rebirth/resurrection imagery in Hosea (which some scholars think is influenced by a dying and resurrecting deity like Baal). In Hosea, Israel is described as being raised by god "on the third day". Paul says Jesus was raised "on the third day" by God "according to the scriptures". John Granger Cook thinks "according to the scriptures" is referencing Hosea.

Jesus fits perfectly into these three groups. All of these played a role in how Jesus is portrayed in the NT texts.

[dbz]

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you think before there was any idea of a Jesus on earth, there was first a Middle Platonic like intermediary power that at some point was said to incarnate as Jesus on earth? If so, there does seem to be evidence of early Christians linking Jesus with other figures like the heavenly Son of Man. So if there was a belief in a Middle Platonic like intermediary power among Jews then it would definitely be possible that Jesus was eventually associated with this power/figure. Jews at this time period were pretty Hellenized so there likely would have been a lot of syncretism going on.

• ...before there was any idea of a Jesus on earth, there was first a Middle Platonic like intermediary power that at some point was said to incarnate as Jesus on earth?

Yes, perhaps a dying and rising intermediary power named Lord XS the Redeemer, cf. Wells' viewpoint:

...the Q material, whether or not it suffices as evidence of Jesus's historicity, refers to a [human] personage who is not to be identified with the [mythical] dying and rising Christ of the early epistles. (Can We Trust the NT?, 2004, pp. 49–50).

• Jews at this time period were pretty Hellenized so there likely would have been a lot of syncretism going on.

With most datum lost.

Philo, who made the first attempt in Jewish history to reconcile the Bible with Greek philosophy, cannot have been unique; he must have had peers and a considerable audience, even in Palestine itself.

[But] Rabbinic literature betrays no hint that such interests existed. It is hard to believe that this silence is accidental.

Moses Hadas (1956). "Judaism and the Hellenistic Experience: A Classical Model for Living in Two Cultures". Commentary Magazine.

• The degree to which Jews reconciled the compiled scripture of the LXX bible and other lost scripture—with Greek philosophy—cannot be known beyond Philo. All else is lost!

And most of the works of Middle Platonists are also lost.

Middle Platonism conventionally refers to a group of philosophers from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE . . . Unfortunately, most of the works of Middle Platonists are now lost, but the material that remains enable us to reconstruct the basic features of their thought.

--Bonazzi, Mauro (30 March 2015). "Middle Platonism". Classics. doi:10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0190.