A week or so ago, Jim Davila discussed a recent novel which combines stories of the fallen angels and giants (Nephilim) with UFOlogy and fundamentalist Christian apocalypticism (also discussed on the new blog Café Apocalypsis). The combination of an imminent expectation of the end with the role of alien races as either the saviours or the villains is not new, of course. In the 1990s, the Heaven’s Gate group combined Christian apocalyptic expectation of the final intervention of God (in this case aliens) with the notion of good and bad alien races (the group clearly believed in their views as they ended their lives in expectation of the end and the move to the “level above human”). The malevolent space races, the “Luciferians,” likely included the notion of fallen angels, whose activity was outlined in some detail by the Heaven’s Gate:

The term “TRUE” Kingdom of God is used repeatedly because there are many space alien races that through the centuries of this civilization (and in civilizations prior) have represented themselves to humans as “Gods.” We refer to them collectively as “space alien races in opposition to the Next Level,” what historically have been referred to as “Luciferians,” for their ancestors fell into disfavor with the Kingdom Level Above Human many thousands of years ago. They are not genderless – they still need to reproduce. They have become nothing more than technically advanced humans (clinging to human behavior) who retained some of what they learned while in the early training of Members of the Level Above Human, e.g., having limited: space-time travel, telepathic communication, advanced travel hardware (spacecrafts, etc.), increased longevity, advanced genetic engineering, and such skills as suspending holograms (as used in some so-called “religious miracles”). The Next Level – the true Kingdom of God – has the only truly advanced space-time travel vehicles, or spacecrafts, and is not interested in creating phenomena (signs) or impressive trickery.

These malevolent space races are the humans’ GREATEST ENEMY. They hold humans in unknown slavery only to fulfill their own desires. They cannot “create,” though they develop races and biological containers through genetic manipulation and hybridization. They even try to “make deals” with human governments to permit them (the space aliens) to engage in biological experimentation (through abductions) in exchange for such things as technically advanced modes of travel – though they seldom follow through, for they don’t want the humans of this civilization to become another element of competition. They war among themselves over the spoils of this planet and use religion and increased sexual behavior to keep humans “drugged” and ignorant (in darkness) while thinking they are in “God’s” keeping. They use the discarnate (spirit) world to keep humans preoccupied with their addictions. These negative space races see to it, through the human “social norm” (the largest Luciferian “cult” there is), that man continues to not avail himself of the possibility of advancing beyond human.

Heaven’s Gate, “Crew from the Evolutionary Level Above Human Offers — Last Chance to Advance Beyond Human,” 1996 (Copy at: http://www.wave.net/upg/gate/lastchnc.htm).

One could say that the beginnings of plugging aliens into an apocalyptic worldview began with science fiction films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, which has the alien (and his sidekick robot) clearly in the role of the alien saviour figure and destroyer of evil (evil associated with the military activity of humans–the nuclear bomb and the Korean war were in mind). The alien saviour figure is, in this case, clearly in the role of a Jesus-figure (he dies and raises from the dead).

For the script of the movie, go here. For a brief and rough overview of the plot and its religious themes, go here. For further discussion of apocalypticism and apocalyptic groups throughout western history (including Heaven’s Gate), go to the PBS site Apocalypse!.

Once again, the satirical “wit” at the Daily Show with Jon Stewart shows a familiarity with the history of religions in the reference to Michael Jackson’s victory celebration as the Boy-cchanalia. I will not engage the Michael Jackson issue, but thought I’d say a few words about the Bacchanalia incident that ultimately provided us with our word for wild drunken orgies (Bacchanalia is now in most English dictionaries with a definition along those lines, though you will rarely hear it used these days).

Back in the time of Augustus (c. 20 BCE), the Roman historian Livy recounted the story of a controversy from two centuries earlier (186 BCE) involving the worshippers of Bacchus (Dionysos) in Rome and the surrounding area in Italy. In the process of explaining why the Roman leaders (consuls) had suppressed the worship of that imported, foreign deity, Livy goes into great detail concerning the incidents that supposedly led up to the suppression. In the process he draws on a common stock-pile of charges (including human sacrifice and wild orgies) attributed to foreign or “barbarian” peoples, charges which are echoed in the accusations against the early Christians in later times as well (see earlier post). Livy has the character Hispala describe these Dionysiac mysteries or secretive rituals as follows:

From the time when the rites were held promiscuously, with men and women mixed together, and when the license offered by darkness had been added, no sort of crime, no kind of immorality, was left unattempted. There were more obscenities practiced between men than between men and women. Anyone refusing to submit to outrage or reluctant to commit crimes was slaughtered as a sacrificial victim. To regard nothing as forbidden was among these people the summit of religious achievement
(Livy, History of Rome 39.13; trans. by H. Bettenson, Livy: Rome and the Mediterranean [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976]).

To read more about Dionysos’ mysteries, go here. For some photos of Dionysos or Bacchus, go here or here.

Down in a dusty basement of the British Museum, where few will ever see it, is a very interesting monument involving an association devoted to Zeus Hypsistos (“Most High”; GIBM IV.2 1007; from Panormos, near Kyzikos in Asia Minor).

The “three-storey” relief on this monument depicts the gods to whom the association was devoted, with Zeus (left) alongside Artemis (middle) and Apollo (right). All three deities hold out a libation bowl in their right hands, symbolic of the libations (drink-offerings) which humans offer in honour of these figures.

There is now an online review of my book, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations, in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2005.06.20) . Earlier online reviews also appeared in Review of Biblical Literature and Church History.

I’m back and I’ll start blogging again very soon once the email box is cleared out.

A new book gathers together a variety of Greek epigraphic sacred laws or regulations concerning civic and other cults and groups: Eran Lupu, Greek Sacred Law: A Collection of New Documents (NGSL). Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 152. Leiden: Brill, 2005. The book focuses on those sacred laws that were not included in earlier collections, especially Sokolowski’s Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure (Paris 1955) and Lois sacrées des cités grecques (Paris 1962 and 1969). Sokolowski’s collections included several regulation inscriptions that were produced by associations, including the famous Iobacchoi monument from Athens and the rules of the household-based association devoted to Zeus and Agdistis at Philadelphia in Asia Minor (on the various types of associations, go here).

Included in Lupu’s new volume is a sacred law of an association (synodos) of Herakles devotees at Paiania in Greece, dating to about the turn of the second century (no. 5 = SEG 31 122, first published 1981). Among the statutes of this group are the typical prohibitions against fighting and the supply of food and sacrificial victims for the gatherings of the group. The inscription also seems to suggest that children could also become members of the group (lines 38-40). Among the concerns to ensure supplies is the following:

Two people in charge of meat shall be chosen by lot every [festival] day and likewise two people in charge of pastries. If any of those entrusted is found to have done something sordid, he shall pay 20 drachmas (lines 31-33; trans. Lupu).

I have uploaded a new, extended edition of the “Travel and Religion in Antiquity” bibliography, which covers the following areas:

1. Realities of Travel in the Ancient Mediterranean (including general works and works on dangers of travel [banditry])
2. Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean and Travel (including pilgrimage, itinerant religious practitioners, diffusion of religions)
3. Ancient Ethnography, Geography, and Travelogues
4. Immigrants and Occupational Travelers (including Nomads)
5. Judaism, the Near East, and Travel
6. Early Christianity and Travel (including Jesus and the Gospels, Paul and Acts, other early Christian literature, geography of heresies)
7. Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Methods and Theory (including geography of religion and the cultural history of travel)

Forgot to mention: Ahura Mazda (Lord Wisdom), the good god of Zoroastrianism who opposes the evil forces of Angra Mainyu, is to be interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart next week. There was a sneak peak last night in connection with the “This Week in God” segment, and it looks promising.

Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) was a prophet in Iran in the sixth century BCE or perhaps much earlier (c. 1400-1200 BCE according to some). Zoroastrianism was characterized by a thoroughgoing dualism (two-ism) of good and evil. Writing in the early second century CE, the Greek philosopher Plutarch summarized Zoroastrian teachings thus:

“Oromazes (Ahura Mazda), born from the purest light, and Areimanius (Angra Mainyu), born from the darkness, are constantly at war with each other. . . But a destined time shall come when it is decreed that Areimanius, engaged in bringing on pestilence and famine, shall by these be utterly annihilated and shall disappear; and then shall the earth become a level plain, and there shall be one manner of life and one form of government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue” (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 370; trans. by Babbitt in Loeb Classical Library)

Scholars are generally agreed that there is an important relationship between Zoroastrian dualism and Jewish (and Christian) apocalypticism, but they disagree on precisely what that relation is. The Jewish (and Christian) apocalyptic worldview also speaks of an ongoing battle between a good force (God) and an evil one (Satan), ending in an ultimate punishment for evil and bliss for those on the right side, who will live in an eternal, wonderful kingdom (in Zoroastrianism this end-time situation is often called the “making wonderful”, by the way). Part of the problem in determining a relation is that although Zoroaster himself pre-dates our earliest cases of the Jewish apocalyptic worldview (which begin to appear in a full-blown sense from about 200 BCE), the vast majority of the writings associated with the teachings of Zoroaster–at least in the form we have them–date significantly later (check out Mary Boyce’s collection of Zoroastrian texts: Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism).

For those of you who have not yet heard, or like me need to be reminded, there are numerous excellent maps–free for educational use–at the The Ancient World Mapping Center (associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). They also have a frequently updated “features and news” page which provides information relating to geography and cartography of the ancient world (and happened to refer to the CSBS Travel and Religion in Antiquity seminar, which is what reminded me about the maps). The Center was and is directly involved in the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World project and continues to do work in revision and updating. Now that I have the Barrington Atlas–the most detailed map of the ancient world ever, I don’t know how I did without it.

The organization summarizes its aims:

The Ancient World Mapping Center promotes cartography, historical geography and geographic information science as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies through innovative and collaborative research, teaching, and community outreach activities.

When the members of associations or guilds in the Roman empire gathered together for a meal, much more than simply satisfying the appetite or merely socializing was going on. Things that we moderns might separate into the categories of “social” and “religious” were intimately intertwined in antiquity, and the sacrificial meal is a case in point. The main way to honour the gods or goddesses was to make offerings of food or animal sacrifices, and in the majority of cases this, by default, included the accompanying meal of the worshipers.

In fact, in some cases it was even imagined that the god threw the banquet and was present with devotees as they shared in a communal meal. One banquet invitation on papyrus (ancient paper made from plants in Egypt) shows that the (Greco-Egyptian) god Sarapis sometimes sent out personal invitations for dinner: “The god calls you to a banquet being held. . . tomorrow from the 9th hour” (trans. by G.H.R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, vol. I no. 1). And this is one of those rare cases when an upper-class author (in this case Aelius Aristides of Smyrna) happens to clarify how the members of an association devoted to Sarapis might think about their god’s presence, whether in Egypt or in Asia Minor:

“And mankind exceptionally makes this god [Sarapis] alone a full partner in their sacrifices, summoning him to the feast and making him both their chief guest and host, so that while different gods contribute to different banquets, he is the universal contributor to all banquets and has the rank of mess president for those who assemble at times for his sake . . . he is a participant in the libations and is the one who receives the libations, and he goes as a guest to the revel and issues the invitations to the revelers, who under his guidance perform a dance.” Orations 45.27-28; trans. by Charles A. Behr, P. Aelius Aristides: The Complete Works. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981 (second century

Quite well-known is the book of Revelation’s (aka John’s Apocalypse) condemnation of “worshiping the beast” in his writing to the Christians in Asia Minor:

[The beast rising from the sea] was given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slaughtered (13:7-8 [NRSV]).

Scholars have for a long time recognized in this a reference to worship of the Roman emperor, with the emperor being cast as a chaotic beast in this passage. In the Greek part of the empire (including Asia Minor), in particular, the emperor and the imperial family were granted honours equivalent to those offered traditional deities, like Zeus or Artemis. They were referred to as the “revered ones” (Sebastoi), the Greek equivalent of the title “Augusti”. This worship included temples in their honour as well as sacrifices at both the city and the provincial levels.

Yet quite often those who have studied these “imperial cults” tend to see them as primarily political and lacking in religiosity, or as “public” rather than “private”. This problematic view is partly due to the neglect of the many monuments and inscriptions set up by small, informal groups or associations at the local level in many cities of Asia Minor. Many of these groups worshiped the emperors without anyone imposing that on them. One such association at Pergamum was called the “hymn-singers” (hymnodoi). Once in a while they participated in special provincial celebrations in honour of god Augustus and his heirs, but they also engaged in special “mysteries” that lasted three days in honour of the “revered ones” within their local meetings. Similarly, an association at Ephesus in the time of emperor Domitian had “mysteries and sacrifices” which they performed each year “to Demeter…and to the Sebastoi gods”.

If you want to read more about John’s Apocalypse in relation to imperial cults, go here. If you want to read more about the associations specifically and their imperial mysteries, go here. For a short overview of the types of imperial cults, go here.

Many of the papers and discussions at the recent Canadian Society of Biblical Studies conference (this past weekend) were very interesting, and I thought it would be worth saying a few words about some of the work that is being done there for those of you out of reach.

Tony Chartrand-Burke (Atkinson College, York University) presented a paper that will inaugurate a new continuing seminar on curses in the ancient world. His introductory paper surveyed evidence from the Ancient Near East to late antiquity. He pointed out how biblical scholars tend to neglect curses in the bible itself, partly due to the fact that cursing is not in line with modern sensibilities. Generally, we don’t want a God, or a Jesus, who curses. Tony also pointed to the cases of curses in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is his area of expertise. Among the well-known curses in that gospel is the following:

After this again [the boy Jesus] went through the village, and a lad ran and knocked against his shoulder. Jesus was exasperated and said to him: ‘You shall not go further on your way’, and the child immediately fell down and died (4.1).
Translation from W. Schneemelcher, The New Testament Apocrypha (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991) 1.444.

As a preview to their forthcoming work on the subject, Margaret Y. MacDonald (St. Francis Xavier University) and Carolyn Osiek (Brite Divinity) presented a very interesting paper on the education of girls and the role of women in educating within early Christianity and its world. Despite the sparseness of our evidence, they showed how we can indeed gain glimpses into this important aspect of the social history of early Christianity. In the same session, Harry O. Maier (Vancouver School of Theology) shed new light on the references to barbarians and Scythians in Colossians 3:11, showing how the author’s perspective on foreign peoples here intersects with Roman imperial notions of the subjugation and encorporation of foreign peoples as represented in art (e.g. the reliefs in temple of the revered ones [Sebastoi = emperors] at Aphrodisias).

The “Travel and Religion in Antiquity” seminar had its first two sessions, and the lively discussion that accompanied the seven papers suggested that this will be an intriguing and productive topic to explore in the coming years. Several papers focussed on realities of travel. Robert Jewett (presently guest Professor at the University of Heidelberg) discussed his exciting project, which will involve archeological work on the road network at Troas (north-western Turkey) and, perhaps most astonishing, constructing an ancient boat and sailing the seas as Paul did! Setting aside any possible implications for our view of the “we” passages in Acts, the re-creation of ancient travel will in itself be an important contribution to our knowledge in this area. Lincoln Blumell (U. of Toronto) discussed the realities of brigandage and Agnes Choi (U. of Toronto) discussed peasant travel from countryside to towns in the Galilee.

Several other papers began to delve into the intersection of religion and travel specifically. Following my introductory paper which surveyed some of the evidence, Ian Scott (King’s University College, U. of Western Ontario) focussed his attention on divinization and travel by comparing the narratives (or satirical literature) depicting the travels of Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras, Peregrinus, and others. He showed just how problematic the scholarly category of the “divine man” is, and drew attention to Apollonius’ roles as philosopher and cultic expert, which seem to outweigh his role as miracle-worker (thaumaturge). Steve Muir began to explore encounters with the gods (or God) en route, including the most famous narrated encounter of Paul with Jesus on the road to Damascus (according to Acts). He also spent some time discussing the Greco-Roman deities associated with travel, including Hermes (Greek) and Lares (Roman). Michele Murray’s (Bishop’s University) interesting paper looked at the ways in which the nomadic lifestyle of the Nabateans influenced their religious and cultural life. She also offered some comparative observations in relation to the burial practices of the Scythians, who were also nomadic.

There were many other sessions and papers that I was unable to attend.