Quite well-known is the book of Revelation\u2019s (aka John\u2019s Apocalypse) condemnation of \u201cworshiping the beast\u201d in his writing to the Christians in Asia Minor:<\/p>\n
[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]).<\/p>\n
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 \u201crevered ones\u201d (Sebastoi<\/em>), the Greek equivalent of the title \u201cAugusti\u201d. This worship included temples in their honour as well as sacrifices at both the city and the provincial levels.<\/p>\n Yet quite often those who have studied these \u201cimperial cults\u201d tend to see them as primarily political and lacking in religiosity, or as \u201cpublic\u201d rather than \u201cprivate\u201d. 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 \u201chymn-singers\u201d (hymnodoi<\/em>). Once in a while they participated in special provincial celebrations in honour of god Augustus and his heirs, but they also engaged in special \u201cmysteries\u201d that lasted three days in honour of the \u201crevered ones\u201d within their local meetings. Similarly, an association at Ephesus in the time of emperor Domitian had \u201cmysteries and sacrifices\u201d which they performed each year \u201cto Demeter\u2026and to the Sebastoi<\/em> gods\u201d.<\/p>\n Click on the Books \/ Articles tab at the top of the page to read some scholarly articles on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Quite well-known is the book of Revelation\u2019s (aka John\u2019s Apocalypse) condemnation of \u201cworshiping the beast\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,37,22,5,23,467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-associations","category-christian-origins-and-literature","category-emperor-worship","category-greco-roman-religions","category-mysteries","category-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean-blog-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13639,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/13639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}