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