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The Cult of Serapis (Philosophy)
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Wireloop


In: Detroit
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Moses?
King Josiah?


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Wireloop


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Lets get started.

The Muse just spoke to me while listening to a lecture on Alexandria.
This voice, in this tone, has come to me before, and the corporate intellect should prove it to be a good or bad Spirit, eh?
You may disagree, but clarity of thought is what we are striving for.
Reasonable disagreement is like fire, so here it goes.

Wiki: The first Jews arrived in the area now known as Republic of Macedonia during Roman times, when Jews fled persecution in other Roman territories, with some settling in Macedonia. The first evidence of Jews in the region is an ancient synagogue dating from the 3rd or 4th century BC, in the ancient town of Stobi, in the south-east of the Republic of Macedonia.

I can attest to the above quote through other things that I have heard and read. So, if Jews are in Macedonia with a synagogue in 300 BC, then they must have been there for a little while at least....lets say...ummm... at least since, 400 BC, but probably much before then.

Who else is from Macedon?
Alexander of course.

Now, with whom did Alexander play with when he was a lad?
Ptolemy Soter I. Ptolemy was Alexander's slave...umm....page.

Ptolemy was not only Alexander's general and best mate-page, but also 'took over' Egypt when Alexander died, eh?
Yep.

So, who in the world was Ptolemy?
Well, we know that his mother was a concubine.

WHAT?
A concubine.

Were Macedonian, Jewish women known to be concubines?
Well, it seems that the Jews fled to Macedonia, so one would presume that 'in-flight' Jewish woman would invariably end up being 'concubines'.

So then, was Ptolemy 1/2 Jew?
Presumably.

I guess that would explain his infatuation with Egypt, it had a HUGE Jewish population after all, eh? Maybe he had an axe to grind with his former (Exodus) slavemasters too?
Yep.

Where did Serapis come from?
Tradition has it, that Ptolemy invented Serapis in order to exalt his status while maintaining the affirmation of the people. Therefore Serapis was not only a mix of Egyptian and Greek theology per se, but perhaps Jewish theology also. Hmmm.

Let's test it!
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Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Wiki: The first Jews arrived in the area now known as Republic of Macedonia during Roman times, when Jews fled persecution in other Roman territories, with some settling in Macedonia. The first evidence of Jews in the region is an ancient synagogue dating from the 3rd or 4th century BC, in the ancient town of Stobi, in the south-east of the Republic of Macedonia

If the FIRST Jews arrived in Macedonia during Roman times due to Roman persecution, who were the 3rd/4th Century BC Jews in Macedonia? The Romans didn't conquer Macedonia until after the 4th Macedonian War in the middle of the 2nd Century BC so how could the FIRST Jews there be the product of Roman persecution?

Were Macedonian, Jewish women known to be concubines? Well, it seems that the Jews fled to Macedonia, so one would presume that 'in-flight' Jewish woman would invariably end up being 'concubines'

This assumption is flawed vis-a-vis the fact that there was no (presumed) Roman persecution prior to Rome controlling the Levant post-Alexander (150 BC). There was Greek persecution of some Jews in Palestine during the Alexandrian period but it hardly seems likely that the persecuted would pick up sticks and move to the seat of Greek power at that time. It's much more likely that they would have 'escaped' to somewhere outside their persecutors' sphere of influence.
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Hatty
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Were Macedonian, Jewish women known to be concubines?
Well, it seems that the Jews fled to Macedonia, so one would presume that 'in-flight' Jewish woman would invariably end up being 'concubines'
.

I concede you've got a point, Wireloop, but have my reservations - not ALL concubines would have been Jewish anyway and though necessity may well have forced some women into concubinage the Jews tend to see themselves as 'God's Chosen People' and their womenfolk are essential to maintain the purity of the line. Maybe the concubines were descendants of the Hyksos (you know, hyksa shiksa) .
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Wireloop


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Komorokid stated:
There was Greek persecution of some Jews in Palestine during the Alexandrian period but it hardly seems likely that the persecuted would pick up sticks and move to the seat of Greek power at that time.

Hatty stated:
not ALL concubines would have been Jewish anyway

Good observations.
However, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Even if Ptolemy's mother was not Jewish (I'm not convinced that she was), the Jewish population in Egypt by the time Ptolemy took over was quite large and Ptolemy, a new-foreign King, by necessity, would at a minimum need to have thrown the Jews a bone in order to keep from rocking the boat. Bear in mind that the city of Alexandria, established by Ptolemy, was actually partitioned into 'quarters'....Strabo ("Ant." xiv. 7, 2 ).
One of the quarters was Jewish, and as evidenced from Josephus had the same rights originally as Greeks!

Josephus (Against Apion II . 4 ):
Alexander gave them (the Jews) a place in which to live, and they received the same rights as the Macedonians, and up to the present their race has retained the appellation Macedonians.

Josephus (Wars II . 18):
Alexander permitted them the same rights as the Greeks. This privilege they preserved under the successors of Alexander, who permitted them to call themselves Macedonians. Nay, when the Romans took possession of Egypt neither the first Caesar nor his successors suffered the rights, which had been bestowed upon the Jews by Alexander, to be diminished.

Serapis, a democratic invention of Ptolemy I (or even perhaps Alexander), in my mind, was at a minimum, 1/4 Jew!
Literally ; )
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Hatty
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Had to look Serapis up, I confess, and this caught my eye

...Occasionally, and particularly in conjunction with his consort Isis, the greatest Egyptian goddess during the Greek Period, both deities could be depicted as serpents with human heads (most often on door jambs), where Serapis would be discernable by his beard.


Like the Jewish mezuzah perhaps?

Can an invented god 'work'?
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Mick Harper
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Could the Jews have originally been something like the Ottoman Janizaries? These, you will remember were Christian children (ie from Macedonia!) taken away for military training and who, in the course of time, actually finished up ruling Egypt!
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Hatty
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Didn't the Romans do something similar, i.e. bringing up 'barbarian' children to be good Roman soldiers/citizens?

Something which Dan asked about the origin of the word 'Egypt' has been niggling me, I read this:

... the word "Egypt" is a Greek word (the Egyptian word is "Kmt" or Kemet).
Is this in fact correct, Wireloop?
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Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
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The word Egypt is indeed Greek. The Egyptians never called their land by this name.
From hieroglyphic inscriptions it was know as Tāwī (tawy) literally the 'two lands', a reference to the combined kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt.
The kmt is actually an Arabic metathesis of the original Ancient Egyptian htm - Khatm
Khatm Tāwī means fortress or kingdom of the two lands.
In Hebrew and Arabic, Egypt was know as Misraim (msrym) which also means 'the two lands'
The Egypt of today is still called Misrim by Arabs.
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Wireloop


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Egypt is transliterated from the greek as AIGUPTOS.
This seems to me to be a compound of 2 words:
1) AIGES (waves)
2) UPTOS (under)

So does Egypt, to the Greek, literally mean 'under the waves'?
It is interesting to note that Plato's Atlantis story (under the waves) is said to have derivied from AIGUPTOS when Solon visited Sais in the Nile delta.
It is also interesting to note that the oldest Greek usage (Homer) of AIGUPTOS does not refer specifically to the land, but to the Nile River itself.
So could AIGUPTOS (under the waves) simply refer to the annual flooding of the Nile?

Homer (Odyssey)
'In AIGUPTOS, eager though I was to journey hither, the gods still held me back, because I offered not to them hecatombs that bring fulfillment, and the gods ever wished that men should be mindful of their commands. Now there is an island in the surging sea in front of AIGUPTOS, and men call it Pharos, distant as far as a hollow ship runs in a whole day when the shrill wind blows fair behind her'....'.For it is not thy fate to see thy friends, and reach thy well-built house and thy native land, before that thou hast once more gone to the waters of AIGUPTOS, the heaven-fed river, and hast offered holy hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold broad heaven'....No harm came to any of my ships, but free from scathe and from disease we sat, and the wind and the helmsman guided the ships. 'On the fifth day we came to fair-flowing AIGUPTOS, and in the river AIGUPTOS I moored my curved ships'.
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Mick Harper
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So could it have anything to do with my notion of the Nile being an artificial river? Perhaps Egypt was under the sea until the New Nile started bringing all that lovely silt up from the interior of Africa and created it. After all, isn't the present Nile extending Egypt by several hundred yards a year right now? According to the back of this envelope I have here...First Cataract....say, five thousand BC....twenty-seven point four three recurring cubic hectares of effluvient per year....yes, by God... Egypt!
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Komorikid


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Now there is an island in the surging sea in front of AIGUPTOS, and men call it Pharos, distant as far as a hollow ship runs in a whole day when the shrill wind blows fair behind her'...

Unfortunately Homer is not talking about the Egypt of the Pharaohs. He is describing a totally different place. The Pharos he is speaking of is not the island where Alexandria now stands because this island is ON the coast of Egypt and not 100 miles away from it (a whole day's sailing distance for a ship with a strong wind behind). Strabo has questioned this passage and concluded the same.

This passage relays the story of Nestor's and Menelaus' trip home from the Trojan War. They sail south to Sunion (the southern point just East of Athens) where their helmsman, the world's best steersman Phrontus, is killed. Nestor continues his journey while Menelaus and his party go ashore to bury Phrontus then continue with their journey. When Menelaus' fleet reach the Cape of Malea (eastern tip of the Peloponnesus) disaster struck in the form of a huge storm -- Zeus brought disaster on their journey and sent a howling gale with giant waves and there he split the fleet in two. He drove one group to Crete and one to Egypt. All this was done by wind and wave from a SOUTH-WESTERLY wind.

It is impossible to be blown from the Cape of Malea in a north-easterly direction by a south-easterly wind and end up in Crete or Egypt. From Malea, Crete and Egypt are to the south-east and would require a nor'wester to blow their ships in that direction.
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Wireloop


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Komorokid stated:
Unfortunately Homer is not talking about the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't read Homer too literally, but it is quite plausible that the actual Pharos was in mind when he wrote it.
Certainly Plutarch (ca 70 AD) understood that the Pharos of Plato/Alexander's day to be the same Pharos of his day. He quotes the very passage of Homer to back it up.

Plutarch (Life of Alexander):
This is attested by many credible authors, and if what those of Alexandria tell us, relying upon the authority of Heraclides, be true, Homer was neither an idle nor an unprofitable companion to him (Alexander) in his expedition. For when he was master of Egypt, designing to settle a colony of Grecians there, he resolved to build a large and populous city, and give it his own name. In order to which, after he had measured and staked out the ground with the advice of the best architects, he chanced one night in his sleep to see a wonderful vision; a grey-headed old man, of a venerable aspect, appeared to stand by him, and pronounce these verses (of Homer):-

"An island lies, where loud the billows roar,
Pharos they call it, on the Egyptian shore."


Alexander upon this immediately rose up and went to Pharos, which, at that time, was an island lying a little above the Canobic mouth of the river Nile, though it has now been joined to the mainland by a mole. As soon as he saw the commodious situation of the place, it being a long neck of land, stretching like an isthmus between large lagoons and shallow waters on one side and the sea on the other, the latter at the end of it making a spacious harbour, he said, Homer, besides his other excellences, was a very good architect, and ordered the plan of a city to be drawn out answerable to the place.

Komorokid stated:
The Pharos he (Homer) is speaking of is not the island where Alexandria now stands because this island is ON the coast of Egypt and not 100 miles away from it (a whole day's sailing distance for a ship with a strong wind behind)

The passage in Homer can be translated in various ways.
Here it is in Greek.

NESOS = ISLAND
EPEITA = THEREUPON
TIS = ANYTHING
ESTI = TO BE
POLUKLUSTO = MUCH SURGING
ENI = IN, AT, ON
PONTO = A SEA
AIGUPTOS = EGYPT, UNDER WAVES
PROPAROITHE = RIGHT IN FRONT OF, ALONG
PHARON = PHAROS, GREAT HOUSE
DE = BUT
KIKLESKOUSI = TO CALL, NAME, ADDRESS
TOSSON = AS FAR AS, SO LONG AS
ANEUTH = AWAY FROM
OSSON = AS MUCH AS
TE = AND
PANEMERIN = ALL DAY, MORNING TO EVENING
GLAPHURE = HOLLOW
NEUS = SHIP
ENUSEN = ACCOMPLISH
E = IN THAT, AS FAR AS, EVEN
LIGUS = CLEAR, WHISTLING
OUROS = GUARD, BOUNDARY, WIND
EPIPNEIESIN = BLOW UPON, BLOW AGAINST
OPISTHEN = BEHIND, BACKWARDS

Looking at it conversly, and in light of Plutarch, Homer could be telling us just how close Pharos is to Egypt. It is SO close, that a ship against a contrary wind, could leave in the morning and get there before dark.

Consider this plausible alternative translation of my own.

Homer (Odyssey):
Thereupon, right in front of Egypt, there's an island amongst the crashing sea, but it is called Pharos...
It is as far away from (Egypt) as a 'morning to evening' trip for a hollow ship to accomplish, even (when) a whistling, contrary, wind blows it backwards.

Also notice the contrast between the island of Pharos and the .crashing sea.. They are contrasted by the Greek word DE (but). The island here is depicted as a .saviour., a safe haven from the crashing sea. It is close to Egypt, but guarded by the contrary wind. It is no wonder that the founding of Alexandria is associated with a dream of Alexander about Pharos.
Pharos is a LIGHTHOUSE.
Pharos is where stranded Odysseus met Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea (Chaos), and made a propitiation in order to .make a way..

Homer (Odyssey):
So I spoke, and the beautiful goddess straightway made answer: 'Then verily, stranger, will I frankly tell thee all. There is wont to come hither the unerring old man of the sea, immortal Proteus of Egypt, who knows the depths of every sea, and is the servant of Poseidon. He, they say, is my father that begat me. If thou couldst in any wise lie in wait and catch him, he will tell thee thy way and the measure of thy path, and of thy return, how thou mayest go over the teeming deep. Aye, and he will tell thee, thou fostered of Zeus, if so thou wilt, what evil and what good has been wrought in thy halls, while thou hast been gone on thy long and grievous way.'

All in all, by Alexander's (and Plato's) time Pharos was understood to be the actual Pharos we know of today. Are not the similarities between the words Pharos and Pharoah interesting? Especially considering that Poseidon's son Proteus (meaning firstborn) is intimately involved with the island of Pharos. After all the Pharoah was a 'son of god' also.

Komorokid stated:
Unfortunately Homer is not talking about the Egypt of the Pharaohs

So what do you think Homer is talking about?
Also, can you quote Strabo's interpretation of Homer? I can't find it.
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Hatty
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So Pharoah should be Pharo, a beacon of light to his people.

Mitzraim is apparently MaiTzarim, meaning 'narrow straits'. Which is metaphorically accurate from a Hebrew point of view, getting out of a tight place into freedom.
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Dr. Elke Wyst


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Wireloop wrote:
Lets get started.

Wiki: The first Jews arrived in the area now known as Republic of Macedonia during Roman times, when Jews fled persecution in other Roman territories, with some settling in Macedonia. The first evidence of Jews in the region is an ancient synagogue dating from the 3rd or 4th century BC, in the ancient town of Stobi, in the south-east of the Republic of Macedonia.

I can attest to the above quote through other things that I have heard and read. So, if Jews are in Macedonia with a synagogue in 300 BC, then they must have been there for a little while at least....lets say...ummm... at least since, 400 BC, but probably much before then.

Let's test it

This thread has caught my eye but I must protest about the use of Wikipedia as a source. Could you perhaps quote another reference. I hate to request an "orthodox reference" but Wikipedia cannot be the foundation of any structure that is intended to stand on its own.
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