Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

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Like Philo, the author is a Euhemerist, though he is – at least notionally – adapting the doctrine in the spirit of the Christian polemicists who frequently used it (whether or not they knew of Euhemerus himself) to establish the mortality of pagan gods. They appealed to the classical notion of deified kings and benefactors, and to the argument that the gods were susceptible to biological processes, to pain, wounds, and death. They sought to explain how myths arose from events explicable in a rational way, and to show up the pagan gods as human beings who behaved in reprehensible ways; and frequently they sought to explain how idolatry (not just cult, but specifically pagan statuary) derived from the images of human beings. This is Ps.-Meliton’s point, too; he mentions images in his stories of Heracles, Nuh of Elam, and Nebo of Mabug, but statues may be inferred from parallel versions to underlie his stories of Joseph (who became the Egyptian Serapis) and Balthi (city goddess of Byblos) as well. He proceeds on the assumption that pagan gods were mortal men, about whom rationalized stories can be told; the mention of graves (of Tammuz) and, repeatedly, of kings (Dionysus; Zeus in Crete; Balthi in Cyprus; Cuthar in Phoenicia; the King of Elam; Hadad in Syria) echoes the apologists’ repeated charge that pagans worship their defunct rulers. Several stories show us gods behaving in sordid, undignified, compromising ways (Heracles and Zuradi; Athena and Hephaestus; Zeus and Alcmene; Balthi and her lovers), a frequent Christian complaint. Yet he is far from presenting a consistently hostile picture of the cults he describes, and, apart from Joseph the provider of food in Egypt, it is conspicuously the Near Eastern cults, especially of “Athi” (who healed the king of Syria), “Cuthbi” (who delivered the patrician of Edessa from his enemies), and Nebo and Hadran of Hierapolis (who cleansed their city of a malevolent spirit), which receive the most positive press.