Lesson: Jesus Christ is Serapis Part 3

PART 3

RECAP

• HOW & WHY SERAPIS WAS CREATED
• THE IMAGE THAT HE WAS BASED ON
  

WHERE SERAPIS GOT HIS OTHER ATTRIBUTES

• 1 Cor 10:20 the heathen sacrifice to demons and not to God

• Psalm 78:49 evil angels

Plutarch’s story of the stolen statue of Pluto has been challenged, and some scholars claim it was already a statue of Serapis taken from the Serapeum at Memphis. However that may be, the statue is understood to have been a representation of an underworld deity, either the Graeco-Roman Hades/Pluto or Serapis who, as a blend of Osiris and Apis, was also associated with the underworld.^[13]

Ptolemy I took this established cult and added the Greek god Zeus to it. Zeus was the king of the Olympian gods, often referred to as Father, and understood as the god of thunder as well as cosmic justice.^[14] 

• Matt 23:9 call no man Father
• Psalm 119:136-138 the real father of justice predating Zeus

Serapis not only embodied these three gods, however, but drew on others associated with the sun, afterlife, earth energy,[fertility]^[15] and healing. Scholar Richard H. Wilkinson comments:^[16]

Zeus, Helios, Dionysus, Hades, and Asclepius all added aspects of their respective cults, so that Serapis emerged as a thoroughly Egypto-Hellenistic deity who personified the aspects of divine majesty, the sun, fertility, the underworld and afterlife, as well as healing. The mythology of Serapis was, therefore, the mythology of his underlying deities, but the aspects of afterlife and fertility were always primary to his nature.

• Let’s have a quick gander at these gods to see if we find any similarities to Jesus

• Zeus

• Exhibit a - Jesus modelled after Zeus in the 4th century

• Exhibit b - Jesus as Zeus

• Jesus as Zeus 1460s
• Jesus as Zeus 1490

• Helios

• Helios black figure pottery
• The halo

• Exhibit a - helios' halo on Jesus
• Exhibit b - Helios' halo on Jesus again

• Apollo

• Exhibit a - Halo taken from a sun god Apollo

• Apollo associated with the sun

•  Dionysus

• Exhibit a - Dionysus fertility lordship through orgies        

• The christian Bacchanal

• Exhibit b - Serapis as fertility lord

• Hades

• Afterlife rulership^[17]

• Asclepius

• Healing and resurrection

• Asclepius met a tragic end when he was killed by a thunderbolt thrown by Zeus. This was because the father of the gods saw Asclepius and his art of healing as a threat to the eternal division between humanity and the gods, especially following rumours that Asclepius' healing powers were so formidable that he could even raise the dead…