WERE ANY SAVIORS BESIDES JESUS CRUCIFIED?

According to Kersey Graves there were sixteen other saviors before Jesus who were crucified. He even wrote a book about them with that title Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), and the list appears on atheist websites and in the writings of the late S.M Acharya (AKA, Dorthy Murdock) and in the Zeitgeist documentary film based on her work. But going through the list, it appears that exactly none of these notable figures were crucified, some died natural deaths, others didn't die at all, and some seem to have been made up by the author or somebody he relied on for his information. To my knowledge, Jesus was unique among celebrity saviors, historical or mythical, to have suffered that form of execution. (Of course, offenders crucified by the Romans numbered in the thousands, but none of these became known as saviors, except Mani who may have been crucified in the 3rd century A.D. (or possibly just skinned alive).

We need to define "savior" and crucifixion. A savior is "a person who saves someone or something from danger or difficulty". (S)he can be mythical, but not somebody nobody but the author has heard of. Crucifixion was a form of capital punishment in which the victim is affixed to to a wooden beam and left to hang until death from exhaustion or asphyxiation. Being skinned alive, decapitated, crushed with heavy stones, electrocuted, or hanged by the neck don't count. Nor would murder or violent death other than execution count. And certainly death by natural causes, bathtub falls, etc., would not ordinarily be described as crucifixions. (I mention this because some of the folks on Graves list seem to be in the latter category.)

I can think of one possible contender: Inanna (aka Ishtar), the Sumerian goddess of sex and war, who, BTW, is not on Graves' list (sexist!) It seems Inanna invaded Kur, the Underworld, realm of her sister Ershkigal, was executed, hung on a meat hook, and left to rot until she turned green. But when people started getting restless, being deprived of sex, they petitioned the god Enki for an intervention, and she was miraculously restored to life. Resurrection? I'll give it a pass. Crucifixion? More like impalement, I'd say. Any others?

 

Graves list:

• Thulis of Egypt, 1700 B. C.
• Krishna of India, 1200 B.C.
• Crite of Chaldea, 1200 B.C.
• Atys of Phrygia, 1170 B.C. Tammuz of Syria, 1160 B.C.
• Thammuz or Tammusz of Syria, 1160 B.C.
  
• Hesus or Eros, 834 B.C.
• Bali of Orissa, 725 B.C
• Indra of Thibet (Tibet), 725 B.C.
• Iao of Nepaul (Nepal), 622 B.C
• Budda Sakia (Muni) of India. 600 B.C.
  
• Mitra (Mithra).of Persia, 600 B.C.
  
• Alcestos of Euripides , 600 B.C.
  
• Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, 587
  
• Wittoba of the Bilingonese, 552 B.C.
• Prometheus or Aeschylus of Caucasus, 547 B.C.
• Quirinus of Rome, 506 B.C.

If you don't recognize some of these names, don't feel dumb. This was put together back in 1875, before spell checks, and figuring out who some of these "saviors" are is a challenge. One of them, Crite of Chaldea, appears to be based solely on the Anacalypsis of the late eighteenth-early nineteenth "eccentric" (i.e., nutso) amateur antiquarian, Geoffrey Higgins--Freemason, Chief of the Order of Druids and ardent believer that the perennial truths of world religions derived from the Lost Continent of Atlantis. One might say he was ahead of his time, being a forerunner of the mumbo jumbo that became Theosophy and more recently New Age, which in my opinion means anything he says can be taken with a grain of salt. Iao (Jao) of Tibet is referenced in Antonio Giorgi's Alphabetum Tibetenum (1762), based on reports of the Capuchin mission in Lha-sa. The good fathers seem to have been referencing 3rd century A.D. Manichaenism, which could explain the references to crucifixion but would not count as pre-Christian. Tulis of Egypt with a little tweaking becomes Thoulis, the creation of the Greek Christian chronicler in his Chronographia of the sixth century A.D. Obviously, characters who are made up after the death of Jesus, even if they were said to be from 1700 B.C,, can't count as a savior crucified before Christ. Besides, it doesn't seem that Thoulis was crucified or much of a savior. He was an arrogant prick, a king of Egypt who "conquered the whole earth as far as Okeanos", and stopped off to consult an oracle to confirm his importance and instead gets a deflating prophecy and is set upon and assassinated by his retainers (the manner of death is not mentioned, but it sure doesn't seem like crucifixion). The account of Thoulis, king of Egypt, in the Chronographia of John Malalas, Byzantinische Zeitschrift | DeepDyve

When I first saw Wittoba of the Bilingonese, I thought "That's gotta be bogus". But actually, it seems to be referring to Vithoba, a Hindu deity who was thought to be a manifestation of Krishna. No mention of his being crucified, but Thomas Doane, in Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions, claims that there are replicas of Krishna with piercings on his hands and feet. Actually, he appears to be referring to a photo of figures in in Moor's Hindu Pantheon (1810) which are not of Krishna but of Vishnu, of whom Krishna is Avatar, and the marks seem to be chakras, not nail holes. Krishna comes up again as second on Graves list (isn't that cheating? counting saviors twice in different manifestations?) Anyhow, there is a story that Krishna was incarnated in human form and was shot by Jara Savara, who mistook him for a deer. shot by mistake doesn't count!

Hesus, third on the list, is surely not also known as Eros, the Greek Cupid. This seems to be a typo for the Celtic God Esus (sounds like Jesus, except Jesus' real name was Yeshua. No record of Esus being crucified, although he did go in for human sacrifice and the victims would be suspended from trees and mortally wounded. But he seems to have been the perpetrator instead of the victim. Bali of Orissa is really obscure. The only such person on record was a king mentioned in the Hindu Mahabharata as the father of a warrior who fought against Krishna and Aruna in the Bhagavad Gita. Graves' source seems to be Higgins again, who mentions a temple built to this "god" as part of the Trinity--possibly a confused reference to the Hindu Trimurti. No crucifixion in the picture. Higgins mentions that this deity is also known as Baliu, and sometimes Bel. That is particularly suspect, since Bel was the Mesopotamian designation for Lord, and an alternate name for the Phoenician/Canaanite god Baal. Higgins seems to have been mixing his pantheons again.

Indra of Tibet is the very same Indra of India who is the most referred to deities of the Rig Veda ,the king of Svarga (heaven), slayer of Vritra (evil one), lord of storms, lightning bolts, and war. No obituary yet, although his prestige diminished considerably during the Axial Age. Shakyamuni Buddha is the name given to Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, especially in the Mahayana tradition. From all accounts, he died a natural death at a ripe old age. Mithra of Persia, an Angellic divinity devoted to justice and combat against the forces of Darkness, never died, to anybody's knowledge. Alcestos (Alcestis) of Euripides is a character in a play who died in place of her husband and was brought back from Hades by Hercules. No crucifixion there. Quetzalcoatl was tricked by his rival Tezcatlipoca into a scandalous relationship with a relative. There are two versions of his death. One has him committing suicide by self-immolation and rising from the ashes. Another has him sailing off to the planet Venus, promising to return again--the basis of the legend that led the Aztecs to let down their guard with Cortez. Promometheus of Caucasus, who stole fire from the gods and brought it to humans, was punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock where an eagle fed on this liver each day--nasty death but not crucifixion. Quirinus of Rome (aka Romulus) was reported to have been taken up bodily to heaven while alive, while others say that was just a cover story by the senators who assassinated him and cut him to pieces.

The attentive reader will notice I skipped over two names that I've saved for last: Atys of Phrygia and Tammuz of Syria. Neither of these was crucified, but I think they deserve special attention as possible prototypes for our concept of Jesus. TBC

 

Like Jesus Christ, the enlightened sufi sage Mansur Al Hallaj was similarly tortured and killed for alleged blasphemy.

Al-Hallaj - Wikipedia

He is best known for his saying: "I am the Truth" (Ana'l-Ḥaqq), eerily similar to Jesus's own statement "I and the Father are one." ~ Jesus Christ (John 10:30).

 

As promised, I want to deal with a couple of leftover items from Graves's list. Atys (aka Attis) of Phrigia and Tammuz (aka Dummuzi) of Syria/ Sumeria had in common their attachment to castrating women: the Magna Mater Cybelle and Astarte (aka Inanna, Ishtar). The story goes that Cybelle, in her mortal form as Agdistis, became attracted to Attis, and when his parents arranged a marriage to a mortal woman, the goddess appeared and drove him mad with her beauty so that he castrated himself. Cybelle repented and saw to it that Attis's body would not decay and would be reborn as an evergreen. Never did make a full comeback as a person. The cult of Cybele, which spread to Rome, featured a devoted group of self-castrated priests called Galli.

Similarly, Tammuz was the consort of Astarte (Inanna), whose invasion of the Underworld and remarkable resurrection by Enki was mentioned in the previous post. The goddess of the Underworld would let her return to the surface permanently only if she could arrange a substitute. When she got back home and found her consort consorting with other women, she decided Tammuz would be perfect as her sub and sent him packing to the Underworld. Later she began to miss him, so she arranged for her sister-in-law, the goddess of fertility and agriculture, to be substituted for Tammuz for half of the year. This became the basis for the cycle of the seasons. Sir James Frazer, in The Golden Bough, gave the impression that such "dying, rising" gods were a dime a dozen in ancient times, and reflected seasonality. More recently, scholars have taken a second look and found that Frazer had a tendency to exaggerate parallels between these fertility cults and Christianity and to stretch the parallels among different religions. So in Atis and Tammuz, we had gods who were pitiful. Their worship involved rituals of sorrow. But they remained strictly subordinate to the women who wore the pants (or tunics) in the household. And they weren't crucified. And they kept coming

So what was this about? Discrediting Kersey Graves may seem like beating a dead horse, since prominent atheists like Richard Carrier Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors acknowledege he isn't reliable, although Carrier doesn't get into the particulars. My primary purpose was to show the uniqueness of crucifixion in ancient mythology. Contrary to the impression left by Graves and his uncritical present day followers, not a single "savior" before him seems to have been crucified--executed like a common criminal. So what? In discussions of the existence of an historical Jesus, remarks are often made about how Christians are just a bunch of copycats following a standard script from established ancient mythologies. But on this point, crucifixion, it doesn't seem to have been true. There were no other pre-Christian crucified saviors. Nada. Not one! I think that point is important, cuz it's often said there were plenty of Jesuses around in the first few decades of the first century, which is true. And there were tens of thousands of folks who were crucified, mostly by the Romans. And some of these even claimed to be the Jewish messiah. But only stands out. Why is that? For one thing, because it wasn't supposed to be like that. The Jewish Messiah was supposed to be either a conquering king or a priest or both, but not a convicted, executed criminal in a manner described in Deuteronomy (21:22) as a curse. That's one of the reasons I believe in an historical Jesus. What follower would make up a story like that about someone they were claiming to be a Messiah unless it were true and they were trying to make lemonade out of the lemon? One reason none of those crucified wannabee messiahs in Roman times never made it is that the very act of crucifixion refuted the victim's claims. It took a flash of insight--genius , I'd say--to come up with an explanation that made the cross into a symbol of victory. And this was done by drawing not on pagan myths but on Jewish scripture.

 

Thanks for bringing him to my attention. Of course, he lived over 800 years after Jesus, and he wasn't crucified; he was either beheaded or hanged, after being punched in the face and whipped to unconsciousness. But his ideas were quite remarkable for the time.

 

Although he wasn't exactly crucified, and lived over eight centuries after Jesus, Mansur Al-Hallaj May have in common with Jesus a sense of oneness with God. I think you may have detected a similarity that would escape the atheists on this forum and also the believers who think of God as an entity "wholly other" from us. To such people, Mansur would come come across as a madman and/or a blasphemer. But to mystics, his statements would be par for the course: the ecstatic vision of direct communion with God. He does not sense a separation between self and the One. Such people can be found in all religious traditions, and clerics as well as government officials have always been uncomfortable with them, because they don't respect the perceived proper boundaries between humans and Deity. I've sometimes used the perhaps tasteless and even blasphemous analogy to making love to a significant other: it's unlikely that on such occasions one would pause to ask "how do I know this person exists"? It would be rude and would spoil the mood!

 

So what is the point? People have always been getting killed for professing their beliefs? Well I don't think that Jesus would disagree with that. Even in the context of the Jewish culture before Jesus was born the prophets were often killed and persecuted.

Here is one of the things that Jesus said about this:

Matthew 23:37

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Besides, how many of those martyrs lived a life without sin?

 

What is your point? My point was to show that none of the so-called "saviors" mentioned by Graves died by the specific method of crucifixion. Some did not die at all. Some were simply murdered. But practically none were executed, and only Jesus specifically by crucifixion. He died the death of a common criminal and in a manner that would make him "cursed" according to Deuteronomy 21;23. And why is that significant? Messiahs weren't supposed to die that way. Jewish prophecies envisioned two kinds of messiahs: military leaders in the tradition of David and/or priests. Their role would be to restore Israel. A crucified Messiah wouldn't fit the job description. So the crucial question is: Why would any group of Jews manufacture such a Messiah? Unless perhaps he was a real person who really was crucified and they had to explain how that could possibly be. So to me the point is that Jesus probably was a real, historical person, or at least this is one indicator that he was.

 

Well when we see this pattern of people being persecuted like Jesus was, not just by crucifixion, it is a sign of the inner condition of man, or at least the spiritual forces that are at work in the current age, or perhaps both. So if people that profess the truth are constantly being turned into martyrs, then it means that the truth is being opposed.

 

By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.

No one saves us but ourselves.
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path:
Buddhas only show the way.
Dhammapada 165

 

Why is he talking to himself?

 

When I think of the cross I think of it as more of a kind of symbology. It is also important to notice how the innocent are condemned by mankind, in order to gain a full view of spirituality.

 

Like you say the word Savor needs definition... If you want to define it as someone who saves another then there have been millions...
but if you want to talk comparisons to Jesus and what he did, no, there was only one and that was Jesus...