Lecture 3 -- Outline
Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World
As we’ve seen, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Greco-
Roman world were polytheists. They did not believe that there was
a great chasm between the divine and human realms but understood
that these realms could overlap. We have looked at one model of this
overlap: divine beings becoming human. In this lecture, we will look at two
other models: humans born to gods and humans who were exalted to heaven,
usually at death, to become one of the gods.
I. Humans Born of the Gods
A. In the ancient world, it was not uncommon for an exceedinglypowerful or intelligent person to be thought of as more than human.
B. In some cases that status was because he was not, in fact, a meremortal but had one of the gods as his father. This was the case withAlexander the Great, rumored to be the son of Zeus.1. A humorous account of such a birth is told by the Romanplaywright Plautus in his work Amphitryon. Here, Alcmena,the mother of Hercules, is made pregnant by Zeus’s Romancounterpart, Jupiter. The god disguises himself to resembleAlcmena’s husband, Amphitryon, in order to spend a longnight frolicking in her arms.
2. It is not clear that anyone actually believed that this story washistory, but it was seen as a plausible view: Sometimes godshad sex with women, and the result was a demigod, part godand part human.
II. Apotheosis
A. A third way a human could also be or become divine involves aprocess known as apotheosis-the act by which a human is madeinto a god. We have seen an instance of this already in Ovid’s storyof the elderly couple Philemon and Baucis.
B. More commonly this divinization of a human involved greatphilosophers or, more commonly still, incredibly powerful rulers.1. The Roman historian Livy tells of how Romulus, the founderand first king of Rome, was thought to have been taken up tothe divine realm as a god at the end of his life.
2. The Roman biographer Suetonius discusses the idea that JuliusCaesar was thought to have been made a god after he died.
3. In Caesar’s case, it is not surprising that his adopted son,Octavian (who was later to become Caesar Augustus, thefirst Roman emperor), encouraged the belief that his fatherhad become a god. If his father was a god, what did thatmake Octavian?
III. The Cult of the Emperor
A. With Caesar Augustus, we have the beginning of the emperor cult,the practice of honoring emperors, both dead and living, as gods.Note that the word cult is not derogatory in this context but refers tothe care of the gods.
B. In Greece, Alexander the Great-300 years beforeOctavian-accepted divine honors, allowing hissubjects to make sacrifices to him. Roman emperorswere also accorded such honors, otherwise reserved forthe gods.
C. Thus, the Roman orator Quintilian speaks of gods who were borndivine and of other gods who had “won immortality by theirvalor,” that is, those who had been made gods because of theiramazing deeds.
D. In the Roman world, this normally happened after an emperor haddied, based on a vote of the Senate, seen to ratify an emperor’sdivine status.
E. But it often happened for living emperors, as well, as can be seen, for example, inan inscription from Pergamum dedicated to the god Augustus Caesar or one in Miletusdedicated to the emperor Caligula, who is called the god Sebastos.
F. How are we to understand this adoration of the emperor as a divine being?1. The older view of scholarship was that we should not take it seriously In this View those said to be gods were known to be as human as anyone else.The emperor cult was simply political propaganda, which no one ever really believed, that encouraged people to worship their leaders as divine. Logically, if the ruler is divine, then he cannot be disobeyed.
2. Recent scholarship has reevaluated this older view andoffered a different perspective. There is little evidence thatthe worship of the emperor was promoted by the officialsof Rome itself and rarely by the emperors. These weregrassroots movements, in which rulers were revered for theirsuperhuman power and authority.
3. Whether or not people actually believed in their hearts thatthe emperors were gods is impossible to know. However,the emperors were certainly treated as gods, for example, byhaving sacrifices performed not only on their behalf but also tothem and by having temples built and dedicated to them.
4. Like the gods, the emperors could provide enormous benefitsto their people; thus, they had divine-like power. And as wehave seen, they, too, could be called god.G. This adoration of divine rulers was not restricted to Rome. It can
be seen clearly in an inscription dedicated to the ruler of Syria,
Antiochus, and his wife Laodice in gratitude for their overcoming
a foreign power. The city Teas set up cult statues of the two,
performed sacrifices at a public ceremony, and honored them with
an inscription in which they were placed on the same level as the
local god Dionysus and said to be “common saviors of our city.”
IV. Divine Humans
A. In short, Jesus was not the only divine man in the ancient world.1. Some were thought to have been gods who came down to earthtemporarily in human form.2. Others were thought to have been literally the son of a god, thedivine product of the union of a god and a mortal woman.3. Still others were thought to have been taken up into heaven atthe end of their lives to live and rule in the divine realm.B. Jesus, as we will see, was thought to be all three of these things bydifferent Christians in different times and different places.
Suggested Reading
Cartlidge and Dungan, eds., Documents for the Study ofthe Gospels.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.
Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John.
Hengel, The Son of God.
Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians.
Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World.
Price, Rituals and Power.
Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire.
Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire.
Questions to Consider
1. In what ways are the stories of Jesus’s virgin birth like and unlike Greekand Roman myths about people born to the union of a god and a mortal?
2. In what ways would Jesus have been seen as similar and dissimilar tothat other “Son of God” in the ancient World, the Roman emperor?
Transcript -- Lecture 3
Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World
We have seen that since the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Greco-
Roman world were polytheists, they did not believe that there was a great
chasm between the divine and human realms. Instead, they understood that
these realms could overlap. We’ve looked at one model of this overlap.
Sometimes divine beings could become human beings, for example, in the
story told by Ovid, of Jupiter and Mercury visiting Phrygia in Asia Minor.
In this lecture, we look at two other models for how there could be overlap
between the divine and human realms. One involves how a human can be
born to a god, making him a divine-human. The other involves how a human
could be exalted to heaven-usually at his death-in order to become one of
the gods.
We begin with people who were born to the sexual union of a god with a
mortal. It was not uncommon for an exceedingly powerful or unbelievably
intelligent person to be thought of as more than human. In some cases, that
was because he was not, in fact, a mere mortal, but had one of the gods as
his father.
As it turns out, this is the case of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great is
considered by many people to be the most important figure in the history of
Western civilization as it developed out of the ancient world. That’s because
Alexander the Great went on a number of military campaigns conquering the
Mediterranean region and conquering lands as far east as the Persian Empire.
And when Alexander conquered lands, he not only took over countries that
were being controlled by other forces, he imposed a Greek form of culture
on these lands, so that the lands around the Mediterranean became Greek-
like or Hellenized.
That’s why Greek culture had spread throughout the Mediterranean, and it’s
why throughout the Mediterranean all of the educated people spoke Greek.
Alexander’s dates were 356 to 323. According to later rumor, he was so
important and so powerful that he wasn’t a mere mortal. In fact, he was said
to have been the son of Zeus.
One of our few sources for the historical Alexander was the Greek author
Plutarch. Plutarch lived between 46 CE and 120 CE, so most of his books
were being written in the early 2” century. He’s famous for having written
two kinds of books. Plutarch wrote a group of moral essays, which were
philosophical reflections in essay form. And he wrote a set of Parallel Lives.
The Parallel Lives are biographies of important Greek and Roman men.
And they’re called Parallel Lives because Plutarch would match the life of
a Greek with the life of a Roman and publish them as a pair. And so for
example, Alexander the Great was paired with Roman Julius Caesar.
According to Plutarch’s version of Alexander’s birth, he was born to the
ruler of Macedonia, a man named Philip, and his wife Olympias. There were
rumors later hatched (that Plutarch reports) which says that Olympias, the
night before she married Philip of Alexandria, had the dream of a thunderbolt
that came down and entered into her body. This was later taken to be an
image of Zeus working his magic on Olympias.
The other rumor about Alexander’s birth is that that same night Philip
looked in on Olympias while she was lying asleep, and saw there a serpent
in conjugal embrace with her. Now, in many ancient Greek and Roman
religions, Zeus was understood often to appear in the form of a serpent.
As one might understand, and as Plutarch points out, when Philip saw this,
it considerably cooled his passion for his then to-be wife. In any event,
Alexander was said to have them born of this union in which it was Zeus
who was his real father, not Philip.
A humorous account of this kind of birth between a mortal and an immortal is
told by the Roman playwright Plautus. Plautus was a Latin author who wrote
a number of plays. Unfortunately, we don’t have most of them anymore. The
ones we have are outrageously funny. He was a comedic playwright whose
most famous work possibly is his book called the Amphityon. The book is
called the Amphitryon because it’s named after the main character, a general
of the army of Thebes, Amphitryon.
Amphitryon is married to a woman named Alcmena. Alcmena has become
pregnant by Amphitryon. And Amphitryon, as a general in the army, has gone
off to war, leaving his pregnant wife Alcmena behind. Alcmena by herself
takes care of the household duties. And one day, as it happens, Jupiter, the
king of the gods, looks down from heaven and sees Alcmena there with her
husband away to war, and is struck by her great beauty.
Jupiter, as often happens in myths of this kind, is so taken with her beauty
that he decides he has to have her. And he knows how he’s going to make it
happen. Jupiter assumes the appearance of Amphitryon, who is off at war.
And he comes down to Alcmena and announces that he has now retumed
from war. As one might expect, she welcomes him with open arms. And
Jupiter, disguised as Amphitryon, takes her to bed.
Jupiter has sex with Alcmena and is enjoying himself so much, according to
Plautus, that he orders the constellations to stop moving in the sky. In other
words, he makes time stand still. And so this is a very long night indeed.
Eventually, even Jupiter has his Iill, and he orders the constellations to
resume. Time starts up again, and Jupiter then returns to heaven.
As it turns out, according to this story, Amphitryon himself-the real
Amphitryon-comes home the next day from his war, and is very surprised
indeed to find out that his wife is not welcoming him more enthusiastically.
But the reason is quite clear, because in fact she thinks she’s spent an
evening-a very, very long evening-frolicking in his arms already. The
result of the story is that Jupiter also has gotten Alcmena pregnant.
Now, some of the people telling these myths, of course, were not altogether
current in modem theories and knowledge of anatomy and biology. Alcmena
had already been pregnant for a long time by Amphitryon, but now Jupiter
gets her pregnant, as well. And the result is she bears twins. The son born of
Jupiter is none other than Hercules.
This is where Hercules comes into being. Hercules is the son of Jupiter and
Alcmena. But Hercules has a twin brother named Iphicles. Iphicles is a
mortal born to the union of Amphitryon and Alcmena.
It’s not clear that anyone actually believed that this story of Amphitryon was
historical, but it was seen as a plausible view. According to the ancients,
sometimes it happened that the gods would have sex with women, and the
result was a demigod--someone who was part god and part human, such
as Hercules.
A third way a human could also be or become a divine being involves a
process that is known as apotheosis. The word apotheosis means the act by
which a human being is made into a god. As it turns out, there’s an instance
of this already in a story that I’ve narrated to you--the story about Philemon
and Baucis who were visited by Jupiter and Mercury.
If you recall in this story, Jupiter and Mercury are hosted by Philemon and
Baucis, and this elderly couple is rewarded for their hospitality, and they are
told that they will be granted any request. Well, their request is that they could
be rulers of the shrine of these two gods and then they might die together.
And they die together when they are formed, at the end of their lives, ir1to a
tree with a single trunk with branches con1ing off in two directions.
As it turns out, this tree was worshipped by people who came to visit the
shrine. Laying wreaths on the boughs, the worshipers said, they now are
gods-referring to Philemon and Baucis. “They now are gods who served
the gods. To them who worship gave is worship given.” And so Philemon
and Baucis were not only granted their request to die together, in death they
have been divinized. They have themselves been worshipped and given
adoration as gods.
More commonly, this divinization of a human being involved great
philosophers. Or, more commonly still, incredibly powerful rulers. We
can see this view in a number of ancient writers. One good example is the
Roman historian Livy. Livy was one of the great historians of the Roman
Empire who lived from 59 BCE up through 17 CE. And so he was writing
during the time when the empire came into existence.
Rome itself had been ruled for many centuries by a Senate, and so was
considered to be a republic. But eventually, after a number of civil wars, one
of the Roman generals, Octavius, was named as the emperor of Rome. And
he became, for all practical purposes, the sole ruler of Rome. And so Rome
moved from being a republic to being an empire. Livy was living during
the age of Octavius, who later took on the name Octavian, and is known to
history as Caesar Augustus.
Livy wrote his history of Rome in 142 volumes, most of which don’t survive
any longer. Book 1 does survive, however. And it’s a very interesting book,
because it deals with the life of Romulus and Remus, the two twins who
both started founding Rome, one of whom, Remus, was killed by his brother
Romulus, so that Romulus became the founder of Rome.
For our purposes, the most important thing that Livy tells us in his account
of Romulus’ life is how Romulus was thought to have been taken up to
the divine realm as a god at the end of his life. At this point, Rome has
been founded and has become a major city-many buildings, it has large
territory, and it has an army. Romulus and the leaders of the people-the
Senate-are watching as the troops of soldiers parade in front of them for a
special occasion.
And suddenly a thunderstorm comes up. And there’s great fog. There’s
thunder and lightning. Nobody can see what’s going on. And then the
fog lifts. And according to Livy, Romulus was no longer sitting there in
public view.
Livy tells us that there were two views about what had happened to
Romulus. One view was that the senators who wanted to get rid of him as a
potential dictator tore hi1n to shreds and hid the parts of his body. The view
that became popular, however, was quite different. The more popular view
indicated that Romulus had been taken up into heaven. This is the view that
was advanced by the members of the Senate, who said that Romulus had
been made a god.
According to Livy, they said, “They all with one accord hailed Romulus as
a god and a god’s son-the king and father of the Roman city. And with
prayers, the senators besought his favor, that he would graciously be pleased
forever to protect his children.” Here, then, we have the senators declaring
that Romulus had been taken up to be a divine being.
Now, Livy, of course, is somewhat suspicious of this report. And he
undoubtedly believes the first one-that the senators had done away with
him. But the point is that the senators were able to convince the common
people that, in fact, Romulus had been made a god. And later this report was
verified by another figure--a man named Proculus Julius-who says that, in
fact, Romulus had come down and spoken with him.
According to Proculus Julius, “The father of this city, Romulus, descended
suddenly from the sky at dawn this morning, and appeared to me.” So
Romulus has come down from heaven, having been made a divine figure.
“Covered with confusion,” says Proculus, “I stood reverently before him.
‘Go,’ he said, ‘and declare to the capital of the world. So let them cherish the
art of war, and let them know and teach their children that no human strength
can resist Roman arms.’ ” And alter Romulus said this, he ascended back
into heaven.
It is interesting that Romulus was thought so much to have been made a god
that he became one of the principal gods of the Roman Empire. There was
a trio of gods who were worshiped on the ancient l1ill, the Capitoline. These
three gods were Jupiter, the father of the gods, Mars, the god of war, and a
god called Quirinus. Quirinus was understood to have been the divinized
Romulus. Romulus, then, was not simply made a minor god. Romulus was
made into one of the major gods.
The Roman biographer Suetonius discusses how, at a much later time, Julius
Caesar was thought to have been made a god alter he died. Suetonius is a
famous author from the early 2nd century. He wrote 12 volumes of books
called The Lives of the Caesars, writing in the year 115 CE. The Lives of the
Caesars begins with Julius Caesar as the first.
According to Suetonius, alter Julius Caesar was killed--murdered at the
Ides of March in 44 BCE--there was, of course, a large funeral for him, at
which Mark Antony delivered the funeral oration. At this funeral oration,
Mark Antony called for the Senate to render Caesar all honors, both divine
and human. At this point, the Senate voted that Julius Caesar would be
recognized as a divine being. In other words, he was deified.
Now, it’s not in this case that Julius Caesar was being made a god by the
vote of the Senate. It’s that they were recognizing that he was god. And
so, Suetonius tells us, “Caesar died in the 56th year of his life, and he was
included in the ranks of the gods, not only by formal decree, but also by
the conviction of the con1n1on people.” Once again, the people believe that
Julius Caesar has been made a god. And as it turns out, something confirmed
this belief
At the first games which were given after his deification by his heir
Augustus-so there are big games celebrating this deification-at these
games, “A comet shone, appearing around the 11‘h hour for seven days in
succession. And it was believed that this comet was the soul of Caesar, who
had been received up into Heaven.” And so there was a divine sign that
showed, in fact, Caesar had ascended up to the heavenly realm.
Now in Julius Caesar’s case, it’s not surprising that his adopted son,
Octavian-whom, as I said, later became known as Caesar Augustus, the
first Roman emperor-Octavian actually encouraged the belief that his
father had become a god. And it’s clear why, because if his father was a god,
what does that make him? With Caesar Augustus, we have the beginning of
what is called the emperor cult-the practice of honoring emperors, both
dead and living, as gods.
The word cult in this context is not a derogatory term referring to a group of
crazy people following a dynamic and charismatic leader who urges them
and forces them to do all sorts of strange things. In this context, cult doesn’t
mean that at all. The word “cult” simply means “the care of” And so for
example, we have agriculture-the care of the fields. In ancient Roman
religion, they were concerned about the cultus deorum--the care of the gods.
The way one cared for the gods was by praying to them and by offering
sacrifices to them. There came a point at which the Roman emperors started
receiving cult as if they were divine beings.
In other ancient societies, such as Egypt, it was thought that the ruler-the
pharaoh, for example-was an embodiment of a god. In Greece, Alexander
the Great-some 300 years before Octavian, Alexander the Great accepted
divine honors when he conquered Egypt. He conquered Egypt. The
Egyptians were accustomed to worshipping their pharaoh as a god, and so
Alexander received divine cult. The subjects there made sacrifices to hi1n.
So too, Roman emperors were accorded such honors that otherwise were
reserved for the gods.
The relevance of the fact that Roman emperors were treated as gods first
hit me when I was making a tour of archaeological sites in Turkey in the
year 2010. I was with a friend of mine. We were traveling around Turkey,
going simply wherever we wanted to go, wherever there were archaeological
sites we could examine. And we ended up one day in Priene, which is a city
that was on the west coast of Turkey. It’s a very interesting and dramatic
setting within a mountain range. It’s an ancient city that had been dug up by
German archaeologists. These archaeologists had reconstructed parts of this
city that was in ruins. But most of it was left in ruins. There were temples,
and houses, and shops, and streets.
There was a nice theater there, a very large temple to the goddess Athena
Pallas. While we were exploring the ruins, there were on the ground all
sorts of stones, many of which had inscriptions on them. And looking at
one of these inscriptions, I had a blinding realization. As with all of these
inscriptions, it was written in Greek. But as I looked at this, I came to realize
that, in fact, something really significant was going on in Roman religion
precisely when the Christians were calling Jesus God.
The inscription on the stone I was looking at referred to the god Caesar
Augustus. Now, I knew that for a very long time scholars had argued that
Jesus wasn’t the only human being thought to be god-that the emperors
also were thought to be god. But for some reason, this had never l1it me
before. I had to sit down and think about it. Because it changed entirely how
I was thinking about how Jesus became God.
At that point, I was working on my book on how Jesus became God, and I
was imagining at that moment-or at least before that moment-that Jesus
had become God because of internal developments within Christianity. That
what had happened is Jesus had proclaimed certain things during l1is ministry,
and that after his death, the things that he had declared were modified by his
followers, based on their belief in l1is Resurrection, and that Jesus becoming
God was completely an internal development happening within Christianity.
It hadn’t really hit me before that in fact, Jesus was being called God precisely
when the emperor was being called god, and that this could not have been an
accident. Jesus becoming God was not just an internal Christian development
of theology, it was a competition between Jesus and the emperor. The more
I researched the matter, the more I saw that I was right. And I had to rewrite
my book and rewrite this course.
The 1st-century Roman orator Quintilian speaks of gods who were born that
way, such as Hercules, and of other gods who have won immortality by their
valor, he says. In other words, there are other gods who have become god
because of the amazing deeds, they said. And he, in fact, is referring to two
of the Roman emperors when he says this-Vespasian and Titus.
In the Roman world, normally an emperor would be declared god after he
died on the basis of a vote of the Senate. This vote was seen to ratify an
emperor’s divine status. But it often happened that living emperors were
also seen as gods, as can be seen, for example, in an inscription-another
inscription, from the city of Pergamum-which has been found, which is
dedicated to the god Augustus Caesar. Or another one that has been dedicated
in the city of Miletus to the Emperor Caligula, who is called Gaius Caesar,
the God Sebastos.
I should point out that Caligula is one of the emperors who insisted on being
worshiped as a god while he was an emperor. Later the Senate did not vote to
make him a god. So he ended up, despite his wanting to be a god, losing out.
Caesar Augustus, on the other hand, was sometimes recognized as a divine
being while he was alive, and was voted by the Senate as being a divine
being afterwards.
How are we to understand this adoration of the emperor as a divine being?
Didn’t people realize that in fact he was a mere mortal, that he had bodily
functions, that he had limitations, that he could bleed, that he could die? The
older view of scholarship was that we should not, in fact, take seriously this
idea that the emperor was a god. According to this older view of scholarship,
these people-the emperors-were known to be human, just like everyone else.
But the emperor cult, according to this view in which the emperors were
worshipped as gods, was simply political propaganda, which no one really
believed. It simply encouraged people to worship these emperors as divine
on the logic that if the ruler was admitted to be divine, then he could not be
disobeyed. In other words, this is a way of political control.
Recent scholarship has reevaluated this older view and offered a very
different perspective. As it turns out, there’s little evidence that the worship
of the emperor was promoted by the officials of Rome itself as a way of
controlling people, especially people out in the provinces, so as to make
them obedient to Rome. Very rarely did the emperors themselves advocate
cult being offered to themselves as divine beings, with Caligula being a
notable exception.
These emperor cults were grass roots movements in which the rulers were
revered for their superhuman power and authority. In this more recent
scholarship, whether or not people actually believed in their hearts that the
emperors were gods is impossible to know. But the emperors were certainly
treated as gods, for example, by having sacrifices performed-not only
on their behalf but to them-and by having temples built and dedicated
to them.
Like the gods, the emperors could perform enormous benefits to their people.
And so, they had divine-like power. And so they too, as we’ve seen, could
be called God. I should stress that this adoration of divine rulers was not
restricted to Rome. I’ve already pointed out that in Egypt, the pharaohs were
thought to be gods, and in other parts of the world, leaders were given divine
honors. Because of the great power that they exercised, they were thought to
be gods.
One example comes to us from the land of Syria. There was a ruler of Syria
whose name was Antiochus, whose wife was Laodice. Antiochus had done
a very good thing for the city of Teos. Teos had been ruled by a foreign
oppressor, and Antiochus had intervened in order to free them from their
oppressor. In gratitude, the city of Teos set up cult statues to both Antiochus
and his spouse Laodice. Most telling of all, these two were honored with
an inscription in which they were placed on the same level as the local
god, Dionysus.
According to this inscription that’s been discovered, Antiochus and Laodice
were honored as followed:
Having made the city and its territory sacred, and having freed
us from tribute, they should receive honors from everyone to the
greatest possible extent. And by sharing in the temple and other
matters with Dionysus, they should become the common saviors of
our city, and should give us benefits in common.
They are saviors of the city. They’re given a temple. They’re given worship.
And they’re placed right up there with the god Dionysus.
In short, Jesus was not the only divine man in the ancient world. Others were
thought to have been gods who came down to earth temporarily in human
form. Yet others were thought to have been literally the son of a god, who
made a woman conceive a child who was then a divine man. And still others
were thought to have been taken up into heaven at the end of their lives
to live and rule in the divine realm. Jesus, as we will see, was thought to
be all three of these things by different Christians in different times and
different places.
