Orpheos Bakkikos

Nathan Bauman, who writes the blog Seoul Hero, has helpfully provided information linking Orpheus to Christ in what looks like an image syncretizing Christianity and Orphism. I've borrowed this image from Nathan's old blog, Nathan's Updates from Seoul.

This image has recently been made famous by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, who wrote The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? (Three Rivers Press, 2001). On page 52, they write:

From the same period [i.e., 2nd-3rd centuries A.D.] comes the remarkable talisman which shows a crucified figure immediately recognizable as Jesus but who is actually Osiris-Dionysus (see front cover and plate 6). The inscription under this figure reads "Orpheus-Bakkikos," which means "Orpheus becomes a Bacchoi." Orpheus was a great legendary prophet of Dionysus who was so respected that he was often regarded as the godman himself. A Bacchoi was an enlightened disciple of Dionysus who had become completely identified with the god. The talisman , therefore, represents Dionysus dying by crucifixion, symbolizing the initiate's mystical death to his lower nature and rebirth as a god.

I haven't read this book, though I've read scholarly critiques of it that convince me of the wrongheadedness of its thesis, which (if I recall) states that Jesus never existed but is merely a figure constructed out of pagan myths. They point to the image above as evidence for this thesis because this crucifixion scene, an obviously pagan one, predates crucifixion scenes depicting Jesus on the cross.

This argument looks flawed to me since we have the literary evidence from the first century gospels for the crucifixion of Jesus. Freke and Gandy would need to find pre-Christian evidence of Orpheus being crucified for their argument to work.

However, the link to Dionysus (= Bacchus) is interesting, and is also made by Wikipedia:

According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus's lost play Bassarids, Orpheus at the end of his life disdained the worship of all gods save the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he ascended Mount Pangaion (where Dionysus had an oracle) to salute his god at dawn, but was torn to death by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron, Dionysus. Here his death is analogous with the death of Dionysus, to whom therefore he functioned as both priest and avatar.

I wouldn't trust either The Jesus Mysteries or Wikipedia very far, but if Orpheus did come to be considered Dionysus in one of his guises, then the crucifixion image above would show a link between Dionysus and Jesus from around the same time as the "second-century bronze statuette of Dionysus, with the text of Psalms 28:3 engraved in Greek capitals around the waist," which I commented upon in yesterday's post.

But if I interpret the image more cautiously, then I'd say that it shows Orpheus, but not necessarily Dionysus, as Jesus. Or does it show Orpheus as a martyr for Dionysus in much the same way that a crucified Christian would become a martyr for Christ? Interpreting images is never so straightforward.

At the very least, however, the image shows yet another example of one religion borrowing imagery from another religion, which I yesterday noted had occurred in early Anglo-Saxon Christianity as an "aggressive Teutonic warrior becomes the Christ who charges into battle in mounting the cross for his own crucifixion in The Dream of the Rood."

Which reminds one of the 'crucifixion' of Odin...

UPDATE: Thanks to Ian Myles Slater, I now know of the scholarly consensus that this 'amulet' is a forgery. See comments for details.