Reading Companion to Book 1 of The Seculary of a Wandering Jew
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the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BCE.
Mithra
God of Persian and Roman mythology
Mithra is the Zoroastrian divinity of covenant and oath. In addition to being the divinity of contracts, Mithra is also a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of Truth, and the guardian of cattle, the harvest and of The Waters.
The Romans attributed their Mithraic Mysteries to Persian or Zoroastrian sources relating to Mithra.
The Mithraic Mysteries were a mystery religion practiced in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Writers of the Roman Empire period referred to this mystery religion by phrases which can be Anglicized as Mysteries of Mithras or Mysteries of the Persians; modern historians refer to it as Mithraism. The mysteries were popular in the Roman military.
Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake". They met in underground temples (called mithraea), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its center in Rome.
The Romans themselves regarded the mysteries as having Persian or Zoroastrian sources.
Mithraism has sometimes been viewed as a rival of early Christianity.
Nix
Goddess of Greek mythology (of the night)
Osiris
God of Egyptian mythology
Osiris was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive crown with two large ostrich feathers at either side, and holding a symbolic crook and flail.
Osiris was at times considered the oldest son of the Earth god Geb, and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son. As ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called "king of the living", since the Ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead "the living ones".
Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles observed in nature, in particular vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile, through his links with Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year. Osiris was widely worshipped as Lord of the Dead until the suppression of the Egyptian religion during the Christian era.
Saturn
God of Greek mythology (agriculture)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a god of agriculture, liberation, and time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace. He was thus a god of wealth, and the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum housed the state treasury. In December, he was celebrated at what is perhaps the most famous of the Roman festivals, the Saturnalia, a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving and revelry. Saturn the planet and Saturday are both named after the god.
The Romans identified Saturn with the Greek Cronus, whose myths were adapted for Latin literature and Roman art. In particular, Cronus's role in the genealogy of the Greek gods was transferred to Saturn.
Serapis
God of Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology
Serapis or Sarapis is a Greco-Egyptian god.
Serapis was devised during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection.
His cult was spread as a matter of deliberate policy by the Ptolemaic kings, who also built a splendid Serapeum in Alexandria. Serapis continued to increase in popularity during the Roman period, often replacing Osiris as the consort of Isis in non-Egyptian temples.
The Lord
Only God of the Judaeans and the Christians
God is often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of humans and the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.
God has also been conceived as being incorporeal (immaterial), a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent". These attributes were supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers. Many notable medieval philosophers and modern philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God.
There are many names for God, and different names are attached to different cultural ideas about who God is and what attributes he possesses.
In the Hebrew Bible "I Am that I Am", and the "Tetragrammaton" YHVH are used as names of God, while Yahweh, and Jehovah are sometimes used in Christianity as vocalizations of YHVH.
In Arabic, the name Allah ("the God") is used, and because of the predominance of Islam among Arab speakers, the name "Allah" has connotations with Islamic faith and culture. Muslims regard a multitude of titular names for God, while in Judaism it is common to refer to God by the titular names Elohim or Adonai.
In Hinduism, Brahman is often considered a monistic deity.
Other religions have names for God, for instance, Baha in the Bahá'í Faith, Waheguru in Sikhism, and Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism.
Titans
Primeval gods of Greek mythology
In Greek mythology, the Titans were a primeval race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Heaven), that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. They were immortal huge beings of incredible strength and stamina and were also the first pantheon of Greco-Roman gods and goddesses.
In the first generation of twelve Titans, the males were Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius and Iapetus and the females - the Titanesses - were Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea and Themis. The second generation of Titans consisted of Hyperion's children Eos, Helios, and Selene; Coeus's daughters Leto and Asteria; Iapetus's sons Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Calypso and Menoetius; Oceanus' daughter Metis; and Crius's sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.
The Titans were overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, in the Titanomachy ("War of the Titans"). This represented a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks may have borrowed from the Ancient Near East.
Uadjit
Goddess of Egyptian mythology
Wadjet. known to the Greek world as Uto or Buto among other names, was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep (Buto), which became part of the city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet, House of Wadjet, and the Greeks called Buto, a city that was an important site in the Predynastic era of Ancient Egypt and the cultural developments of the Paleolithic.
She was said to be the patron and protector of Lower Egypt and upon unification with Upper Egypt, the joint protector and patron of all of Egypt with the "goddess" of Upper Egypt. The image of Wadjet with the sun disk is called the uraeus, and it was the emblem on the crown of the rulers of Lower Egypt. She was also the protector of kings and of women in childbirth.
As the patron goddess, she was associated with the land and depicted as a snake-headed woman or a snake‚ usually an Egyptian cobra, a venomous snake common to the region; sometimes she was depicted as a woman with two snake heads and, at other times, a snake with a woman's head.
Her oracle was in the renowned temple in Per-Wadjet that was dedicated to her worship and gave the city its name. This oracle may have been the source for the oracular tradition that spread to Greece from Egypt.
(*) Fictional Characters
Places and Geography of Book 1
Achaea
Region in the northern Peloponnese
Geographically, Achaea was (and is) the northernmost region of the Peloponnese, occupying the coastal strip north of Arcad
ia. Its approximate boundaries were to the south the mountain range of Erymanthus, to the south-east the range of Cyllene, to the east Sicyon, and to the west the Larissos river. Apart from the plain around Dyme, to the west, Achaea was generally a mountainous region.
Both Herodotus and Pausanias recount the legend that the Achaean tribe was forced out of their lands in the Argolis by the Dorians, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. Consequently, the Achaeans forced the Aegialians (now known as the Ionians) out of their land. The Ionians took temporary refuge in Athens, and Aegialus became known as Achaea.
Under the Romans, Achaea was a province covering much of central and southern Greece. This is the Achaea referenced in the New Testament.
Alexandria
City in Egypt
Alexandria was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great. It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641.
Ancient Alexandria was best known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its library (the largest in the ancient world); and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa.
Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism, but was also home to the largest urban Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Hellenistic center of learning (Library of Alexandria), but were careful to maintain the distinction of its population's three largest ethnicities: Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian. From this division arose much of the later turbulence, which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater who reigned from 221-204 BC.
The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 BC, according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander, but only after it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years. It was besieged by the Ptolemies in 47 BC during Julius Caesar intervention in the civil war between king Ptolemy XIII and his advisers, and the fabled queen Cleopatra VII. It was finally captured by Octavian, future emperor Augustus on 1 August 30 BC, with the name of the month later being changed to August to commemorate his victory.
Antaradus
City in Roman Syria
Antioch
City in Roman Syria (Antakya/Turkey)
Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.
Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch's geographic, military and economic location, particularly the spice trade, the Silk Road, and the Persian Royal Road, benefited its occupants, and eventually it rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East.
As a result of its longevity and historical industriousness, Antioch was called a cradle of Christianity. Once a great metropolis of half a million people, it declined to insignificance during the Middle Ages because of repeated earthquakes, the Crusaders' invasions, and a change in trade routes.
The Roman emperors favored the city from the first, seeing it as a more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than Alexandria could be, because of the isolated position of Egypt. To a certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome. A great temple to Jupiter Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the insistence of Octavian, whose cause the city had espoused. A forum of Roman type was laid out. Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius.
Agrippa and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work. Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. A circus, other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new aqueducts to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the work of Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod (most likely the