by
Damien F. Mackey
“I can’t think of another pair,
of ancient stories which are so similar, and yet so seldom compared! Both
Abraham and Athamas were divinely commanded to sacrifice, each their own son,
with a knife on a mountain top, and each was about to comply when the child was
saved, each by the miraculous appearance of a ram”.
John R. Salverda
Can we find traces of Abraham (Abram) and Sarah (Sarai) also in other ancient
traditions?
Indeed, it appears that we can. The pair are commonly likened to, for
instance, the Hindu pair Brahma and Sarasvati. Thus we read in:
Brahma and Abraham: Divine Covenants of Common Origin
Regarding the link between Abraham and Brahma, Steven Rosen writes:
The similarities between the names of Abraham and Brahma have not gone
unnoticed. Abraham is said to be the father of the Jews, and Brahma, as
the first created being, is often seen as the father of mankind.
Abraham’s name is derived from the two Semitic words ab meaning ‘father’
and
raam/raham meaning ‘of the exalted….’
We might also note that the name of Brahma‘s consort Sarasvati seems to
resonate with that of Abraham‘s wife, Sarah [… each one‘s identity as a wife
and/or sister]. Also, in India, the Sarasvati River includes a tributary known
as the Ghaggar…. According to Jewish tradition, Hagar was Sarah’s maidservant….
Both Brahmins … and Jews see themselves as the ‘chosen people of God’. The
Hebrews began their sojourn through history as a ‘kingdom of priests’
(Exodus 19:6). Likewise, Brahmins are also a community of priests. ….
Now, good friend John R. Salverda claims also to have found compelling
likenesses between Abraham and the Minyan Athamas (of Greek legend), and
between Sarah and Nephele, the wife of Athamas:
Abraham, Athamas and the Minyans
Contents:
Minyans,
Kurds, Armenians, and UR.
Thessalians.
Abraham
and the Ram-Lamb?
The
Almost-Consummated Sacrifice of the Son!
Competing
Wives and their Allegorical Significance.
Isaac and
the Mountain.
Different
Hebrew Traditions Coalesced in Greek Mythology.
Minyans,
Kurds, Armenians, and UR
Here I
shall take what I would consider to be the most compelling comparisons in this
article:
Abraham and
the Ram-Lamb?
The
Minyans, as Hurrians from Armenia, knew well the story of the Hebrew, Abraham,
they called him Athamas. The Minyans most likely got their, only slightly
tainted, version of the story, brought over by migrants from the area of
Carchemish and therefore named its Greek colony at the city of Orchomenus (a
plausible transliteration, and supposed by some to have been founded by Athamas
himself) after the place. Even a cursory comparison of the two supposedly
unrelated stories displays them as remarkably coincidental. Athamas began a
movement toward, the abolition of, that age old and wide spread, religious
concept, human sacrifice (as well as its companion tradition, cannibalism).
Although we praise Abraham for his role in this abolition, it seems that some factions
(mainly, the Achaeans) of the ancient Greeks, were of a different opinion. They
considered their Abrahamic equivalent Athamas, and his descendants as well, to
be cursed for their part in the civilizing of mankind (See Herodotus 7. 197
Athamas the son of Aeolus contrived death for Phrixus, having taken counsel
with Ino, and after this how by command of an oracle the Achaeans propose to
his descendants the following tasks to be performed: whosoever is the eldest of
this race, he is brought forth to the sacrifice. This is done to the
descendants of Kytissoros the son of Phrixus, because, he brought the wrath of
the gods upon his own descendants.). In both cases, whether Scripture or myth,
the abolition of human sacrifice in favor of animal sacrifice (the ram) is the
obvious message of the story. Pausanias describes a statue depicting the
sacrifice of this ram; "There is also a statue of Phrixus the son of
Athamas carried ashore to the Colchians by the ram. Having sacrificed the
animal, he has cut out the thighs in accordance with Greek custom and is
watching them as they burn." (Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 24. 2)
Take note of the Greek custom of cutting out the thighs as if to make the
sacrifice Kosher. There is no doubt in my mind as to where they got such a
notion.
The
Almost-Consummated Sacrifice of the Son!
Intricate
details of Abrahams life appear as parts of the Greek myth as well, I can’t
think of another pair, of ancient stories which are so similar, and yet so
seldom compared! Both Abraham and Athamas were divinely commanded to sacrifice,
each their own son, with a knife on a mountain top, and each was about to
comply when the child was saved, each by the miraculous appearance of a ram.
The ram was considered to have been supplied by God, and was said to have been
acceptable to Him as a replacement sacrifice instead of the son of man. ... The
symbol of the sacrificed lamb of god, appears in the Greek Myth, complete with
an association to the Hebrew story of the garden of Eden, for the quest of the
Argonauts, like the Biblical quest of all mankind, hangs in (nailed to) a tree,
in a sacred grove, there is a serpent, and the way is guarded. Phrixos
sacrificed the golden-fleeced ram to Zeus Phyxios, but gave its fleece to
Aetes, who nailed it to an oak tree in a grove of Ares." (See
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 80) "The fleece in Colchis and the
apples of the Hesperides, since they seemed to be of gold, two serpents that
never slept guarded and claimed as their own." (Philostratus the Elder, Imagines
2. 17. 6) This association begs for the conclusion that these Greeks had some
knowledge about the Hebrew concept of the original sin as well as the hopeful
promise of the Messiah. No doubt they did, for they knew many intricate details
of the Hebrew story, including the sophisticated religious symbolism inherent
in the parable of
Abraham’s
two wives.
Competing
Wives and their Allegorical Significance.
Both
Abraham, and Athamas, are said to have had a pair of competing wives each of
whom were obvious allegories of differing religious concepts. Offspring was
gotten from each of the wives, and the quarrel concerned, whose offspring, and
their attending religious concept, would be favored, this is true in both
stories. Ino is the Greek equivalent of Hagar from the Hebrew story, while
Nephele is the counterpart of Sarah. Consider the Ino, Hagar identification
first; The Greeks considered Ino to be the loser of the wifely quarrel, she was
exiled and had to flee from her family home, with her half dead child in her
arms, (Gen. 21:14,15) to the point of her death, when god intervened, granting
Ino powerful miraculous abilities over water, thus saving the lives of Ino and
her son Melicertes and appointing them to become great religious icons among
the People who lived in the land of her exile, which we are told in the myth,
was Corinth in Greece. Except for the location and names, all of these motifs
are straight from the life of Hagar, who was looked upon as symbolic of earthly
Zion, the covenant with slavery and death (Gal. 4 :22-31).
On the
other hand, Sarah was symbolic of freedom, the Heavenly Zion, the wife of God
(also in Gal. 4:22-31). Now, Consider the identification of Nephele with Sarah;
Nephele was created as a duplicate of Hera, the heavenly wife of god,
"Zeus formed a figure of Hera out of cloud (Nephele) (Diodorus Siculus,
Library of History 4. 69. 4) "a Cloud (Nephele)? its form was like the
supreme celestial goddess, the daughter of Kronos. The hands of Zeus set it as
a trap for him, a beautiful misery (Pindar, Pythian Ode 2. 32 ff). Zeus
fashioned a Cloud (Nephele) to look like Hera (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca
E1. 20). Hers were the favored offspring, who were carried off to the Egyptian
land, (That Colchis [in the Caucasus] was an Egyptian land we learn from
Herodotus who says:
There can
be no doubt that the Colchians are an Egyptian race. Before I heard any mention
of the fact from others, I had remarked it myself. After the thought had struck
me, I made inquiries on the subject both in Colchis and in Egypt, and I found
that the Colchians had a more distinct recollection of the Egyptians, than the
Egyptians had of them. Still the Egyptians said that they believed the
Colchians to be descended from the [Egyptian] army of Sesostris (Herodotus Histories
2.104) from which they eventually had a miraculous epic deliverance
(Argonautica). ….
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