“This mythological rigmarole adds up to an identification of the Israelite Jehovah of Tabor, or Atabyrius, with Dionysus the Danaan White Bull-god: an identification which rests on respectable Classical authority. In Plutarch’s Convivial Questions one of the guests claims to be able to prove that the God of the Jews is really Dionysus Sabazius, the Barley-god of Thrace and Phrygial and Tacitus similarly records in his History (v. 5) that ‘some maintain that the rites of the Jews were founded in honour of Dionysus.’ Also, the historian Valerius Maximus records that about the year 139 B.C the Praetor of Foreigners, C. Cornelius Hispallus, expelled from Rome certain Jews who were ‘trying to corrupt Roman morals by a pretended cult of Sabazian Jove.’ The inference is that the Praetor did not expel them for a legitimate worship of this god, but because they foisted novelties on the Tracian cult—probably circumcision, which was regarded by the Romans as self-mutilation and a corruption of morals—for they admitted aliens to their Sabbaths. According to the Leclerq’s Manual of Christian Archaeology, burials in the cemetery of Praetextatus at Rome confirm this cult of a Jewish Sabazius. That the Jews of the Dispersion may have used false etymology to equate ‘Sabazius’ with ‘Sabaoth’—Jehova was the Lord of the Sabbath, and also of Sabaoth, ‘of hosts’—does not dissprove the original identity of two gods.
Sabazian Zeus and Sabazian Dionysus were different names of the same character, the Son of Rhea; which meant that he was of Cretan origin. The Phrygians called him Attis and made him the son of Cybele, but this amounted to the same thing; and an inscription of jewish origin has been found in Rome: ‘To Attis the Most High God who holds the Universe together.’ The serpent was sacred to Sabazius and this recalls the Brazen Seraph Ne-esthan or Nehustan, which Moses used as a standard and which is said to have been destroyed as idolatrous by Good King Hezekiah because incense was burned to it as to a god. But the jewish sect of Orphites, centered in Phrygia, revered the Serpent in early Christian times, holding that the post-exilic Jehovah was a mere demon who had usurped the Kingdom of the Wise Serpent, the Anointed One. Sabazian Dionysus was represented with bull’s horns because, as Diodorus Siculus records, he was the first to yoke oxen to the plough for agriculture: in other words to plant barley. Since Jehova was pre-eminently protector of barley—the Passover was a barley harvest-festival—Plutarch’s convivial guest would have had little trouble in proving his contention, especially since, according to the legend, Sabazius was torn by the Titans into seven pieces. Seven was Jehovah’s mystical number.”
- the white goddess, robert graves, p. 274
- hand of sabazius, bronze idol of the sabazius cult in rome, 1st–2nd century CE
- 'salvator mundi', painting of jesus by leonardo da vinci, 1499-1510, assumedly commissioned by medici family
- pope paul vi
- pope paul vi audience hall at the vatican
