The Ancient Greeks had three very special concepts in their approach to Divinity, all of them were daringly sacrilegious for a faithful Jew of the Old Testament.
These three concepts were:
- First, Anthropomorphism: For the Greeks, their gods can have a human shape. This concept was a sacrilegious concept for Jehovah in the Old Testament,
- Secondly, Theogony: Greek gods could come down to earth to get married with mortal ladies. Imagine Jehovah now in the New Testament under this concept. This concept was sacrilegious too.
- Third, Theosis: An immortal can become a participant to the Divine nature.
All of these three concepts, being totally sacrilegious and disgusting for a faithful Jew of the Old Testament, are the base of the New Testament.
- The base of the New Testament, the basic truth, the foundation, is that God appeared on the face of Jesus Christ as a human. And this is anthropomorphism. God Himself was in a human shape among all of us.
- Theogony: Jesus was not only the son of God and a lady, Mary, but also His relationship with the church is a matrimonial relation; the bride and the groom. And do you remember the greatest of the blessings in the Old Testament? Long life on earth and prosperity, and that’s all – long life on the promised land and prosperity and that’s all.
- In the concept of Theosis the human, a mortal, becomes the participant of the Divine Nature, which is the greatest blessing of the New Testament:
In the New Testament we read in 2 Peter 1:4: Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
All of these concepts are concentrated on the face of a personality called Asclepius. We have in Asclepius a prefiguration of Jesus Christ.
Anthropomorphism: The gods can have a human shape. Theogony: Asclepius was born the son of a god, Apollo, and a mortal lady, a princess, called Coronis. (Greek gods could come down to earth to get married with mortal ladies.) Theosis: Asclepius became a participant of the Divine nature.
Asclepius was born mortal, but his immortal father gave him a very good education and so, he knew all about herbs and he became a very good medical doctor to such a degree that he could raise people from death.
But when he arrived at the point of raising the dead two gods were totally furious against him and they went to Zeus complaining that this man was disturbing the world order. These two gods were the
- Mother Earth who said that if people are just born and they don’t die, the weight on my chest is going to be unbearable, and I’m going to collapse and there will be no more earth.
- The other one was Hades. Hades among the Greeks had a nickname, Pluto. Pluto, in Greek, means richness. Pluto was gaining richness, because his kingdom was always getting richer due to the death of souls, added to his kingdom.
Now, for first time, due to the resurrection that Asclepius achieved, Pluto (Hades) felt threatened that he would grow poorer. So, Asclepius had to die young.
Asclepius died when he was a young husband and young father, leaving behind his wife and five orphans. He was of all the mortals having a favored class, he was classified as favored, special, and he, because of his piety, he went to Elysium, also referred to as the Elysian Fields. And even in the Elysian Fields, Asclepius never expressed any complaint against Divinity (the assembly of the gods) for his fate – to die young and to leave behind his young wife and his little orphans.
This made Divinity think once more about Asclepius and they invited him to Mount Olympus where they offered to him a Divine banquet with ambrosia and nectar (the divine food and the divine brain) making Asclepius a participant of the Divine nature.
Does this story remind something to you? Who else was classified as favored, special – to become the God of compassion, of mercy and healing? Who else was born immortal? And yet had gone through all the struggles of the life of a mortal? (He could taste it, even death.)
Greeks, as I mentioned to you already, considered their gods as having a favored class status, but some of their animals also had favored class status.
For the Greeks there were two animals depicting and representing wisdom.
- Wisdom from above was depicted with the birth owl, which has a front face with big eye parts for drawing in knowledge.
- Wisdom from below, is depicted as a snake.
Genesis 4:1 says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?” He was the most wise animal and because his activity was based on a curse (the medicine) the snake was used as his symbol, symbolizing coming from below.
Does this have a connection with the Old Testament? With the staff with the bronze snake?
In the Old Testament in Numbers 21:6-9 we read: Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So, Moses prayed for the people.8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
God is the Master of History. The Master of History is the Holy One and history is not compartmentalized. All of history has the same author. God, the Master of all of history, cultivated the Greek Christian pagan road for the day of Jesus Christ.
From the Jewish world in the Old Testament, we have Melchizedek, another prefiguration.