Note 174 — Chapter XIV · PART II POPULAR BELIEF

Probably all these cults promised immortality to their mystai. This is certain in the worship of Isis (cf. Burckhardt, Zeit Constantins d. G.2, p. 195 ff.). Apul., M. xi, 21–3, alludes to symbolic death and reawakening to everlasting life as the subject of the δρώμενα in the Isis mysteries. The initiated is thus renatus (21). In the same way the mystai of Mithras are said to be in aeternum renati: CIL. vi, 510; 736. Immortality must certainly have been promised. Acc. to Tert., Pr. Haer. 40, the mysteries of Mithras included an imago resurrectionis. By this the Christian author can only understand a real ἀνάστασις τῆς σαρκός. Did these mysteries promise to their ὅσιοι a resurrection of the body and everlasting life? This belief in the ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν (always a difficulty for the Greeks: Act Ap. xvii, 18; 32; Plotin. 3, 6, 6 fin.) is in fact ancient Persian (Theopomp. fr. 71–2; Hübschmann, Jb. Prot. Theol. v, p. 222 ff.), and probably came to the Jews from Persia. It is possible then that it may have been the essential idea of the Mithras mysteries.—Hopes of immortality as they appeared to the mystai of Sabazios are illustrated by the sculptures of the monument of Vibia (in the Catac. of Praetextatus), and of Vincentius: numinis antistes Sabazis Vincentius hic est. Qui sacra sancta deum mente pia coluit (Garrucci, Tre Sepolcri, etc., tab. i–iii, Nap. 1852).—It is difficult to see why Christian archeologists should regard this Vincentius as a Christian. He calls himself a worshipper of “the gods” and an antistes Sabazii (there cannot be the slightest objection to giving this meaning to numinis antistes Sabazis. The difficulties raised by Schultze, Katakomben, 44, are groundless: Sabazis = Sabazii is no more objectionable or doubtful than the genitives Clodis, Helis: see Ritschl, Opusc. iv, 454–6. The arrangement of words, n. a. Sab., is due to the exigencies of metre).