Talk:Dionysus-Osiris

message: I removed this pgph from the article, since it needs more support:
:Pagan spirituality of the Osiris-Dionysus sects was composed of two components. The Outer Mysteries consisted of Pagan beliefs and practices that were widely disseminated and taught to the general public. The Inner Mysteries were revealed only to those who had been initiated into the Pagan religions. The initiates learned that Osiris-Dionysus was not a historical person. His legends were simply fables containing spiritual and moral teachings.
Also, I removed the mention of Antiochus and the historical note about him.  The list of proposed members of the Osiris-Dionysus complex is full enough to stand on its own without Antiochus.  Bacchiad 22:01, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Inner Mysteries

message: Reading this article one might think there was actually a god named "Osiris-Dionysus", which of course there was not.  Rather this term is a conflation of two different dieties with similar stories... and, as the article points out, only two of many with similar stories.  If anyone can think of a way of clarifying this, please do... I can't think of any felicitous way of phrasing it. -- Someone else 00:00 Nov 3, 2002 (UTC)
:Tried to do some fixing on this subject. Tuf-Kat
::Actually, "Osiris-Dionysus" was a God shared across the whole meditterranean as the chief figure in the pan-meditterranean Mystery Religion. However, the local form was heavily syncretised with local deities, producing the varients Osiris, Dionysus, Attis etc. 
::But, these deities existed before, so they had earlier versions of their myths, which became part of the Osiris-Dionysus myth at a later time. CheeseDreams 19:34, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: B.t.w. the term "osiris-dionysus" is just one used by scholars to refer to this pan-hellenic-world figure, it more properly means Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Aion, Apollo, Mithras, and many others. 81.156.93.59 20:03, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: The idea of Mithra having twelve apostles comes from Mithratic art which showed Mithra being surrounded by 12 figures. The 12 figures were the signs of the zodiac. Then someone ran with it. Maybe Jesus had 12 apostles because of the 12 tribes of Israel? So that each one could rule over each tribe? Old Testament parallels be damned! 69.254.76.77 (talk) 14:12, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did Osiris-Dionysus exist as an actual God 

message: This article is a mess.
In addition, the pages it links to need to link back.
Mystery religions should be rewritten and part of the content moved here.
The remainder being a description of the general tenets of a mystery religion.
Details of how the religion spread (e.g. sailors, merchants) and took over the various pre-existing gods should be included.
Details of where it came from should be included. Pythagoreanism might help.
There should be mention of syncretism and of life-death-rebirth deity. 
There should be a discription, where possible, of aspects shared between all and every of the different versions of Osiris-Dionysus.
The article should not seek to duplicate Historicity of Jesus, though it should mention it (in passing)
This page should be of a similar quality to pages about Dionysus and Mithras etc.
It isnt.
Thoughts? CheeseDreams 03:46, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tidy 

message: For most of its long and glorious lifetime, this gem of an article has presented the pan-Mediterranean Jesus-like pagan "godman" Osiris-Dionysus as an established fact.  I have tried to recast it into a "history of an idea"-type article.  Personally, I think the theory is dumb, but it's been out there for a while, influenced a lot of people, and its development and manifestations should get serious, NPOV treatment.
Right now it could use some expansion - like named people who have argued for this viewpoint besides Hislop and Freke/Gandy. Personally, Christianity isn't my specialy, so I can't add a lot more.  — Bacchiad 01:44, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're thinking about adding Acharya S, then don't. She's the first one I can think of. 69.254.76.77 (talk) 15:05, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Recasting

message: I have removed the stub tag.  According to the policies on stub articles Wikipedia:Perfect_stub_article, a stub is not merely any imperfect article, but one too short to be useful in any sense - about 3-10 short sentences.  Although this article could use some work, it is out of stub territory.  Bacchiad 13:45, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: De-Stub

message: This article is extremely misleading. I was doing some research, and when I came to this page, I had to do a lot of detective work to figure out why this article seemed to not be about the Osiris-Dionysus deities at all. 
Christian apologists have clearly hijacked this article. The last section doesn't belong in this article, it belongs in the historicity of Jesus article. This is not the historicity of Jesus.
I'd also like to note that the only "citation needed" has been placed passive aggressively. The entire article needs citations.
Because this article could be very confusing to someone who is unaware of the debate over the historicity of Jesus, I suggest a tag be added that explains that this article is somewhat of a battle-ground, or it should be deleted completely, as any serious explanation of the topic will be undermined by people who don't understand that the story of Jesus is separate from the person and, more importantly, that this is not an article about Jesus.
I don't know if I have the ability to do that, so I'd ask that someone who does seriously consider it. Thank you.
 66.152.196.34 13:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article was hijacked by people who haven't done their research.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.254.76.77 (talk) 09:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Dire need of help

message: This article has been hijacked and is being used to lend credibility to the likes of Freke and Gandy. Kabain's comment above shows this to be the case. This article should have nothing to do with Christianity at all. The fact is, Freke and Gandy's theory is a fringe one and not taken seriously by many at all, yet it has become a major focus of this article. Look at this: "The Pagan and Christian practices are strikingly similar: bread and wine as the body and blood, resurrection on the third day, virgin birth to a father who is a god, etc. Christian apologists charged the devil of copying Jesus' life into the past." Not a single citation is give for this laundry list. If these things really are, for example, a part of the legendary life of osiris, then they should be presented in that context. In fact they aren't, so they shouldn't even be mentioned, but this attempt to turn a subject about Egyptology into an anti-Christian polemic has no place in a serious forum like Wikipedia. I have therefore edited out this line altogether. Please, what we need are real contributions that are on topic, and not motivated in this way. GPeoples (talk) 03:25, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, this fringe hypothesis made by non-scholars is over done. --Ari (talk) 02:58, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Hijacked

message: The Latter-Day Saint Perspective section is not even a little bit relevant.  So why am I accused of vandalism when I remove it?  Seriously, do we need a "Latter-Day Saint Perspective" about Islam?  Apollo?  Star Trek?  Peak Oil?  It's not like there is any specific LDS document or source that discusses Osiris-Dionysus, anywhere.  Some Mormon just stumbled into the article and put his theological perspective where it doesn;t belong.  If there was, like, an LDS book about Osiris-Dionysus, or even a statement made by a Church Leader or something, then maybe it would be worth putting in.  But there ain't.  All there is is a general Latter-Day Saint opinion about why many of the world's myths have parallels with the story of Jesus.  But this isn't an article about Christianity and comparative mythology generally.  It's specifically about Osiris-Dionysus.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.233.83.157 (talk) 01:36, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Latter-Day Saint Perspective

message: The work of Freke and Gandy on a hypothesized popular pre-Christian Jesusesque divinity is quite separate from the deity that results from the syncretism of Dionysus and Osiris. The former seeks to popularize a 'Godman' divinity that had a widespread cult that evolved into separate divinities, whereas the latter is a syncretized divinity that arises from increased contact and conquering of the Egyptian peoples by the Greeks. While the 'Osiris-Dionysus' godman cannot be sourced outside of Freke and Gandy's work, likely due to the fact that it is ostensibly wrong, the syncretized divinity occurs throughout Hellenistic Egypt, and is more frequently referred to in the combined form in Western writings as 'Dionysus-Osiris'. Though 'Dionysus-Osiris' isn't always called as such, the instances in which the figures are likened to be the same, by both Greeks and Egyptians, are evidence towards a mutual belief in the oneness of the deities.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fabianzzz (talk • contribs) 02:26, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: True, but Osiris and Osiris-Dionysus weren't distinct figures. The form of Osiris worshipped in Greece and Rome was Osiris-Dionysus. The topic can easily be covered in a section of the Osiris article. A. Parrot (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with  that this article is largely misguided; Dionysus-Osiris does not seem to be a term that is commonly used in real scholarship. The ancients either saw Dionysus and Osiris as separate deities or as the same deity under different names. They never believed in a distinct, syncretized deity clearly distinguishable from both of its constituents, and I think that the very idea of a distinct "Dionysus-Osiris" is misleading. This would be a bit like having a separate article called "Inanna-Ishtar," when the ancient Mesopotamians knew her only as either Inanna or Ishtar, and envisioned both of them as the same goddess only under two different names. We do not have a separate article called Dionysus-Bacchus, because, to anyone in the ancient Greco-Roman world, that would have simply been Dionysus, not a distinct deity. --Katolophyromai (talk) 05:03, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

text: I think you are missing the point of what both of us are trying to say; what we are saying is that, while the ancients syncretized the two deities for sure, they had no conception of the syncretized deity being different from the deities he was a syncretization of. It would be better to mention the syncretism in the articles about Dionysus and Osiris rather than having a separate article called "Dionysus-Osiris." If we are going to have a separate article on this subject, we would have to call it something like "Syncretism of Dionysus and Osiris in antiquity" or something similar, especially since the name "Dionysus-Osiris" with a hyphen does not seem to be commonly used by real scholars. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:42, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Osiris-Dionysus as separate from the 'Godman theory'

message: Indeed, this article is about the relationship between the ancient cults of Osiris and Dionysus but as we see, even if "Jesus" isn't even mentioned, some people are bold enough to remove a quote from a well researched article or book with appropriate citations, if some of the rituals discussed bear even a slight resemblance to those of Christianity! As if the presence of the Roman Empire, with its Hellenistic influences, wouldn't have any effect on the local philosophies and religions in the Middle East? When this article is completed, Wiki may want to lock it against general public editing or vandalism!MARK VENTURE (talk) 02:47, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: METHINKS CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH