Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 51:203 (Jul 1894)
Article: The Adoration Of Jesus In The Apostolic Age
Author: Theodor Zahn

BSac 51:203 (July 1894) p. 389

The Adoration Of Jesus In The Apostolic Age

Prof. Theodor Zahn

[Continued from Page 330]

It may indeed be questioned whether there are any who are impartial with reference to the subject which we have been treating. The Jews and the Gentiles who from the beginning reproached the Christians with revering a Crucified One as God, can certainly not be called impartial. Among the Gentiles it was a very natural thought, that men should deify a man, and revere him as God. Malicious Jews might easily be believed, when they took occasion to express the expectation that the Christians might some day resolve to honor as divine, instead of the Crucified, some other from among themselves—say a martyr, like Polycarp, under the impulse of the immediate impression made by his heroic death. Thus might Jews scoff, and Gentiles believe.1 Some centuries had already passed since Greek philosophers had explained that all the gods of Olympus were men by birth and death, who had been deified because of their services to civilization. But such an explanation was the beginning of the end of all serious worship of those gods. The Romans soon became accustomed to having their emperors translated to a place among the gods, immediately after their death. This was connected with very old traditions of the Gentile world. But the

BSac 51:203 (July 1894) p. 390

way in which it was accomplished, and the ease with which intelligent people accustomed themselves to it, can be accounted for only on the ground that the old religions were dying out. The noble emperor Trajan was praised for not claiming divine titles and honors for himself while yet alive, like some of his predecessors, but waiting patiently to be made a god after his death. This expression “to make a god” was apparently used with entire ingenuousness.2 We possess a description of the ceremonies, with which at the end of the second century this so-called apotheosis was consummated. While the body of the emperor was buried in the earth, a wax figure representing the deceased with the utmost fidelity, had to take his place, and to be made the centre of pantomimic solemnities lasting several days. When finally, at the close, the wax figure was burned on a costly funeral pile, an eagle fastened there was let loose, in order that it might ascend to heaven with the flames. The narrator adds: “Of this eagle, the Romans believe that it bears the soul of the emperor from the earth to heaven, and from that moment they worship that soul with the rest of the gods.”3 We will not ask how many of the Romans really believed this; but we...