Dionysus-Osiris
Template:Ancient Egyptian religion Template:Ancient Greek religion Dionysus-Osiris, alternatively Osiris-Dionysus, is a deity arising from the syncretism of the Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek god Dionysus.
Syncretism
[edit]The two deities had been identified with each other as early as the 5th century BC, as recounted in the Histories of Herodotus:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Template:Quote Other syncretic deities arose from these Egyptian-Greek conflations, including Serapis and Hermanubis.
Dionysus-Osiris was particularly popular in Ptolemaic Egypt, as the Ptolemies claimed descent from Dionysus, and as pharaohs claimed the lineage of Osiris.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This association was most notable during a deification ceremony where Mark Antony became Dionysus-Osiris, alongside Cleopatra as Isis-Aphrodite.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In the controversial book The Jesus Mysteries, Osiris-Dionysus is claimed to be the basis of Jesus as a syncretic dying-and-rising god, with early Christianity beginning as a Greco-Roman mystery.<ref>Maurice Casey Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? T&T Clark 2014 FREKE, N.T. and GANDY, L.P. p.17</ref> The book and its "Jesus Mysteries thesis" have not been accepted by mainstream scholarship, with Bart Ehrman stating that the work is unscholarly.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>