Editing Castor and Pollux (section)

===Christianization===
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| image1 = Dioscuri (Pollux or Castor), Rome, Capitol.jpg
| image2 = Dioscuri (Castor or Pollux), Rome, Capitol.jpg
| footer = Late Roman Imperial Dioscuri, transferred from a temple of Castor and Pollux to the [[Piazza del Campidoglio]] on the [[Capitoline]] in 1585
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Even after the rise of [[Christianity]], the Dioskouroi continued to be venerated. The 5th century pope [[Gelasius I]] attested to the presence of a "cult of Castores" that the people did not want to abandon. In some instances, the twins appear to have simply been absorbed into a Christian framework; thus 4th century CE pottery and carvings from North Africa depict the Dioskouroi alongside the [[Twelve Apostles]], the [[Raising of Lazarus]] or with [[Saint Peter]]. The church took an ambivalent attitude, rejecting the immortality of the Dioskouroi but seeking to replace them with equivalent Christian pairs. Saints Peter and [[Paul the Apostle|Paul]] were thus adopted in place of the Dioskouroi as patrons of travelers, and [[Saints Cosmas and Damian]] took over their function as healers. Some have also associated Saints [[Speusippus, Eleusippus, and Melapsippus]] with the Dioskouroi.<ref name="Kazhdan" />

The New Testament scholar [[Dennis MacDonald]] identifies Castor and Pollux as models for [[James son of Zebedee]] and his brother [[John the Apostle|John]] in the [[Mark the Evangelist|Gospel of Mark]].<ref>{{citation | first=Dennis | last=MacDonald | author-link=Dennis MacDonald | chapter=Sons of thunder | title=The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark | publisher=Yale University Press | year=2000 | pages=24–32 | isbn=0-300-08012-3}}</ref> MacDonald cites the origin of this identification to 1913 when [[J. Rendel Harris]] published his work [[Boanerges]], a Greek version probably of an Aramaic name meaning "Sons of [[Thunder]]", thunder being associated with [[Zeus]], father of Pollux, in what MacDonald calls a form of early Christian Dioscurism.<ref>{{citation|last=Harris|first=J. Rendel|title=Boanerges|url=https://archive.org/details/boanerges00harruoft|pages=1–4|year=1913|publisher=Cambridge University Press|author-link=J. Rendel Harris}}</ref>

More directly, the [[Acts of the Apostles]] mentions the Dioskouroi in a neutral context, as the figurehead of an Alexandrian ship boarded by Paul in Malta ([[Acts 28]]:11).