FocusMyView said
Just trying to think of steps between the two. Different eras of course. I do try to be practical.

The idea that they are “nothing alike” is simply being dismissive. There are differences in every writer’s hero journey to the underworld. 

  

If you can’t show evidence of those steps, then it is just hypothetical with no connection.

And they are not alike. And that is a fact recognized by almost every single leading scholar in the world, including the chiefmost expert on the issue Tryggve Mettinger.

Also, do you actually think the “hero journey” is a thing? Because if you do, then you are about 50 years out of date with folklore and mythological scholarship, including the entire disproving of any monomythic concept as a hero journey.

FocusMyView said
Thank you for warning me about the “hero journey” thing. 

The point of bringing up Tammuz is that it was worshiped by (Judeans, Judahites, Yehudians, Arameans?) in the temple in Jerusalem itself. No foreign (Japanese, Hindu, Attic, Roman) counterpart needed. 

But I haven’t got much to work with, so I suppose its natural for you to get bored and straw man a little. 

  

I realize that.

The problem here is that while we have a reference to “weeping” in the passage, we have nothing else, and it is hard to connect anything on mere ritual alone. In fact, rituals can continue after myths have stopped being passed on, meaning the wailing for Tammuz in Ezekiel… may not reflect the mythology at all. There is not a stringent connection to myth and ritual that scholars like Frazer (who originated the dying-rising god) once thought.

FocusMyView said
The women weeping in the Temple, in Daniel? 

 

You mean to tell me the tradition is still going on in Daniel? 

  

What are you talking about? No one has mentioned Daniel here but you. Citations please.

FocusMyView said
Daniel 11:37 

The one beloved by women. 

 

Yes, I misquoted again. Still Tammuz though. 

  

That is hard if not impossible to verify. The “one believed by women” could be a number of deities, and does not line up with the Ezekiel passage, as the one being bewailed. There are a number of issues with such an identification.

The passage has to do with Antiochus IV’s persecution of Jewish people. There is no evidence that he banished the worship of Tammuz. And if he did do such, why would the Book of Daniel have an issue with this?

Another issue is that the “beloved/desired by women” aspect is more in alignment with Greek/Byblian Adonis than with Tammuz. There is no evidence until after Christianity that Adonis had any resurrection. Instead, he was associated with Osiris at Byblos, dying and then remaining in the underworld with “transcendent life” (as Walter Burkert notes).

Of course, there are also many gods “desired” by women, and this passage has to do with Antiochus’ own gods. So this makes the possibilities even greater, since it may include his Hellenistic background. Effectively, there is no clear ability to identify this with Tammuz.

FocusMyView said

 

That is because Daniel has moralistic lessons on what happens if you do not worship your gods correctly. There is evidence Antiochus did offensive things to the temples of other gods. One of the strongest defenses of this cultural history that Antiochus did indeed do offensive things in Zion is that it is not unlike his behavior in other places. That is the point, that Antiochus did all this offensive behavior. Nabonidus, described as Nebuchadnezzar, is another example of not worshiping the lead god correctly. So in one passage the author of Daniel is listing the gods that Antiochus offends and one of those gods is “the one beloved by women.” 

At any rate, for what it is worth, the “pulpit commentary” on Biblehub has: “The suggestion of Ewald, that it was the worship of Adonis or Tammuz which Antiochus despised, is more likely to be meant here.”

  

(1) I cannot find any widespread evidence that Antiochus went after the worship of other deities. Furthermore, actually upon further research, Antiochus may not even fit this description in Daniel at all, thus the assumption you make is incorrect (** you do not have permission to see this link **).

(2) This could refer to Dionysus, Adonis, Tammuz, or even Aphrodite. The latter works even better since 1 and 2 Maccabees record that he raided a temple of Aphrodite. So, even assuming Antiochus, there is not a shred of evidence that this is Tammuz and you have only provided conjecture.

(3) The “Pulpit Commentary” is extremely outdated and not used hardly at all by any academics. I couldn’t care less what it says. It is only on BibleHub because it is so old that it is in public domain.

FocusMyView said
There isn’t widespread scholastic focus on it? Because our sources on Antiochus are fairly limited as one Greek historian parroting another. So it’s a line or two in like three sources where obviously one copied from another. 

Our sources on what Antiochus did in the Jerusalem Temple though – that is an amazing array of objective sources. 

Daniel

1 Maccabees

2 Maccabees

Josephus, Antiquities

Josephus, Wars

Tacitus basically telling us the Judean perspective. 

Sound a lot like the sources for a historical Jesus?

  

None of which mention Tammuz.

For a mythicist who would dismiss the sources for Jesus, or say later references mentioning him don’t matter, you seem to have quite the double for supporting Tammuz. Josephus and Tacitus were writing waaaaay after the fact.

Daniel is the one being debated, so doesn’t count, and it is completely vague, and there are an endless number of deities whom women loved.

1-2 Maccabees reference him desecrating more than just the Jerusalem Temple.

Therefore, you have nothing. Nothing at all. You have a tiny reference in Ezekiel written centuries prior to the Book of Daniel, and nothing more, and that tiny reference has none of the mythic relations that you need to prove any link to Jesus.

Thus, you have nothing. Come back when you have more than just empty conjecture.