The first known graffiti making fun of Christians

by fulltimestudent 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  fulltimestudent

  What was the graffiti artist intending when he/she scratched this cartoon like drawing on the wall of a building that served as a training school for imperial guards and personal attendants in the Imperial palace area of Rome. It is known as the Alexamenos graffito.

  

  Our interest may focus on the crucified figure, but as a tracing of the drawing makes a little clearer - there's another figure of interest, a young male whose gestures indicate that he's praying, and the crudely written text says:

  

  "Alexamenos, worship your god"

  Both Christians and pagans worshipped with arm(s) extended and the most likely interpretation of this crude drawing is that the graffiti artist was ridiculing a young slave named Alexamenos, who had become a Christian (either before or after his enslavement), and at times was likely observed to be praying. Since for most Romans in the period the thought of an executed person being a powerful divinity was ridiculous, we can understand why bored guards or attendants, standing around without too much to do, may think and act as the graffiti indicates.

  It all seems to make sense when we think of another item of graffiti, in the same complex (the next door building to be precise). It simply states (and its claimed to be by a different writer) Alexamenos fidelis, - That is, "Alexamenos is faithful."

  Which came first cannot now be ascertained. Did Alexamenos write Alexamenos fidelis to describe his own spiritual goal and his associates drew that cartoon to amke fun of his aspiration, or was it the other way round.

  I would imagine that being a slave and a Christian was not easy. Slaves had few rights, in fact if a young, handsome Christian, male slave had an owner who wished to have sex with him, the slave would have had little choice but to submit.

  The Wikipedia entry seems quite accurate in its discussion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito

  and an academic by the name of Dr Peter Keegan, at my university, in a book entitled 'Graffiti in Antiquity,' devotes about a page to it.

  https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zwTEBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1&lpg=PT1&dq=graffiti+in+antiquity&source=bl&ots=5cvfTGFV4i&sig=cc4LMaOpAQg200KPZmP1P4Fc7lU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjy_7Tz35vMAhXDxqYKHfhHDfwQ6AEIUzAN#v=onepage&q=graffiti%20in%20antiquity&f=false

  
  

  Whether we are Christian or not, the above graffiti gives us an insight into the minds of humans when this Asian religious concept was seeping into the western world. It's interesting to consider that at almost the same time as Christianity seeped into the Roman world, Buddhism seeped into the Chinese civilisation of the east.
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  FayeDunaway

  I remember this when I was researching whether or not Christ actually died on a cross. I dont remember the dating of the graffiti other than that I was impressed how early it was. Maybe 180 AD?
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  fulltimestudent

  • FayeDunaway : I dont remember the dating of the graffiti other than that I was impressed how early it was. Maybe 180 AD.

    That's sort of in the agreed time, Faye. I do not think we can be more precise than that.
    

    Just think, for decades this building was a sort of training school for young men who were to serve in some role in the Imperial palace. The wall in question was only preserved because another wall was built to cover it and provide support for a higher building. It was first acquired by Caligula, who was emperor between 37 and 41CE.

    So remembering that this was drawn by a young person during the years in which it served as this school, we cannot expect anything about the building to fix a more precise date. Nothing else in the image, scrawled onto a wall, fixes a time.

    But, we do have a young man, Alexamenos, who has a reputation among the other boys for 'praying' and who has apparently professed to being a Christian.

    At what time a professed Christian could be found in the palace service is difficult to say precisely, but it seems later rather than earlier..

    ---------------

    It is also difficult to state what value the graffiti has in knowing the precise way Jesus was put to death. We are seeing, not an accurate portrayal of the death, but the image of a young (possibly a slave) co-worker of Alexamenos, who may otherwise have known nothing about Christianity, conjuring up an image to poke some fun at Alexamenos' habit of praying.

    We see the graffiti writer's image of the Christian god, not the image that the Christian Alexamenos may have had in his mind.
    

    
    

    
    

    
    
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  Vidiot

  Strange.

  My first impression was that the artist was calling Jesus a horse's ass...
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  Crazyguy

  There has been things mentioned about the worship of a donkey back in those days and even something about a donkey being in one of the temples. People really have no clue what they are worshipping today.
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  Half banana

  It is really important to know that any early secular references to "christians" cannot be attributed to a particular cult or temple let alone one of the the Jesus cults. Early christianity was lumped with what was later perjoratively called paganism by the Romans since their beliefs overlapped as did the types of worship including prayer with arms extended. Early Christian graves for example are rarely distinguishable from pagans since they used the same symbols such as crucifixion, the shepherd carrying a lamb etc.

  The same graffito as you show Fulltimestudent is presented in Gandy and Freke's The Jesus mysteries, Element, 2003. Here it is given a date between 193 to 235CE with the text suggesting a pagan initiate of the mysteries looks on at the crucifixion of a donkey headed man. "This represents his lower 'animal' nature, which he has put to death...so he may be spiritually resurrected".

  I recall a horse-headed Roman god which was apparently mocked by contemporaries for its ludicrous looks, I wonder if this had any connection with the image in question?
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  fulltimestudent

  Yes, horses and their relatives (asses and donkeys etc) have been important in human history and therefore (at times) worshipped.

  Is it possible that above graffito was based on Alexamenos' worship of a 'horse/god?' It's difficult to say yes or no, without more information. For example, if we knew that Alexamenos was South Asian (Indian) in origin, then I could make a connection.

  This is how it could be argued, the Romans were the western market tor the East-West Trade Network (the so-called Silk Road - see Revelation 18). It was difficult for the Romans to trade directly with China, Iran (under both the Parthians and Sasanians) blocked the way and exacted a high tariff. To bypass Iran, the Romans developed trade links with India. So we know it was possible (but not necessarily probable) for a South Asian to find himself in a Roman territory, and somehow become involved in some action that resulted in his enslavement. Being bought and sold a few times, its possible that he finished up as a slave in the Imperial household.

  In south Asia, there was a horse-headed god.

  

  

  Images from Wikipedia.

  He was an avatar of Vishnu, named Hayagriva. Information about this god, has been traced back to circa 2000 BCE, among the Indo-Aryan people who were moving south from the central Asia steppes where horses were important.

  But it can be appreciated that this interpretation is highly dependent on some coincidences required to explain how a horse worshipper finished up in the Imperial palace. And, it can be noted I offer no explanation as to why this possible explanation has the horse god portrayed as executed.

  Compare that to the explanation offered by most scholars. We know that Christians were in Rome in the period most likely to have been the time in which the graffito was scrawled on the wall. No coincidences required. We know that (apparently) Alexamenos (who may have made the second inscription himself), clearly saw himself as a faithful worshipper. If he wrote the second inscription, 'Alexamenos fidelis' ( trans: Alexamenos is faithful) himself, it may have been his response to the first graffito. (Or, maybe another Christian wrote it to encourage him). The vocabulary fits what we know about early Christians.

  So how could we explain the horse/ass head on the crucified 'god?'

  Is there anything that connects a horse headed figure to early Christianity?
  

  A Wikipedia entry on Alexamenos states:

  "Tertullian, writing in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, reports that Christians, along with Jews, were accused of worshipping such a deity.
  He also mentions an apostate Jew who carried around Carthage a caricature of a Christian with ass's ears and hooves, labeled Deus Christianorum Onocoetes ("the God of the Christians begotten of an ass")."

  Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito

  It is (as acknowledged) quite difficult to assert one interpretation as being the only possible explanation.

  But it is possible to think through as to which explanation seems more likely.
  
  
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  fulltimestudent

  Half banana : It is really important to know that any early secular references to "christians" cannot be attributed to a particular cult or temple let alone one of the the Jesus cults.

  You may like to provide a reference (or more than one if you wish) to the above.

  As far as this statement is concerned:

  "Early christianity was lumped with what was later perjoratively called paganism by the Romans since their beliefs overlapped as did the types of worship including prayer with arms extended."

  I agree that to view the past from our contemporary perspective may distort our conclusions, but it takes effort to separate the two.

  Having said that, I would agree with you that in Roman thought the possibility exists that all worship could be called 'religio,' although there are other possibilities, as is evident in one, mid-second century imperial letter, which speaks of, "those who do not follow Roman religion." (religio).
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  Half banana

  FTS, there is a reference to this somewhere in The Jesus Mysteries. More reference might be found in Art and Death in Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, OUP, 1998. Also J Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, Ithaca, Cornell University press 1971. My favourite source for early Christianity is JM Roberstson, A Short History of Christianity. Watts and Co. second edition 1937. Robertson uses sociology to describe the religious habits of the worshippers and leaves us with a distinct impression of various pagan christ-cults competing for survival, totally at odds with the modern notion of divine attention given to one small group in the first century.

  The early Jesus cult did adopt certain symbols such as the fish but then this was also found in the pagan christ cults (Pythagoreans and sacred geometry).The real cultural distinctions between pagan christs, notably Dionysus and Mithras and the Jesus cults were defined only after the Roman Church adopted the religion of Constantine in his thrust for unifying all religion. This took place in the first quarter of the fourth century followed by imperial edicts proscribing any other form of Christ to be worshipped and subsequently by careful destruction of evidence for the pagan origins of Roman Christianity; the one universal Catholic Church from which all protestant belief has later come. And I like to point out this includes JW beliefs.

  Precisely what Roman 'religio' was in the second century would be useful to define.