Apotheosis
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- see Divinization for disambiguation.
Apotheosis (from Greek ἀποθεόω "to deify"), deification or divinization is the glorification of an individual to a divine level.
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[edit] Antiquity
- Further information: imperial cult and divine king
Prior to the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in Ancient Egypt (pharaohs) and Mesopotamia (since Naram-Sin). From the New Kingdom, all deceased were deified as Osiris.
[edit] Hellenistic Greece
In the Greek and Hellenistic world, state leaders might be raised to the gods before (e.g., Alexander the Great) or after (e.g., the Ptolemaic dynasty) death. It was also an honour given to a few revered artists, such as Homer.
Greek hero-cults were primarily civic rather than familial, in that none of the worshipers traced their descent back to the hero. The cults were distinct on the other hand from the Roman cult of dead emperors, because the hero was not thought of as having ascended to Olympus or become a god: he was beneath the earth, and his power purely local. For this reason hero cults were chthonic in nature, and their rituals more closely resembled those for Hecate and Persephone than those for Zeus and Apollo. Two exceptions were Heracles and Asclepius, who might be honored as either gods or heroes.
[edit] Ancient Rome
Apotheosis in ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized to be divine by his successor, usually also by a decree of the Senate or popular consent. In addition to showing respect, often the successor deified his popular predecessor to legitimize himself. The upper-class, in fact, did not always take part in the cult and some secretly ridiculed the apotheosis of inept and feeble emperors.
At the height of imperial cult worship during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperor's deceased loved ones--heirs, empresses, or lovers--were deified as well. Deified people were awarded posthumously with the prefix Divus (Diva if women) to their names to signify their divinity. Temples and columns were sometimes erected to provide a space for worship.
[edit] Christology
Trinitarian Christianity asserts that Jesus Christ is the Son or Word of God, and as such is God Himself revealed. It explicitly rejects the idea that Jesus became divine, and teaches instead that God became man (that is, he obtained human nature and united it to himself, not that he was changed into a man). The mystical theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church teaches theosis, the doctrine that men enter into the life of the Holy Trinity through Jesus Christ, to be healed of sinfulness, by participation in the love that exists eternally between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: and in this sense "men may become God". This is regarded in Orthodox theology, and all Trinitarianism, to be antithetical to apotheosis.
[edit] Modern
Later artists have used the concept for motives ranging from real respect for the deceased (Constantino Brumidi's fresco The Apotheosis of Washington on the dome of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.), to artistic comment (Salvador Dalí's or Ingres's Apotheosis of Homer), to comedic effect. Many modern leaders have also exploited the artistic imagery, if not the actual worship, of apotheosis. Examples include Rubens's depictions of James I of England at the Banqueting House (an expression of the Divine Right of Kings) or Henry IV of France, or Appiani's apotheosis of Napoleon. The term has been used figuratively to refer to the elevation of a dead leader (often one who was assassinated and/or martyred) to a kind of superhuman charismatic figure and an effective erasing of all faults and controversies which were connected with his name in life - for example, Abraham Lincoln in the US and Yitzchak Rabin in Israel. A further example would be Kim Jong-il leader of North Korea, he took the place of his father Kim Il-sung and much of the nation has grown up with the idea of the "leader" being placed at the height of society, this is the result of parents raised under a similar image by Kim Il-sung passing this view onto their children.
[edit] In Literature
- Joseph Campbell, in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, writes that the Universal Hero from monomyth must pass through a stage of Apotheosis. According to Campbell, apotheosis is the expansion of consciousness that the hero experiences after defeating his foe.
- Arthur C Clarke has the Overlords refer to Mankind's apotheosis at the end of Childhood's End, when the world's children evolve into their union with the Overmind (see also post-human).
[edit] References and further reading
- Arthur E.R. Boak, "The Theoretical Basis of the Deification of Rulers in Antiquity", in: Classical Journal vol. 11, 1916, pp. 293-297.
- Franz Bömer, "Ahnenkult und Ahnenglaube im alten Rom", Leipzig 1943.
- Walter Burkert, "Caesar und Romulus-Quirinus", in: Historia vol. 11, 1962, pp. 356-376.
- Jean-Claude Richard, "Énée, Romulus, César et les funérailles impériales", in: Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome vol. 78, 1966, pp. 67-78.
- Bernadette Liou-Gille, "Divinisation des morts dans la Rome ancienne", in: Revue Belge de Philologie vol. 71, 1993, pp. 107-115.
- David Engels, "Postea dictus est inter deos receptus. Wetterzauber und Königsmord: Zu den Hintergründen der Vergöttlichung frührömischer Könige", in: Gymnasium vol 114, 2007, pp. 103-130.
[edit] See also
- List of people who have been considered deities
- Amaterasu
- Cult of personality
- self-deification
- Euhemerus
- Frazer, James, The Golden Bough
- Graves, Robert, The White Goddess
- Imperial cult
- Hirohito
- Roman emperor
- Roman religion
- Sacred king
- Theosis
- Tylor, E.B.
[edit] External links
- Seneca's Apocolocyntosis at Project Gutenberg
