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Sir James Frazer : Adonis et le Christ
Dans le rameau d'or, un livre consacré
aux religions à mystère de l'antiquité, Sir
James Frazer traite longuement du mythe d'Adonis et de son culte. Il
termine sa description par un rapprochement avec le culte chrétien
(fin du chap. 33, The Gardens of Adonis) :
When we reflect how often the Church has skilfully
contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of
paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and
risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and
risen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to believe, was
celebrated in Syria at the same season. The type, created by Greek
artists, of the sorrowful goddess with her dying lover in her arms,
resembles and may have been the model of the Pietà of
Christian art, the Virgin with the dead body of her divine Son in her
lap, of which the most celebrated example is the one by Michael
Angelo in St. Peters. That noble group, in which the living sorrow of
the mother contrasts so wonderfully with the languor of death in the
son, is one of the finest compositions in marble. Ancient Greek art
has bequeathed to us few works so beautiful, and none so pathetic.
In this connexion a well-known statement of Jerome may
not be without significance. He tells us that Bethlehem, the
traditionary birthplace of the Lord, was shaded by a grove of that
still older Syrian Lord, Adonis, and that where the infant Jesus had
wept, the lover of Venus was bewailed. Though he does not expressly
say so, Jerome seems to have thought that the grove of Adonis had
been planted by the heathen after the birth of Christ for the purpose
of defiling the sacred spot. In this he may have been mistaken. If
Adonis was indeed, as I have argued, the spirit of the corn, a more
suitable name for his dwelling-place could hardly be found than
Bethlehem, "the House of Bread," and he may well have been
worshipped there at his House of Bread long ages before the birth of
Him who said, "I am the bread of life." Even on the
hypothesis that Adonis followed rather than preceded Christ at
Bethlehem, the choice of his sad figure to divert the allegiance of
Christians from their Lord cannot but strike us as eminently
appropriate when we remember the similarity of the rites which
commemorated the death and resurrection of the two. One of the
earliest seats of the worship of the new god was Antioch, and at
Antioch, as we have seen, the death of the old god was annually
celebrated with great solemnity. A circumstance which attended the
entrance of Julian into the city at the time of the Adonis festival
may perhaps throw some light on the date of its celebration. When the
emperor drew near to the city he was received with public prayers as
if he had been a god, and he marvelled at the voices of a great
multitude who cried that the Star of Salvation had dawned upon them
in the East. This may doubtless have been no more than a fulsome
compliment paid by an obsequious Oriental crowd to the Roman emperor.
But it is also possible that the rising of a bright star regularly
gave the signal for the festival, and that as chance would have it
the star emerged above the rim of the eastern horizon at the very
moment of the emperor's approach. The coincidence, if it happened,
could hardly fail to strike the imagination of a superstitious and
excited multitude, who might thereupon hail the great man as the
deity whose coming was announced by the sign in the heavens. Or the
emperor may have mistaken for a greeting to himself the shouts which
were addressed to the star. Now Astarte, the divine mistress of
Adonis, was identified with the planet Venus, and her changes from a
morning to an evening star were carefully noted by the Babylonian
astronomers, who drew omens from her alternate appearance and
disappearance. Hence we may conjecture that the festival of Adonis
was regularly timed to coincide with the appearance of Venus as the
Morning or Evening Star. But the star which the people of Antioch
saluted at the festival was seen in the East; therefore, if it was
indeed Venus, it can only have been the Morning Star. At Aphaca in
Syria, where there was a famous temple of Astarte, the signal for the
celebration of the rites was apparently given by the flashing of a
meteor, which on a certain day fell like a star from the top of Mount
Lebanon into the river Adonis. The meteor was thought to be Astarte
herself, and its flight through the air might naturally be
interpreted as the descent of the amorous goddess to the arms of her
lover. At Antioch and elsewhere the appearance of the Morning Star on
the day of the festival may in like manner have been hailed as the
coming of the goddess of love to wake her dead leman from his earthy
bed. If that were so, we may surmise that it was the Morning Star
which guided the wise men of the East to Bethlehem, the hallowed spot
which heard, in the language of Jerome, the weeping of the infant
Christ and the lament for Adonis.
Sir James Frazer, the golden Bough,
a Study in Magic and Religion, MacMillan, 1922.
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