æsculapius the healer. Asclepius in Trismegistic tradition

Æ SCULAPIUS THE HEALER

Of the Cult of Æ sculapius in Greece and of the widespread influence of this ideal there is little need to remind the student of the comparative history of religions; we cannot, however, refrain from appending a paragraph

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from a remarkable address recently delivered by the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter to the students of Manchester College, Oxford, 1 in which he says:

“Pass beyond the limits of Israel and its hopes, and you enter a world of religious phenomena, so varied as to be practically inexhaustible, and all the patient labour of the last thirty years has only begun to exhibit to us its contents. At every turn you are confronted with beliefs resembling those which pervade our New Testament, so that Prof. Cheyne has recently attempted in a very remarkable little volume, Bible Problems, to trace archæ ologically the roots of four great doctrines associated with the person of Jesus—the Virgin Birth, the Descent into Hades, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The inscriptions reveal to you the very language of Christianity in the making. The hymns and liturgies of other faiths derive their strength from similar ideas, and express similar aspirations. Does Jesus, according to the Gospels, give sight to the blind, and call the dead back to life? So does Æ sculapius. He, too, is wondrously born; he, too, is in danger in his infancy. He, too, heals the sick and raises the dead, till Zeus, jealous of this infringement of his prerogatives, smites him with his thunderbolt, and translates him to the world above. But from his heavenly seat he continues to exercise his healing power. His worship spreads all through Greece. After a great plague in Rome, in 291 B. C., it is planted on a sacred island in the Tiber. In the first century of our era you may follow it all round the Eastern Mediterranean. In Greece alone Pausanias mentions sixty-three Asklepieia. There were others in Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily; nearly two hundred being still traceable. They were both

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sanctuaries and medical schools. A number of inscriptions relate details of cures, or consecrate the ex-votos, which are still dedicated at Loretto or Lourdes. The temple by the Tiber won special fame in the reign of Antoninus Pius, for the restoration of the sight of a blind man. Æ sculapius himself bears the titles ‘king’ and θ ε ὸ ς σ ω τ ή ρ, ‘divine saviour. ’ He was even σ ω τ ὴ ρ τ ῶ ν ὅ λ ω ν, ‘saviour of the universe. ’ In his cosmic significance he was thus identified-with Zeus himself, and on earth he was felt to be ‘most loving to man’ (cp. Tit. iii. 4). Harnack, in one of the fascinating chapters of his Expansion of Christianity, has traced the action of these influences on later Christianity conceived as a religion of healing or salvation, medicine alike of body and of mind. It must be enough now to remind you that the god was believed to reveal himself to those who sought his aid, and Origen affirms that a great multitude, both of Greeks and barbarians, acknowledge that they ‘have frequently seen, and still see, no mere phantom, but Æ sculapius himself, healing and doing good, and foretelling the future. ’”

But to pass on to the Trismegistic Asclepius.

ASCLEPIUS IN TRISMEGISTIC TRADITION

Asclepius comes forward in our literature as the type of a disciple of Trismegistus already trained in philosophy. This prior training must presumably be referred to the Ptah-tradition—Ptah being himself a God of Revelation, that is of teaching by means of apocalypsis, and Asclepius being originally his “son” and “priest. ” But not only was Ptah a God of apocalypsis generally, but also a God of medicine, as he must needs have been for his son to have learned his wisdom from him.

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[paragraph continues] This view is brought out in a Hellenistic text which reads as follows:

“A Remedy from the shrines of Hephæ stus [Ptah] at Memphis interpreted by the decision and owing to the philanthropy, they say, of Thrice-greatest Hermes; for he decided that it should be published with a view to man’s saving. It was found on a golden tablet written in Egyptian characters. ” 1

The tradition of the date when Asclepius was admitted to the Trismegistic discipline is given in K. K., 3 (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 387, 1). After the ascension of Hermes, we are told:

“To him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir unto these knowledges; and not long afterwards Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah who is Hephæ stus. ”

What precise historical worth this tradition may contain, it is impossible to say; all we can suppose is that there was at some early date a union of two schools of mystic discipline belonging respectively to the Thebaic and Memphitic traditions. This union may have been somewhat analogous to that of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus. What is clear, however, from our Trismegistic writings, is that there is no doubt whatever in the writer’s mind that the Trismegistic tradition is in possession of the higher wisdom; and, indeed, C. H., xiii. (xiv. ) distinctly allows us to conclude that though. Tat was younger, in so far as he had not the technical training of the Asclepius-grade, it is nevertheless Tat, when he reaches “manhood, ” and not Asclepius, who succeeds to the mastership of the School.

Nevertheless we find a number of Trismegistic writings, presupposed especially in “The Definitions of

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[paragraph continues] Asclepius” and in “The Perfect Sermon, ” in which both Tat and Asclepius share in a common instruction—Asclepius appearing as the older and riper scholar.

This makes Reitzenstein (p. 122) suppose that this type of what we may call a company of two disciples was invented by the Hermes priests at Thebes, and that it was later on taken over by the Memphitic Ptah-Asclepius priests and developed in their own interest.

This may be so if we must be compelled to speculate on the dim shades of history which may be recovered from these obscure indications.