Old Saturn and the Risen Christ
On Sunday and the Universal Symbology of Myth
I finally decided to go back through my drafts and actually try and finish the many (too many) articles that I have started and never finished. As such, I’ll be revisiting a few topics that I wrote on several months ago. I’ll link the appropriate articles for context.
A little while ago, I wrote an article regarding a Christian approach to reading myth. You can read it here. This present article serves as a sort of riff on the thoughts I expressed in that previous entry, and a means for me to demonstrate my conclusions with some reflections on myths and their symbolism as they relate to the truths of Christianity.
The Day of the Sun
Reading through Justin Martyr’s First Apology I came across a fascinating detail in Justin’s comments regarding the Christian day of worship:
“Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun…appeared to His apostles and disciples.”
[Justin Martyr, First Apology, 67.]
While largely un-suspecting, I found Justin’s reference to ‘the day of Saturn’ in connection with Christ’s death and burial a tantalising detail. From this, a large rabbit hole presented itself, and I found myself drawn into the many connections between the the myths of Kronos and his Latin alter-ego Saturn, and the ‘true myth’ of Christ’s death, descent, and resurrection.
But before we get too carried away, it might be helpful to pause and explain the significance of what has come to be a rather arbitrary fact of our modern world - the days of the week.
In Greco-Roman culture (though the practice began, as with many things, with the Babylonians, and thus long predates these cultures, who are really actually late comers to what we would call the ‘Ancient World’) the days of the week were named and associated with the various gods of the pantheon:1
As you can see, our English names for the days of the week are a sort of blend of the Latin, Greek and Norse/Germanic pantheons.2 Particularly in the Greco-Roman context, these gods were connected with the planets and their respected spheres. As such, each day of the week was believed to be associated with the influence of these gods, and were thus dedicated to them and their various religious festivals.3
This understanding was not merely pagan, however. Indeed, it is no secret that the liturgical calendar of the Church was based upon the seasonal processions of the heavenly bodies, particularly the moon - a practice they inherited from their Jewish forebears.4 Indeed, astral observation, and particularly the conceptualisations and influences of the planets were central to many calendrical systems we have from the Second Temple era. Examples, such as the Astronomical Book found among the library of texts that has come to be called 1 Enoch and various texts from the sectarian group of the Yahad at Qumran, demonstrate that astrology was a common tool within Ancient Judaism.
All of this stems from the common ancient conception that all of creation mirrors the divine, and follows a prescribed course, harmonising with the tune of God, so to speak. Thus the days of the week, the months and the years were ruled over by the heavenly bodies, who were apportioned and allotted by God to govern the “times and seasons” (Gen 1:14-16) of the earth.
Returning to the days of the week then, it is worth noting that the holiest day in the Jewish week was the Sabbath on Saturday. Sunday was typically understood as the first day of the week (called יום ראשון ‘the first day’ in Hebrew)5, as is the case also within Christianity. The key difference, however, is that Christianity, from it’s earliest expressions6, chose to celebrate the holiest day, the Lord’s day, on the first day of the week, the day of the Lord’s resurrection, as a sign of his defeat of death, rather than the typical Sabbath of Judaism. Many of our earliest Christian documents attest to this:
“On the Lord’s own day, gather together and break bread and give thanks, having first confessed your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure…”
[Didache 14.1.]
“On the day of the resurrection of the Lord, that is, the Lord's day, assemble yourselves together, without fail, giving thanks to God…”
[Apostolic Constitutions 7.30.]7
“We keep the eighth day [Sunday] in celebration, the day on which Jesus both rose from the dead, and after appearing again, ascended into heaven ”
[Epistle of Barnabas 15:9]
…those who had lived according to ancient practices came to a new awareness of hope, no longer keeping the sabbath but living in accordance with the Lords day, on which our life also arose through him and his death…the mystery through which we came to belief…”
[St Ignatius Epistle to the Magnesians 9:1]
“The day of [Christ’s] light . . . was the day of his resurrection from the dead, which they say, as being the one and only truly holy day and the Lord’s day, is better than any number of days as we ordinarily understand them, and better than the days set apart by the Mosaic law for feasts, new moons, and Sabbaths, which the apostle teaches are the shadow of days and not days in reality”
[Eusebius of Caesarea Proof of the Gospel 4:16:186.]
“The Sabbath was the end of the first creation, the Lord’s day was the beginning of the second, in which he renewed and restored the old in the same way as he prescribed that they should formerly observe the Sabbath as a memorial of the end of the first things, so we honour the Lord’s day as being the memorial of the new creation”
[St Athanasius, On Sabbath and Circumcision, .]8
From these, we can see that the common understanding of the early Christian adoption of Sunday was related to the resurrection of Christ, and the concept of the Sabbath pointing forward to the true rest brought about by Christ within it (cf. Heb 4:9-11).
While I do not wish to question or contradict this clear consensus, I would like to put forward a more… mythological interpretation, of the significance of these theological concepts. I hope to show how the correlation between the ‘day of Saturn’ and the ‘day of the Sun’, as Justin put it, might shed further light on the relation between the symbolism of death and resurrection in Christianity and Greco-Roman myth - thus portraying the victory of Christ from within the pagan context.
Sol, Saturn and the god of Death
The connections between Sunday and Sol, the god of the Sun, have a rather clear relationship to concept of the resurrection in both Judaism and Christianity. Indeed, Scripture depicts both salvation and the resurrection with solar/astral imagery:
I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near - a star shall come out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel;
[Nu 24:17].
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shone.
[Isa 9:2].
“Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you…”
[Isa 58:8]
“But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.”
[Mal 4:2–3.]
“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
[Luke 1:78–79.]
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”
[Daniel 12:2-3]
The Old Testament is full of solar imagery associated with the Messiah and the “Day of the Lord”. It is thus not surprising that such a conceptual link would be made in the early church. The ‘dawn’ of salvation in Christ’s resurrection is thus celebrated at the ‘dawn’ of the week, on the day of the Sun. On the other hand, there is also no shortage of theories as to the connection between early Christianity and the cult of Sol Invictus [the unconquered Sun] in the Roman Empire under Constantine [who was himself a devotee of the religion before his conversion].9
Conversely, the day of Saturn, was of course, named and associated with Saturn, the name given by Rome to the Greek deity Kronos, the primordial god of time. χρόνος is, in fact, the Greek word for ‘time’ in a linear sense [the root of the English - ‘chronology’], and is often understood in contrast to καιρός, which is understood as a specific point in time.10 This concept became central within Christian theology and eschatology in reference to God’s divine appointment. While the two are not necessarily diametrically opposed, the contrast between them certainly bares interesting implications for our present discussion on the defeat of Kronos at the hands of Christ.
While this normally meant that Kronos was associated with the seasons and the harvests, rebirth and renewal, it also meant that he was naturally associated with death and decay. As the personification of time, Saturn/Kronos was the all consuming force of life and death. Perhaps this is why he was also known as the Father of the Gods, particularly of Zeus himself [Kronos’ own father being Ouranos - the God of the very heavens themself]. It is thus fitting that the last day of the week, the ‘death’ of the week we might say, is named after this deity.
The Hell-mouth and Saturn’s Maw
Turning now to the mythological material itself, we find that, while the Latin accounts of Virgil and Ovid retain the overthrow of Saturn, their portrayals are rather tame (Virgil, Aeneid 8.319–325; Ovid Metamorphoses 1.112-113). The original Greek legends, on the other hand, are far darker. Though varied in form, the Greek succession myth of the Olympian gods and the Titans generally begins with the account of Kronos and his children. Below is Hesiod’s version:
“Rhea was subject in love to Kronos [Saturn] and bore splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken. These great Kronos [Saturn] swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother's knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods…”
[Hesiod, Theogany, 454-460.]11
The most striking detail of the Kronos/Saturn myth is his devouring of his own children. One is faced with a horrific portrayal in Francisco Goya’s rendition of Saturn Devouring His Son. What is particularly striking in this presentation, however, is the gaping maw of Saturn captured in the grizzly process of eating his own child, and how similar it is to the many medieval portraits of the ‘hell-mouth’ often depicted in iconography, illuminations and marginalia . The symbolic connection is striking:
What further stands out is the ravenous appetite of Saturn, devouring, as he does, all of his children, and the way in which this central aspect of the myth recalls the imagery of the underworld, linked also with Satan himself, depicted in the Bible as a ravenous animal:
“Sheol and Abaddon will not be satisfied…”
[Prov 27:20a]
“Therefore Sheol has enlarged its throat, and it has opened wide its mouth without limit…”
[Isa 5:14–15]
“Your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
[1 Pet 5:8]
The portrait of Saturn waiting at the knees of Rhea in order to devour his children as they are born, also recalls another portrait in Scripture, that of the dragon of St John’s Apocalypse:
“…the Dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, in order that whenever she gave birth to her child he could devour it…”
[Rev 12:4.]
The mythological portrait of Saturn as the devouring god of death thus links directly, not only with the scriptural portraits of death and Sheol, but also the prince of darkness himself. In a Christian reading of the myth then, we can safely appropriate the imagery of Kronos/Saturn, onto that of the Enemy.
The Harrowing of Saturn
The striking parallels do not stop there, however. In order to spare her only remaining son Zeus, Rhea gives her ravenous husband a stone instead of her son. While Kronos devours the stone, Zeus is sequestered away to be raised in the wilderness:
“Earth received him in broad Crete to nurse him and rear him up…carrying him through the swift black night; she took him in her hands she concealed him in a deep cave, under the hidden places of the holy earth, in the Aegean mountain, abounding with forests.”
[Hesiod Theogony 475-480.]
This, of course, recalls the description of the Messiah in St John’s account, who was “snatched away and taken to God and to his throne” and the woman, who “fled into the wilderness” (Rev 12:5–6) where she is nourished and aided by the earth:
“the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. [in his rage] the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.
[Rev 12:14–16]
When Zeus comes of age, he returns to his mother in secret, who instructs her son to give his father a substance which will cause Kronos to vomit up, first the stone, and then his children:
“Kronos…was beguiled… and brought up again his offspring, vanquished by the arts and might of his own son, and he vomited up first the stone which he had swallowed last…”
[Hesiod Theogony, 495.]
Hesiod mentions also how this stone was erected by Zeus as a testimony to his victory over his gruesome father:
“Zeus set it fast in the wide-pathed earth at goodly Pytho under the glens of Parnassus, to be a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men…”
[Hesiod Theogony, 495.]
Similar indeed is the portrait of the personified ‘stone’ who is Christ, rejected but now exalted:
The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
This is from Yahweh; it is wonderful in our eyes.
[Ps 118:22–23; cf. Matt 21:42]
And also the stone “not cut by human hands” that destroys the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, becoming a mountain and filling the earth (Dan 2:34-35). Indeed, Christ, the stone that was rejected, smashes the teeth of death itself, and now holds authority over Death and Hades (Rev 1:17-18).
Similarly, the language of Zeus freeing his brothers and sisters is vivid, and recalls the depiction of Christ freeing captives from the bonds of death and hades.
“And he freed from their deadly bonds his father's brothers, Sky's sons, whom their father had bound in his folly…”
[Hesiod, Theogony, 501.]
The portrait of Kronos vomiting up, first the stone, and then his children recalls the ‘cornerstone’ who is Christ himself, the “firstborn of the dead” (Col 1:18; Rev 1:8) leading a host of “captives” from the jaws of Hades (Ps 68:18; Eph 4:8). We might also recall how at the great judgment seat of Christ, the dead are called forth, and “Death and Hades gave up the dead in them…” (Rev 20:13), a rather emetic image. Akin to the mythic portrait of Zeus freeing his brothers from the maw of his demonic father, the saints of the Old Testament are freed form the grip of Hell by the power of the Son of God.
In a later section of his poem, Hesiod details the final defeat of Kronos by the hand of Zeus during the cataclysm of the Titanomachy (war with the Titans). The Titans are then imprisoned beneath the earth in Tartarus:
“…the Titans [were] buried… beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound in bitter chains… as far beneath the earth to Tartarus… Round it runs a fence of bronze, and night spreads in triple line all about it like a neck-circlet, while above grow the roots of the earth and unfruitful sea. There by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods are hidden under misty gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth. And they may not go out; for Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon it, and a wall runs all round it on every side…”
[Hesiod, Theogany, 717-718, 726-734]
In comparison, we have, of course, the description of Satan bound beneath the earth (Rev 20:1-3), which draws from older images of the giants (Ezek 32:27-28; 1 En 10:4-6, 12-13; Jub 5:10; 10:5-11) and of the shades in Sheol (Job 26:5; Isaiah 14:9), which some traditions associate with the Titans themselves (Sib. Or. 2:228-232).12 Interestingly, the portrayal of the bonds of iron and bronze gates of Tartarus recalls the words of the Psalms, often interpretated as depictions of the resurrection:
“Rear your heads, O gates!
Be exalted, O gates of the netherworld!
The King of Glory would enter!”
[Ps 24:7-10]13
He brought them out of darkness and gloom, and tore off their bonds.
Let them give thanks to Yahweh for his loyal love and his wonderful deeds for the children of humankind, for he shatters the doors of bronze, and cuts through the bars of iron.
[Ps. 107:14b-16]
These Psalms which are still used today within the oldest Paschal traditions of the Church and are taken as direct references to Christ’s harrowing of Hades.
Some later accounts (most likely a confusion with the Orphic accounts of Dionysius) also attest to the dismemberment of Kronos. While this does not seem to be apart of Hesiod original account, it nevertheless recalls the portrait of the enemies of Christ slain by the “sharp sword of his mouth” (Rev 19:15). Lastly, like the Titans, who are cast into the fiery abyss of Tartarus, Death and Hades are then thrown into the lake of fire following the last judgment (Rev 20:14).
Conclusion
It is arguably significant, therefore, that Christ was “crucified on the day of Saturn.” The mythological portrayal of the defeat of Saturn/Kronos in Hesiod’s Theogony holds several key conceptual parallels to the Christian portrayal of the victory of Christ and the Harrowing of Hades, and serves as a fruitful example of a Christian reading and application of pagan mythology.
Having been devoured by ‘Kronos’, the ravenous god of death and time, Christ defeats the old god by rising from the maw of Hades, causing him to vomit out the children of God he has held captive in his grasp. The victorious Christ binds fast the ravenous beast in his own prison, and leads the redeemed into the glory of God, establishing an everlasting sign for all humanity in his Church, built upon the stone which the builders have rejected.
Thus, Christians worship on the day of the Sun, the commemoration of the dawn of salvation and the victory of the unconquered Sun of Righteousness, who, having “wrought a change in the darkness”, has trampled down death by death, and restored life to all.
For further study see; Michael Falk, "Astronomical Names for the Days of the Week". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. 93 (1999): 122–133.
Somewhat humorously, the Norse, Scandinavian and Icelandic name for' ‘Saturday’ breaks from this model quite drastically: ‘Laugardagr/Lørdag’ means ‘wash day’, as it was the common practice to bathe on this day - I could not determine whether there was a Norse God of bathing. The English is thus modelled purely on the Latin.
C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 56.
E. G. Richards, Mapping Time, the Calendar and History, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Most likely an allusion to the seven days of the creation week (Gen 1:3-2:4).
John Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977) 342.
The Apostolic Constitutions are by no means ‘early’ [4th century]. I simply list them here after the Didache (which it is quoting) as it serves to expand on it.
For more quotes, see; Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity. (Rome: The Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977),
James E. Walker, “Solar Imagery and Early Christian Iconography”, Athanor 1. (1981): 5-12.
BDAG, καιρός, 394-395; χρόνος, 887-889.
Glenn W. Most, Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. LOEB. (London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 39-43.
There is only one other instance in which the Hebrew רְפָאִים ‘Rephaim’ (another name for the giants) is rendered with the Greek “τιτάν”, (2 Kgdms 5:18, 22 LXX).
This translation is taken from Cooper’s brilliant article; Alan Cooper, “Ps 24:7-10: Mythology and Exegesis”, JBL, 102. 1 (1983), 41.