Wisdom and Word among the Hellenistic Saviors: The Function of Literacy

Parallels for developments in Jewish Wisdom and the Jewish use of Word are often sought in Hellenistic cults such as that of Isis, and increasingly the mechanisms of the spread of such religious movements are being investigated. In the Hellenistic period there appeared a number of social and religious developments that may be correlated with the reverence for textuality among some groups, especially among those who revered those cosmic saviors more associated with creation than with fertility or rescue: Isis and Sarapis outside of Egypt, Hekate of the Chaldaean Oracles, Hermes/Thoth of the Egyptian Hermetic literature, Word, Jewish Wisdom, Jesus Christ, and Sethian redeemers such as Barbelo. The philosophical development that formed the intellectual basis for these divinities was Middle Platonism, with its three-tiered system of transcendent divinity, cosmic savior, and human beings, and the social development that formed the political and economic analogy for this was patronage, with its three-tiered system of patron, broker, and client. The cosmic savior was then an alternative broker for an alternative patron, and there was a strong investment in texts that provided a portable focus for the sanctum and an alternative myth of origins for the adherent.