Jesus and Perseus against the background of common Greco-Roman thinking

Abstract

The intention of the article is to retell Ovid’s story of Perseus who was conceived virginally and to show why the second-century philosopher Celsus thought that the Christians unjustifiably mirrored this Greek hero, child of Zeus, in their depiction of Jesus. According to the myth, Perseus was the abandoned son of Danae by Zeus. This story was not only very familiar in the first-century Greco-Roman world, but also came to mind when Gentile philosophers of that period reflected on what Christians said about Jesus, child of God. The article argues that the divine births in the mythological narratives of the gods and the emperor cult form the background against which Luke represented the birth of Jesus in light of the hellenistically interpreted Old-Testament traditions concerning the holy men of God.