Such a view could certainly not have been held
if the rituals of the two gods had not been so alike as to be almost
indistinguishable. Herodotus found the similarity between the rites
of Osiris and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the
latter could have arisen independently; they must, he supposed, have
been recently borrowed, with slight alterations, by the Greeks from
the Egyptians. Again, Plutarch, a very keen student of comparative
religion, insists upon the detailed resemblance of the rites of
Osiris to those of Dionysus. We cannot reject the evidence of such
intelligent and trustworthy witnesses on plain matters of fact which
fell under their own cognizance. Their explanations of the worships
it is indeed possible to reject, for the meaning of religious cults
is often open to question; but resemblances of ritual are matters of
observation. Therefore, those who explain Osiris as the sun are
driven to the alternative of either dismissing as mistaken the
testimony of antiquity to the similarity of the rites of Osiris,
Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of interpreting all these
rites as sun-worship.
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