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>>Onolatry is the supposed worship of the donkey. In Imperial Rome, the charge of onolatry was used by the pagans to taunt the Jews and first Christians.[1][need quotation to verify][2] The association of Jews with donkeys was a common feature of Hellenic as well as Latin ethnographic and historical writings, and included accusations of worshipping a golden donkey head and even sacrificing foreigners to it at intervals.[3] A famous example of this is the Alexamenos graffito.[4]
The charge was likely first used against Jews in Egypt, where donkeys were at some points associated with Set, the murderer of Osiris who is in turn destroyed by Isis.[5] It is first attested in the late first century BCE, and was used against Christians extensively in the first and second centuries CE before disappearing almost entirely in the third.[6] The accusation against the Christians is discussed by Tertullian and Minucius Felix, among other early Christian apologists.[7]
Arthur Bernard Cook, in an 1894 article, argued that there had been an ancient Mycenaean cult practising onolatry, citing a fresco depicting donkey-headed figures found near a sacrificial pit and several carved gems apparently showing people wearing donkeys' heads and skins holding sacrificial objects, and further describing the diverse roles asses played in Ancient Greek mythology.[8] His interpretation was challenged at the time by Andrew Lang in Longman's Magazine.[9]"
"It seems to have been commonly believed at the time that Christians practiced onolatry (donkey-worship). That was based on the misconception that Jews worshipped a god in the form of a donkey, a claim made by Apion (30-20 BC – c. AD 45-48) and denied by Josephus.[24]
>>Origen reports in his treatise Contra Celsum that the pagan philosopher Celsus made the same claim against Christians and Jews.[25]
Clownworld is taking me for a spin today.
