The Donkey deity

I am currently reading “The Apocryphal Gospels” translated by Simon Gathercole. It features numerous non-canonical texts, some gnostic, some that are not, as well as fragments. As I have mentioned elsewhere, it is always a pleasure to read new translations of various texts which gives me a new perspective (and in the case of Gospel of Judas, can drastically change the meaning of the story). This blog post is regarding a fragment by Epiphanius. I have made posts about his works before and knew I would come back to him. The story I am referring to is a Gnostic lost text titled “The Book of Mary”. Epiphanius describes a scene from the book detailing the death of John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias. Here is the actual English translation of Epiphanius’ commentary, from “The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis”:

“They blaspheme not only Abraham, Moses, Elijah and the whole choir of prophets, but the God who chose them as well. Indeed, they have ventured countless other forgeries. They say that one book is a “Birth of Mary,” and they palm some horrid, baneful things off in it and say that they get them from it. On its authority they say that Zacharias was killed in the temple because he had seen a vision, and when he wanted to reveal the vision his mouth was stopped from fright. For at the hour of incense, while he was burning it, he saw a man standing there, they say, with the form of an ass. And when he had come out and wanted to say “Woe to you, whom are you worshiping?” the person he had seen inside in the temple stopped his mouth so that he could not speak. But when his mouth was opened so that he could speak, then he revealed it to them and they killed him. And that, they say, is how Zacharias died. This, they say, is why the priest was ordered to wear bells by the lawgiver himself. Whenever he went in to officiate, the object of his worship would hear them jangle and hide, so that no one would spy the imaginary face of his form.”

In Simon Gathercole’s book, he offers his own commentary regarding this section and states that pagans would taunt Jews (and by default, Christians) as worshipping a donkey headed deity. There is the infamous Alexamenos graffito piece that depicts Jesus as a donkey headed deity:

This “Book of Mary” fragment is an explanation of this group to side with the pagans in describing the Jewish god (i.e. the demiurge) and oddly enough, give an explanation on why priests wear bells into the temple. I thought this fragment would be great to test out in the Midjourney A.I. art program, so behold, the donkey deity:

Wiki entry on the Alexamenos graffito: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito

bP