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THIS SITE ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN ROMANS CHAPTER ONE IN REGARDS TO THE CONDEMNATION OF SAME SEX RELATIONS. NOTICE THAT IN THE ATTIS CULT THE PRIEST HAD TO REMOVE HIS EXTERNAL SEXUAL ORGANS BEFORE HE WAS ACCEPTED AS A PRIEST. THIS IS WHERE I GOT THE IDEA FOR PAUL MUTILILATING HIMSELF IN MY NOVEL "RED HEIFER."
TAUROBOLIUM, the sacrifice of a bull, usually in connection with the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods, though not limited to it. Of oriental origin, its first known performance in Italy occurred in A.D. 134, at Puteoli, in honor of Venus Caelestis. Prudentius describes it in Peristephanon (x., 1066ff.): the priest of the Mother, clad in a toga worn cinctu Gabino, with golden crown anti fillets on his head, takes his place in a trench covered by a platform of planks pierced with fine holes, on which a bull, magnificent with flowers and gold, is slain. The blood rains through the platform on to the priest below, who receives it on his face, and even on his tongue and palate, and after the baptism presents himself before his fellow-worshippers purified and regenerated, and receives their salutations and reverence.
The taurobolium in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor, Empire, or community, its date frequently being the 24th of March, the Dies Sanguinis of the annual festival of the Great Mother and Attis. In the late 3rd and the 4th centuries its usual motive was the purification or regeneration of an individual, who was spoken of as renatus in aeternum, reborn for eternity, in consequence of the ceremony (Corp. Insc. Let. Vi. 510512). When its efficacy was not eternal, its effect was considered to endure for twenty years. It was also performed as the fulfilment of a vow, or by command of the goddess herself, and the privilege was limited to no sex nor class. The place of its performance at Rome was near the site of St Peters, in the excavations of which several altars and inscriptions commemorative of taurobolia were discovered.
The taurobolium was probably a sacred drama symbolizing the relations of the Mother and Attis (q.v.). The descent of the priest into the sacrificial foss symbolized the death of Attis, the withering of the vegetation of Mother Earth; his bath of blood and emergence the restoration of Attis, the rebirth of vegetation. The ceremony may be the spiritualized descent of the primitive oriental practice of drinking or being baptized in the blood of an animal, based upon a belief that the strength of brute creation could be acquired by consumption of its substance or contact with its blood. En spite of the phrase renatus in aeternum, there is no reason to suppose that the ceremony was in any way borrowed from Christianity.
See Esperandieu, Inscriptions de Lectoure (1892), pp. 94 if.; Zippel, Festschrift zum Doctorjubilaeum, Ludwig Friedlhnder, 1895, p. 489 f.; Showerman, The Great Mother of the Gods, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 43, pp. 28084 (Madison, 1901); Hepding, Attis, Seine Mythen und Sein Kult (Giessen, 1903), pp. 168 if., 201; Cumont, Le Taurobole et le Culte de Bellone, Revue dhisto-ire et de littrature religieuses, vi., No. 2, 1901. (G. SN.)
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TAUROBOLIUM
In the blood bath called TAUROBOLIUM, the bull was bled above the priest so that the blood could cascade down upon the priest. This site explains this ritual that seems to have been a part of the ritual was done earlier at Taursus than at Rome.
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Red Heifer by Luther Butler deals with the validity of the belief that the Bible was verbally dictated by a God who made the writer write without any regards to the author's personal experience. When the Apostle Paul probably dictated the epistle to the Romans did he write his own thoughts, or was he merely a puppet whose hand was directed by Supreme Being? In other words,did Paul condemn same sex relations because God forced him to do so or did he make this condemnation because of a bad experience in a pagan place of worship? Red Heifer is fiction based on research done in ancient writings some of which would have been available to the Apostle. Modern theologians have made the mistake of separating the humanity of Biblical people from the world in which the authors lived. After all, Paul like other men who wrote the Bible, was flesh and blood influenced by his own experiences.
