A visual overview of how, amid the Roman recension, the Egyptian god Osiris was split three ways into: Jesus Crucified, God the Father, and Lazarus (see: Raising of Lazarus); Anubis became John the Baptist; and Horus became Jesus the infant born to a virgin Mary (see: Isis), in short. |
“The conduct of Roman religion was managed by the politicians. The senate was endowed with supreme authority in all matters religious. They delegated decisions to the four main priesthoods, the ‘pontifices’, i.e. the advisory board of priests who assisted the magistrates in their sacra functions, the ‘augurs’, the quindecimviri sacris faciundis (fifteen men in charge of the ritual who were custodians of the Sibylline books, and the septemviri epunoum (the seven in charge of feasts), but the individuals appointed to these offices were not a priestly caste, but men active in public affairs.”— Patrick Walsh (1998), “Introduction” to Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods [1]