{{Short description|Ancient worship of donkeys}} [[File:Jesus graffito.jpg|upright|thumb|2nd Century CE, the satirical Alexamenos graffito]] {{use dmy dates |date=April 2020}} '''Onolatry''' is the supposed worship of the donkey during antiquity. In Imperial Rome, the charge of onolatry was used as a polemic against Jews and Jewish Christians.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Suffering of the Impassible God |last=Gavrilyuk |first=Paul L. |year=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-926982-2 |pages=76 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jFsg-VB6ANwC&pg=PA76 |access-date=2008-10-14}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wellman|first=T. J.|year=2008|title=Making Tradition of an Ass. Zênôn the Alexandrian, a White Donkey, and Conversion to Hellenism|journal=Religion and Theology|volume=15|issue=3|pages=321–339|doi=10.1163/157430108X376564}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Cueva | first1=E.P. | last2=Byrne | first2=S.N. | title=A Companion to the Ancient Novel | publisher=Wiley | series=Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World | year=2014 | isbn=978-1-4443-3602-3 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fl5IAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA183 | access-date=2018-07-11 | page=183}}</ref> The Egyptian and Greek Alexandrians would equate the Judahite deity Yahweh as being Set/Typhon, a chaotic god of the deserts, storms and violence.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Slade |first=Dr Darren M. |date=2024-02-11 |title=How Yahweh Became a Donkey-Headed Egyptian Demon Called Set |url=https://www.gcrr.org/post/yahweh-and-set |access-date=2025-12-23 |website=GCRR |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Litwa |first=M. David |title=The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea |date=2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-756643-5 |location=New York, NY |chapter=The Donkey Deity |oclc=1243261365}}</ref> It is first attested in the second century BCE,<ref name=":0" /> and was used against Christians extensively in the first and second centuries CE before disappearing almost entirely in the third.<ref name="Ramelli">{{cite book |last=Ramelli |first=Ilaria |chapter=Apuleius and Christianity: The Novelist-Philosopher in front of a New Religion| editor=Pinheiro, M.P.F. | editor2=Bierl, A. | editor3=Beck, R. | title=Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel | publisher=De Gruyter| year=2013 | isbn=978-3-11-031190-7 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L7DpBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA148 | page=148}}</ref> The accusation against the Jews is discussed by Josephus in his ''Against Apion II.7.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Josephus: Against Apion II |url=http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/apion-2.html |website=penelope.uchicago.edu}}</ref>'' As well as those targeted at Christians being addressed by Tertullian and Minucius Felix, among other early Christian apologists.<ref>{{cite book |chapter=The Ass (in Caricature of Christian Beliefs and Practices) |author=Hassett, M. |date=1907 |title=The Catholic Encyclopedia |publisher=Robert Appleton Company.}}</ref> A famous example of this is the Alexamenos graffito, showing a crucified man with the head of a donkey.<ref>{{cite book |last=Herbermann |first=Charles George |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=THEqAAAAMAAJ&q=Onolatry+%2Balexamenos |title=The Catholic Encyclopedia |publisher=The Encyclopedia Press |year=1907 |pages=793 |access-date=2008-10-14}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Animal Worship in the Mycenaean Age |author=A.B. Cook |journal=The Journal of Hellenic Studies|volume=14 |date=1894|pages=81–169 |doi=10.2307/623962|jstor=623962 |s2cid=162848452 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/2342881 }}</ref> His interpretation was challenged at the time by Andrew Lang in Longman's Magazine.<ref>{{cite book |chapter=At the Sign of the Ship| title=Longman's Magazine | volume=24 | year=1894 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=clIcAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA546 | access-date=2018-07-11 | page=546}}</ref>
==See also== * Alexamenos graffito * Cultural references to donkeys * History of early Christianity
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *{{in lang|it}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=C3IrPabnaM0C&dq=onolatria&pg=PA116 ''Tiberio...'', of Zvi Yavetz, on ''books.google.it'']
{{Donkeys}}
Category:Anti-Christian sentiment in Europe Category:Antisemitism in Europe Category:Donkey deities Category:Animal worship Category:Set (deity)