The Roman two-faced god of transitions and the start of a new year.
Since the Romans “borrowed” large amounts Greek culture, it’s fun to find mythological traditions that are uniquely Roman. Janus is a Roman god with no Greek equivalent. He was created before the importation of the Greek pantheon and even before the foundation of Rome itself. Typically he is depicted as just a head with two faces looking in opposite directions. He’s the god of transitions, change, beginnings & endings, of doorways & gates, etc. He faces both the past and the future.
Originally spelled Ianus, since the letter “J” wasn’t added to the Western alphabet until after 1524 CE, janus meant “arched passage, doorway” in Latin. There were numerous jani (ceremonial gateways) built throughout Rome as superstitious freestanding structures for good luck and to bring about good beginnings.
The exact origin of Janus is unclear. There are theories that he was originally a sun god, as the sun would be the beginning of a new day, but this isn’t certain. What is better known is that he presided over beginnings and was invoked at the start of ceremonies. His being the gatekeeper to the gods meant you made an offering to him before reaching out to any of the other gods.
Janus in profile. Sometimes the faces are identical, but other times the one face is older & bearded while the other face is clean-shaven & younger.
Start All Over Again
Janus’s role as the god of transitions led to the month of January being named for him, as on January 1st we start not only a new day but a new month and a new year as well. The Romans believed that how something started was an indication of how it would go. An inauspicious start could prove disastrous to a new venture so it was important to make an offering to Janus.
So it became customary on January 1st to not only honor Janus, but to give gifts & well-wishes to other Romans. This could set the standard for the rest of the year. At the start of a new year it’s valuable to not just look back, but also to look forward to something new.
The characters of Calvin and Hobbes are named after a theologian and a philosopher.
The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features a six year old boy named Calvin and his sometimes anthropomorphic stuffed tiger Hobbes. The two are named after 16th century protestant theologian John Calvin and 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The characters of Calvin and Hobbes are decidedly a lot more fun than their namesakes.
John Calvin
Born in France in 1509, John Calvin trained to be a lawyer but moved to Geneva, Switzerland and became a major figure in the protestant reformation that was spreading across Europe at the time. Unlike Martin Luther, who looked to work with Catholic doctrine but make some changes, Calvin threw it all out and started from scratch creating an entirely new school of Christian thought. Among other things his new theology taught that we can’t know anything about God except what God chooses to reveal to us, that because of Original Sin we are driven to sin unless God steps in to help us, that you only partially have free will because God has predetermined your fate to end up in Heaven or Hell so you’re going to end up doing what it takes to merit the one you are destined for, and that there is nothing you can do about any of this.
The Catholic Church used to name heretical movements after the founder (such as Lutheranism). Similarly, this is how Calvinism was born. Calvin’s ideas for reformation became influential with a host of protestant groups including the Presbyterians, the Puritans, and the Huguenots. Calvin also believed that “… the human heart is a perpetual idol factory”, and that religious art was a distraction. This is why Calvinist churches are so plain and without statues or other ornamentation. Until this time the Catholic Church had been a lucrative source of work for artists, but because of the reformation movement’s austere aesthetic, to earn a living artists were forced to either produce more secular art or move to other cities or countries where the reformation hadn’t taken hold as strongly. This simple aesthetic applied to Calvinist clothing as well (such as the simple styles and Sunday black clothes of the Puritans).
In politics Calvin believed in the separation of church and state, but he also believed that politicians & royalty were in positions of power because God willed it. As such authority figures should be submissively obeyed even when said figures are unworthy of such deference (except if they are leading you astray from God). Which is kind of like Thomas Hobbes …
Thomas Hobbes
Born in 1588, 24 years after Calvin’s death, Thomas Hobbes’s world view was strongly influenced by the destruction brought about by the English Civil War. From this he produced Leviathan, which is his 1651 treatise of social contract political theory. In short, he believed that, when left on our own and without government, humans are violent and selfish. He believed we need government to help us rise above our base instincts. Without a political community he said that the life would be “… solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Similar to Calvin’s view that humans are compelled to selfishness & sin, Hobbes’s political philosophy was that without a government, the default “state of nature” for humans is chaotic and violent.
This is the basis for his argument that we not only need government but that we also must obey authority figures even when said figures leave a lot to be desired. In his mind, an abusive dictatorial government was still better than no government at all. There was almost no place for political revolution in Hobbes’s version of the social contract.
It’s worth noting that the foundation for Hobbes’s argument, the belief that without government “uncivilized” humans would engage in constant bickering & violence and would always be looking over their shoulder for attacks from others, isn’t necessarily true. The philosophical novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn partially explores this assumption and how the competition for greater wealth is what incites violence. Many early tribal groups living within their means were able to live in relative stability. It has also been argued that, as humans became more sedentary in civilizations, warfare increased because humans couldn’t move away from one another to avoid conflict.
Even keeping to 17th century social contract philosophy there are arguments against Hobbes’s ideas. John Locke also believed in the benefits of having a strong government, but he believed that if that government was jeopardizing your natural rights to “life, liberty, and property” you had the right of revolution to overthrow the government. Thomas Jefferson later copy & pasted Locke’s ideas for the Declaration of Independence.
Calvin & Hobbes
Ultimately both Calvin and Hobbes had fairly dim views of humanity. They believed that without an authority figure (be it God or be it a political leader) humans were by default mean and unable to make better lives for themselves. Fortunately the fictional Calvin and Hobbes are a lot more positive than their namesakes.
Calvin and Hobbes crossing a log bridge appeared in the The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book. It was later parodied by Nina Matsumoto showing the actual Calvin and Hobbes as Calvin and Hobbes crossing the log, and has since become a much parodied meme.
Dante’s fictional ideas of Hell are largely responsible for what most people think of as Hell.
Completed in 1320, the Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Italian Dante Alighieri. It is divided up into three sections:
Inferno / Hell
Purgatorio / Purgatory
Paradiso / Paradise
Making himself the protagonist, the Divine Comedy tells the story of Dante’s journey to the underworld (Hell) and his eventual ascent to paradise (Heaven). It’s the first installment of this story, Inferno, that most people are familiar with. Inferno follows Dante down through nine very organized levels of Hell where each level down is for more terrible sinners. In the lowest level of Hell we find the devil along with the very worst sinners (those guilty of treachery).
What is Hell?
The Bible is fairly silent in regards to describing Hell. The specific word “Hell” is nowhere in the Bible. As far as a place in the afterlife full of punishment & suffering, the Old Testament doesn’t have one. The Old Testament has Sheol but everyone goes there – the good and the bad. It isn’t until the New Testament that a place of damnation is established with a few sketchy details. When someone dies, if they were righteous their name is in the book of life and they get eternal reward in Heaven. Those who don’t make the cut get a one-way trip to suffering city. While not given a name we’re told that this place has an unceasing fiery lake, that there is gnashing of teeth, and eternal suffering. There aren’t many more details than that. Enter, Dante’s Inferno.
Botticelli painting of the Inferno
Pop culture Hell
Dante’s Inferno creatively fills in the blanks left by the scant Hellish details of the Bible. For starters, Dante puts Hell underground (which is never specified in the Bible). The idea that there are different kinds of punishments for different kinds of sins is also invented by Dante. Similarly, the idea that there are different levels of Hell, each more awful than the previous, is also his literary creation. Interestingly Buddhism has places in the afterlife for punishment that are a lot closer to Dante’s idea of Hell than anything Christianity has ever created.
In the Inferno’s ninth and lowest level of Hell Dante finds Satan, but the Bible never says Satan is in Hell. Similar to the idea of Hell, Satan isn’t created/introduced until the New Testament. Satan’s origin story is convoluted with lots of retconning, but one way or another Satan is cast out of Heaven and sent down to Earth where he must live until the second coming of Jesus. Only on Judgement Day will he be cast down into what we now call Hell as a final punishment. Until then Satan is presumably wandering the Earth, causing trouble, but he is certainly not ruling Hell as we tend to think of him. Further, Dante depicts Satan as a giant monstrous beast with 3 faces and large bat like wings. It makes for a scarier story, but none of it is in the Bible. Of course if Satan could have at one point been a beautiful fallen angel, but also have potentially been a serpent, maybe he could also turn into a monster. The Bible is silent on the potential shape-shifting super powers of Satan.
Gustave Doré etching of Satan in the Inferno
Ultimately, when we think of Satan ruling over the administration of various punishments in a stalactite & stalagmite cavernous underground Hell we are thinking of the influence of Dante’s Inferno. None of this is in the Bible. After hundreds of years and untold number of other works of fiction, what we think of as Hell is more influenced by popular culture than the Bible. Add to this that most people have never read the Bible, and it’s easy to see how Dante has done more for Hell than scripture.
Added bonus: Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in the Florentine Tuscan dialect of Italian instead of Latin (which would have been the literary language of the time). Because it was written in the language of the people, the Divine Comedy was more accessible to more people which only increased its popularity. This helped popularize the Florentine Tuscan dialect of Italian which eventually became the standard Italian language that we know today.
Moses spent a period of time in art with horns because of a mistranslation.
During the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance, Moses was frequently depicted in art as having horns on his head, including in a statue by Michelangelo. This was all because of a mistranslation from the Hebrew text.
The mistranslation of Exodus 34:29 said that Moses came down from Mount Sinai and his face was “horned from the conversation of the Lord” but it should have been translated as his face was “shining/radiant from conversation of the Lord”.
So the paintings & sculptures of Moses with mutant horns should have just been Moses with a rosy glow.
A collection of Moses depicted with horns from over the centuries.
