This idea became a symbol of human immortality in the Eleusinian mysteries, presumably derived from older sources which go back to religious cults in Babylonia and Asia Minor, and the Christian doctrine is apparently derived from the same tradition. Paul says (1 Cor. xv. 36-38):
EROS IN THE UNDERWORLD.
Votive terra-cotta tablet.
“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.”
Jesus echoes the same argument and uses the same simile of the grain of wheat in John xii. 24:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
The most important document still at our command relating to the chthonian Venus is a fragmentary poem called “Istar’s Descent to Hell.” The main subject is introduced in order to justify the possibility of conjuring the dead from Sheol. Dr. Jeremias[17] explains the situation as follows:
“A man grieves over the death of his sister. He consults a magus as to how to release the spirit of the deceased from the prison of Hades. The priest tells him the story of Istar’s descent to Sheol for the sake of proving that the gates of Sheol are not unconquerable, and advises him to address Istar, the conqueror of Hades, and Tammuz her consort, with prayer and sacrifice, in order to gain their assistance. He is requested to comply with funeral ceremonies at the coffin of the dead and to begin his mourning with the assistance of the Uhats, the companions of Istar. The spirit of the dead, hearing the lamentations of her brother, requests him to rescue her from the horrors of Sheol through mourners’ music and sacrifices in the days of Tammuz, which is the time when the people sing and weep, as told by Ezekiel viii. 14, and mourn for their dead under the shape of Tammuz. The concluding lines of the poem, which are summed up in these words, form the core of the whole, while the legend of Istar’s descent to Sheol is only an introduction to it, and constitutes a part of the conjuration of the dead. From other documents of Babylonian literature we learn that on the names of Istar and Tammuz, the hero and heroine of the legends of the descent to Sheol, depend the hopes of a rescue from Sheol.” (Loc cit., pp. 7-8.)
It appears that people celebrated with special preference the days of the god Tammuz, who represented the disappearance of vegetation and its resurrection to life. The legend of Istar’s descent[18] to Sheol reads in the translation based on Dr. Jeremias’s version as follows: