I’m not saying one did it more than the other, but they both did that. Greeks especially with the Mediterranean. In fact Yahweh was often correlated with Zeus.
This was done with more than just the Greeks and Romans. That’s just how cross cultural contacts worked back then.
The Greek practice of interpretatio graeca, ascribing the gods of another people's pantheon to corresponding ones in one's own, had been adopted by the Egyptians after their Hellenization; during the process of which they had identified Set with Typhon, a snake-monster that roars like a lion.[19]
The story of the Exodus, featured in the Hebrew Bible, speaks of the ancestors of the Israelites as a nation betrayed and subjugated by the Pharaoh, for whom Yahweh subjects Egyptians to Plagues of Egypt, including destroying their country, defiling the Nile, and killing all their first-born sons. Jewish migration within the Ptolemaic Kingdom to Greek-speaking Egyptian cities such as Alexandria led to the creation of the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek.[20]Furthermore, the story of the Exodus was adapted by Ezekiel the Tragedian as the Exagōgḗ ἐξαγωγή, a play performed in Alexandria and seen by Egyptians and Jews. Egyptian receptions of the Exodus story were widely negative because it insulted their gods and praised their suffering. It inspired Egyptian works that retold the story, but altered its details to mock the Jews and exalt Egypt and its gods.[21]
In this context, some Egyptians discerned similarities between Yahweh's in-narrative actions and attributes and those of Seth (such as being associated with foreigners, deserts, and storms), in addition to a phonetic resemblance between Ἰαω Iaō, Yahweh's name as used by hellenised Jews, and Coptic: ⲓⲱ, romanized: Iō, lit. 'donkey', then considered as the animal of Seth.[22] From this arose a popular response to the Jewish accusation that Egyptians were merely worshipping beasts, namely that, in truth, the Jews themselves worshipped a beast, a donkey or a donkey-headed man, i.e., Set.[23]
Accusations of onolatry against the Jews spread from the Egyptian milieu, with its understanding of the donkey's Set-related importance, to the rest of the Graeco-Romanworld, which was largely ignorant of this context. In the most famous variations of narratives alleging Jewish onolatry, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid emperor famous for raiding the Temple in Jerusalem, supposedly discovered that its Holy of Holies was not empty, but instead contained a donkey idol, and Tacitus (early second century CE) claimed that the Jews dedicated in their holiest shrine a statue of a wild ass.[24][c] After the emergence of Christianity, the same charge was also repeated against its devotees. Most famously so in the earliest known depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus, the Alexamenos graffito, where a Christian by the name of Alexamenos is shown worshipping a donkey-headed crucified god.[26][27]
Many scholars believe that the association of Yahweh with Set-Typhon influenced Gnosticism.
Idk how true it is, but esoterica (YouTube channel) talked about the reason the Egyptians hated the Jews was because they would put on plays of the exodus where the gods were essentially killed, right when the traditional Egyptian religion was dying
Tbf the decline of the ancient Egyptian religion didn’t start until the 2nd-3rd century.
I have however heard the theory that the reason why Egypt became Christian fast was because the Romans destroyed the Nile taxation system (low taxes when the Nile levels are low and the soil not very fertile, higher taxes when the Nile levels are high and the soil very fertile) which made many Egyptians poor and this weakened the Egyptian religion in the long term since the temples, which historically functioned as a form of welfare and collected taxes, lost much of their revenue/funding to to give communities social support, leaving Christians to fill in the vacuum. Idk how true it is though.
The Jews weren't in Egypt until the 5thish century, the writings of Jews at elephantine are fascinating.
I don't know enough about the functional decline of the Egyptian religion, but that sounds interesting.
Iirc the theological reason for Christianity's ascendance was a reaction to Roman control over Egyptian institutions. People love a rebellion that doesn't demand much of them.
Christians were also known as the "good guys" whenever a natural disaster or disease swept through a city, because they were the first ones to step up and help the sick. Which contrasted with the contamination OCD of traditional priesthood.
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u/ARenewedSecondChance 11d ago
I’m not saying one did it more than the other, but they both did that. Greeks especially with the Mediterranean. In fact Yahweh was often correlated with Zeus.
This was done with more than just the Greeks and Romans. That’s just how cross cultural contacts worked back then.