Is Adonis a Greek, Roman or Phoenician god?

Answer 1

Adonis, it seems was based very heavily on Tammuz.
His name is Semitic, a variation on the word "adon" meaning "lord" that was also used, as "Adonai", to refer to Yahweh in the Old Testament.
When the Hebrews first arrived in Canaan, they were opposed by the king of the Jebusites, Adonizedek, whose name means "lord of Zedek" (Justice).
Yet there is no trace of a Semitic cult directly connected with Adonis, and no trace in Semitic languages of any specific mythemes connected with his Greek myth; both Greek and Near Eastern scholars have questioned the connection (Burkert, p 177 note 6 bibliography).
The connection in cult practice is with Adonis' Mesopotamian counterpart, Tammuz:

"Women sit by the gate weeping for Tammuz, or they offer incense to Baal on roof-tops and plant pleasant plants.
These are the very features of the Adonis cult: a cult confined to women which is celebrated on flat roof-tops on which sherds sown with quickly germinating green salading are placed, Adonis gardens... the climax is loud lamentation for the dead god." —Burkert, p. 177).

A 19th-century reproduction of a Greek bronze of Adonis found at PompeiiWhen the cult of Adonis was incorporated into Greek culture is debated: Hesiod made him the son of Phoinix, eponym of the Phoenicians, and his association with Cyprus is not attested before the classical era.
W. Atallah[2] suggests that the later Hellenistic myth of Adonis represents the conflation of two independent traditions.

Adonis was worshipped in unspoken mystery religions: not until Imperial Roman times (in Lucian of Samosata, De Dea Syria, ch. 6 [1]) does any written source mention that the women were consoled by a revived Adonis.
Women in Athens would plant "gardens of Adonis" quick-growing herbs that sprang up from seed and died.
The Festival of Adonis was celebrated by women at midsummer by sowing fennel and lettuce, and grains of wheat and barley.
The plants sprang up soon, and withered quickly, and women mourned for the untimely death of the vegetation god (Detienne 1972).


Birth and death of Adonis

Aphrodite and Adonis, Attic red-figure aryballos-shaped lekythos by Aison, ca. 410 BC, Louvre.Adonis' birth is shrouded in confusion for those who require a single, authoritative version.
The resolutely patriarchal Hellenes sought a father for the god, and found him in Byblos and Cyprus, faithful indicators of the direction from which his cult had come to them.
In Cyprus, the cult of Adonis gradually superseded the cult of Cinyras.[3]
Walter Burkert questions whether Adonis had not from the very beginning come to Greece with Aphrodite (Burkert 1985, p. 177).

Multiple versions of the birth of Adonis exist: The most commonly accepted version is that Aphrodite urged Myrrha to commit incest with her father, Theias, the King of Smyrna or Syria (which helps confirm the area of Adonis' origins). Myrrha's nurse helped with the scheme, and Myrrha coupled with her father in the darkness.
When Theias at last discovered this deception by means of an oil lamp, he flew into a rage, chasing his daughter with a knife.
Myrrha fled from her father, and Aphrodite turned her into a myrrh tree.
When Theias shot an arrow into the tree — or when a boar used its tusks to rend the tree's bark — Adonis was born from the tree.
This myth fits both Adonis' nature as a vegetation god and his origins from the hot foreign desert lands where the myrrh tree grew. (It was not to be seen in Greece.)

Pseudo-Apollodorus, (Bibliotheke, 3.182) considered Adonis to be the son of Cinyras, of Paphos on Cyprus, and Metharme.
Hesiod, in a fragment, believes he is the son of Phoenix and Aephesiboea.

Death of Adonis, by Luca Giordano.

As soon as Adonis was born. the baby was so beautiful that Aphrodite placed him in a closed chest, which she delivered for security to Persephone, who was also entranced by his unearthly beauty and refused to give him back.
The argument between the goddess of love and the goddess of death was settled, either by Zeus or Calliope, with Adonis spending four months with Aphrodite, who seduced him with the help of Helene, her friend, four months with Persephone and four months of the years to himself.
Some say Aphrodite eventually seduced Adonis into spending his four months alone with her.

Adonis died at the tusks of a wild boar, sent by either Artemis in retaliation for Aphrodite instigating the death of Hippolytus, a favorite of the huntress goddess, or Aphrodite's paramour, Ares.[4]
As Aphrodite sprinkled nectar on his body, each drop of Adonis' blood turned into a blood-red anemone, and the river Adonis (modern Nahr Ibrahim) flowing out of Mount Lebanon in coastal Lebanon ran red, according to Lucian (chs. 6 – 9).
Therefore, Persephone ultimately laid claim to Adonis as his shade was transported forever more to the Underworld.
Lucian, who attributes the color of the river Adonis to siltation, adds "Nonetheless, there are some inhabitants of Byblos who say that Osiris of Egypt lies buried among them, and the mourning and the ceremonies are all made in honor of Osiris instead of Adon" [2].
Certainly there are many parallels with the myth of Osiris, encased in the coffin, imprisoned in the tree from which he issues forth.

"In Greece" Burkert concludes, "the special function of the Adonis cult is as an opportunity for the unbridled expression of emotion in the strictly circumscribed life of women, in contrast to the rigid order of polis and family with the official women's festivals in honour of Demeter."

The most detailed and literary version of the story of Adonis is Ovid, Metamorphoses, x

Answer 2

Adonis is mainly known from Greek mythology but was imported from Phoenician folklore. Adonis was a Canaanite God from Lebanon before he was a Greek god. He was carved with a Roman body in a famous sculpture.

Answer 3

Adonis was originally the consort of the Phoenician (that is Lebanese-Syrian) goddess Ashtarte.

The nearby Greek Cyprians adopted him as the consort of Aphrodite, their chief goddess, and his cult entered through there into Greece.

The Adonia spring-time festival became quite popular in the Greek and Roman world.

For all the Greek and Roman versions of his story see:
http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/AphroditeLoves2.html#Adonis

The Greek poets modified the story to their own tastes. Its hard to say how much of it is genuinly Phoenician, since there is no surviving literature from this culture on the subject.

Answer 4

All of the above. Like every Greco-Roman deity (although Adonis was not worshiped under the Greeks) he began with the Phoenicians, was adopted and re-made by the Greeks and carbon-copied by the Romans, who passed him down to us, through European culture, in which he is the archetype of Masculine beauty.

Answer 5

Hotep, Very interesting, I have done a little research on that as well. Well, first and foremost, the Christian religion is not Jewish in origin; but Egyptian. However, that is an argument for another time. The Hebrew religion should have had man-gods or godsons (sun). Some of the ancestors to the modern day Jews and Arabs were the first to come in contact with the society that produced the man-gods or son of gods; the Egyptians. A lot of the Hebrew religion is a mixture of Egyptian mythology and "Jewish history," and their own myths. The first society accredited with creating the "One God" belief was the Egyptians. Furthermore, everything from the law, the story of Noah, and Moses were copied from the Egyptians. I think because they were at war with the Egyptians and was forced to leave the region, they were unable to further evolve their new found religion from the Egyptians. Next, they were later conquered by the Babylonians and adopted some of their beliefs. That is why two of the "rivers" flowing from the garden of eden are in Iraq, while the other two are in Africa. Then, of course you already know the Greeks invaded, then the romans invaded. I believe that these invasions stunted the growth of the Jewish religion. They became more secretive and inward, had they the time to grow they would have. Salaam, shalom, peace

Answer 6

Interesting you asked that question. Within the last two weeks I have begun some rather intense Bible study and Bible culture study.

It seems the cultures of the ancient wolrd were much more advanced than I ever realized. And their cultures sort of grow from one another. The Greeks borrowed from the Babylonians/Persians. And the Romans borrowed from the Greeks.

Adonis was borrowed if that is the proper term from the Babylonians/Persians by the Greeks. Later the Romans also borrow this ida from the Greeks and had their own God.

Answer 7

Greek

Answer 8

Actually, Adonis in Greek mythology, was a beautiful youth beloved by the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. Born of the incestuous union of King Cinyras of Cyprus and his daughter, Adonis was concealed in a chest and placed in the custody of Persephone, queen of the underworld. When Adonis was slain by a wild boar while hunting, Aphrodite pleaded with the god Zeus to restore him to her. Zeus decreed that Adonis should spend the winter months with Persephone in Hades and the summer months with Aphrodite. The story of his death and resurrection is symbolic of the natural cycle of death and rebirth. The name Adonis is etymologically related to adon, a Semitic word meaning “lord” that occurs in the Old Testament in the form Adonai.

Answer 9

Adonis wasn't a god but rather a deity in greek mythology.

Answer 10

Adonis is greek-and I'm not sure if he is a god I think that he was a prince of some sorts.

Answer 11

He is the Greek version of Semitic Adonai, a castrated and sacrificed savior-god.