If Heaven Is Holy, Why Do Priests Use Cinnamon?

Across Scripture and across empires, fragrance is never incidental. Incense rises in temples. Spices are burned for the dead. Cinnamon appears in sacred anointing oil. Smoke ascends toward heaven — or toward something claiming to be heaven.

This is not merely about aroma. It is about mediation, ascent, offering, and power. From Bashan to Tyre, from Hermon to Rome, from temple courts to imperial altars, the same symbols recur — fire, fragrance, kingship, and the unseen.

Today we follow the pattern.

Before the cross, worship was bound to a sanctuary. It required location, lineage, and regulated ritual. Spices such as cinnamon belonged to a consecrated system administered by Levitical priests. Fragrance was part of an earthly mediation. Holiness was approached through prescribed materials.

But in John 4:23, Jesus announces a decisive shift: “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” No mountain is required. No temple court. No restricted altar. The axis of worship moves from geography to reality. Mediation becomes personal and direct.

After the resurrection, the New Testament does not reinforce the material system; it redefines it. In Revelation 5:8, incense appears again, but it is explicitly interpreted: “which are the prayers of saints.” The text does not describe priests compounding spices. It does not describe earthly censers maintained by hereditary orders. It tells us plainly what the incense now is; prayer.

Under the Old Covenant, priests burned fragrance in a physical sanctuary. Under the New Covenant, the saints’ prayers rise without intermediary spice. The material form is replaced by its fulfillment.

From a New Covenant perspective, nothing physical is required to gain access to God. No incense. No altar. No animal. No earthly priesthood. Christ has fulfilled the system. What once operated through shadow now stands complete in Him.

If that is the case, then the continued reliance on ritual smoke cannot be defended as necessity. The New Testament nowhere commands its continuation. It describes the reality to which it pointed.

The New Testament addresses the question of sacrifice with unmistakable clarity, especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Hebrews argues that the Temple system was a shadow, a provisional structure anticipating fulfillment. Christ is presented as the true High Priest, not serving in an earthly sanctuary but in the heavenly reality to which the earthly one pointed. His sacrifice is described as once-for-all. No repetition. No continuation. No supplementary offering required. If incense formed part of that Temple framework, then in terms of atonement it no longer functions as necessary. Hebrews makes that explicit: the sacrificial system has reached completion in Christ.

When incense reappears in the New Testament, it does so in a transformed register. In Revelation 5:8, the incense is identified directly as “the prayers of the saints.”

So the question becomes precise: is incense necessary? Necessary for salvation? For forgiveness? For access to God? The New Testament answer is no. Christ is sufficient.

If Christ fulfilled everything, why retain elements that resemble the temple order?

Now we come to Revelation 18:13.

When “Babylon” falls, the merchants of the earth mourn the loss of their cargo. The list is long and deliberate:

“…cargo of gold, and silver, and precious stones… and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense… and slaves, and souls of men.”

Cinnamon appears in that list. Not as consecrated oil. Not as priestly compound. Not as sacred anointing. It appears as merchandise.

It is grouped with luxury imports; precious metals, perfumes, indulgent goods; and the list climaxes with something chilling: “slaves, and souls of men.” The trade is not neutral. It is exploitative. It is sensual. It is dehumanizing. Cinnamon is no longer sanctuary material. It is cargo within a system that traffics in human beings.

This is a profound shift.

In Exodus, cinnamon formed part of holy anointing oil. It marked consecration. It was restricted. It was not for common use. It belonged to divine service.

In Revelation 18, cinnamon represents luxury trade, economic dominance, sensory indulgence, and commercial excess. It moves through shipping routes. It enriches merchants. It perfumes a system that stands under judgment.

The contrast is not accidental.

Earlier in Scripture, fragrance signified holiness, divine presence, temple service. In Revelation, fragrance is commodified. It is packaged, priced, and profited from inside a corrupt global order called “Babylon.” The same substance that once marked sacred space now circulates in a marketplace that enslaves souls.

What does that tell us?

If something once set apart for consecration becomes part of a luxury trade network condemned by God, what happened in between? When did sacred fragrance become imperial commodity? When did what was restricted for holy service become embedded in economic power structures?

Notice something else: when Revelation describes heaven’s worship; the throne, the altar, the bowls; cinnamon is not named. Incense appears, but it is explicitly defined as “the prayers of the saints” (Revelation 5:8). Heaven’s incense is not imported spice. It is prayer. Cinnamon appears only in the Babylon trade list.

That detail matters.

Why is cinnamon absent from heaven’s worship but present in Babylon’s cargo? Why does it move from consecration to commerce? Why is it mourned by merchants rather than offered by saints?

Revelation is exposing a system where even what once symbolized holiness can be absorbed into economic exploitation and spiritual corruption. The issue is not the spice itself. It is the system that carries it.

When the merchants weep over the fall of Babylon, they do not mourn lost holiness. They mourn lost profit.

And cinnamon is on that list.

To understand who the merchants are in Revelation, we first need to understand how the Bible itself uses the term “Canaanite.” The word is not as narrow as many assume. It can refer to a specific ethnic group descended from Canaan in Genesis 10. It can function as a broader term for the inhabitants of the land before Israel’s settlement. And in later Hebrew usage, it can even mean merchant or trader.

From Genesis onward, “And the Canaanite was then in the land” (Genesis 12:6). By the time of Exodus and Joshua, they are grouped with Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites as established inhabitants. The repeated language of “driving out” in Exodus 23, 33, 34 and throughout Joshua is not framed in genealogical terms. The text does not clearly say they are expelled because they descend from Cain or from the Nephilim. The stated reason is moral and religious corruption.

Leviticus 18 and Deuteronomy 9 explicitly say the land “vomited out” its inhabitants because of idolatry, ritual prostitution, child sacrifice, and abominations. The conflict is covenantal. It is about worship.

But the term evolves. By the post-exilic period, “Canaanite” could also signify a trader. Hosea 12:7 uses the word in that sense. Zechariah 14:21 declares that in the final purification “there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD.” Many scholars recognize that this may not be speaking only about ethnicity, but about the removal of commercial corruption from sacred space. No more merchant in the temple. No more trade embedded in worship.

Now place that beside Revelation 18. When Babylon falls, the merchants of the earth weep because their cargo is destroyed — gold, silver, spices, cinnamon, incense, and finally “slaves, and souls of men.” Revelation’s Babylon is not merely political/religious. It is economic. It is commercial. It is maritime. It traffics in luxury and in human beings. The merchants are not passive bystanders. They are participants in the system.

Historically, the Phoenicians were coastal Canaanites. “Phoenician” is a Greek exonym. Biblically, Tyre and Sidon; Phoenician cities, are condemned not for giant ancestry but for pride, trade exploitation, and idolatry. Ezekiel 27 describes Tyre as a global trading vessel enriched by the nations. Isaiah 23 calls her the “merchant city.” When Revelation later portrays Babylon as a maritime trade empire whose fall devastates merchants and shipmasters, the echoes are unmistakable.

Now consider the geography. The regions associated with giant (Nephilim) memory; Rephaim, Anakim, Bashan, Hermon; overlap with or border land later inhabited by Canaanite peoples. Deuteronomy 3 emphasizes Og of Bashan as “the last of the remnant of the Rephaim.” Joshua 11:3 mentions Hivites dwelling “under Hermon.” Hermon, in Second Temple tradition such as 1 Enoch 6–7, becomes the site of the Watchers’ descent and the birth of the giants. The north is not neutral territory. It carries layers of memory: giant clans, storm-god cults, rival mountains of assembly.

In Ugaritic texts, Baal’s mountain is in the north, Mount Zaphon. Isaiah 14 speaks of a rebellious figure aspiring to sit on the “mount of assembly in the sides of the north.” Northern elevation becomes associated with rival divine council imagery. By the Second Temple period, Deuteronomy 32 (in the Dead Sea Scroll reading) speaks of nations allotted according to the “sons of God,” and Daniel speaks of spiritual “princes” over empires. Geography and spiritual administration become conceptually linked.

The land of Canaan becomes more than soil; it becomes a contested spiritual domain.

So when Revelation portrays merchants weeping over the fall of Babylon, and when Zechariah envisions a day when there will be no more “Canaanite” in the house of the LORD, the themes converge. Merchant power, maritime trade, idolatrous systems, and spiritual corruption intertwine.

The Canaanite is not merely an ancient ethnicity. The Canaanite becomes a type; trader, trafficker, economic intermediary within a rival worship system. Revelation’s merchants stand in that lineage of maritime-commercial power that Scripture repeatedly critiques.

The north was conquered. Bashan fell. Tyre was judged. The prophetic trajectory moves toward purification. The question Revelation forces upon the reader is whether the system has disappeared; or merely changed its name.

To link Canaan to Phoenicia, we must first strip away the modern labels. “Phoenician” is a Greek exonym. The people the Greeks called Phoenicians were, in biblical terms, coastal Canaanites. They were not a separate civilization that appeared out of nowhere. They were the maritime development of Canaanite culture.

Genesis 12:6 tells us plainly, “And the Canaanite was then in the land.” Before Israel was a nation, before Sinai, before kings, the Canaanites were already embedded in the territory. By the time of Exodus and Joshua, they are consistently grouped with Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites as inhabitants of the promised land. The command to drive them out appears repeatedly in Exodus 23, Exodus 33, Exodus 34, and throughout Joshua. The justification given in the text is not bloodline mythology but covenant corruption. Leviticus 18 states that the land “vomited out” its inhabitants because of abominations. Deuteronomy 9 emphasizes that it was because of wickedness, not Israel’s righteousness. The issue is worship. Baal. Asherah. Astarte. Fertility cults.

Now move forward historically. The Canaanites along the coast developed powerful maritime networks. They became famous for Tyrian purple dye, for the alphabetic script that would shape Western writing, for sea trade across the Mediterranean, and for founding Carthage. Canaanite culture did not disappear; it evolved into Phoenician city-states like Tyre and Sidon. From there, those city-states were absorbed successively into Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman imperial systems. Canaanite religion, trade expertise, and maritime dominance did not vanish. They were integrated upward into empire.

Scripture itself draws attention to Tyre and Sidon. Isaiah 23 calls Tyre the merchant city. Ezekiel 26–28 condemns Tyre for pride and trade exploitation. The critique is not about giant ancestry. It is about economic power married to idolatry. The prophets universalize the indictment. Trade becomes spiritual. Wealth becomes arrogant. Commerce becomes intertwined with rival worship.

Now consider the geography that frames all of this. Deuteronomy 2–3 speaks of Rephaim, Anakim, Emim, Zamzummim. Og of Bashan is called “the last of the remnant of the Rephaim.” Joshua 11 locates Hivites under Hermon. Hermon, in Second Temple literature such as 1 Enoch 6, becomes the remembered site of the Watchers’ descent. Bashan and the north carry giant memory. They border and overlap with Canaanite territory. The land is not merely political real estate; it is layered with theological memory.

In the Dead Sea Scroll tradition of Deuteronomy 32, the nations are allotted according to the “sons of God.” Daniel later speaks of princes over Persia and Greece. Nations are tied to spiritual administration. Within that framework, Canaanite cult systems; Baal, Astarte, storm-god worship—are not neutral cultural expressions. They are manifestations of rival governance. The struggle becomes cosmic.

No Second Temple text explicitly says Canaanites descend from Watchers. But the conceptual architecture is there. Watchers produce giants. Giants leave behind spirits. Spirits corrupt nations. Nations are governed by hostile powers. The land of Canaan is saturated with idolatry and giant memory. The linkage becomes theological rather than genealogical.

So when we trace Canaan into Phoenicia, we are not inventing a connection. We are following historical continuity. Canaanite culture becomes Phoenician maritime power. Phoenician trade integrates into empire. Prophets condemn Tyre for pride and commerce. Zechariah envisions a day with no more Canaanite; no more merchant; in the house of the LORD.

The trajectory runs from land to sea, from altar to marketplace, from Baal worship to imperial trade networks. The question is not whether Canaan disappeared. The question is how it transformed, how its systems migrated, and how its spirit of trade and syncretism embedded itself within successive Mediterranean power structures.

Phoenicia was never a single centralized empire. It was a network of powerful coastal city-states; Tyre, Sidon, Byblos; stretching along the eastern Mediterranean in what is now Lebanon and parts of Syria and northern Israel. Before these cities rose to prominence in the Iron Age, the region was inhabited by the Canaanites, the indigenous Bronze Age peoples of the Levant. The Phoenicians were not a new ethnicity replacing them; they were a continuation and maritime evolution of Canaanite culture. Prior to their ascendancy, the region experienced periods of domination or heavy influence from larger powers, particularly the Egyptian New Kingdom, which ruled much of Canaan during the Late Bronze Age, and the Hittite Empire, which controlled northern Syria and influenced parts of the Levant in the second millennium BCE. After the Late Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BCE, Phoenician culture emerged more distinctly, expanding outward through trade and seafaring.

Phoenician independence, however, did not last indefinitely. Over time, their city-states were drawn under the control of successive imperial powers: first the Assyrian Empire, then the Babylonian Empire, followed by the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire, then Alexander the Great and his Macedonian-Greek rule, after which Phoenicia fell under the Seleucid branch of the Greek successor states, and finally it was absorbed into the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire. By the time Rome dominated the Mediterranean, Phoenicia was fully integrated into Roman provincial administration.

When this historical sequence is placed alongside Daniel’s prophetic visions, the alignment is striking. Daniel 2 presents the statue of successive metals, and Daniel 7 describes four beasts rising from the sea. Most historical readings identify these empires as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Compare that to the trajectory of Phoenician decline: Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greek rule under Alexander and the Seleucids, and then Rome.

Assyria does not appear in Daniel’s four-beast sequence because it had already fallen by Daniel’s time; Babylon had replaced it. In Daniel’s prophetic horizon, Assyria belongs to a prior era. Yet historically, Assyria did subdue Phoenician cities such as Tyre and Sidon. Babylon, represented in Daniel 2 as the head of gold and in Daniel 7 as the lion, besieged Tyre under Nebuchadnezzar and exerted control over Phoenicia. Medo-Persia, symbolized by the silver chest and the bear, ruled Phoenicia and relied heavily on Phoenician fleets in its campaigns, including its conflicts with Greece. Greece, depicted as the bronze kingdom and the leopard, is vividly connected to Phoenicia through Alexander the Great’s famous siege of Tyre in 332 BCE; after his death, Phoenicia passed under Seleucid authority. Rome, the iron kingdom and the dreadful beast, ultimately absorbed Phoenicia into its expanding imperial system.

With the exception of Assyria, which predates Daniel’s sequence, Phoenicia’s absorption follows almost exactly the order of the empires Daniel describes symbolically: Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Daniel is not specifically prophesying about Phoenicia, but he is outlining the dominant Near Eastern imperial powers, and Phoenicia fell beneath each of those waves in turn.

There is another layer that should not be overlooked. In Daniel 7:3, the beasts rise “from the sea.” Phoenicia was fundamentally maritime, a sea-based trade power whose wealth and influence were tied to Mediterranean shipping lanes. The Mediterranean becomes the theater upon which these beast empires operate. Later, Revelation adopts Daniel’s beast imagery and situates the final manifestation within a Roman context. By that time, Tyre and Sidon were fully embedded within Roman imperial structure.

From a geopolitical perspective, the pattern is clear: Phoenicia loses independence and is successively absorbed into the same empires Daniel presents in symbolic form. From a prophetic-symbolic perspective, northern territories such as Tyre and Sidon; long associated with storm-god worship and maritime trade; are drawn into the machinery of the beast empires, culminating in Rome. The alignment is historically tight: Babylon ruled Phoenician territory, Persia ruled Phoenician territory, Greece ruled Phoenician territory, Rome ruled Phoenician territory. The sequence is not forced; it is chronological reality.

And this naturally raises the next question. If Tyre is repeatedly condemned in Ezekiel 26–28 for pride, trade dominance, and self-deification, and if Daniel’s beasts represent successive arrogant imperial powers rising from the sea, how closely do the themes of Tyre overlap with Daniel’s beast imagery?

When Ezekiel 26–28 is placed alongside Daniel’s beast imagery, the parallels are not merely historical; they are thematic, structural, and theological. Ezekiel 26–27 announces the fall of Tyre, the great Phoenician maritime power. Tyre is not described simply as a city but as a magnificent ship, perfectly constructed, ruling the seas. Ezekiel 27 catalogues her cargo in detail, silver, iron, ivory, purple, fine linen; goods flowing in from every nation. Kings depend upon her. The nations enrich her. She sits at the center of global commerce, commanding the Mediterranean through trade.

Ezekiel 28 intensifies the portrait. The “prince of Tyre” declares, “I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas” (Ezekiel 28:2). The language moves from commerce to divine pretension. The ruler is described with Edenic imagery, adorned with precious stones, walking among fiery stones until pride is found in him (Ezekiel 28:12–17). The text shifts from earthly monarch to language that feels cosmic, as though the critique transcends a single historical king.

Daniel’s beasts operate in the same register. In Daniel 7, the fourth beast speaks “great words against the most High.” In Daniel 8, the little horn magnifies himself even against the Prince of the host. Pride, blasphemy, self-exaltation; these define beastly empire. The overlap is unmistakable. Tyre claims divinity. The beasts challenge the Most High. Both embody the same spiritual posture.

Tyre in Ezekiel becomes more than a port city; it becomes the symbol of a commercial empire intoxicated by wealth and convinced of its own invincibility. Historically, Tyre was indeed absorbed by Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, and finally Rome; the same imperial sequence Daniel outlines symbolically. But the theological critique is deeper than chronology. Ezekiel portrays Tyre as immeasurably rich, globally connected, self-deifying, and suddenly judged. Daniel portrays the beasts as arising from the nations, exercising global dominion, speaking against God, and ultimately destroyed by divine intervention.

Revelation later fuses these streams. Revelation 18 describes “Babylon” as a global trading power whose merchants are the “great men of the earth”; a phrase that echoes the ancient “men of renown” in Genesis 6:4, the Nephilim (hybrids), figures remembered for power, reputation, and dominion. Its cargo list echoes Ezekiel 27, culminating in “slaves, and souls of men.”

The pattern becomes visible. Tyre represents maritime pride judged. Daniel’s beasts represent imperial arrogance judged. Revelation’s Babylon represents a commercial-spiritual empire judged. Tyre functions as an early prototype of the beast system: wealthy, sea/underworld-based, proud, claiming divine status, intertwined with the nations.

The geography of the northern coastal cities, the economy of sea trade, and the theology of self-exaltation converge. From Tyre to the beasts to Babylon, the same pattern repeats in different historical forms. The next layer is to examine how Revelation 17–18 merges Daniel’s beast, Ezekiel’s Tyre, and Isaiah’s Babylon into a composite end-time system that is both political and commercial, both spiritual and imperial.

To link Baal worship to Canaan is not speculation; it is the religious reality of the land. Baal was the central storm and fertility deity of the Canaanite world. His cult was embedded in the high places, the agricultural cycles, the seasonal rites, and the social fabric of the region long before Israel entered the land. The prophets repeatedly condemn Israel not for inventing something new, but for adopting what was already there. Jeremiah 7:9 speaks of burning incense to Baal. Jeremiah 11:13 declares that Judah had as many altars to Baal as streets. Hosea 2:13 laments that incense was offered to the Baals while covenant loyalty was abandoned. And it is important to remember what covenant loyalty actually signified. YHWH declared the Sabbath to be a perpetual covenant, “a sign between me and the children of Israel forever” (Exodus 31:16–17).Yet in later centuries Rome accused Christians of “Judaizing” if they honored that day, even though Christ; confessed as YHWH incarnate; declared Himself “Lord of the sabbath”(Saturday)(Mark 2:28). The tension is revealing: incense could be retained, ritual could be preserved, but the covenant sign rooted in YHWH’s own declaration was treated as suspect.

The offerings to Baal were not abstract. Archaeology from Canaanite and later Israelite high places shows that incense was central to ritual practice (remember not all Israel is of Israel Romans 9:6) Frankincense was common throughout the Near East. Myrrh was used in both sacred and funerary contexts. Local aromatic resins such as storax and other tree gums were burned. Residue analysis from certain Iron Age altars in Israel has even detected traces of frankincense and, in specific cases, substances mixed to intensify combustion, though interpretations vary. The biblical text does not catalog the ingredients burned to Baal; it condemns the act itself. The issue is allegiance.

So when incense is burned to Baal, the offense is not botanical but theological. Either common regional blends were being offered to a rival deity, or materials consecrated for YHWH were being redirected. In either case, the act represents syncretism; merging the worship of YHWH with the cultic systems of Canaan.

Isaiah 1:13 intensifies the critique: “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me.” This is not a repudiation of incense itself, because God commanded sacred incense in Exodus 30. Isaiah is speaking to a people who are performing the rituals correctly while living in corruption. The temple sacrifices continue. The incense burns. The festivals are observed. Yet injustice fills the streets, violence stains the land, and the poor are exploited. In that context, incense becomes offensive. The problem is not the formula; it is the fracture between ritual and righteousness.

The prophetic message is consistent. “Wash you, make you clean… seek judgment, relieve the oppressed” (Isaiah 1). Incense without covenant fidelity becomes empty smoke.

In the Torah, incense is commanded for tabernacle worship. In Revelation 5:8, incense represents “the prayers of the saints.” It can symbolize acceptable prayer and faithful worship. But it can also become a vehicle for idolatry and hypocrisy. The same act; burning incense; can mark covenant devotion or covenant betrayal.

If Christ made atonement once for all, why return to temple-like symbols?

If heaven is Holy, why the continued use of cinnamon?

If access to God is direct through Christ, why rely on incense at all?

If the shadow has been fulfilled, why preserve its fragrance?

If prayer itself is the incense (Revelation 5:8), what is the purpose of burning it physically?

If ritual objects cannot create atonement, why treat them as though they carry spiritual weight?

Etruscan bronze thymiaterion — incense rising above a sculpted female figure and guardian beasts, symbolizing ritual mediation between worlds.

This bronze thymiaterion is not merely Greek or Anatolian in style; it is Etruscan. That matters.

The Etruscans were the dominant civilization in central Italy before the rise of the Roman Republic. Early Rome itself was shaped by Etruscan religion, kingship symbolism, augury, temple architecture, and ritual practice. Several of Rome’s early kings were Etruscan. What we often call “Roman religion” was deeply indebted to Etruscan foundations.

This object places incense, image, and animal symbolism together in one ritual instrument. The female figure supports the burner. At the base are lions; guardians, emblems of power. Incense would have burned above her head, rising upward while anchored in sculpted divinity. Fragrance, image, offering, mediation; all fused into one.

Now follow the trajectory.

Canaanite religion involved incense offerings to Baal and Astarte. Phoenician city-states carried Canaanite religious culture westward across the Mediterranean through trade networks. The Etruscans were deeply connected to that same Mediterranean exchange world; absorbing, adapting, transmitting religious motifs. Rome inherited Etruscan ritual structure. Rome later absorbed Phoenician territories. Rome also installed Cybele, the Great Mother, on the Palatine in 204 BC.

The Etruscans were famous for divination, augury, ritual precision, and communication with the unseen world. Their religion emphasized reading signs, mediating omens, and maintaining cosmic order through exact rites. Incense burning was not incidental; it was part of structured interaction with divine forces.

When Rome absorbed Etruscan practice, it absorbed that ritual mindset. The Roman concept of pax deorum; peace with the gods (fallen angels/demons); depended on correct performance of rites. Fragrance rising from a burner was not symbolic poetry; it was transactional religion.

And this is where the pattern tightens.

Daniel’s beasts describe successive empires rising from the sea. Phoenicia — maritime Canaanite culture; becomes absorbed into Babylon, Persia, Greece, and finally Rome. Rome itself rests on Etruscan religious infrastructure. Revelation then presents a final composite beast empire emerging within a Roman context, saturated with incense imagery and global trade.

This object; an Etruscan incense burner bearing a female figure; is not random art. It is a physical artifact of Mediterranean religious continuity. It embodies a world where incense rises before sculpted divine forms, where mediation is ritualized, and where political power and religious rituals intertwine.

If incense in Exodus was restricted to covenant worship, and if Revelation redefines incense as the prayers of the saints on earth, then how do we understand this parallel stream; incense anchored in image, empire, and goddess symbolism; flowing through Canaan, Phoenicia, Etruria, and Rome?

The thymiaterion becomes more than a burner.

It becomes a bridge.

Incense would be placed in the bowl at the top and burned as part of offerings. It was not decorative furniture. It was functional liturgical equipment. Smoke rose upward. Fragrance marked sacred space. The object itself signaled mediation between earth and the divine (which heaven though?).

When such a burner is crowned with the image of a woman flanked by lions, the symbolism becomes unmistakable. A female figure standing between or enthroned above lions is a well-established motif across the ancient Mediterranean world. It is most commonly associated with Cybele, known in Rome as Magna Mater, the Great Mother. She was linked to mountains, wild nature, fertility, and sovereign power. The lions at her sides symbolized dominance over untamed forces, royal authority, and command over the natural world. This imagery did not begin in Rome; it stretches back into Anatolia and Mesopotamia and appears in connection with figures such as Astarte and Ishtar. The “Lady of the Beasts” motif; woman mastering animals;is ancient and widespread.

Cybele; known across cultures by many names, including the consort associated with Baal; was enthroned on the Palatine Hill in 204 BC.

Placing such a figure on a thymiaterion is not incidental. It binds fragrance, sacrifice, fertility, and "divine" presence together in a single ritual object. Incense rises before the goddess. The smoke becomes an offering. The lions reinforce her authority. The visual message is clear: she governs nature, receives devotion, and mediates blessing.

This stands in sharp contrast to biblical worship. The Hebrew Scriptures forbid carved images representing deity (Exodus 20:4). Incense was commanded in Israel, but it was burned without anthropomorphic statues of YHWH. The altar of incense in Exodus 30 functioned within a covenant system that explicitly rejected visual representations of the divine. That difference is theological, not aesthetic. In Mediterranean cults, the divine was sculpted and enthroned. In biblical worship, God remained unseen.

Now consider the women in Revelation. Revelation 12 presents a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, giving birth to a male child and opposed by a dragon. Her imagery is cosmic; sun, moon, stars—not empowered by beasts. No lions flank her. Revelation 17 presents another woman, seated on a scarlet beast, called “Babylon the Great,” associated with luxury, trade, and intoxication of nations. Instead of mastering beasts, she rides one. The apocalyptic woman in Revelation 17 is carried by the beast, entwined with political and economic power rather than portrayed as nature’s sovereign.

In the Roman world, Cybele was formally venerated. Her imagery was familiar. A woman with lions, enthroned, receiving incense, embodied sacred authority.

In Cybele’s worship, incense functioned as ritual devotion rising before a visible goddess. In Revelation 5:8, incense is redefined as “the prayers of the saints.”

So when a thymiaterion bears the image of a lion-flanked woman, it is not merely artistic. It represents a religious worldview in which incense ascends before a mother-goddess figure associated with sovereignty, fertility, and wild dominion. The question then becomes unavoidable: if Christ fulfilled the sacrificial and mediatory system, and if Revelation redefines incense as prayer, why would ritual smoke continue to orbit imagery rooted in Mediterranean goddess tradition?

See the original lion of Cybele; also identified with Ishtar in Babylon; depicted crushing a man beneath its power.

The people we call “Etruscans” were not known by that name among themselves. “Etruscan” is a Latin and later historical label derived from the Roman term Etrusci or Tusci. In their own inscriptions, they referred to themselves as Rasenna (or Rasna). That is their endonym — the name they used for their own identity.

The Greeks, however, called them Tyrrhenians (Τυρρηνοί, Tyrrhenoi). From that Greek designation comes the name of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the body of water west of Italy. That name is not incidental. It reflects the Etruscans’ deep engagement in Mediterranean maritime networks. They were not an isolated inland culture; they were active participants in sea trade, naval activity, and trans-Mediterranean exchange.

The Phoenicians were likewise major maritime traders operating across the same sea routes. Archaeological evidence confirms Phoenician goods in Italy, and Carthage; itself a Phoenician colony; maintained interaction with Etruscan cities. The Mediterranean was not divided into sealed cultural compartments; it was an interconnected commercial and religious sphere. Etruscan and Phoenician networks overlapped, exchanged goods, and transmitted motifs.

The influence of the Etruscans on early Rome was profound. They shaped Roman religious ritual, especially practices of divination and the reading of omens. They influenced temple architecture and sacred layout. Regal insignia such as the fasces, the curule chair, and the purple-bordered toga trace back to Etruscan precedent. Even the concept of sacral kingship in early Rome bears Etruscan imprint.

Several of Rome’s early kings, including Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus, were of Etruscan origin. Rome did not emerge religiously or politically in a vacuum. Its early structures of authority, ritual, and sacred symbolism were filtered through Etruscan mediation; and the Etruscans themselves operated within the broader Mediterranean world that included Phoenician trade and religious exchange.

Funerary altar of a Roman woman. In her left hand she holds a jar of incense; with her right hand she sprinkles it over a flaming thymiaterion.

Incense in the ancient world was never merely decorative fragrance. It was bound to death, the soul, and the unseen realm. In Roman funerary practice, incense was burned during burial rites as both offering and purifier. The rising smoke symbolized transition; the movement of the soul from the earthly sphere into the realm of the manes, the spirits of the dead. Fire and smoke became mediators between worlds. What could not be seen — breath, spirit, essence; was represented through smoke ascending into the air.

In elite Roman funerals, incense served practical and symbolic roles. It masked the odor of cremation or decay, but it also honored the deceased. More than that, it visually enacted elevation. In imperial funerals especially, the rising smoke dramatized apotheosis; the ascent of the ruler into the company of the "divine" —but not the Holy of Holies, aligned through sacred time in the Sabbath. The emperor was not simply remembered; he was transformed in public ritual language into something more than human.

The thymiaterion; the standing incense burner; functioned in both temple and funerary settings. When a Roman woman is shown sprinkling incense over flame, she is performing sacred mediation. She is not casually perfuming the air. She is engaging the boundary between the visible and the invisible, honoring the dead, invoking presence, participating in the ritual vocabulary of transition.

There is deep Mediterranean continuity here. Incense marked Egyptian mortuary rites, associated with preservation and the honoring of the dead. It was used in Greek hero cults (Titans), where exceptional figures were venerated after death. In Rome, ancestor veneration (worship) centered on the lares and the manes, household and ancestral spirits believed to persist beyond the grave. In each of these traditions, incense signaled sacred presence; either divine or ancestral.

And this is where the language becomes significant. In Latin, the spirits of the dead were called the manes. In Greek and earlier Hebrew tradition, the term Rephaim could refer both to ancient giant peoples and to shades in the underworld. Isaiah 14:9 speaks of Sheol stirring up the Rephaim to greet a fallen king. Proverbs 9:18 states that the Rephaim are there among the dead. Earlier in this series, we examined Og of Bashan, called the last of the remnant of the Rephaim (hybrids) (Deuteronomy 3:11). The word moves between giant memory and underworld shade.

Rome venerated its ancestral spirits. Some emperors were declared divine after death. The dead, especially the powerful, were not treated as extinguished but elevated. The smoke rising in funerary rites signified continuation, transformation, even exaltation.

If the Rephaim are remembered both as giants and as shades, and if Mediterranean religion preserved traditions of ancestral spirits becoming semi-divine presences, then the conceptual overlap becomes difficult to ignore.

In biblical literature, incense is also linked to ascent. “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense” (Psalm 141:2). In Revelation 5:8 and 8:3–4, incense represents the prayers of the saints rising before God. But in Roman funerary imagery, incense rises for the dead. It honors them. It dramatizes their elevation.

Fire. Smoke. Ascent. Spirit.

The woman on the funerary altar is not simply holding a ritual vessel. She is depicted participating in mediation between realms; acknowledging the continued presence of the departed, engaging the ritual language of transition, and affirming a worldview in which the dead, especially the great, persist.

And when Rome venerated its ancestors as manes, and when certain rulers were elevated toward divine status, the line between shade, hero, and Nephilim (hybrids) was thin indeed.

At the center of all of this stands the God of Israel (not the nation state); YHWH; the Holy One who revealed Himself in covenant, who forbade carved images, who commanded exclusive worship, and whom Christians confess was made manifest in Jesus Christ. If Christ is YHWH incarnate, if He died once for sins and conquered death, if the veil was torn and access to God opened, then the theological question becomes unavoidable: why the continued reliance on temple smoke? Why the persistence of cinnamon and incense in ritual systems that claim fulfillment?

Revelation 18 condemns the merchants of “cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense,” placing these goods within a global commercial system judged by God. The list climaxes with “slaves, and souls of men.” Cinnamon there is not consecrated oil. It is cargo; trade, luxury, indulgence, spiritualized commerce. That imagery echoes backward into the ancient world of Baal worship, where incense rose before storm gods and fertility consorts. Baal’s cult in Canaan was intertwined with Asherah and Astarte. In later Mediterranean religion, Astarte merges with Isis, who in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses declares herself known by many names; Astarte in the East, and in Rome identified with the Great Mother, Cybele. Cybele was installed on the Palatine Hill in 204 BC. Rome, the city of seven hills.

Revelation describes a woman who sits on seven hills and rides the beast. She is called Babylon the Great, the mother of abominations. Early Christian tradition often used “Babylon” as a cipher for Rome; 1 Peter 5:13 reflects that language. The woman of Revelation is adorned, wealthy, intertwined with kings, intoxicated with power. The merchants of the earth grow rich through her. Fragrance, luxury goods, global trade; these are not incidental details.

Meanwhile, incense continues to rise in ritual contexts long after the resurrection.

If Christ is the once-for-all sacrifice, if Hebrews declares the system fulfilled, if Revelation defines incense as the prayers of the saints rather than material substance, then what does it mean when smoke persists within imperial religious frameworks historically shaped by Canaanite, Phoenician, Etruscan, and Roman transmission?

The dots do not prove a simplistic equation. But the continuity of symbols is undeniable: Baal and Astarte in Canaan; Phoenician trade across the Mediterranean; Etruscan ritual mediation; Rome enthroning the Great Mother; merchants trafficking in cinnamon; Revelation condemning a global system of luxury, idolatry, and spiritual corruption; a woman on seven hills riding a beast.

And above it all stands YHWH; not a storm god, not a fertility deity, not a composite mother enthroned with lions, not a merchant prince enriched by trade; but the Holy One who declares, “I am the LORD, and there is none else.” In Christ, death is conquered not through ritual ascent but through resurrection. Access to heaven is not mediated by smoke, spice, or sculpted form, but by the crucified and risen Son.

If heaven is Holy, if the Lamb has triumphed, if atonement is complete, then the final question is not about incense.

It is about allegiance.

Revelation 18:4 (KJV)

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”