That name was Atys, or Attis, or Attes, * and the meaning will evidently appear from the meaning of the well-known Greek word Ate, which signifies "error of sin," and is obviously derived from the Chaldean Hata, "to sin."
* SMITH'S Classical Dictionary, "Atys." The identification of Attes with Bacchus or Adonis, who was at once the Father of the gods, and the Mediator, is proved from divers considerations. 1. While it is certain that the favourite god of the Phrygian Cybele was Attes, whence he was called "Cybelius Attes," from Strabo, we learn that the divinity worshipped along with Cybele in Phrygia, was called by the very name of Dionusos or Bacchus. 2. Attes was represented in the very same way as Bacchus. In Bryant there is an inscription to him along with the Idaean goddess, that is Cybele, under the name of "Attis the Minotaur" (Mythol.). Bacchus was bull-horned; it is well known that the Minotaur, in like manner, was half-man, half-bull. 3. He was represented in the exoteric story, as perishing in the same way as Adonis by a wild boar (PAUSAN). 4. In the rites of Magna Mater or Cybele, the priests invoked him as the "Deus propitius, Deus sanctus," "the merciful God, the holy God" (ARNOBIUS in Maxima Biblioth. Patrum), the very character which Bacchus or Adonis sustained as the mediatorial god. Atys or Attes, formed from the same verb, and in a similar way, signifies "The Sinner." The reader will remember that Rhea or Cybele was worshipped in Phrygia under the name of Idaia Mater, "The mother of knowledge," and that she bore in her hand, as her symbol, the pomegranate, which we have seen reason to conclude to have been in Pagan estimation the fruit of the "forbidden tree." Who, then, so likely to have been the contemplar divinity of that "Mother of knowledge" as Attes, "The sinner," even her own husband, whom she induced to share with her in her sin, and partake of her fatal knowledge, and who thereby became in true and proper sense, "The man of sin,"--"the man by whom sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all, because all have sinned." *
* The whole story of Attes can be proved in detail to be the story of the Fall. Suffice it here only to state that, even on the surface, this sin was said to be connected with undue love for "a nymph, whose fate depended on a tree" (OVID, Fasti). The love of Attes for this nymph was in one aspect an offence to Cybele, but, in another, it was the love of Cybele herself; for Cybele has two distinct fundamental characters--that of the Holy Spirit, and also that of our mother Eve. "The nymph whose fate depended on a tree" was evidently Rhea, the mother of mankind. Now to Attes, this "Man of sin," after passing through those sorrows and sufferings, which his worshippers yearly commemorated, the distinguishing characteristics and glories of the Messiah were given.