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Confession of Sins and the Classics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Raffaele Pettazzoni
Raffaele Pettazzoni
Affiliation:
University of Rome
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Extract

In the first of his letters ex Ponto (vv. 51–58) Ovid mentions the confession of sins practised in the religion of Isis by the faithful (in the presence of a priest?). One man, seated before the altar of the goddess (Isiacos focos, v. 52), confessed that he had offended her divinity (numen violasse fatentem, v. 51); a second, deprived of his sight in punishment for some similar crime, went along the public road crying out that he had merited the castigation (se meruisse, v. 54). Ovid affirms that he had seen all this with his own eyes (vidi ego, v. 51). It may be that his vidi ego is purely rhetoric. Confession of sins, however, was certainly practised in Egypt ab antiquo, as is proved by a group of Theban inscriptions of the epoch of the XlXth Dynasty (about 1300 B.C.) dedicated to various divinities, amongst whom is a local goddess assimilated to Isis-Hathor. Moreover, ophthalmia was very common in Egypt.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 1937 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1937

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References

1 This lecture was delivered in German (Das Sündenbekenntnis in der Antike) on September 30th, 1935, before the Royal Society of Letters at Lund and some days later at the Göteborgs Högskola. The matter here dealt with is found in an extended form in the IIIrd Volume of my work on the Confessione dei peccati (Bologna, N. Zanchelli, 1929–36): I (Primitives: Ancient America, Japan, China, Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism); II (Egypt, Babylonia, Israel, Southern Arabia); III (Syria, Hittites, Asia Minor, Greece).—Vol. I has been enlarged and translated into French: La Confession des péchés, I-II, Paris, E. Leroux, 1931–32.

2 Cf. Juvenal, Sat. XIII, 92 sq.: decernat quodcumque volet de corpore nostro Isis et irato feriat mea lumina sistro; Martial, Ep. IV, 30.

3 Cf. Tibullus, I, 2, 91; Horace, Sat., I, 8, 23; Virgil, Aen., III, 623; etc.: Norden, Aeneis VI Buch3, p. 277.

4 Erman, A., Denksteine aus der Thebanischen Gräberstadt, Sitzungsber. Berl. Akad., 1911, 1086–1110Google Scholar; B. Gunn, The Religion of the Poor in Ancient Egypt, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1916, 81 ff.; Roeder, G., Urkunden der Religion der Ägypter, Jena, 1923, 52 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 Many prescriptions for ophthalmia in the Ebers Papyrus (New Kingdom). Eyes of gold and silver dedicated as ex votos to Isis and Serapis at Delos: Roussel, Les cultes égyptiens à Délos, 290; cf. Cumont, Cat. codd. astr. graec., VIII, 4, 190, n. 1; Gunn, loc. cit., 89.

6 Cumont, F., Il sole vindice dei delitti ed il simbolo delle mani alzate, Memorie della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, I, 1, Rome, 1923, 65 sqq.Google Scholar; Nuovi epitafi col simbolo della preghiera al dio vindice, Rendiconti della Pontif. Accad. Rom. di Arch., V (1926–27), Rome, 1928, 69 sqq.; Invocation au Soleil accompagnée des ‘mains supines,’ Syria, 1933, 385 sqq.

7 Baptism and confession are associated in the penitential rite of John the Baptist: καì ἐβαπτίζοντο ἐν τῷ Ἰορδáνη ποταμῷ ὑπ αὐτοῦ, ἐζομολογούμενοι τὰς ἁμαρτíας αὐτῶν (Matth., 3, 6).

8 Fr. Steinleitner, Die Beicht im Zusammenhange mit der sakralen Rechtspflege in der Antike, Leipzig, 1913; Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, IV (Manchester, 1933), nrr. 265–312; Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, VI (Lugduni Batavorum, 1932), nrr. 248–260.

9 Zingerle, J., Jahreshefte des österreichischen archäologischen Instituts, 24 (1928), Beiblatt, 107 ff., nr. 3Google Scholar.

10 Keil, J., A. von Premerstein, Bericht über eine zweite Reise in Lydien, Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie, 54, 2 (1911), 95 f., nr. 183Google Scholar.

11 Cf. λουσαμένουϛ κατακέϕαλα in the statute of the cult founded by the Lycian Xanthos at Sunion: IG, III, nr. 74 (and 73).

12 Cf. equally in Ovid, Metam., IV, 237 sq.: precantem, Tendentemque manus ad lumina solis….

13 Reitzenstein saw a reflection of this type of piety (Die hellenistischen Mysterien-religionen3, Leipzig, 1927, 138 f.) also in Tibull., I, 2, vv. 81–88.

14 Zingerle, loc. cit., nr. 2: a mother-in-law, to refute the rumours that accused her of witchcraft to the injury of her own son-in-law, challenges the divine judgment by a conditional curse (ἀράϛ), but it turns out unfavourable for her; she dies and so does her son.

15 Cf. Persius, II, 15 sq.: haec sancte ut poscas, Tiberino in gurgite mergis mane caput bis terque et noctem flumine purgas.

16 Scholia in Juvenalem vetustiora (ed. P. Wessner, Leipzig, 1931, 106) ad VI, 522: descendat per glaciem in flumen matrona post usum virilem.

17 Again, one of the South Arabian confessional inscriptions is dedicated by a woman who has done penance for having worn a dirty garment: Ryckmans, G., Deux inscriptions expiatoires sabéennes, Revue Biblique, 41, 1932, 393 ff., nr. 1Google Scholar.

18 Cf. Trist., III, 49–51; II, 103–107.

19 Cf. Martial, IV, 43, 7–8: iuro per Syrios tibi tumores, iuro per Berecyntios furores.

20 Cf. the characterization of the Superstitious Man by Theophrastus.

21 Cf. also Tertullian, De poenitentia, 9.

22 At Bambyke-Hierapolis, the ‘holy city’ of the Syrian Goddess (Atargatis-Derketo), the faithful who reached the sanctuary before entering the temple found a ξóανον representing a woman in the act of pointing out the temple itself (Lucian, De dea Syr., 89). It was explained as an image of the Queen Semiramis (daughter, according to the legend, of Derketo), who wished to be adored as a goddess, but, struck by divine punishment, confessed (ὠμολóγεε) her mortal nature, ordering her subjects to adore the real goddess, the Dea Syria; and this is why she was represented in the act of pointing out the temple, — the gesture implying the recognition of the goddess and the confession of her own sin.

23 Lucian, De dea Syr., 14, cf. 45; Dittenberger, Syll.3, nr. 997, etc.; Wächter, Reinheitsvorschriften im griechischen Kult., Giessen, 1910, 97, 2; Dölger, ΙΧθΤΣ II, Münster i. W., 1922, 161 ff.

24 Ed. Norden, Aeneis VI Buch3, 276.

25 See my Confessione dei peccati, III, 97.

26 Kern, O., Reformen der griechischen Religion, Halle a. S., 1918, 16Google Scholar; Die griechischen Mysterien der klassischen Zeit, Berlin, 1927, 30Google Scholar.

27 Crusius, O., Sitzungsber. bayr. Akad., 1910, 4, 115, 1Google Scholar; Steinleitner, F., Die Beicht, Leipzig, 1913, 118 ffGoogle Scholar.

28 Reitzenstein, R., Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen3, Leipzig, 1927, 137, 1Google Scholar.