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Some Phases of Religious Feeling in Later Paganism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Campbell Bonner
Campbell Bonner
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The scientific study of religion which has gone on for the past fifty years has reaped a rich and varied harvest; but a thoughtful observer might hold with good reason that its most important result is this, that all investigators, whether themselves religious or not, have come to recognize candidly the tremendous motive power of religious emotion and the actual validity of religious experience. Yet singularly enough comparatively little attention has been paid to ancient religious feeling for its own sake. Classical scholars have made fruitful researches into the objective phenomena of ancient religion, particularly Greek and Roman cults; they have considered the relation of religion to philosophy and morals; and after many aberrations they have even found firmer paths through the morass of mythology. But we still await an adequate study of the subjective side of ancient religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 1937 , pp. 119 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1937

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References

1 Much that is useful will be found in W. Nestlé's Die griechische Religiösität in ihren Grundzügen und Hauptvertretern von Homer bis Proklos (Sammlung Göschen: 3 bände, Berlin, 1930–34); but Nestlé's approach is different from mine and I owe nothing to his work, since this essay was completed before his third volume appeared. The present paper is a revised form of a presidential address delivered before the American Philological Association; some paragraphs have been recast, and references have been added.

2 A. D. Nock has reminded me of the need for caution in using the word religion, for which no single Greek vocable affords an equivalent (cf. Wilamowitz, Glaube der Hellenen, I, 15); and it is true that, as we commonly employ it, the word may combine different Greek concepts, and superadd notions that are largely modern. This difficulty cannot be entirely overcome. By religious feeling, as here discussed, I mean the emotional response to participation in worship, or to contemplation or experience of the divine.

3 P. J. Koets, Δεισιδαιμoνία Purmerend, 1929. See also Bolkestein, H., Theophrasts Charakter der Deisidaimonia als religionsgeschichtliehe Urkunde (Giessen, 1929Google Scholar: Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, XXI, 2).

4 Agam. 163–6.

5 Eum. 998–1000. - We must beware of making too much of the frolicsome humor of Aristophanes; but when, in the Knights (1168) the Sausage-Seller promises old Demos ‘sops of bread scooped out by Athena with her ivory hand,’ one may suspect that the poet is burlesquing the naïve complacency of simple folk who, in times of ease, imagined themselves to be, as it were, spoon-fed by their tutelary deities. Compare 1091, where in a dream the goddess seems to pour out wealth and health upon her city from a pail, and the Syracusan ditty (Wendel, Schol. in Theocr., p. 8)

δέξαι τὰν ἀγαθὰν τύχαν,

δέξαι τὰν ὑγίειαν,

ἃν ϕέρoμες παρὰ τᾶς θεoῦ.

6 The translation ‘the Father’ (so Smyth) seems to me to be justified by the tone of the passage and as a natural development, in the more refined thought of Aeschylus, of the Homeric conception of Zeus, πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε; but I have refrained from that rendering here, in order to avoid the possible objection that the interpretation would thus be tinged with Christian associations.

7 The same figure, derived of course from the language of the Gospel, is quaintly developed in the hymn Nun ruhen alle Wälder by the great seventeenth-century German writer of sacred verse, Paul Gerhardt.

8 Hom. Hymn to Demeter, 480; Soph. fr. 837 (Pearson); Ar. Frogs, 455.

9 Plat. Apol., 41 c–d; Hyper. Epit., 43.

10 The active sense of θεοϕιλής, god-loving, is late; but Isocrates (4, 29) says ἡ πóλις ὴμῶν οὐ μόνον θεοϕιλῶς ἀλλὰ καὶ ϕιλανθρώπως ἒσχεν. ϕιλόθεος occurs in Arist. Rhet. 2,17, 6.

11 For Apella, see IG, IV, 955 (Dittenberger, Syll.3 1170), and Wilamowitz, Isyllos von Epidauros (Philol. Untersuch. IX, 116 ff.).

12 There is apparently no eschatological aspect of Asklepios’ care for humanity, and it would be difficult to pick out a definite passage illustrating his solicitude for the welfare of the soul; but I believe that the statement in the text would be borne out by a careful reading of such documents as Aristides’ Sacred Discourses. The great growth in the importance of Asklepios in the later ages of paganism was long ago noticed by B. Stark (Versammlung der deutschen Philologen und Schulmänner, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1861, p. 71 ff.). See also Farnell, Greek Hero Cults, pp. 275–8. Influence of the artistic type of Asklepios upon the traditional likeness of Christ was suggested by Holtzmann, H. in Jahrbb. für prot. Theol., III (1877), p. 191Google Scholar and X (1884), pp. 83–7, and Dobsehütz, E. von appears to be sympathetic to the idea, Christusbilder, p. 30 f. (Texte und Unters. N. F. Ill, 1899)Google Scholar. It is denied by V. Schultze, Archäologie der altchristlichen Kunst, 1895, p. 344, and by C. M. Kaufmann, Handbuch der christlichen Archäologie, 1922, p. 368.

13 Ar. Plut. 721, 727 f.; Herodas 4, 17 f., 80–84. For the healing of the comic poet Theopompos by the hand of Asklepios, see Suidas s.v. Θεóπoμπoς and the first chapter of Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, VIII, 1).

14 Philostr. Vit. Soph. 2, 9, 2.

15 During the composition of this estimate of Aristides, I purposely refrained from consulting the exhaustive monograph, Aelius Aristide by M. André Boulanger (Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 126, 1923). It is a pleasure to find that my views about the religion of Aristides agree so closely with those of the French scholar.

16 Or. 48, 60 ff.

17 Or. 49, 17.

18 Or. 47, 46 and 50.

19 Or. 48, 42 f.

20 Or. 47, 65; 48, 74–79 and 19–23.

21 Or. 48, 26–28.

22 Or. 42, 6–7; 50, 16.

23 Or. 47, 46–49.

24 Or. 48, 44; 51, 24.

25 Or. 50, 33–36.

26 Or. 48, 11–14.

27 Or. 51, 26–27.

28 Or. 51, 31 and 38; 50, 31.

29 Or. 49, 44–45.

30 Or. 49, 49–50.

31 Or. 39, 5; 47, 17; 48, 4; 42, 4; 38, 20–21.

32 Or. 48, 31–32; 50, 3–4.

33 Or. 42, 4. It is not certain whether the gold amulet (an eight-sided cylinder) in the British Museum (No. 3156) with the inscription εῖς Ζεὺς Σέραπις πιϕανς ‘Aσκλπιoὴς σωτήρ represents a combination of two acclamations in honor of different divinities, Sarapis and Asklepios, or a fusion of the two with Zeus. See F. H. Marshall, Catalogue of the Jewellery in the British Museum, p. 381, and Erik Peterson, ΕΙΣ θΕΟΣ, p. 237.

34 Or. 45, 18, 24–26, 32; cf. Pindar, Ol. 6, 99.

35 The work has been made the subject of a valuable study by Professor S. Eitrem, Philostrats Heroikos (Symbol. Oslo., VIII, 1–56).

36 Heroikos, pp. 131–3, 142–5; the references are to the pages of Kayser's Teubner text.

37 Without claiming the right to a voice in so vexed a question, I follow Schmid in allowing the Heroikos as well as the Life of Apollonios to be the work of the second Philostratos.

38 K. Münscher, Die Philostrate (Philologus, Suppl. Band X, 506–8).

39 Heroikos, p. 137 K.

40 Cf. Eitrem, op. cit., p. 3, and Dittenberger, Or. Gr. Inscr. Sel. 522 (Sarpedon and Glaucus); full treatment in Farnell, Greek Hero Cults, chapter xi.

41 Vit. Apoll. 4, 31 (p. 150 K.).

42 Met. 11, 2.

43 Met. 11, 5–6. With 11, 5 one may compare Diod. Sic, 1, 27, P. Oxy. 1380, and the various inscriptions containing hymns or aretalogies of Isis, which are most conveniently brought together in W. Peek's Der Isishymnus von Andros und verwandte Texte (Berlin, 1930). Cf. also A. D. Nock, Conversion, p. 192.

44 The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 248 f.

45 Met. 11, 7, Gaselee's adaptation of Adlington's version.

46 Met. 11, 15.

47 Met. 11, 21 (p. 283, 11 f., Helm, for the notion of the new birth); 11, 23, 28, 30.

48 W. R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, I, pp. 51–2.

49 Conf. 9, 10.

50 Or. 12, 51; cf. also the noteworthy passage on man's love of the gods, 12, 61.

51 See the author's note in Harv. Theol. Rev., XXV (1932), 362 f.

52 J. Geffcken, Der Ausgang des griechisch-römischen Heidentums (1929), pp. 2, 347. - For an interesting discussion of the aging of the gods, as shown by the representations of them in art, see Pottier, E., La vieillesse des dieux grecs, Mélanges Bidez, 729–743 (Annuaire de l'Institut de philologie et d'histoire orientales, II, Bruxelles, 1934)Google Scholar.