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From Religion to Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

George Thomson
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Extract

The starting-point of this article was Cornford's essay, ‘A Ritual Basis for Hesiod's Theogony’, recently published in The Unwritten Philosophy. He showed it to me soon after he had written it in 1942. It is only a sketch, but it struck me at once as important, because it opens a new approach to the conclusion he had reached many years before in From Religion to Philosophy. I told him this and begged him to pursue the subject, but he smiled and said, ‘I leave that to you’. Hence the title of this article, which is a tribute to his memory.

His From Religion to Philosophy appeared in 1913. In the same year Eduard Norden published his Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede. In this study, starting from the Sermon on the Areopagus, Norden shows that the Greek and Latin authors employ, in poetry and prose, certain forms of speech, liturgical in origin, which can be traced independently in the Old Testament. The two streams, the Hellenic and the Hebrew, drawn from Babylonia and Egypt, were reunited in Christianity, notably by St. Paul, who, in virtue of his birth and upbringing, was equally well versed in both. Later, in the Byzantine liturgy, they were reinforced by a third stream, the Syrian, of the same ultimate origin.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 73 , November 1953 , pp. 77 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1953

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References

1 Cornford, F. M., The Unwritten Philosophy, 1950Google Scholar: see also his Principium Sapientiae (1952), published after this article went to press. I wish to acknowledge my debt to the late N. Bachtin, with whom I discussed these problems many times, and to Mr. R. T. Rundle Clark, who drew my attention tothe Egyptian data cited in notes 4 and 7.

2 Norden, E., Agnostos Theos, pp. 207, 260–1Google Scholar; Cantarella, R., Poeti Bizantini (Milan, 1948), Vol. II, pp. 28–37.Google Scholar

3 Hooke, S. H., Origins of Early Semitic Ritual, 1938, pp. 18–19Google Scholar; Engnell, I., Studies in the Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, 1945, pp. 15, 36.Google Scholar

4 In the Egyptian version the sexes are reversed, presumably because in Egypt there is virtually no rain. The Egyptian p.t ‘heaven’ may be connected with wp.i, ‘to separate’: Sethe, K., Uebersetzung und Kommentar zu den altägyptischen Pyramidentexten, Vol. III, p. 11Google Scholar, IV, p. 117. For the latest general account of the myth see Marót, K., ‘Die Trennung von Himmel und Erde’, Acta Antiqua, Vol. I, pp. 35–63 (Budapest, 1951).Google Scholar

5 See my Studies in Ancient Greek Society, 1949, p.58, and, for further data relating to the ‘dual organisation’, Tolstov, S. P., ‘Sovyetskaya shkola v etnografii’, Sovyetskaya Etnologiya, Vol. IV (1947) p. 25.Google Scholar

6 See my note in The Modern Quarterly, 1949, Vol. IV, pp. 267–9.

7 Chāndogya Upanishad 3. 19: ‘In the beginning it was not; it came into being; it grew; it turned into an egg; the egg lay for a year; the egg broke open; one halfwas of silver, the other of gold; the silver half became this earth, the golden half the sky … And what was born from it was Āditya, the sun’. This corresponds to the Egyptian myth of Geb (earth) and Nut (heaven), forced apart by Shu (light). The cosmic egg figured in Egyptian ritual: Lefebvre, G., ‘L'oeuf divin d'Hermopolis’, Annales du service des antiquités, Vol. XXIII, p. 65Google Scholar; Magical Papyrus Harris 6. 10, ed. Lange, H. Ö., Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Hist. Fil. Med. 14. 2, 1927, p. 53.Google Scholar See further Makemson, M. W., The Morning Star Rises: an Account of Polynesian Astronomy, 1941, Chap. II.Google Scholar

8 On Tiamat and the Sumerian Zu see Smith, S., Babylonian Legends of the Creation, 1931, p. 18Google Scholar; Langdon, S., The Babylonian Epic of Creation, 1932, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar Other examples of theduel are the slaying of Leviathan, (Psalms 74Google Scholar, Isaiah 51, cf. Job 26. 11), which is the Lotan of the Ugaritic texts: Schaeffer, C. F. A., Cuneiform Texts of Ras Shamra, 1939, pp. 65–6.Google Scholar

9 In Hesiod· the idea that heaven and earth were one has been overlaid by the notion of an original χάος, corresponding to the Egyptian Nu and the Babylonian Apsu; but it survived in the Orphic tradition: A.R. 1. 496–502, cf. E. fr. 484.

10 Roscher, , Lexikon, Vol. V, p. 1539.Google Scholar

11 Guthrie, W. K. C., Orpheus and Greek Religion, 1935, pp. 92–5.Google Scholar

12 Hes. Th. 820–85. It is clear that 881–5 should follow directly after the defeat of the Titans. The battle of the Titans and the slaying of Typho are alternative versions of thesame theme.

13 Plu. M. 418a, Apld. 3. 4. 1.

14 ‘The Greek Calendar’, JHS, LXII (1943), 52–65.

15 Nilsson, M. P., Minoan-Mycenean Religion, 1927, pp. 423–4.Google Scholar

16 Schaeffer, p. 60.

17 A. Pr. 367, Pi. P. 8. 16.

18 Str. 627.

19 Nonn. D. 1. 481–534. The duel was also located in Boeotia itself: Hsch. Τυφίον, Pi. O. 4. 11 sch., Hes. Sc. 32.

20 Str. 750.

21 Schaeffer pp. 10–17, cf. P. 3: ‘In order the better to understand the formation of ancient Minoan, it seems necessary to reduce the influence hitherto accorded to predynastic and protodynastic Egypt and to search rather in the direction of Asia’. This is borne out by the comparative study of Greek mythology.

22 Other elements in the Hesiodic Theogony traceable to Syria are Aphrodite, whose Phoenician connexions are well known (see my Studies, pp. 507–14) and Eros, the Phoenician Pothos (Ph. Bybl. 1–2, Dam. 125). At Thespiai, where there was a cult of Hesiod, (IG. Sept. 1735, 1760, 1763Google Scholar, cf. Paus. 9. 31. 4), there was also a cult of Eros (Paus. 9. 27. 1). Other ancient cults of this god are recorded at Leuktra in Laconia, founded from the Boeotian Leuktra (Paus. 3. 26. 4, Str. 360), and at Parion (Paus. 9. 27. 1), founded from Erythrai, one of the original Ionian colonies and named presumably after the Boeotian Erythrai.

23 SIG 3. For the harne Pasikles cf. Hdt. 9. 97. For other names in μανδρο see SIG 3g (Miletos), Supp. Epig. Gr. 4. 461. 4 (Branchidai), Apul. Fl. 18 (Priene), SIG 960. 5, 1079 (Magnesia), 1068. 3 (Patmos), Hdt. 4. 88 (Samos).

24 Suid. s.v., Str. 7, D.L. 2.1.

25 D.L. I. 22

26 Hdt. 1. 170. 3 cf. 5. 57. 1 see my Studies, pp. 123–4.

27 Hdt. 1. 146.

28 Str. 633.

29 Hell. 95.

30 Str. 636.

31 Suid. s.v.

32 Hdt. 9. 97.

33 Paus. 9. 16. 5. There are signs that at the Boeotian Orchomenos, too, and at Andania, the worship of Demeter had been a palace cult: see my Studies, pp. 125, 193.

34 The cult at Branchidai was older than the Ionian colonisation (Paus. 7. 2. 6), yet Branchos was said to be descended from Delphos (Str. 421). This is what we should expect if the Ionian settlers reorganised the cult under Delphic supervision.

35 Str. 632–3.

36 D.L. 9. 6.

37 Str. 633.

38 Arist. AR. 57. 1.

39 Paus. 7. 2. 6.

40 Lethaby, W. R. in JHS XXXVII, 10.Google Scholar

41 D.L. 9. 6.

42 Pl. Tht. 180a.

43 Arist. Rh. 3. 9, Demetr. 192, Cic. Or. 2. 63. 256.

44 The ensuing quotations from the Greek Orthodox Liturgy are cited from Athens, 1938 (abbreviated as IS); Rome, 1863 (EM); Venice, 1876 (OM); Antoniadis, S., La place de la liturgie dans la tradition des lettres grecques, Leiden, 1939Google Scholar; Cantarella, R., Poeti Bizantini, Vol. I.Google Scholar

45 The of the recall the use of in the ancient mysteries (Call. HCer. 1–2, Orph. fr. 32f); and we may recognise an echo of the same in the cries of χαῑρε which recur throughout the Oresteia (see my edition, Vol. I, pp. 17–18). There are many more connexions of this kind yet to be discovered. Just as ancient Greek, especially Attic, drew on the language of the mysteries (see my article, ‘Mystical Allusions in the Oresteia’, JHS LV, 20–34, 228–30), so modern Greek has borrowed many phrases from the Christian liturgy: see Antoniadis, pp. 240–6.

46 Pl. Tht. 180a, D.L. 9. 6. The author of the Hippocratic may have been one of the Herakleiteioi.

47 Quint. 3. 1.8.

48 See my Studies, p. 466.

49 Aristid. Ars Rh. 1. 160 = Rhet. Gr. Vol. V, p. 60.

50 This seems to be the origin of the figure of speech known as oxymoron, which is a conspicuous feature in the style of Aeschylus, reflecting his profound sense of dialectics.

51 Agnostos Theos, pp. 240–50.

52 See my Studies, pp. 45–9.

53 Pl.Grg. 492–3, Crat. 400C, E.fr. 638, Philol. fr.14.

54 On the Eleusinian see my Oresteia, Vol. I, pp. 14–16. In the Lord's Prayer the wording is different but this may have been deliberate (ibid. Vol. II, p. 206), and the original phrase survives in the service of baptism: EM p. 156

55 Cf. Paus. 10. 12. 10

56 Bailey, C., The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, 1928, p. 10.Google Scholar