How did religion originate? At the end of the 19th century different
theories about this subject were put forward.
The animistic theory: at some stage of his development
man came to the conclusion that he has a soul (Latin: animus) and began to
honor the souls of the deceased. (E.B.Tylor, Primitive culture, 1871).
The pre-animistic theory: Primitive man thinks that life
is full of impersonal holy power.
Certain places and strange objects are full of this
impersonal power, which the scholars called by the Melanesian word mana.
This was the beginning of religion (R.Marett, The threshold of religion, 1909). However mana is not an impersonal
power, but the power of the gods and chiefs and spirits.
Andrew Lang, The making of religion, 1898, took his
material from the aboriginals in Australia. He proved that they do not honor
spirits and souls, but they all have a notion of a highest being who is in
heaven and watches man’s keeping the moral commandments.
Pater Wilhelm Schmidt in Vienna Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, 1912-55: This belief in the highest
being can be traced in all primitive cultures. It must be the earliest form of
religion. The belief in many gods (polytheism) is a secondary development like
weed overgrowing and covering the field with good seed.
Schmidt studied the pygmies in Africa and found a
monotheism with clearly ethical features connected to the Supreme Being and the
offering of first-fruits, the old sacrifice also mentioned in Gen 4 as the
sacrifice of Cain and Abel, the first sacrifice in history. By comparing Red
Indian belief in the GREAT SPIRIT (from North America) with Tierra del Fuego
religion, and with negrito-religion in Asia and the religion of aboriginals in
Australia, he proved that what he believed were the oldest layers of human
culture had a monotheistic belief in a god who was good, benevolent,
omnipotent, creator, ethical, eternal, omniscient, living in heaven with no
relatives, no wife, no parents. The control which this Supreme Being exercises
over morality in this life by punishment and rewards carries over, acc. to all
ancient cultures, also in the next life. Here we must place the belief that the
souls of the good deceased go to heaven after death where God now dwells.
“The time that the Supreme Being spent on earth living
intimately with man shortly after He, the Boundless Good had filled His
creation with goodness until it overflowed was considered to be the best of all
times on this earth, according to the beliefs common to this oldest era. People
looked back to this time as to a lost island of bliss with painful longing, a
longing they thought was now satisfied by the existence the souls of the good
experience in heaven. This reestablishes this golden age, however in heaven
this time and no longer on this earth. We find glowing descriptions of this new
heavenly paradise.
The Supreme Being, according to His nature and in all
his activity, is not only completely free of all moral evil, He also possesses
all of the moral virtues in the highest degree. He is not content merely to be
man’s model. Immediately after He created man, He took it upon Himself to
educate man and teach him how to practice this morality. He reinforces this
teaching by threatening and punishing those who do not follow His law, while promising
reward to those who willingly follow His commands. He does not abandon the
wicked, however, if they repent and try
to
improve, a point which is made by a number of early groups. Once this time of
testing, is over, however, He does not hesitate to reward those who were
morally good with a corresponding happy existence and the morally wicked with
the kind of punishment which they have coming to them.
In all of this the Supreme Being not only manifests His
supreme goodness which leads men to pinnacles of purity, strength and bliss,
but also reveals His zeal to realize moral justice and beauty. In this way the
Supreme Being decorates Himself with new moral virtues” (Volume VI,468-73).
An English summary of
pater Wilhelm Schmidt's works is Ernest Brandewie, Wilhelm Schmidt and the Origin of the Idea of God,1983.
Literature
and sources:
“One of the strangest discoveries of modern
science of religion is the one initiated by the Scottish folklorist Andrew
Lang, the discovery of the high gods”,
says the great German scholar
Friedrich Heiler (Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion, 1961, p.456) and he
mentions a lot of titles developing Lang's theory:
Konrad T. Preuss, Glaube und Mystik im Schatten des höchsten
Wesens, 1926.
Archbishop Nathan
Söderblom, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens,
1926 & The living God. Basal forms of personal religion. Gifford Lectures,
1933.
Leopold v. Schröder,
Arische Religion I: Der altarische
Himmelsgott, das höchste gute Wesen,1923.
Raffaele Pettazzoni,
Der allwissende Gott. Zur Geschichte der
Gottesidee, 1960.
Geo Widengren, Der Hochgottglaube im alten Iran,1938.[1]
Polytheism, the belief in
many gods, arises where different functions are split off from the high god. We
meet this process in the Bible when it speaks about God, his word (Greek: Logos), his wisdom (Sofia), his Spirit, his messenger (Angelos), his Son.
Acc. to G.Dumézil, the
Indo-European pantheon is split up into 3 functions: the ruling function, the
war-function, the fertility-function, Les
dieux Indo-Européens, 1952.
In Iran, Ahura Mazda is
surrounded by his 7 Amesha Spentas. They are, as proved by Dumézil, the
spiritualized substitute for the old Indo Iranian functional gods. Acc. to
Widengren this is a typical example of the high god surrounded by minor gods
who are different aspects of his being. Together they make up the fullness of
his nature. Die Religionen Irans 1965 (pp.11f).
Important works on the
Near Eastern seals are:
P.Amiet, La Glyptique mésopotamienne Archaïque,
1980.
ibd, “Glyptique
susienne archaïque”, RA LI,1957
pp.121-9.
ibd, “Le Symbolisme
cosmique du Répertoire animalier en Mesopotamie”, RA L,1956 (about the bull man as Atlas/world pillar).
A,Audin, “Les Peliers
Jumeaux”, AO XVI,1948,265ff, XXI,1953,430ff.
le Breton, “A propos de
cachets archaïches susiens” 1, RA L, 1956, pp.135-9.
H.Frankfort, Cylinder Seals,1939.
L.Heuzey, “Le Sceau
de Goudéa”, RA V,1902, pp.129ff.
(“Gilgamesh” setting up the two pillars of Hercules).
A,Moortgat, Tammuz. Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube
in der altorientalischen Bildkunst, 1949.
Excavations:
M.Dunand, Fouilles de Byblos I-II, 1939,1954-8.
M.Mallowan, Nimrud and its Remains 1-2,1966.
J Mellaart’s reports
on excavations at Catal Hüyük in AnSt
12-14,1962-4.
P.Montet, Byblos et l´Egypt,1927.
Max von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf I-III,1943.
E.A.Speiser, Excavations at Tepe Gawra I,1935.
A.J.Tobler, Excavations at Tepe Gawra II,1950.
The Ugarit texts:
J.Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends,1978.
J.C.de Moor, An Anthology of Religious Texts from Ugarit,
1987 (underlines the importance of “spiritualistic sessions”, where the spirits
of the forefathers were summoned).
Hellenistic sources:
Philo of Byblos has written a History of the
Phoenicians on the basis of material from a certain Sachunjaton, living before
the Trojan war and serving as priest for the god Jeu.
Sa. is said to have taken his
information from very old inscriptions on the “sun-pillars” in the temples,
i.e. the twin-pillars representing the gate of the sun and carrying the
world-order inscribed (see below). Only fragments of his work have survived in
long quotations by the Christian historian Eusebios, Præperatio Evang. I, ed. by K.Mras,1956. Many scholars have dealt
with Philo´s Phoenician cosmogony, theogony and sociogony, the latest (as far
as I know) being I.Schiffmann,
Phönizisch-Punische Mythologie und geschichtliche Überlieferung,1986,pp.10-72.
Nonnos from Panopolis (in Egypt) in his great epos, Dionysiaca, gives important
information about Cadmos and the fight against the double snake of primordial
totality, Typhon, Actaeon, the hunter torn by his own dogs, the god Aion, as
old as the world itself, and sister to Beroe (Beiruth) 7,22ff & 41,143f.
But most important is his description of the visit Dionysos pays Melqart in his
old temple in Tyre, at the altar where the holy Phoenix is renewed in fire, and
where also can be seen the strange flaming tree with a snake coiling around it
and a bowl of the drink of immortality at the top. Here also the first attempt
to sail the sea was undertaken at the command of Melqart, 40,1ff.
Lucian, De Syria Dea, a short description of the cult of
Adonis in Byblos, a long description of the temple in Mabbug (Lucian: The Syrian Goddess by Attridge
and Oden, 1976). In Macrobios Saturnalia
I,17,66f. is an important description of an Apollo-statue in Mabbug.
Diodor of Sicily: Important information about the North African Dionysos (Baal) and the
fragments of Ktesias about Semiramis
and Sardanapal, and fragments of Megastenes´s
description of the military campaign undertaken by Dionysos (Baal) to India (cf. Arrian, Indica 9)
Apuleius Metamorphoses VIII book has a description of
Syrian ecstatics dressed as women, but also the important description of an
nightly initiation into the mysteries of Isis: by following the nightly path of
the sun through all elements the initiate is led through the underworld to dawn
where he is standing upright on a platform as the living picture of the sun god
and greeted as a god. (Apotheosis by following the path of the sun to eternal standing.)
In this work we also find the beautiful fairy tale of Amor and Psyche and the
love-story of Charite and Tlepolemos.
The Hellenistic Novels are built
over the old patterns: The goddess seeking her lost lover or the goddess
abducted and brought back and the journeys & struggles of the sun hero.
Achilles Tatius´s novel starts with a visit in the temple of Astarte, where a great
painting of Europa on the bull is admired. II,14 there is a new description of
the marvellous tree in Tyre surrounded by fire.
Only fragments are preserved of the
oldest novel about the love between Semiramis and Ninos.
Apart from this, the oldest novel
must be Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe.
Photios: Bibliotheca has preserved summaries of
two very important Syrian novels:
“The wonders beyond Thule” by Antonios Diogenes (Bibl. 166) &
“Babyloniaca” by Iamblichos (Bibl. 94).
Only fragments are left of the
novel by Lollianos, Phoenicica.
The Story of Apollonius, king of Tyre by an anonymous author is also important, as
is Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus, and “Joseph
and Asenath”, a Jewish love-story from the Hellenistic period
(M.Philonenko, Joseph et Aséneth,1968).
All the Greek novels (and Apollonios… trans. from Latin) are
brought together in new translations in: Collected
Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B.P.Reardon,1989.
They are all variations on the
theme: the goddess of fertility and beauty taken away by the king of winter,
but liberated and brought back by the sun hero or a Dioscuric pair. The same
theme is worked out as the main theme of modern South Arabian fairy tales by
W.Daum, Ursemitische Religion,1985.
Important aspects of the religion in
Tyre is analysed by
J.Morgenstern, “The King-God among
the Western Semites and the meaning of Epiphanes”, VT X,1960, pp.138-97
E.A.S.Butterworth, The Tree at the navel of the Earth, 1970
in Petra by G.Dalman, Petra,1908
in Palmyra by du Mesnil du Buisson, Les tèsseres et les monnais de Palmyre,1962
in Edessa by H.J.W.Drijvers, Cults
and Beliefs at Edessa,1980
in Hatra by H.Ingholt, Parthian
Sculptures from Hatra, 1954
in Baalbek by Y.Hajjar, La
Triade d´Heliopolis-Baalbek,I-II,1977
in Harran
by D.Chwolson, Die Ssabier und der
Ssabismus,I-II,1856
in Byblos by B.Soyez, Byblos et
la Fête des Adonies,1977
in Tarsus
by H.Böhlig, Die Geisteskultur von Tarsus,1913.
Important for his interpretation of
the motifs on the coins of the Middle East area is A.B.Cook, Zeus, I-III,1914-40, for his insistence
on a religious interpretation of Syrian and Assyrian ivories R.D.Barnett, The Nimrod Ivories in the British Museum,
1957.
The Syrian cult of the sun is dealt with in:
J.Tubach, Im Schatten des
Sonnengottes, 1986.
F-J. Dölger, Sol Salutis, 1925.
The fight between lion and bull:
du Mesnil du Buisson, Etudes sur les Dieux Pheniciens herites par l´Empire Romain, 1970.
The Heracles pillars and the Saturn pillar:
Movers, Die Phoenizier,I, 1841.
The important motif, the ‘birth of the divine
saviour, is dealt with by
Ed. Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes,
1924.
R.Eisler, “Das Fest des ‘Geburttages der Zeit’ in Nordarabien”, ARW 15,1912.
The cosmogony of Philo of Byblos
should be compared with the Phoenician cosmogonies preserved by the late
Neoplatonic philosopher Damascios, De Principiis (ed. C.A.Ruelle, 1889) 123bis-125ter.
A cosmogony linked to the cult of
Zas (Santas) is in Greece propagated by Pherecydes
from the island of Syros (fragments collected & ed. by H.Schibli, 1990).
[1] To the abovementioned titles
could be added: Jan de Vries, Religionshistoria i fågelperspektiv (translated
from Dutch), 1961 chapter VII,F,4 on the high gods.