Statement of the Problem and the Evidence.
{29}
The subject I have chosen for this course may appear over-ambitious;
and the attempt to pass critical judgment upon the facts that arise in
this wide comparative survey may be thought premature. For not only is
the area vast, but large tracts of it are still unexplored, while
certain regions have yielded materials that are ample and promising,
but of which the true interpretation has not yet been found. We have,
for instance, abundant evidence flowing in with ever-increasing volume
of the Sumerian-Babylonian religion, but only a portion of the
cuneiform texts has as yet been authoritatively translated and made
available for the service of Comparative Religion. The Hittite
monuments are witnesses of primary value concerning Hittite religion:
but the Hittite script may reveal much more that is vital to our view
of it, and without the help of that script we are not sure of the
exact interpretation of those religious monuments; but though we have
recently heard certain encouraging expressions of hope, the
master-word has not yet been found that can open the door to this
buried treasure of knowledge. And again, the attempt to gauge
accurately the relation and the indebtedness of Greek religion to that
of the near East cannot be wholly successful, until we know more of
the Minoan-Mycenaean religion; {30} and our hope hangs here partly on
the discovery of more monuments, but mainly, I am convinced, on the
decipherment of the mysterious Minoan writing, to which great
achievement Sir Arthur Evans’ recent work on the _Scripta Minoa_ is a
valuable contribution. Therefore the time is certainly not yet ripe
for a final and authoritative pronouncement on the great questions
that I am venturing upon in this course.
But even the early premature attempts to solve a problem may
contribute something to the ultimate satisfying solution. And often in
the middle of our investigations, when new evidence continues to pour
in, there comes a moment when it is desirable to look around and take
stock, so to speak, to consider whether we can draw some general
conclusions with safety, or in what direction the facts appear at this
stage to be pointing. In regard to the religions of anterior Asia and
South-Eastern Europe, and the question of their relationships, this is
now, I feel, a seasonable thing to do--all the more because the
Asiatic region has been mainly explored by specialists, who have
worked, as was profitable and right, each in his special province,
without having the time or perhaps the training to achieve a
comparative survey of the whole. We know also by long experience the
peculiar dangers to which specialists are prone; in their enthusiastic
devotion to their own domain, they are apt to believe that it supplies
them with the master-key whereby to unlock many other secret places of
human history. This hope, soon to prove an illusion, was regnant when
the interpretation of the Sacred Vedic Books was first accomplished.
And now certain scholars, who are distinguished specialists in
Assyriology, are putting forward a similar claim for Babylon, and are
championing the view that the {31} Sumerian-Assyrian religion and
culture played a dominating part in the evolution of the Mediterranean
civilisation, and that therefore much of the religious beliefs and
practices of the early Greeks and other European stocks must be traced
back to Mesopotamia as their fountain-head.[31.1] This will be
encouraging to that distinguished writer on Greek religion, Dr. O.
Gruppe, who almost a generation ago proclaimed in his _Griechische
Mythologie_ the dogma of the emanation of all religion from a single
centre, and the dependence of Greece upon the near East.
Now there ought to be no prejudice _a priori_ against such a theory,
which stands on a different footing from what I may call the Vedic
fallacy: and it is childish to allow to the Aryan, or any other racial
bias, any malignant influence in these difficult discussions. Those
who have worked for years upon the marvellously rich records of
Mesopotamian culture, whether at first hand or, like myself, at second
hand, cannot fail to receive the deepest impression of its imperial
grandeur and its forceful vitality, and of its intensity of thought
and purpose in the sphere of religion. Naturally, they may feel, such
spiritual power must have radiated influence far and wide over the
adjacent lands; and no one could maintain that South-Eastern Europe
was too remote to have been touched, perhaps penetrated, by it. For we
know that, under certain conditions, the race-barrier falls down
before the march of a conquering and dominating religion. And now, in
the new light of a wider historical survey, instead of saying, as once
was said, “What is more its own than a people’s gods?” we {32} may
rather ask, “What is less its own than a people’s gods?” always,
however, remembering that race-tradition, inherited instinctive
feeling and thought, is very strong in these matters, and that a
people will, often unconsciously, cling to its ancestral modes of
religious consciousness and expression, while it will freely borrow
alien forms, names, and ritual.
The inquiry indicated by the title of these lectures is naturally
twofold; it may be applied either to the earlier or the later periods
of the Hellenic and Hellenic-Roman history. The question concerning
the later period, though much critical research is needed for its
clear solution, is far simpler and more hopeful: for the evidence is
immeasurably fuller and more precise, and historical dates and
landmarks are there to help. The history of the invasion of the West
by Mithraism has been masterfully stated by Cumont; the general
influence of the Anatolian religions upon Graeco-Roman society is
presented and estimated by the same writer in his _Religious
Orientales_; by Toutain, in his _Les Cultes Paiens dans l’Empire
Romain_; by our own scholar, Samuel Dill, in _Roman Society in the
last Century of the Western Empire_; and more summarily by Salomon
Reinach in his _Orpheus_. Therefore I am not going to pursue the
inquiry at this end, although I may have to notice and use some of the
later evidence. I am going to raise the question concerning the very
origins of the Hellenic religious system, so as to test the recently
proclaimed dogma of certain Assyriologists, and to determine, if
possible, whether the Orient played any formative part in the organic
development of Greek religion. For this is just the question which, I
venture to maintain, has never yet been critically explored. From what
I have said at the beginning, it is obvious that I cannot {33} promise
final and proved results. It will be gain enough if we can dimly
discern something behind the veil that shrouds the origins of things,
can reach to something that has the air of a reasoned scientific
hypothesis, and still more if we can indicate the paths along which
one day light may come.
We may then begin at once with stating more clearly what are the
necessary conditions for a successful solution of the problem. First,
we must accomplish a thorough exploration of the religions of the
Anatolian and Mesopotamian lands; secondly, we must explore the
Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and estimate the strength of its influence
on the later period; thirdly, we must be able to decide what beliefs
and practices the Hellenes brought with them from the North; lastly,
before we can hope for any precision in our results, we must be able
to answer with some degree of accuracy a burning chronological
question: What was the date of the arrival through the Balkans from
the North of those Aryan-speaking tribes that by mingling with the
Southerners formed the Hellenic people of history? For only then shall
we be able to test the whole question, by considering the position of
the Eastern powers at this momentous epoch. The third of these
inquiries, concerning the aboriginal religious ideas of the earliest
Aryan Hellenes, is perhaps the most troublesome of all. I may venture
upon it at a later occasion, but it is far too difficult and extensive
to combine it with the others in a short treatise. Nor can I do more
than touch lightly on the Minoan-Mycenaean period; for I wish to
devote the greater part of these lectures to the comparative survey of
Greece, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, as this task has never yet been
critically performed. Something like an attempt was made by {34} Tiele
in his _Histoire des anciennes Religions_, but when that book was
written much of the most important evidence had not yet come in.
But before beginning the exploration of any large area, whether for
the purposes of Comparative Religion, archaeology, or anthropology, we
must possess or acquire certain data of ethnography and secular
history. We must, for instance, face the chronological question that
I mentioned just above, before we can estimate the formative
influences at work in the earliest phases of Hellenic development.
Recent archaeological evidence, which I cannot here discuss, renders
us valuable aid at this critical point of our inquiry. We can no
longer relegate the earliest Hellenic invasion of Greece to a very
remote period of Mediterranean history. The arguments from the Minoan
culture, combined with the still more striking evidence, of which the
value is not yet fully appreciated, obtained by the recent excavations
of the British School on the soil of Thessaly,[34.1] point to the
conviction that this, the epoch-making event of the world’s secular
and spiritual life, occurred not much earlier than 1500 B.C. On this
hypothesis, our quest becomes less vague. We can consider what
influences were likely to be radiating from the East upon the opposite
shores of the Aegean during those few centuries, in which the Hellenic
tribes were passing from barbarism to culture, and the religious
beliefs and ritual were developing into that comparatively advanced
and complex form of polytheism which is presented about 1000 B.C. in
the Homeric poems. By this date we may assert that the Hellenic spirit
had evolved certain definite traits and had acquired a certain
autonomous power. While continuing always to be quickly responsive to
{35} alien influence, it would not henceforth admit the alien product
with the submissive and infantine docility of barbarians In fact, when
we compare the Homeric religion with that of the fifth century, we
feel that in this particular sphere of the social and spiritual life
the Hellene in many essentials had already come to his own in the
Homeric period. Therefore, in trying to track the earliest streams of
influences that moulded his religious consciousness, what was
operative before the tenth century is of more primary importance than
what was at work upon him afterwards.
Now the most recent researches into Mesopotamian history establish
with certainty the conclusion that there was no direct political
contact possible between the powers in the valley of the Euphrates and
the western shores of the Aegean, in the second millennium B.C. It is
true that the first Tiglath-Pileser, near the end of the twelfth
century, extended the Assyrian arms to the shores of South-Eastern
Asia, to Cilicia and Phoenicia[35.1]; but there does not seem to have
been any permanent Assyrian or Babylonian settlement on this littoral.
The city of Sinope in the north, which, as the legend attests and the
name that must be derived from the Assyrian god Sin indicates, was
originally an Assyrian colony, was probably of later foundation, and
geographically too remote to count for the present inquiry. In fact,
between the nascent Hellas and the great world of Mesopotamia, there
were powerful and possibly independent strata of cultures interposing.
We have to reckon first with the great Hittite Kingdom, which included
Cappadocia and Northern Syria, and was in close touch with Phrygia and
many of the communities {36} of the shore-line of Asia Minor; and
which at the period of the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence was in
diplomatic relations and on terms of equality with the Assyrian and
Egyptian powers. And the tendency of modern students, such as
Messerschmidt in his _Die Hettiter_, is to extend this ethnic name so
as to include practically all the Anatolian peoples who were other
than the Aryan and Semitic stocks. As far as I can discern, at the
present stage of our knowledge this is unscientific; and it is at
present safer to regard the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Troad,
Phrygia, Lycia, Caria, and Lydia, possibly Cilicia, as varieties of an
ancient Mediterranean stock to which the people of the Minoan-Aegean
culture themselves belonged. At any rate, for the purposes of our
religious comparison, they are to be counted as a third stratum,
through which as through the Hittite the stream of influence from
Mesopotamia would be obliged to percolate before it could discharge
itself upon the Hellenic world. And these interjacent peoples are
races of great mental gifts and force; they were not likely to
transmit the Mesopotamian influence pure and unmingled with currents
of their own religious life.
Therefore this great problem of old-world religion is no light one;
and fallacies here can only be avoided by the most critical
intelligence trained on the best method of comparative religious
study. We must endeavour to seize and comprehend the most essential
and characteristic features of the Babylonian-Assyrian cults and
theology; we must discover all that is at present possible, and trust
to the future for discovering more, concerning the Hittite religion;
and then we must glean all we can of the earliest forms of cult in
vogue among the other peoples of the Asia-Minor coast, {37} and in the
early world of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture.
And if the phenomena of this area present us with certain general
resemblances to the Hellenic, we must not too hastily assume that the
West has borrowed from the East. For often in comparing the most
remote regions of the world we are struck with strange similarities of
myth and cult; and, where the possibility of borrowing is ruled out,
we must have recourse to the theory of spontaneous generation working
in obedience to similar psychical forces. The hypothesis of borrowing,
which is always legitimate where the peoples with whom we are
concerned are adjacent, is only raised to proof either when the
linguistic evidence is clear, for instance when the divine names or
the names of cult-objects are the same in the various districts, or
when the points of resemblance in ritual or religious concept are
numerous, striking, and fundamental, or peculiar to the communities of
a certain area. This is all the more necessary to insist on, because
many superficial points of resemblance will be found in all religions
that are at the same stage of development.
Now, in beginning this wide comparative survey, one’s first difficulty
is to arrange the material in such a way as to enable one to present a
comparison that shall be definite and crucial. It would be useless to
attempt a mere synoptical outline of the Babylonian-Sumerian religion;
those whom that might content will find one in Dr. Pinches’ handbook,
_The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, or Mr. King’s _Babylonian
Religion_, while those who desire a more thorough and detailed
presentation of it will doubtless turn to the laborious and critical
volumes of Prof. Jastrow, _Die Religion Babyloniens u. Assyriens_. But
for me to {38} try to present this complex polytheism _en bloc_ would
be useless in view of my present object; for two elaborate religious
systems cannot effectively be compared _en bloc_. A more hopeful
method for those who have to pass cursorily over a great area, is to
select certain salient and essential features separately, and to see
how, in regard to each one, the adjacent religious systems agree or
differ. And the method I propose to pursue throughout this course is
as follows: Ignoring the embryology of the subject, that is to say,
all discussions about the genesis of religious forms and ideas that
would contribute nothing to our purpose, I will try to define the
morphology of the Mesopotamian and Anatolian religions; and will first
compare them with the Hellenic in respect of the element of
personality in the divine perception, the tendency to, or away from,
anthropomorphism, the relation of the deities to the natural world, to
the State, and to morality, and I will consider what we can deduce
from the study of the famous law-code of Hammurabi. A special question
will arise concerning the supremacy of the goddess, a phenomenon which
may be of some importance as a clue in our whole inquiry. The
comparison will then be applied to the religious psychology of the
different peoples; and here it will be useful to analyse and define
that element of the religious temper which we call fanaticism, and
which sometimes affords one of the crucial distinctions between one
religion and another.
We may also obtain evidence from a comparison of the cosmogonic ideas
prevalent over this area, so far as the records reveal any, as well as
of the eschatological beliefs concerning man’s future destiny and his
posthumous existence. Finally, we must compare the various
cult-objects and forms of ritual, the significance of the {39}
sacrifice; the position and organisation of the priesthood; and here
it will be convenient to consider the ritual of magic as well as of
the higher service and the part played by magic within the limits of
the higher religion. If under each of these heads we have been able to
discover certain salient points of divergence or resemblance between
the Hellene and the Mesopotamian, we may be able to draw a general
deduction of some probability concerning the whole question. In any
case we may be encouraged by the assurance that the comparison of two
complex and highly developed religions is fruitful and interesting in
itself, whether it yields us definite historical conclusions or not.