Thomas Yaeger's Blog: Rome

I guess that you are asking if there is a significant history of the idea of man as the image of God before Christianity, and the doctrine of the incarnation? Yes there is, and it is a very old idea. In Egypt, the Pharaoh was understood to be the Divine on earth – he could be understood to reflect many aspects of divinity – for example, when represented as the destroyer of Egypt’s enemies, he was depicted in the form of the God Montu, wielding a club. But he could be any of the other gods in the divine pantheon, according to circumstance.

In Mesopotamia they had the same essential notion, that the king represented the perfect man, and was ‘the very image of the God’ (I quoted from some Assyrian letters which illustrate that this was the contemporary understanding – see 'Standing in the Place of Ea'). There are a number of parodies of this idea which appear in the Old Testament, as a consequence of the Hebrew exposure to Mesopotamian ideas while in exile in Babylon. I wrote about this in ‘The Idea of Being in Israel’.

This isn’t a way of thinking which was necessarily drawn from the east, though there are clear parallels. The Romans developed an imperial cult around their emperors from the end of the Republic onwards. Effectively the emperors were worshipped either as semi-divine, or as actually divine (sometimes hard to tell the difference). They could be elevated to divine status after death, even if no-one was sure of their actual status while alive.

[Quotation from 'Knowledge and Belief in Israel']

As discussed elsewhere in The Sacred History of Being, in Greece and Mesopotamia divine images functioned as a part of a complex system, a chain of images of Being, to enable intellectual access to the most difficult of all images which might be apprehended by man or god: the one true thing, which is the nature of reality itself, and the source of all knowledge.

Over time, the polytheistic show was entirely removed in Israel. The monotheism which emerged in Israel was necessarily no longer about access to knowledge of the divine and its apprehension - a mental discipline - but about belief.

Replying to @Rotorvator

Excellent. Do you unpack the last sentence somewhere? The idea that belief was merely mental assent is unfortunately common.

Replying to Johannes Richter @jgmrichter

I’ve talked about this a lot, and in various places. I distinguish between belief (doxa, or opinion) and faith (pistis). Belief serves societal and political functions. Faith is not so much about what is believed, but is about the necessity that the due observances are conducted. In early Judaism for example, the scope for observance was gradually narrowed, to the point where only the priests in the temple in Jerusalem could perform ritual. Everybody else had to make do with a simple altar of earth. This was about political and social power. I talk about this in ‘The Idea of Being in Israel’, and there is a separate article on the blog called ‘Distinguishing Belief and Faith’.

If religion is about the acquisition of knowledge of divine things, but is subsequently transformed into a social and political construction which enforces what you are to believe, then that religion has ceased to serve its proper function. It has fallen away from both the importance of regular observance, and the very idea that such observance opens a connection with the divine, and reinforces the connection between man and the Divine.

Replying to @Rotorvator

PS where do you discuss it? [the ontological argument]

Replying to Johannes Richter @jgmrichter

…. I spent fifty pages discussing the progress of the ontological argument [in The Sacred History of Being]. I think it is a dead thing now. Though in the way of things, it may take a hundred years for this critical demolition to be taken on board.

Replying to @Rotorvator

That's the weakness of arguments; they shuffle bits of information around as if it changes something. I was just curious whether you know the book (by David Bentley Hart) since it comprehensively tries to stake down the conceptual space the (classical) idea of God occupies.

Replying to Johannes Richter @jgmrichter

I’m particularly interested in the contrast between conceptions of the Divine in antiquity, and conceptions from the middle ages onwards. They are quite different, and a lot of ideas have simply disappeared from later argument. I know what you mean when you refer to the classical idea of God, but I would refer to that ‘classical’ idea as ‘the standard ontological argument’. It is less than a thousand years old. Since I study classical philosophers from fifteen hundred years earlier than that, to refer to such an idea of God as ‘classical’ would just court confusion and misunderstanding.

Of course we don’t have clear formal argument about the Divine from the Classical or the Mesopotamian worlds. But close study of what they wrote does make it possible to figure out what they understood by the Divine. The ancient conception is far more subtle and sophisticated than the standard ontological argument. The modern world prefers a simpler idea of God.

The whole idea of constructing a form of argument which provides a rational basis for religious belief (which is how Alvin Plantinga views its function), is self-contradictory, and an absurdity.

Replying to @Rotorvator

Thanks. DBH gives an overview of scholastic theology and includes perspectives from quite a few other traditions. Tough reading but we'll worth the time.

Replying to Johannes Richter @jgmrichter

Thanks for the pointer to DBH's book.

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Thursday, 30 August 2018

At the very Edge: Marking Transition and Transformation in Antiquity

One of the principal themes of my work is the importance accorded to the idea and the function of limit in ancient thought. Discussion of the idea of limit (and the unlimited) can be found in early Greek philosophy, and limit is a key idea in both Mesopotamian and Roman civilization. However currently it is not a major focus of interest for scholars, and so its importance is scarcely understood.

Here are pointers to seven texts which discuss the significance of the idea of limit in antiquity.

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'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria'. http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-threshold-in-ancient-assyria.html?spref=tw The chapter is based on pioneering research by the scholar Pauline Albenda.

[From The Origins of Transcendentalism in Ancient Religion (forthcoming)]

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'The Divine and the Limit' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-divine-and-limit.html?spref=tw … explores the prominence of Janus in the ritual life of the Romans. In the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things. The king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him. At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. He is especially associated with the idea of limit, which is a preoccupation of a number of ancient cultures.

[From Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

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Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/being-kabbalah-and-assyrian-sacred-tree.html The Assyrian Sacred Tree appears to be associated with the ideas of divine being and also with the idea of limit. The explanation for such an association is that the Mesopotamians conceived divinity to be at the limit of that which is. The parallels between the Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree were uncovered by the Assyriologist Simo Parpola in the 1990s. This was achieved using the god numbers which the Mesopotamians used to reference their gods.

[an extract from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

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'Ocean and the Limit of Existence' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2017/03/ocean-and-limit-of-existence.html?spref=tw There are similar ideas associated with Ocean in Europe and in the Ancient Near East. These parallels, and the concepts which underpin them, are explored in this chapter.

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

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'Remarks on the Telos (and other lost ideas)' https://t.co/FBciqYgSWk We recognise only one cause in the modern world, which is the efficient cause. This is concerned with work, energy and power. In antiquity Aristotle described four causes, which are discussed here. Did Aristotle conjure these by himself, or were these concepts understood across the civilised world for centuries before Classical Greece?

[From the chapter: 'Aristotle’s Four Causes' in: Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

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'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-esoteric-conception-of-divinity-in.html In my twenties, I was struck by the strong interest the ancients had in the idea of limit – in art, architecture, philosophy, and ritual. This interest did not much seem to engage modern scholarly attention, with a couple of notable exceptions. Initially I had no idea at all what the significance of the idea of limit might be, and no idea where pursuing it would take me. Or that it would lead to a book it would take me four years to write, and which would reframe my understanding of human intellectual history in the process.

[Some extracts from the essay: 'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World', in Man and the Divine (2018)]

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'The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria.' https://t.co/6CMNzMiGw2 We have good information about the installation and refurbishment of the gods in Assyrian temples from Esarhaddon, who ruled Assyria before his son Ashurbanipal. Such operations were agreed (via diviners present in the workshop of the gods) with the relevant divinities beforehand (principally Shamash, the sun god), and the omens were cross-checked for accuracy. The full strangeness of what we now know renders a lot of previous anthropological interpretation horribly out of date.

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

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'Installing the Gods in Heaven: the Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-babylonian-mis-pi-ritual.html?spref=tw … This extract contains analysis and commentary on one of the surviving descriptions of the ritual found in Ashurbanipal's library during excavations. Boundaries and limits serve an important function at key moments of the three day ritual.

[An extract from the chapter 'The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual', from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

TY, August 30, 2018

Saturday, 8 April 2017

The Raft of the Medusa

The past, as has been observed, is another country. Much of what we acquire as education and understanding takes us further away from the possibility of entering into that foreign land, with each generation that passes. As a consequence, piecing together the past can sometimes involve a good deal of supposition, and much of this is done without any real consciousness that suppositions are being introduced.

In an age where both ideas of realpolitik and the centrality of ideology and different varieties of determinism (philosophical and economic in particular) are knowingly supposed to be the constants in history, knowledge of which eluded our predecessors, it is easy to introduce suppositions into historical analysis without any sense of violating the proper context of the evidence.

These suppositions create difficulties which stand between us and use of evidence which does more than fit the pieces crudely into a pattern of meaning which does more than simply conform to something like our expectations, and what we are prepared to countenance as a credible model of the past.

More significant than individual difficulties however, is the complex interaction of one with the other, and the effects of successive layers of these interacting obstacles to our understanding.

Any age has a raft of of commonly understood truths, sometimes contradictory and multiple, and differing across social groups, societies and nations. They are not examined closely (if at all) because they have the special status of commonly understood truths. Not common in the sense that they are base or full of superstition, but common in that they are universally agreed from the top of society to the bottom. These vary from age to age.

In my own lifetime, I have seen many patterns of belief change – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Many of these ideas have changed so dramatically that the world in which I spent my first ten years now looks as strange and remote to me as (for example) the world of nineteenth century rationalism. Mostly (in both cases), the changes which occurred in the years following were unregrettable. What is regrettable however, is that one set of unquestionable certainties has been replaced by others.

In fact, we have gone much further than acquire new unquestionable certainties: we have gone so far as to create an approach to reality which is designed to support the enlightenment agenda without a theoretical basis, It is worth drawing attention to this approach, since it illustrates a certain naivete about our own times, and the worth of our own advance on our predecessors. We assume our enlightenment, though it is hard for us to prove it.

The philosopher John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, published in 1971, essentially uses a normative approach as the basis of determining what is or is not just. The idea is that, though we might not any longer agree on the kind of quasi-theological or philosophical theoretical basis for what is just, which one would have found in past cultural contexts, in many cases we can agree on what is just without such a basis. This represents a break with former traditions in which justice was understood to emerge from philosophical principle, and be instantiated in particular cases. For Rawls it is about the calculation of self-interest.

To some extent it can be understood as a reformulation of the idea of common law, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, where law can be decided by judges on the basis of their personal judgement, and the circumstances, without any necessary reference to a body of specific precedent, or an established legal principle. However, Rawls’ book attempts to enshrine this normative approach to justice as the successor to all philosophical approaches to the establishment of the idea of justice.

At a stroke, all the difficulties raised by the nature of former approaches to the problem of what is just fall away. Where the old approaches provided little or no support for things which we needed to root as fundamental in our culture, if it is to function rationally, we, by the adoption of normative criteria, could begin the advance to that position.

The downside to this is becoming all too clear. A generation of lawyers and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic is now steeped in this way of thinking. If what you want is reasonable (and of course it is, since we are all reasonable people), then the precedent of other legal systems, legal prescriptions, agreements and contracts, are, from beginning to end, no more than limitations imposed by past ways of thinking. Where there is a conflict with what is clearly ‘normative’ to the reasonable mind, existing arrangements are obstacles. Those who would stand on these arrangements in the face of the normative desire, are using the past as a way of impeding the future.

The normative view is now the just view. We are now in a period where ‘pre-emptive’ self-defence is understood to be a legitimate policy for a powerful state. And important international agreements such as the Geneva Convention can be ignored provided some kind of normative legal excuse can be provided. What it is reasonable to think, appears to be in the course of a substantial revision. Our idea of reason is changing.

We are by and large, by reflex, so sure of the rightness of our ways of thinking, particularly in the modern Western world, that we have now elevated that reflex to a place above all other rational and legal responses to the world, in the whole of history.

Such a thing has happened before. It is reminiscent of the elevation of the Roman Republic above all other constitutional forms, as described to us in the pages of Polybius, so that the Republic was not any longer subject to the forces that (it was understood) other states were. The ancient world had several models for state constitutions available, and Aristotle (we are told) had arranged them into a cycle. Rome fitted into this construction, but at some point the Romans decided that they had transcended that cycle, and that both Rome and its constitution transcended all other forms of polity. Rome stood apart, and was just and eternal.

The pursuit of the normative also can be seen in the culmination of the rationalist and humanist agenda of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rationalists and humanists understood themselves to be struggling under the deadweight of accumulated belief and superstition, as well as the institutions and powers which drew their authority from the religious structures dominating the intellectual landscape.

Drawing on the intellectual models of nature which developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rationalist perception of the world constantly sought to describe reality in terms of the laws of physics and mechanics. Nature became something which could be the subject of operations, rather than an outward expression of the mystery and character of the divine. The latter approach was derided and progressively ignored.

Descartes first shut out this aspect of reality as unnecessary for the analysis of the world, without significant supportive argument in favour of this, beyond the simple assertion that the world of the divine need not be invoked in order to explain physical reality. This severing of the link had enormously beneficial results in terms of the development of the sciences in general – matters were simplified enormously if all that was being considered was what could be measured, counted and weighed; and there was no imponderable interference from the intrusion of the divine.

Though it was not the case that the world of the divine had been shown to be of no account in the development of an understanding of nature, as the sciences progressed, the quality and power of the descriptive models of nature created supplied what appeared to be the proof that a knowledge of the world of the divine was unnecessary for an understanding of nature. Thereafter, the divine became, in the world of the sciences, something to be scorned, as a relic of the days when the human race lived in a state of irrational superstition.

The exclusion of the divine was normative, in that it seemed to make rational sense, even if it could not be supported by rational argument. In fact, no argument could be brought against what is essentially a supposition - the idea that the divine has no impact on the world of physics. Before long, any argument for the impact of the divine was necessarily an irrational argument.

Monday, 18 May 2015

The Divine and the Limit

This is an extract from a document (not a chapter in The Sacred History of Being) which was put together as part of a project to understand the role and function of the threshold and the boundary in Mesopotamia in general, and Assyria in particular. The purpose of this part of the document was to explore parallel cultural concerns with thresholds and boundaries elsewhere in the ANE, and also around the Mediterranean. The extract concerns ancient Rome. I've not changed the footnote numbers, so since this is an extract, they start at 26.

In exploring these details, over a long period and in some depth, it is hard not to have the disturbing feeling that often, much of what we have understood to be the 'religion' of a culture, isn't anything of the sort, but a form of public show, which actually disguises what is regarded as important. As noted below, at sacrifices, the name of Janus was mentioned before that of Jupiter. Jupiter is supposed to be the supreme god of the Romans! There are strong connections between the public faces of the gods and the underlying ideas concerning reality of course, but often they aren't spelled out, or are otherwise glossed in a manner which misdirects those who do not belong to the priestly class.

I'm not referring to the traditional distinction that academics make between theology as the core of a religion, and the exoteric show as its external expression.These details are esoteric in nature, and exist below the surface level of whatever theology can be discovered. In Assyria the role of the Sacred Tree is a perfect example. Its image is everywhere, but there is no formal discussion of it anywhere which survives. It plays a role in shaping their theology we know, but it seems that, like the Kabbalah for many centuries, its significance and use was confined to oral communication and discussion.

A short study of the significance of the threshold in Mesopotamia and Assyria will be published separately. The role and function of the Assyrian Sacred Tree is extensively discussed in The Sacred History of Being.

***

Temple of Janus represented on a

sestertius ca 65 CE, reign of Nero Augustus.

...The Romans also had a tradition of veneration of the boundaries and limits of things. Oskar Seyffert describes the god Janus as ‘A god peculiar to the Italians, with no corresponding divinity among the Greeks’. However, the lack of a corresponding divinity does not mean the importance of limits and boundaries to their patterns of belief was unknown to the Greeks. Seyffert continues that ‘even the ancients were by no means clear as to his special significance; he was, however, regarded as one of the oldest, holiest, and most exalted of gods’.

Of course, if the special significance of Janus was close to the heart of Roman religion, an absence of discussion might, rather than signifying a lack of clarity about his special significance, mean quite the opposite, and that the written tradition is quite misleading as to the Roman understanding of Janus, at least within the priestly community.

‘In Rome the king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him’*26 'At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter’. Which is indication of high status. If we recall the remarks of Pythagoras on what comes first and why, we can see that the significance of Janus is extremely important indeed. This is further emphasised by the fact that ‘in the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things’ *27. The Salii were an old Italian college of priests of Mars, said to have been originally introduced at Rome by Numa Pompilius, the legendary 2nd king of Rome. He was said to be a native of Cures in the Sabine country, and was elected king a year after the death of Romulus.

William Smith says that ‘he was renowned for his wisdom and piety; and it was generally believed that he derived his knowledge from Pythagoras’*28. Given that the foundation of Rome is traditionally 753 B.C.E., this is impossible, since Numa and Pythagoras would have been two centuries apart. However the fact that later the institutions of Numa were associated with Pythagorean influence suggests that there was a perception of a relationship between the doctrines of Pythagoras and the foundation of Roman religion. Smith continues: ‘…he devoted his chief care to the establishment of religion among his rude subjects’, and to giving them appropriate forms of worship. He was instructed by the Camena Egeria (Aegeria), one of the twelve nymphs in Roman mythology. Numa later dedicated the grove in which he had his interviews with the goddess, in which a well gushed forth from a dark recess, to the Camenae.* 29

Seyffert continues regarding Janus: ‘It would appear that originally he was a god of the light and of the sun, who opened the gates of heaven on going forth in the morning and closed them on returning at evening’. Rather, Janus, being the divinity associated with boundaries, is associated with gates, crossings, risings and settings, beginnings and endings, and the daily movement of the sun is the most important visible instance of beginnings and endings. In course of time (Seyffert suggests) ‘he became the god of all going out and coming in, to whom all places of entrance and passage, all doors and gates were holy’ [my italics]. Seyffert, writing in the late 19th century, is assuming an evolution of the nature of the god. He continues:

In Rome all doors and covered passages were suggestive of his name. The former were called ianuae; over the latter, the arches which spanned the streets were called iani

which Seyffert suggests, ‘is a term perhaps symbolical of the vault of heaven’*30. Many of these were expressly dedicated to him, especially those ‘which were situated in markets and frequented streets, or at crossroads’. In the case of crossroads, Seyffert tells us that ‘they were adorned with his image, and the double arch became a temple with two doors, or the two double arches a temple with four’. The way Janus was generally represented was ‘as a porter with a staff and a key in his hands, and with two bearded faces placed back to back and looking in opposite directions.’

Further, he is also the god of entrance into a new division of time, and was therefore saluted every morning as the god of the breaking day (pater matutinus); the beginnings of all the months (the calends) were sacred to him, as well as to Juno; and, among the months, the first of the natural year, which derived from him Ianuarius. For sacrifices on the calends twelve altars were dedicated to him; his chief festival, however, was the 1st of January, especially as in B.C. 153 this was made the official beginning of the new year. On this day he was invoked as the god of good beginnings, and was honoured with cakes of meal called ianuae; every disturbance, every quarrel, was carefully avoided, and no more work was done than necessary to make a lucky beginning of the daily business of the year; mutual good wishes were exchanged, and people made presents of sweets to one another as a good omen that the new year might bring nothing but that which was sweet and pleasant in its train.

The beginning of the year is a time when a major change occurs, and is marked by ceremony and ritual. For the Romans, this juncture of the year, like every other juncture over which Janus presided, was a region in which change was more possible, more likely, than at any other time. Therefore any immoderate behaviour, any departure from the normal daily pattern of life, whether through a quarrel or some other unpleasantness, might easily have taken root, and they might have found their whole lives dislocated as a result.

Seyffert continues that: ‘the origin of all organic life, and especially all human life, was referred to him; he was therefore called consivius (‘sower’). From him sprang all wells, rivers, and streams; in this relation he was called the spouse of Juturna*31, the goddess of springs, and father of Fontus*32, the god of fountains’. And:

As the god of coming and going and of traffic, he had power not only on land, but also on sea; he was therefore described as the husband of the sea-goddess Venilia*33 and as the discoverer of the art of shipbuilding. For this reason the Romans bore the impression of a ship on the obverse of the head of Janus.

In addition to this, in connexion with war:

... he was known in the fane founded by Numa near the ancient Forum, as Ianus Quirinus. When war was declared,the consul opened the double doors of this sanctuary and summoned the Roman youths capable of bearing arms to march through it with him. As long as war continued, the doors stood open, but on the declaration of peace they were closed. From the time of Numa to the year of the birth of Christ, this happened on four occasions only, and twice in the reign of Augustus. While Janus appears as the most ancient of the Roman gods, he is at the same time named as the most ancient king of the land, who dwelt upon the Janiculum on the right bank of the Tiber, and erected a temple to the gods and gave a friendly reception to Saturn. In very late times, he is represented with a bearded and an unbearded face; and, instead of his having the usual attributes of the key and the staff, the fingers of his right hand exhibit the number 300, and those of his left hand the number of the remaining days of the year.

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26 the Rex Sacrōrum (or Rex Sacrificulus: ‘king of sacrifice’), was the name given by the Romans to a priest who, after the abolition of the royal power, had to perform certain religious rites connected with the name of king’. Thus, like the Greeks, the king formerly occupied a key role in the religious and cult activity of the Romans. ‘He resembles the archon basileus of the Athenian constitution. He was always a patrician, was elected for life by the pontifex maximus with the assistance of the whole pontifical college (of which he became a member), and was inaugurated by the augurs. Although he was externally of high rank and, like the pontifex maximus, had an official residence in the Regia, the royal castle of Num, and took the chair at the feasts and other festivities of the pontifices, yet in his religious authority he ranked below the pontifex maximus, and was not allowed to hold any public office, or even to address the people in public. His wife (like the wives of the flamens) participated in the priesthood….’ Seyffert also says that the rex sacrorum used to ‘summon the people to the Capitol on the calends and nones of each month’ (in the days before the knowledge of the calendar became general), ‘and to announce the festivals for the month. On the calends he and regina sacrificed, and at the same time invoked Janus…’.
27 Seyffert, Oskar, Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, [rev & ed. by Nettleship and Sandys], 1906, 'Janus'.
28 Smith, William Smaller Classical Dictionary, 1891 ' Janus'
29 the Camenae being the fountain nymphs who belong to the ancient religion of Italy, and which are sometimes identified with the muses.
30 19th century philology tended to the view that many of the gods developed from a primitive picture of the sky and the sun, and that the etymology of the names of the gods reflected this.
31 Juturna (Diuturna) was the nymph of a fountain in Latium (according to Smith), famous for its healing qualities, whose water was used in most sacrifices. A pond in the forum, between the temples of Castor and Vesta, was called Lacus Juturnae. The nymph is said to have been beloved by Jupiter, who rewarded her with immortality and dominion over the waters…’
32 According to Seyffert, Fontus was the Roman god of springs, son of Janus and Juturna, who had an altar in Rome on the Janiculum. A special festival, the Fontinalia, was held in his honour on the 13th October, at which garlands were thrown into the springs, and laid round the wells.
33 Venilia was a nymph, daughter of Pilumnus, sister of Amata, wife of king Latinus, and mother of Turnus and Juturna by Daunus [Smith: Venilia]