This is an abridged and retitled version of a chapter in The Sacred History of Being, which
explores interconnections between earthly
and Divine realities in antiquity. A key thing to observe is that the idea of
such interconnections is established on
logical grounds. The reality of the Divine world is inferred, on the basis
of the visible imperfections of profane reality, but the two worlds must be
connected in some way if reality itself is not to be necessarily irrational in
nature (this also was argued on logical grounds). Establishing the connection
between the worlds was a major preoccupation in antiquity: things should ‘meet
and agree’.
The original chapter contained footnotes, which I have
removed for ease of reading. I’ve reduced the number of modes of connection
which are discussed also. The essential argument of the chapter however remains
the same.
TY February 18, 2018.
***
Since the world of the divine is a transcendent reality, the
nature of that reality is not going to conform to our secular understanding of
the existent world. This is an important point, which would have been
considered in antiquity. Thus, there is no reason to presume that extension is
represented or has reality in the same way in which extension exists in normal
space. There is also no reason to presume that time is represented or has
reality in the same way in which time exists in the secular world (the secular
world being, by definition, the world of time, or the world existing in time).
Almost every aspect of the world of existence will have a different nature in
the divine world, to the point where we would find it difficult or impossible
to establish the connection between one and the other. We are not accustomed to
imagining that the ancients thought in such terms, except perhaps within the
Academy, or within Parmenides circle.
There are many conceptions which are associated with the
divine reality. This may seem a strange way to understand the world of the
divine. But it is no more a species of imprecision to do this than it is to create
a pantheon of gods, all of which have something of the divine about them. The
problem with the divine is that it is forever beyond our capacity to fully
understand, by definition. Therefore we can only say things about it from a
particular point of view, at a particular time, and under certain
circumstances. All within the limitations of the human understanding. Beyond
that our interpretation is more or less imperfect. This means that our
understanding of the divine is forever contingent – in essence a species of
conjecture rather than full understanding.
This is a difficult idea to communicate, given the last two
thousand years of theological speculation, and religious struggle in the world.
It may seem an unimaginable idea – that the theological ideas of the ancient
world were understood to be conjectural, and ultimately contingent on the
limitations of the human understanding.
For us, even before the advent of the empirical approach to
knowledge during the European enlightenment, we attempted to construct our
notions of the world and what is real on what could be established as far as
possible, whether what was established was on the basis of logical inference or
deduction, on the basis of experience, or was revealed to us by the divine.
Conjecture might have been tolerable (or even encouraged to an extent) within
the church school and the seminary, but only in so far as it was desirable that
scholars produced by religious institutions should be able to use their
critical faculties to the best of their ability, in the service of Church and
state. But in the end, conjecture is not something we generally wish to face as
an important component of our picture of the world.
In constructing ideas of the gods, and creating images of
them, the ancients were engaging in the enterprise of framing their
understanding of the divine world. They did this on the basis of the idea that
the realm of reality (which we have spoken of as Being earlier in this essay),
being unchanging in its nature, must still stand behind the world of appearance
and existence. This latter world is an image of it, but is not a perfect
representation of it. The realm of reality embraces it, but the world of
appearance and existence is necessarily a lesser world. However, because it is
a good semblance of it, there must be the possibility of aspects of the realm
of the reality being manifest in the world. On the basis of their ideas about
the nature of the divine, of the supremely perfect Being, we might ask what they
would look for in the world which would represent the presence of the supreme
Being, woven all through the world, as the soul is woven all through the world
in Plato’s model. They would ask: where is it? What shape does it have? How big
is it? What properties does it have? And so on.
This is an incomplete list of items which were identified in
antiquity as representing what we might term ‘bleedthrough’ from the divine
reality. These were things which were regarded as of great importance – in a
sense, of more importance than the gods themselves, in that they were aspects
of the divine which had reality in our world, and did not depend to the same
extent on human conjecture. They are therefore more profoundly real than the
gods.
1. Limit: Before the idea of Being, there is no reason to
have a sophisticated attitude to limit. One can have the idea that things are
separate from other things, or must be separate from other things, and that
there is a point of demarcation which marks off where one thing ends and
another begins. It is also possible to have the conception that it might be
desirable or even necessary to move from one side of the limit to the other. It
is also possible to imagine the divine as having existence on the other side of
a limit, without there being anything very sophisticated in the conception. A
sophisticated conception of a modus operandi of contact with the divine
however will not emerge from this, until an intellectual basis for there being
a reason why things should be connected is understood. Before Being, one side
of the limit or border is the concern. However, once the idea of Being is in
play, then the limit itself becomes
the focus of interest. The existence of a sophisticated idea of Being means
that what exists is understood to be less real than reality itself (the idea of
Being from St Anselm onwards was not very sophisticated).
2. Perfection: Before the idea of Being, talking of
perfection is focused on the subjective notion of perfection, and the term is
used either rhetorically, or refers simply to quality of workmanship or quality
of action. It has no bearing on ideas relating to the divine, or to reality.
The idea may however be extended to application to the divine and to the gods.
By analogy, something which has great perfection will come to be understood to
transcend other objects or works of a similar kind, and this transcendence will
come to be applied to the divine. It is however a long step to realizing that a
proposed perfection means that the divine is actually unintelligible to us, and
that the divine is Being itself, beyond any fixed or rigid attributes.
Perfection as a quality which may actually connect with the divine, rather than
merely showing transcendence of other lesser perfections, is an idea which is
dependent on the concept of the divine as Being.
3. Completion: The idea of completion is related to the idea
of perfection, particularly in connection with the nature of the divine.
However completion as a concept relates more closely to the idea of limit, in
that it is a property of the concept of Okeanos in Greece, and the all-enveloping
Apsu in Mesopotamia. It is an interesting concept in connection with the idea
of a circle, since it is impossible to determine the beginning or end of a
circle, at least when it is unbroken. The concept may be used in a great many
ways, from indicated the completion of a form, nature, or the performance of
ritual and liturgy, and so on. It might also be used to indicate the end of a
life, or a process. What is completed has some property in connection with the
divine, some participation with it, in that the realm of the divine must be
complete as opposed to the world of existence, which is incomplete in its
general nature. I suspect that the idea of completion was one of the first
mundane properties in the world to be identified as a potential access point to
the divine world.
4. Excellence: Excellence is a concept which the Greeks had
a particular interest in, but it is an idea which, like the ideas of completion
and perfection, is referred to throughout the ancient world. To excel is to
exceed something. So something which possesses excellence transcends the
excellence of some other thing. This is its comparative use, but it is also
used intransitively, so that something can be said to have a special excellence
of its own, irrespective of the qualities of other things. Hence its use by
Aristotle in his moral and ethical treatises. Ultimately it is about
transcendence, whether of oneself or of other things. The world of the divine
is both more excellent than the secular world, but it also possesses a special
excellence of its own. Excellence is something which exists in the world of
existence which has a connection with the reality which stands behind it.
5. Greatness: the idea of greatness as we have seen an idea
which was pressed into service in the Middle Ages to try to prove the existence
of the supreme Being. Greatness is naturally something which the human
understanding would wish to associate with the supreme Being. It has been in
the past associated with the gods – Herodotus refers to the rituals associated
with the cult of the great gods on Samos, without going into any detail, which
is frustrating. The great gods were known as the ‘Kaberioi,’ which indicates a
near eastern origin for this cult, since kbr is the semitic root for ‘great’.
Great however is an imprecise term, merely indicating that these gods transcend
other gods, or that that their special excellence is their greatness. It is
however an appropriate term to describe men who might be classed in this way,
who, through the quality of their greatness, on the field of battle, in their
wisdom, and a thousand other attributes, might be understood to have some
empathy with the gods.
6. Justice: the focus on justice in the ancient world in
general, and not simply among the Greeks, might indicate to the cynical modern
sensibility only that justice was in short supply. It might indeed be the case
that it was much referenced precisely because there was little access to it.
However the discussion of the subject in Plato makes it clear that it is an
idea which has its place in this exploration of the earthly corollaries of
aspects of the divine nature which have some form of existence here on earth.
Justice was presumed to be something which was perfected in the divine world,
but justice in the secular world is a different matter. The very nature of the
world of existence means that justice – true justice is unobtainable. What we
can access is a poor copy of something which can only exist elsewhere. It is
interesting that both in Mesopotamia and in Greece it was the Sun god (Shamash
and Apollo respectively) which were responsible for the dispensation of justice
on earth.
The gods might know what is just, but our capacity to discern it is limited, and the dispensation of justice by the gods is sometimes hard for man to understand and accept. One of the images of the dispensation of justice, is of the participation in battle of the sun god. Assyrian reliefs show Shamash hovering above opposing forces in the winged circle. The meaning of this is at least two-fold: the god is involved in the outcome of the battle, which represents a way of dispensing just decision; and the to-ing and fro-ing of battle represents the difficulty of apportioning justice in the world of existence. It also means that the engagement in battle was understood by kings, priests and generals as a legitimate way of establishing right. In Homer, there is a famous passage where opposing forces are described as being bounded by ropes, which are pulled this way and that in the course of the battle. These ropes are also found in the iconography of Shamash. The underlying idea is the same.
The gods might know what is just, but our capacity to discern it is limited, and the dispensation of justice by the gods is sometimes hard for man to understand and accept. One of the images of the dispensation of justice, is of the participation in battle of the sun god. Assyrian reliefs show Shamash hovering above opposing forces in the winged circle. The meaning of this is at least two-fold: the god is involved in the outcome of the battle, which represents a way of dispensing just decision; and the to-ing and fro-ing of battle represents the difficulty of apportioning justice in the world of existence. It also means that the engagement in battle was understood by kings, priests and generals as a legitimate way of establishing right. In Homer, there is a famous passage where opposing forces are described as being bounded by ropes, which are pulled this way and that in the course of the battle. These ropes are also found in the iconography of Shamash. The underlying idea is the same.
7. Proportion: aspects of the divine reality can exist in
the secular world expressed in terms of proportion. Thus, in a figure, a side
which bears a proportionate relationship to another side, can be regarded as an
image or representation of it, in a way similar to the understanding that the
image of a god bears a relation to the god itself. Proportionate relationships
in a structure, object or image could therefore be used as a way of enhancing
the meaning of images and representations which bore a relationship with the
divine reality. This is an enormous subject, worth a monograph on its own.
8. Purity: Purity is an attribute which might be associated
with the idea of perfection, and often was. But purity can be attributed to
things in a different way – not everything which is pure is to be regarded as a
perfection. Something which is perfect is just that. Purity on the other hand,
is an attribute which can be put on and put off in a way which perfection
cannot. This distinction is of great
importance in the Assyrian and Babylonian contexts, since in order to create
divine statues, the craftsmen required to be given a temporary divinity. Thus
the purity, a temporary perfection, can be put on for the purpose of the work.
This was achieved through the perfection of the appropriate ritual. Afterwards
it was removed by the performance of another ritual.
9. Wholes and Totalities. Things which are whole are
regarded as participating with one another, in that they share the property of
wholeness, or totality. This idea is a strong pointer to the essentially
subjective nature of the model of the world in which these things are
important, since the wholeness of something is sometimes attributed, rather
than being a property of an entity. There is a doctrine associated with wholes
and totalities, which is attributed to Pythagoras. It is also referenced by
Plato. The doctrine however is much older than the middle of the first
millennium B.C.E.
Those are nine phenomena which can appear in the world of
existence, which were understood to allow and enhance connection with the
divine reality which stands eternally behind the physical world. This is an
edited list, but it is sufficient to illustrate what was in the mind of man
attempting contact with the divine.
Other things which we might consider, which were of great
importance in the ancient world, include the idea of reduplication, principally
of concepts, attributes and properties. The point of reduplication is emphasis.
Two collocated symbols, meaning the same, could be understood to double the
power of the image and the connection.
Another related idea is ‘collection’, sometimes expressed in
ancient texts as ‘heaping up’. This refers to the bringing together, usually of
good things (but not always), sometimes in the context of an altar and a
priest. There may be several reasons for creating such a collocation, depending
on the objects involved, but ‘heaping up’ is a good thing in itself, if the
intention of the supplicant is to multiply and reduplicate the offering. It is
obvious from the study of ancient iconography that many images are reduplicated
directly, in a way which does not amount to a purely aesthetic distribution of
images, and in addition, the meaning of symbols and tableau are reduplicated
using different images. The effect is of reduplication, and to make such
assemblages identifies to the informed viewer, what is the same among what is
apparently different. These assemblages are of course addressed to the gods,
and the divine.
Another action which was understood to convey an aspect of
the divine world in the physical world is ‘division’. This concept is very
closely associated with the ideas of justice and of decision, but it is
possible for division to be separated from these ideas, in that division can
take place without the wish or need for justice, or of decision. At least in
terms of our modern understanding of what justice is. Ultimately the connection
between the ideas is about ‘good order’, and ‘meeting and agreeing’.
The association of justice and the power of division with
kingship is very strong in the ancient near east – the sun god Shamash is often
represented as holding a saw, and the Egyptian kings were also represented with
the symbol of the Neteru (axes). In
both cases, the instrument for deciding the fate of anything is clearly not a
weapon but a tool (though weapons of war also were understood as legitimate
tools of the gods). If it is possible to understand the creation and generation
of the world as a decision of the gods, then the nature of reality has been
divided, at least insofar as there is now a world of existence which has
descended into secular time, and which is cut down from Being itself. The power
of kings to deal justice comes from their participation in the nature of the
divine Being, though they live and function in the world of existence.
Division is also important in gaining an apprehension of
what is real and what is not, and in understanding how one thing is different
from another. Ultimately it is the basis of logic and classification which we
find in developed form among the Greeks in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E.
Sumerologists were puzzled to find tablets listing things together which to us
had no meaningful connection, such as a large list of objects which have the
property of ‘being white’. To the Sumerian scribe who assembled this list, the
characteristics of whiteness would have determined the worth of the list. The
items were separated out from a (hypothetical) list of all known items, and
collected together as a classification of items of the same property. These
properties are in a sense subjective, but only because we do not know the
function of white objects in the Sumerian model of the world.
Another notion of great importance in antiquity is the idea
of ‘drawing near’ to a god. This might be represented by proximity to an altar
or symbol of the god, or by the device of showing the supplicant being
introduced to the god by a third party, whether another god or by a priest of
the divine cult. There is however a technical idea behind this concept. The
idea is that by being near, you already participate in the nature of the god,
to a limited extent. The connection is open, even if transaction with the
divine is not in operation. Drawing near can be achieved through a collocation
of offerings, through benefactions to the priesthood and the temple, through
other good works, the virtue of the individual, and so on.
