Religions 18: Religious Options

Attractions Appeal of options outside main traditional practice Esoteric wisdom: ‘inward’, secrecy, looking for divine wisdom beyond the ordinary; for Romans this meant ‘foreign’ and ‘ancient’ > mainly East Divine inspiration: people claiming special connection to the divine

1. Esoteric wisdom

a. Graeco-Roman tradition Orphism: first mainly mythological poems ascribed to Orpheus, later all kinds of texts > ‘Orpheus’ = religious authority; very disparate group of cults Pythagoreanism: vegetarianism, reincarnation Sybil of Cumae: seer > oracles = Sibylline books, kept and consulted in Rome Other collections: Oracula Sibyillina

Cave of the Sibyl, Cumae

b. Egyptian tradition Isis cult (treatment of cult statue, bald head, linen clothes) Hermetic writings: Hermes Trismegistos = Thoth: nature of the cosmos, but Corpus Hermeticum also includes works on alchemy, astrology etc.

c. Judaean tradition Judaean: refers to homeland: ‘Judaea’ vs. Jew Attractions: ancient, Hebrew/Aramaic, exotic customs (food laws, Sabbath, circumcision) Idea of perfect/morally good God was very close to philosophical ideas ‘God fearers’: worship Jewish God, but do not conform to all practices of ethnic Jews Jewish pseudepigrapha = writings falsely attributed to famous person from past, esp. apocalyptic pseudepigrapha (revelations) Association with esotericism: magical texts

d. Persian tradition Mithras cult/Mithraism: ‘private’ character – meeting in underground caves where people shared meals > looks more like cult association Magic: mageia = Persian sage; eastern origin, cf. Apuleius who points to the antiquity of the practice and finds it a perfectly acceptable religious practice; but also used as a derogatory term for any freelance religious expert (cf. our ‘quack’ or ‘charlatan’) yet, as appears from the magical papyri from Egypt, it was a widespread phenomenon (read p. 164)

2. Divine inspiration Jesus: among many Messiah figures at beginning of CE Paul: Tarsus > conversion: from persecutor of followers of Jesus to charismatic leader; opens up movement to ‘gentiles’ (= non-Jews) Apollonius of Tyana: I CE; Life written by Philostratus in III; ‘pagan holy man’ or ‘magician’?

Advantages Religious market place: supply – demand * That there were so many options does not mean that the mainstream cults and practices were ‘in decline’: most options still operated within traditional framework; there were simply more options * So what advantages did these new practices bring?

Alternatives to traditional practices: healing by Asclepius or special ‘prophetic’ figure, such as Jesus or Apollonius; love through Venus or by love charm (p. 172) Intensification: mystery cults (intense period of initiation: think of Aebutius in Livy or Lucius in Metamorphoses) - innovations: difference between inferior earthly life and higher life > salvation, e.g. Mithraism (grades), Christianity (Paul: Christ has saved us from sin and death), Gnosticism (gnosis or ‘knowledge’ can be reached through ‘knowledge’ and freeing yourself of material aspect of life on earth in order to return to higher existence)