The perception of the Ancient Greeks and religion in Ancient Greece
Religion in Ancient Greece during the 7th and 6th centuries. e.g. together with the older conceptions of the gods, that they were violent natural forces, receded and prevailed the "new" conception that the gods are moral forces and values of the Greek world. This perception of the gods as moral forces had the consequence that people felt much more strongly than before the distance from the Divine. He who seeks to assimilate himself to the Divine, or to appear as their interlocutor, co-banker or child, practices Ibri (arrogance) and provokes the envy of the gods.
The seven wise men with their moral maxims, such as "Know thyself", "Mede agan", "Metron ariston" etc. (which were engraved on the pronaos of the Delphic Sanctuary), laid the foundations of Right Logical Thinking, which is now formulated by people who thought about it for themselves, and not by divine inspiration. Thus, now, in Greek societies anyone who tries to claim that he is expressing the will of God, that he is a child of god or a god himself will be considered a blasphemer. In this way, theocracy will be invalidated as insulting to the Divine Himself! The conception of the idea is magnificent! It does not undertake democracy or progressive intelligence to directly clash with theocracy, but has the heavenly gods abolish it!
Did (organized) religion exist as a concept in Ancient Greece?
In ancient Greece, the good thing was that an organized religion with a unified infallibility by revelation doctrine never prevailed. That is why the correct view is that the Greeks had no religion (as we know and understand it today), but rather a traditional piety permeated by various conceptions of the gods that changed from era to era, while later what we call today "theology ” became the subject of philosophical research, but none of the philosophers ever claimed that he possessed “divine enlightenment” when he formulated his views on the Divine. The Greeks, observing the moral commandment "study everything", also researched about the gods guided by the Ortho Logos, as noted by the high priest of Delphi, Plutarch:
"This is why the search for truth, and in fact that which refers to the gods, is a strong drive towards divinity. The learning and research thereof is in some way akin to the undertaking of sacred duties and a work holier than all religious abstinence, than all temple service, and is eminently suited to the goddess whom you serve, who is exceedingly wise and a friend of wisdom, as her name also seems to mean, since knowledge and science suit her more than anything." And he points out that scientific research around the Divine is much more sacred than fasting and liturgies, incense, vestments and hymns, "a work more sacred than any religious abstinence, than any service in the temples".
Peisistratus and Orphism
But, around the 7th century BC. a "sect" appeared within the boundaries of Hellenism, which attempted for some time to replace the paternal liberalism in the conceptions of the gods with the introduction of divinely inspired doctrine by revelation. It was the trend of Orphism, of which Ulrich Wilcken writes:
"With this dogmatic definition of a theological system, the Orphic religion in ancient Greece stands in contrast to the liberal (and in the religious field) perceptions of the Greeks and is more reminiscent of the "revealed" religions of the East."
Understandably, the benefits of an organized religion in ancient Greece were first realized by a tyrant, Peisistratus of Athens:
"The Orphic religion in ancient Greece was particularly supported by Peisistratos, but it never became an official religion of the state. (...) in general, however, Orphism remained out of the foreground of the spiritual life of the Greeks, it was something like a heresy, and it was preserved mainly in the lower strata of the people. Its effects, however, can be traced to the appearance of Christianity."
Orphism as an attempt at organized religion in Ancient Greece
Orphism will ultimately not succeed in imposing itself, because it will find the rationalist Ionian philosophers in opposition to it. Wilcken's opinion is that "the fact that this Orphic "Gospel" did not prevail - despite all the propaganda that its prophets did by preaching from one place to another - was fortunate for Greece; for although it had certain deep and beautiful ideas, with the dogmatic determination of its principles and the barriers it thus set up for the spirit hid many dangers for the free development of the Greek spirit, since it could easily lead to the spiritual dominance of the priesthood and a forced way of thinking, as was the case to the eastern peoples.
The fact that intellectual freedom was preserved among the Greeks was due to the opposite great intellectual current that came from Ionia at exactly the same time, i.e. during the 6th century BC, when Orphism took its definitive form in Attica". The Ionian philosophers valued “complete intellectual freedom. This was the great achievement of the Ionian natural philosophers, who thus made scientific thought possible for the first time. (…) This achievement of the Ionian philosophers is a milestone in the history of humanity, because no one had grasped the concept of science until then."
Heraclitus the Ephesian
At the beginning of the 5th century, the philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus is the one who will be the great enlightening station of Greek Thought. He will educate the political morals of the Greeks in the opposite direction to that desired by the Orphics and all kinds of priesthoods. In his unsurpassed work On Nature, of which only a few scattered passages have survived to us, he boldly and persistently checked the old superstitions cultivated by the priests and thus held the citizens captive to absurd and oxymoronic beliefs.
As today Christianity claims that its baptism has purgatory potential and absolves him who is baptized from all sin, while afterwards there is confession followed by the remission of (all) sins, so also in antiquity there were corresponding rituals that promised purification and forgiveness of sins to whoever followed them.
However, how could a grave crime like murder be forgiven with a simple purification ceremony? And what was the position of the civil laws and the judges who imposed the prescribed punishments on the offenders, against the religious beliefs which claimed that after a purgatory ceremony the offender was now innocent? One of the two, religion or State, had to retreat, recognizing the force of the other's rules as superior.
Complaints about idolatry
Here, then, Heraclitus intervened, denouncing the purgatory rites as invalid and foolish:
"Those who are stained with blood try to expel the miasma with purgatory rites where blood flows again (meaning the sacrifices that were offered). It is like one who has been soiled with mud trying to clean himself by falling into the mud: anyone who sees a person doing such a thing will surely mistake him for a madman. And when they again pray to the statues, it is as if they are talking to the curtains, being completely ignorant of the real nature of the gods and heroes."
Thus, the religious traditions of punishment and justice were set aside and the State, with its laws and judicial officials, took over to judge who is the perpetrator and who the victim, how the guilty should be punished and for how long, so that they are considered "forgiven". .
Also, Heraclitus in the same passage criticizes the tendency of simple people to consider that the effigies of gods (or saints today) have divine qualities and for this they address them as if they were, the statues or images, themselves gods (or saints ). Those who do this, he says, are like speaking in veils, "being completely ignorant of the real nature of gods (God) and heroes (saints)." People don't change, we say it again, but neither does Greek Philosophy, see how timeless it is.
The denial of the metaphysical
Heraclitus also founded the denial of metaphysics, which became a common admission of all the Greek philosophical schools after him. So, he denied the metaphysical - supernatural god creator of the universe (as understood by the Abrahamic religions) with the following words, which the last word of our science tends to verify:
"This world, which is the same for all, was not made by anyone, neither god nor man, but it was, is, and always will be: it is an eternally living fire that burns and goes out according to certain measures."
In opposition to superstitions, he praised Right Reason, proclaiming it as a universal law: "Wisdom is one thing only: to know that right reason governs everything through their internal relations." He founded scientific rationalism with the following saying: "Whatever things are objects of sight, hearing, and perception, these I prefer." He taught that people should live in harmony with natural laws: "H right thinking is the greatest virtue, and wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature, as befits men of knowledge.' He proclaimed the challenge: ""Challenge", writes Heraclitus".
Religion in Ancient Greece and rival awe
At the moment when the first organized religion appeared in ancient Greece, Orphism, in an era that, as we said, was shaken by social, political and class conflicts, at the same time the Ionian philosophers appeared, bearers of the first enlightenment, and created the strong rival awe.
The Ionian philosophers will not deny the Divine, but will naturally redefine it and attempt to remove the priesthood from any involvement in the political administration of the cities.
Also, they will fiercely combat superstition, which is deliberately cultivated in all ages by the keepers to make people submit to metaphysical - supernatural fear and at the same time to the rulers, and they will limit the priests to their worship duties. Eventually, many of the philosophers themselves will also take on priestly duties, creating in the following centuries the first, and unique as a phenomenon in history, scientific viewing and understanding of the Divine (as we saw the philosopher and priest Plutarch say in a much later era - 1st century AD – where things had now fallen into place).
Major Influencers in Philosophy
And it was not only Xenophanes or Heraclitus who spread logical ideas. A significant number of pioneering Greek intellectuals, whom we call "prosocratics", set out to awaken the simplistic world from the deep sleep (or rather mental death) of superstitions and prejudices.
Some examples of these early humanist philosophers:
- Ο Mitrodoros of Lampsakin (5th century BC) who tried to allegorically interpret the Homeric epics, in which the superhuman works of the gods were perceived by many as real events.
- Ο Diogenes the Apollonian (mid 5th century BC) spoke of infinite worlds, said that the universe is infinite but our world is finite and dealt with anatomy. Leucippus (second half of the 5th century BC) who is considered the introducer of the atomic theory.
- Ο Metrodoros of Chios, who said that "the universe is eternal, because, if it were subject to genesis, it would come from non-being". He also spoke of infinite worlds in the universe, said that the sun is fiery, asserted that the moon is illuminated by the sun, and denied revealed truths saying that "no one knows anything, but even what we think we know, we do not know." we know exactly".
Thus, thanks to these great intellectuals, the Greek world, and only it at that time, escaped the shackles of theocracy and was able to give birth to the sciences and democracy, which even today humanity considers as its most important achievements and goods.
Superstition and religion in Ancient Greece
Of course, historical truth testifies that philosophers did not always spread their ideas under regimes of freedom. In classical Greek antiquity, in an early age, there were superstitions who tried to silence them, because human folly unfortunately resides in all places and all times.
Plutarch reports that the first Greek natural philosophers and astronomers who attempted to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies and the eclipses of the sun and moon met with persecution and suspicion: "
The first to write more clearly and boldly than all about the radiation and shadow of the moon, Anaxagoras, was not old and his theory was not widely known but secret even and communicated to a few carefully and confidentially. Because they did not tolerate the natural philosophers and the then so-called "meteorologists", because they relegated the divine to irrational causes, to forces without providence and unfree passions.
That's why Protagoras was exiled and Anaxagoras who was imprisoned was saved by Pericles with difficulty, and Socrates, although nothing like that suited him, was nevertheless destroyed because of philosophy". He even points out that philosophy succeeded and was liberated thanks to a trick of Plato: "Later Plato's brilliant praise of the life of man (he means Socrates) and the fact that he subordinated natural needs to divine and higher principles dispelled the slander for these theories and opened the way for everyone to this knowledge".
The "Religion - Philosophy" Dilemma
On the other hand, political and national unity - identity, which also passes through the common religious expression, was achieved by the common participation of all citizens in the same public and under the auspices of the State, religious and worship events. In them, intellectuals, rulers and common people paid honor to the ancestral gods in the same way. At the same time they were free to maintain any conception of the Divine they wished, and not only for themselves, but they could discuss it publicly.
The State did not care if one saw Athena as an eternal warrior, while the other saw her allegorically as divine or human wisdom. But the State cared that everyone should honor the goddess in the same way that it defined as the most beneficial for its citizens. For the State it was a crime if someone sacrificed people to the goddess, and not if he questioned the existence of her hymen. The priests of the gods in the republic were strictly limited to their ritual duties and had no "divinely inspired" say on opinions about the Divine, nor did they have intellectually; if they expressed any opinion, as free citizens, it was part of the general unhindered movement and exchange of ideas.
Plutarch is revealing about the different meanings given to God by the philosophers on the one hand and the legislators and the poets on the other hand as expressions of popular beliefs: "...so for our understanding of the gods the poets were our guides and teachers , the legislators, and thirdly the philosophers, all defining the existence of the gods in the same way, but having great differences among themselves as to the number, rank, nature, and power of the gods. In other words, the gods, according to the philosophers, are: "immune and ageless, immune to pain and have escaped the heavy-sounding passage of Acheron".
That is why they do not accept the Quarrels and Supplications of the poets, nor do they want Deimos and Phobos to be gods and recognized as children of Mars. They conflict in many points and the legislators, as Xenophanes told the Egyptians, not to honor Osiris as a god if they consider him mortal, and not to mourn him if they believe him to be a god. The poets and legislators again cannot even bear to listen, but neither can they understand, the philosophers, who deify some ideas, numbers, units and spirits.
Homotropous state and religion in Ancient Greece
When the Greeks spoke of the same, the same language and the same religion, they did not mean the same. Or, to put things in perspective, while "similar" and "same-language" existed in their language, "same-religious" did not exist either as a concept or otherwise.
The well-known passage of Herodotus which has been interpreted as promoting the national identity triptych in question states verbatim: "and the Greeks are of the same language and of the same language and of the same institutions and sacrifices of the same gods...". Which in rendering in our current language says, "there is still the Greek equivalent and homolingual, the common Sanctuaries of the gods, and similar sacrifices and customs". Nowhere is "homo-religious" or "homo-dox" mentioned.
Instead of these, the "homotropos" is mentioned: common gods, common morals and customs, a common way of rendering honor to the Divine; all these indeed refer to and mean the "homotropos", that is, the common way of life! But no common beliefs, no common conceptions of the Divine, no common and organized religion in ancient Greece in a few words! Paying homage to the Panhellenic gods and participating in panhellenic festivals, such as Olympia, were clearly identifying elements, but close to them, heresy was also considered an identifying element of the Greeks, i.e. the formulation of a different philosophical-logical position on all science.
Each city-state clearly and publicly and politically paid the prescribed honors to the patron and Panhellenic gods, but did not impose any doctrine on its citizens. Instead of a state religion in Ancient Greece there was a state cult. The State had to do with rituals but not with ideas. Also, those who arranged the ceremonies were the public rulers and not the priesthood. Besides, there was no priesthood in the cities.
There was a body of priests that came under the control of the municipality as a public service (as did the police force), but no organized self-governing priestly caste. The old organized priesthoods were strictly confined to their ancient centers, namely Delphi, Eleusis, Delos and Samothrace. Outside of them, their words had little effect and usually even these priesthoods submitted to the political authority that came directly from the municipality, that is, from the Greek citizens.
The role of the State
In our words about state (or rather political) worship, we will also refer to the legislation of the city of Athens itself. Therefore, according to article 453 of the basic charter of the ancient republic, "Eternal institution to Attidas, the eternal lord of all time, the gods, guardians and heroes of the natives in common, empoinimous laws of the fatherland, own, according to power with euphemia and ancient fruits plain beggars".
We see, therefore, that while the law is clear, that is to say that the gods and patron heroes must be honored according to ancestral customs, publicly and with bloodless sacrifices, nowhere does it define what ideas the citizens must have about the gods. The legislator is limited only to the ceremonial part. While regarding the priests of the city, articles 491-501 define that the competent public archon for religious matters was the archon basileus (a kind of constitutional king elected and recalled with a specific term).
He therefore took care of the election of the priests (art. 491), and only he of the nine lords of the city was obliged to attend the sacrifices with the elected priests. Priests were drawn by lottery and the prospective cleric who entered the lottery had to be "clean in body and pure in soul". So the City, while strictly controlling the ritual part of the religious events, did not interfere in what its citizens believed about the gods. It is precisely for this reason that philosophy flourished among the Greeks, especially in democratic Athens. Because no one was dictating to the other what to believe and what not to believe.
In a few words
So, in summary, we can say that ancient (patroa) Greek "religiosity" functioned as follows:
a) There were the opinions of the philosophers about the Divine, and each philosophical school had its own opinions. Philosophers and intellectuals tried to understand and perceive the divine rationally.
b) There were the popular and simplistic views about the gods that were based on ancient beliefs and myths, mainly those that came from the Mycenaean era.
Among them there were many superstitions and prejudices that were more powerful in the inhabitants of rural areas and less so in the inhabitants of the towns, and c) above all this was dominated by the political cult which did not dictate to the citizens what to consider and what to believe about the gods, but how to worship and honor the gods, that is, how to behave in the events that were intended to honor the God or the heroic ancestors.
The priests, on the other hand, were civil servants and were elected by lot for a specific term, as was also the case for the rest of the public positions and services of the republic.
Find more information about the relationship between philosophy & religion in ancient Greece in the book "Sun from the Crypt" of the Lux Orbis series, from iWrite Publications.