THE MEASURE OF ALL GODS: RELIGIOUS PARADIGMS OF THE ANTIQUITY AS ANTHROPOLOGICAL INVARIANTS

A. V. Halapsis

doi:10.15802/ampr.v0i14.150756

Authors

A. V. Halapsis Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs (Dnipro, Ukraine), Ukraine https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9498-5829

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i14.150756

Keywords:

henotheism, polytheism, monotheism, man, Antiquity, religion, myth, paganism, anthropology

Abstract

Purpose of the article is the reconstruction of ancient Greek and ancient Roman models of religiosity as anthropological invariants that determine the patterns of thinking and being of subsequent eras. Theoretical basis. The author applied the statement of Protagoras that "Man is the measure of all things" to the reconstruction of the religious sphere of culture. I proceed from the fact that each historical community has a set of inherent ideas about the principles of reality, which found unique "universes of meanings". The historical space acquires anthropological properties that determine the specific mythology of the respective societies, as well as their spiritual successors. In particular, the religious models of ancient Greece and ancient Rome had a huge influence on formation of the worldview of the Christian civilization of the West. Originality. Multiplicity of the Olympic mythology contributed to the diversity of the expression forms of the Greek genius, which manifested itself in different fields of cultural activity, not reducible to political, philosophical or religious unity. The poverty of Roman mythology was compensated by a clear awareness of the unity of the community, which for all historical vicissitudes had always remained an unchanging ideal, and which was conceived as a reflection of the unity of the heavens. These two approaches to the divine predetermined the formation of two interacting, but conceptually different anthropological paradigms of Antiquity. Conclusions. Western concepts of divinity are invariants of two basic theological concepts – "Greek" (naturalism and paganism) and "Roman" (transcendentalism and henotheism). These are ideal types, so these two tendencies can co-exist in one society. The Roman trend continued to be realized by the anti-Roman religion, which took Roman forms and Roman name. Iconoclasm was a Byzantine version of the Reformation, promoted by the Isaurian emperors and failed due to the strong Hellenistic naturalistic lobby. Modern "Romans" are trying to get rid of the last elements of religious naturalism, and modern "Greeks" are trying to preserve the Hellenic elements in Christianity. Patterns can be transformed, but the observational view will still be able to identify their lineage. The developed model allows a deeper understanding of the culture of both ancient societies, as well as the outlook of Western man.

Author Biography

A. V. Halapsis, Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs (Dnipro, Ukraine)

Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs (Dnipro, Ukraine),
Email: prof.halapsis@gmail.com

References

Apollodorus. (1921). The Library (Vol. I). J. G. Frazer (Ed.), Trans. London: W. Heinemann. (in English)

Areopagite, D. (1899). Works (Vol. 2). J. Parker, Trans. London: James Parker and Co. (in English)

Baltzly, D. (2016). Divine immutability for Henotheists. Sophia, 55(2), 129-143. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-015-0472-2 (in English)

Beard, M. (2015). SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. New York: Liveright. (in English)

Bremmer, J. N. (1994). Greek Religion (Vol. 24). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (in English)

Burkert, W. (1985). Greek Religion. J. Raffan, Trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (in English)

Carandini, A. (2011). Rome: Day one. S. Sartarelli, Trans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (in English)

Coogan, M., Brettler, M., Newsom, C., & Perkins, P. (Eds.). (2010). The new Oxford annotated Bible with apocrypha: New revised standard version (4 Edit.). New York: Oxford University Press. (in English)

Cornell, T. J. (1995). The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC). London: Routledge; New York: Taylor & Francis Group. (in English)

DuBois, P. (2014). A Million and one Gods: The persistence of polytheism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (in English)

Fustel de Coulanges, N.-D. (2010). Drevniy gorod. Religiya, zakony, instituty Gretsii i Rima. L. Igorevskiy, Trans. from Engl. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf. (in Russian)

Goldhill, S. (2004). Love, sex, & tragedy: How the ancient world shapes our lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (in English)

Halapsis, A. V. (2015). On the nature of the Gods, or epistemological polytheism as history comprehension method. European Philosophical and Historical Discourse, 1(1), 53-59. (in English)

Halicarnassus, D. (1960). The Roman Antiquities (Vol. 1, Books 1-2). E. Cary, Trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (in English)

Jones, C. P. (2012). The Fuzziness of "Paganism". Common Knowledge, 18(2), 249-254. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-1544932 (in English)

King, C. (2003). The Organization of Roman religious beliefs. Classical Antiquity, 22(2), 275-312. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2003.22.2.275 (in English)

Losev, A. F. (1991). Afina. In Y. M. Meletinskiy (Ed.), Mifologicheskiy slovar (pp. 72-73). Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya. (in Russian)

Losev, A. F. (1991). Zevs. In Y. M. Meletinskiy (Ed.), Mifologicheskiy slovar (pp. 220-221). Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya. (in Russian)

Mikalson, J. D. (2010). Ancient Greek religion (2 Edit.). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. (in English)

Mitchell, S., & Van Nuffelen, P. (Eds.). (2010). One God: Pagan monotheism in the Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (in English)

Momigliano, A. (1990). The classical foundations of modern historiography. Berkeley: University of California Press. (in English)

Nemirovskiy, A. I. (1991). Menrva. In Y. M. Meletinskiy (Ed.), Mifologicheskiy slovar (p. 361). Moskow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya. (in Russian)

Parker, R. (2005). Polytheism and society at Athens. New York: Oxford University Press. (in English)

Peters, T. (2007). Models of God. Philosophia, 35(3-4), 273-288. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9066-8 (in English)

Plato. (1997). Complete Works. J. M. Cooper, & D. S. Hutchinson (Eds.). Indianapolis: Hackett. (in English)

Plutarch. (1967). Lives (Vol. I). B. Perrin, Trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (in English)

Polinskaya, I. (2013). A local history of Greek polytheism: Gods, people, and the land of Aigina, 800–400 BCE. (XXVIII, Book 178). Leiden: Brill. (in English)

Price, S. (1999). Religions of the ancient greeks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (in English)

Rodríguez-Mayorgas, A. (2010). Romulus, Aeneas and the cultural memory of the Roman Republic. Athenaeum, 98(1), 89-109. (in English)

Serandour, A. (2005). On the appearance of a monotheism in the religion of Israel (3rd Century BC or Later?). Diogenes, 52(1), 33-45. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192105050601 (in English)

Shtaerman, Y. M. (1991). Yupiter. In Y. M. Meletinskiy (Ed.), Mifologicheskiy slovar (pp. 646-647). Moskow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya. (in Russian)

Sissa, G., & Detienne, M. (2000). The daily life of the Greek Gods. J. Lloyd, Trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (in English)

Van Nuffelen, P. (2012). Beyond categorization "Pagan monotheism" and the study of ancient religion. Common Knowledge, 18(3), 451-463. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-1630332 (in English)

Vernant, J.-P. (1993). Greek religion. In M. Eliade (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion (Vol. 6, pp. 99-118). New York: Macmillan Publishing. (in English)

Versnel, H. S. (2011). Coping with the Gods: Wayward readings in greek theology. Leiden: Brill. (in English)

Wiseman, T. P. (1995). Remus: A roman myth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (in English)