In fact, the names of nearly all the gods came to Hellas from Egypt. For I am convinced by inquiry that they have come from foreign parts, and I believe that they came chiefly from Egypt.
(Herodotus, 2.50.1, ca. 450 BC)
The historical relationship between Greek religion and the ancient Near East is one that scholars have pondered, investigated, and debated for many years. Approaches to the subject have ranged from the merely suggestive to the fiercely polemical. At the heart of the subject is a question of cultural influence; that is to say, whether striking similarities in the textual, artistic, and archaeological remains constitute evidence for Near Eastern influence on Greek culture or whether one can account for affinities by seeing them as independent developments. It is into this larger context of cultural influence that one must place discussions of Greek religion and the ancient Near East.
In their outward forms, at least, Aegean religions appear very similar to those in the Near East. In both, for example, one finds cult images, altars and sacrifices, libations and other ritual practices, sanctuaries, temples and temple functionaries, laws and ethics, prayer, hymns, incantations, curses, cultic dancing, festivals, divination, ecstasy, seers, and oracles. Other shared features include the existence of divinities and demons of both genders, an association of gods with cosmic regions, notions of the sacred, and concepts of pollution, purification, and atonement. However, since one can find these features in religious traditions that had no contact with the Aegean or the Near East it is possible that they represent independent developments. On the other hand, their presence elsewhere does not necessarily rule out the possibility that they are the result of cultural influence. As some classicists have pointed out, Near Eastern influence is the most likely explanation for some elements - certain purification rituals, the sacrificial use of scapegoats, and foundation deposits - to name just a few. But how and when did such elements make their way to the Greek world? Such questions are not easily answered.
For centuries, questions of influence were intimately bound up with perspectives of privilege. Scholarship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often took it for granted that ‘‘Greece’’ was the font of western civilization. Informed by Romantic nationalism and, in part, by the racism associated with it, it understood the ‘‘genius’’ of Greek civilization as marking the end of antiquity and the start of a ‘‘miracle’’ that ‘‘anticipated the Enlightenment by breaking with myth, tradition, and puerile superstition to achieve a critical view of religion’’ (Lincoln 2004:658). The Near East represented all that was ‘‘barbarian’’ and ‘‘pagan.’’ Consequently, looking eastward for evidence of contact and influence remained a largely peripheral enterprise. A few scholars offered challenges to the dominant paradigm (Astour 1965; Berard 1902-3; Brown 1898; Farnell 1911; Gordon 1956,1962, 1966,1967; Wirth 1921), but their works went largely unnoticed by classicists. Recent decades have seen this paradigm shift, but it has not shifted without a good deal of controversy and disciplinary polemic (Bernal 1987, 1990, 1991, 2001; Lefkowitz 1996a, 1996b).
Today, it is fair to say that a consensus view among classicists and Near Eastern scholars admits of some East-to-West influence. Yet vital questions remain. How much and what kind of influence are we speaking of? How early does this influence occur? And how does one differentiate evidence for mere contact from evidence for influence? Responses to these questions have been hotly debated, and typically they have fallen along disciplinary lines, with classicists seeing Near Eastern influence as largely intermittent until the late archaic and classical periods (Burkert 1992, 2004, 2005a; Scheid 2004) and Near Eastern scholars (and a few classicists: Morris 1992, 2001; Walcot 1966; West 1995, 1997) pushing for greater influence and earlier dates (Burstein 1996; Dalley and Reyes 1998a; Naveh 1973; Redford 1992; Talon 2001). Influence in both directions is generally accepted for the hellenistic period and later (Kuhrt 1995; Linssen 2004).
The question of Near Eastern influence would appear to be difficult enough to answer were it not for a series of more recent challenges that have come from a variety of disciplines. Anthropologists, for example, have drawn attention to the modern western biases that inform the very question of influence. Historians of religion ask what is meant by ‘‘influence’’ in a world of constant mutual contact and exchange. Classicists too are now urging us to consider what preconditions make any cultural exchange a possibility and to define with greater rigor the modalities of transmission in both directions (Johnston 1999a; Raaflaub 2000). Other scholars question whether one can legitimately speak about ‘‘religion’’ in cultures that possess no corresponding word for it. Indeed, some wonder whether any proposed taxonomy for religion can account for its inherent diversity and plurality of forms, or whether any taxonomy can be free from ideology (Smith 2004:169, 171-2, 179). Terms like ‘‘cult,’’ ‘‘sacrifice,’’ and ‘‘ritual,’’ whose definitions had long been taken for granted, have now become focal points for theoretical debate and redefinition (Bremmer 2004; Burkert 1983; Girard 1977; Hubert and Mauss 1964; Rappaport 1979; Smith 2004:145-59; Versnel 1993:16-89).
The label ‘‘Near East’’ also has become increasingly problematic for some scholars when discussing religion. For one thing, the phrase masks under a single rubric dozens of diverse peoples and cultures. Though there is some heuristic utility in dividing the Near East into several cultural zones, scholars find it extremely difficult to speak generally of‘‘religion’’ in Egypt, Syro-Canaan, Israel, Anatolia, or Mesopotamia alone, each of which possessed countless religions of infinite variety at family, village, and state levels (Hornung 1971; Morenz 1973; Oppenheim 1977; J. Smith 2003; Zevit 2001). Moreover, implicit in the classification ‘‘Near East’’ is a geographical perspective that can be defined only by its relation to the West. Thus, for some it has become problematic at best and ‘‘orientalist’’ at worst (Said 1978). For similar reasons, many classicists have begun to avoid employing the anachronistic term ‘‘Greek’’ when discussing the many disparate Aegean cultures of antiquity and opt instead for more localized and accurate terms such as ‘‘Athenian,’’ ‘‘Spartan,’’ and the like.
Given such difficulties, scholars typically have approached the subject of ‘‘Greek religion and the ancient Near East’’ in one of three overlapping ways, each of which depends on the scholar’s definition of religion and view concerning the general comparability of religious traditions. The first approach examines the subject by remaining attentive to the particular times, places, and cultural contexts of each religion under investigation. It aims to identify cases in which specific religious practices and beliefs are adopted, adapted, and transformed when cultures come into contact (Brown 1995, 2000, 2001; Dotan 2003; Faraone 1993, 1995, 2002; Frankfurter 1998; Noegel 1998, 2004; Toorn 1985, 1997). The second approach adopts a more holistic and comparative vantage, and seeks to ascertain whether a comparative enterprise is justified by identifying trends, issues, and features that unite the various religions of the ‘‘Mediterranean world’’ (Graf 2004b; D. P. Wright 2004a). The third approach sees value in comparing the various religions of the world regardless of their historical and cultural contexts. It is interested less in identifying cases of influence and exchange than in removing the study of all religions from their relative academic isolation (Eliade 1959, 1969; Mondi 1990).
Regardless of which approach one adopts, those pursuing the study of ‘‘Greek religion and the ancient Near East’’ must consign themselves to sorting through and interpreting an unwieldy and thorny mass of textual, artistic, and archaeological evidence. It is, of course, impossible to treat such a vast array of information adequately here. Therefore, I shall focus the discussion on four problems that are central to any investigation: (1) myths, rituals, and cults; (2) the vehicles of cultural transmission; (3) shared taxonomies and the problem of cultural exchange; and (4) monotheisms, monolatries, henotheisms, and polytheisms.
World History
