Last week, we were hanging out with a man, one part monster and one part Roman military mastermind, named Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. We discussed Pompey's approach to Jerusalem in 63 BC, his siege of the city, and his siege of the holy citadel within. We discussed the piety of the Jewish priests during that siege, who continued to do their priestly Temple duties even as Pompey's troops approached them to cut them down from behind. This was all in the context of a study of ancient paganism and its interplay with ancient Judaism.
At first glance, Pompey might not be the most pertinent figure when we look at the historic space between paganism and Judaism. The Jews had, after all, descended from pagans*, and the Old Testament is chock full of stories of the Jewish people interacting with pagans of all sorts. There is also no doubt that the exile of the Jewish people to the pagan Babylon in the sixth century BC qualifies as one of the most powerful collisions between paganism and Judaism ever - enough to rival anything Rome ever did to the Jews.
So why the focus on Pompey and Rome? Because of their proximity to Jesus, of course. When Jesus grew up in the Galilee, Rome was the ultimate earthly authority in that area. When a Galilean said "damn The Man," they were referring to Rome. The immense cultural pressure Rome brought to bear on her subjects would have been palpable to Jesus and the whole population of Palestine at the time.
Still, we should understand that when Rome arrived in full force in 63, Palestine was already a thoroughly Hellenized place. The people there had been familiar with Greek traditions and religion since, at the latest, Alexander the Great's conquest of the area in 332 BC.** Pompey was, by no means, the first pagan to walk into Jerusalem. He was merely the most powerful pagan to date to have ever stepped foot in the city.
Bearing the gradual Hellenization of the entire Mediterranean world in mind, today we'll continue our study by simply highlighting some of the main practical aspects of Greco-Roman religious belief.
Ten Broad Strokes on Greco-Roman Paganism
1. Greek and Roman pagan practices differed very little.
We call it "Greco-Roman" paganism because, in many ways, Roman and Greek paganisms were indistinguishable. This statement is true for a vast majority of Greco-Roman history, and it is especially true of the first century BC. At that time, in Roman towns and Greek towns alike, cult and temple worship of patron gods was the norm. In Roman towns and Greek towns alike, religion was a transactional thing, wherein the adherent made continuing blood sacrifices to the gods in return for rewards here in this earthly life. In Roman and Greek towns all over the Mediterranean and the near-east, religion looked pretty much the same.
The religion of the Greeks and the religion of the Romans can be separated from one another, but, for our purposes, Greco-Roman paganism can be viewed as a monolith.
2. Greco-Roman paganism was not a system of morality, unlike the major modern religions.
Greco-Roman paganism did not come with prescriptions for morality, generally. The gods worshipped by the Greeks and Romans were themselves, by tradition, often morally reprehensible, and thus there was no imperative set for human behavior by the gods. For Greco-Roman pagans like Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus or Pontius Pilate, religion was strictly a system by which one appealed to the gods for favors in this earthly life.
This is not to say that the Romans or Greeks were without morality. They certainly were not. Their morality was just based on things like civic duty, personal honor, and the politics of war, rather than on duty to the divine.
We can say for sure that Pompey never once laid awake in bed thinking "I really hope Jupiter will forgive me for telling that lie I told earlier today."
Speaking of Jupiter...
3. Jupiter = Zeus
Jupiter was the King of the Gods in the Roman pantheon. He was analogous to Zeus in the Greek pantheon. Maybe "analogous" doesn't go far enough, though. You see, the name "Jupiter" is a cognate of the Greek "Zeû páter," or "Zeus, father." The prime Roman god, then, is literally the prime Greek god by a translated name.
One can actually take any name off the list of the primary Roman pantheon and find the mythological prototype of that character in the Greek pantheon. The Greek Ares became the Roman Mars. The Greek Poseidon became the Roman Neptune. The Greek Aphrodite became the Roman Venus. The two pantheons can almost be seen as a single pantheon of double-named deities.
4. The Romans interfaced with the gods through birds and gore.
The Romans had various methods of divination***. They engaged in practices such as haruspicy and augury.
Haruspicy is an ancient practice that the Romans had picked up from their Italian neighbors the Etruscans. It involved the inspection of the entrails of a sacrificed animal, most commonly the liver of a bird, for divine signs of the future. There is archaeological record of statues of bird livers used as reference for liver-readers on the Italian peninsula.
Augury was the practice of observing the flight patterns or other behavioral habits of living birds, interpreting them as messages from the gods.
There's an interesting story about Roman augury that I like to retell. You see, before initiating battles, Romans had a religious requirement to appeal to the gods for approval through augury. A Roman commander would have with him in the field, or on his ship, a cage full of "sacred chickens." When the Roman commander wanted approval from the gods for a battle, he would open up the chicken cage and spread some seed on the ground before it. If the chickens came out to eat the seed, this was considered "good auspices" and the battle would go forward. If the chickens did not eat the seed, it was considered a bad omen - a message from the gods that the battle should not be initiated.
During the First Punic War, a man named Publius Claudius Pulcher led the Roman naval forces into the Battle of Drepana against defiant Carthaginian blockade runners. Before ordering his men into the fray, Pulcher was said to have opened up his cage of sacred chickens and ceremoniously thrown some delicious seed on the deck before them. The chickens, on that day, may have been somewhat seasick, as evidenced by the fact that they did not leave the cage to eat the seed. Pulcher, being unwilling to delay the battle on that particular day on account of the chickens, famously remarked "if the chickens won't eat, then let them drink!" and threw the whole lot of chickens overboard into the Mediterranean. Pulcher's men, no doubt, looked on in horror. It would have been considered terrible luck to defy the sacred chickens, much less to kill them all in a fit of anger.
Pulcher ordered his fleet to commence attacking the Carthaginians despite the inauspicious chicken reading, and was rewarded for his haste by having 93 of his ships captured or destroyed. The sacred chickens had been right, and no one who heard this tale dared doubt the chickens for generations to come.
5. The Greeks interfaced with the gods via Oracles.
The Greeks also had methods of divination. Most famously, the Greeks heard oracles. Most famously, the Greeks heard the wisdom of the Oracle at Delphi, also known as the Pythia.
The Pythia was a position held by one woman at a time. She was one in a line of female seers, and was certainly the most powerful woman in the classical world. Greek leaders appealed to her wisdom in all manner of inquiry for ages, and her influence is multiply attested in nigh countless ancient authors. The Oracle at Delphi was established in the eighth century BC and was still used as late as the fourth century AD.
Located a hundred miles west and slightly north of Athens, the Oracle was the place to go for Greeks seeking to interface with the divine. Generally speaking, at the Oracle, a seeker could pose a question to the gods and receive some kind of divine answer via the Pythia.
Some historians say that the Pythia, upon being asked a question, would inhale fumes coming out of a natural vapor spring. The fumes would cause her to start speaking an unintelligible gibberish. The Oracle priests would then interpret the gibberish into an answer in plain Greek for the seeker. Other historians recall the Pythia intelligibly answering the seeker herself, in Greek.
Some of the most pivotal decisions in Greek history were essentially made by the Pythia, whoever she was at that time.
If the Romans wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could cut open an animal and look at its liver. If the Greeks wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could go talk to a woman who had possibly driven herself mad with natural inhalants.
Different strokes.
6. Greco-Roman paganism was tolerant of alternative religiosity.
Greco-Roman paganism, as we've mentioned before, was very tolerant of the religious views of other peoples. This is probably because most peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world worshipped a non-moralizing pantheon of gods transactionally, just as the Greeks and Romans did. When Alexander the Great went conquering, then, it was not a big deal for the newly conquered people to mix and match their existing gods with the new Greek gods. When Rome conquered, it was the same thing. Pantheons might get added together, and the names of some gods might change here or there, but the overarching structure of pagan religion was the same everywhere.
7. The pagans originated the belief in an everlasting soul.
Greco-Roman pagans believed in an eternal soul. Attitudes and beliefs about the afterlife evolved throughout antiquity, but eventually landed on something close to an afterlife-as-punishment-or-reward model. A person who lived well and was remembered well would be rewarded by pleasure in a place called Elysium. A person who lived impiously or was remembered poorly by others would have to, at least for a time, experience some measure of suffering in a dark place known as Tartarus. Again, "good" and "bad" living were not defined by religion here, but were concepts rooted in civic duty and social order.
One can see the origins of the Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell in the Greco-Roman concepts of Elysium and Tartarus. (One cannot, incidentally, find the origins of these concepts in Biblical Judaism.)
8. They worshipped and sacrificed publicly at temples.
The temple was the center of public religious life for the Greco-Roman pagan. Any Greco-Roman town of any importance had at least one temple, if not more. Most towns would also have other smaller shrines where people could pray and sacrifice. Most temples were associated with some divine or revered grave. The space a Greco-Roman temple occupied was more sacred than the edifice itself, and thus the centerpiece of the temple, the sacrificing altar, was frequently located in the open air directly in front of the temple. This also facilitated participation in ceremony by the locals.
9. They worshipped and sacrificed privately in their homes.
The center of private religious life for the average citizen of Greece or Rome was the home. Citizens would create shrines to patron gods in their homes and would personally burn small offerings there on a daily basis. The patriarch of a family was the default advocate to the divine in any household, and it would have been his responsibility to see these reverences completed for the earthly benefit of his flesh and blood.
10. Transactional, not salvational
I've said it before, but it gets its own bullet-point here: Greco-Roman religion was transactional in nature, not salvational. Greco-Roman paganism was "practical and contractual." The old Roman idiom was "do ut des," or "I give, that you might give."
One practiced paganism because one wanted to increase one's bounty in this life.
---
There you have them. Ten broad strokes about the religious atmosphere that the Jewish people found themselves surrounded by at the time of Jesus Christ's Galilean Ministry.
Next time, we'll look at ancient Judaism broadly in this same way, seeking to find the starkest differences and the clearest similarities between it paganism. Some of you might be surprised at what we find. Don't miss it.
For now, let's get back to the gospel.
------------------------------
Matthew 5:10
10 Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
------------------------------
The original Greek word that we have translated into "persecuted" here is "dediōgmenoi" which is a prolonged and more intense form of the verb used to mean "pursue." I think "persecuted" is a pretty good translation here.
The verb "to persecute," today, means "to subject (someone) to hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of their race or political or religious beliefs."
The original Greek word that we have translated into "righteousness" here is "dikaiosynēs," meaning fairness, equitability, justice, or even levelness.
For me, it is next to impossible to read this Beatitude without thinking about the mechanisms of power and empire as they existed in Jesus' time and as they exist now in modern times.
Jesus assures his followers that those who labor for equality and fairness to the point that the authorities begin to harass, harm, or expel them are extremely blessed, and will be the rightful heirs of the "kingdom of heaven."
Those familiar with Christ's whole story know him as a political radical. This verse shows Jesus, from the very outset, encouraging political radicalism in his followers, too. Jesus tells his followers that they ought to expect to be persecuted for their mode of living. In fact, in this Beatitude, Jesus offers his people a yardstick by which to measure themselves. He seems to say "if you aren't being persecuted, you probably aren't advocating loudly enough for righteousness or justice."
Jesus wants his followers to be persecuted for the radical methods by which they advocate for righteousness.
For a modern example of the persecution Jesus refers to here, consider the establishment's persecution and murder of Martin Luther King Jr for his work in civil rights, his advocacy for the poor, and especially for his work in the anti-war movement in the 1950s and 60s. Here was a man very clearly "persecuted for the sake of righteousness."
Coincidentally, I will say that there are only a few figures in the history of Christendom that I now find worthy of the title "Christian." Dr. King is one on that very short list. I like to guess that the good Doctor took a lot of solace in this eighth Beatitude throughout the trials of his life.
For Jesus and for Dr. King: damn The Man.
Join us next time, and thanks for reading.
Love.
-------------------------
* Joshua 24:2
** It was during the Hellenizing period between 332 and 63 BC that the Jews first adopted some of the beliefs of the Greek philosophers, like that of the "immortal soul," which did not exist anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.
*** divination: noun - the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.
** It was during the Hellenizing period between 332 and 63 BC that the Jews first adopted some of the beliefs of the Greek philosophers, like that of the "immortal soul," which did not exist anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.
*** divination: noun - the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.
-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.
To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
For the index of Christ's words, click here.
