Author: hackney@uoregon.edu

Judaism in Rome

hackney@uoregon.edu

Rome had a policy to accept many other religions than simply their own pantheon, given that they were not harmful to the Roman way of life. This was particularly helpful when examining how the Romans treated their Jewish population. The Roman elite had “respect for ancestral traditions” (Rives, 194) even when they considered the religions bizarre. This respect from the elites of Rome, and smooth maneuvering by the Judean leaders, led to a general acceptance of the Jewish way of life. Roman authorities allowed the Jews to practice their ancestral ways and practices without interference, even going so far as to write documents dissuading other Romans from stealing their sacred funds and scriptures by calling that sacrilege (Rives, 195).

Jews in the Roman empire also got special treatment, at the beginning, due to their religion, Josephus writes that Lucius Lentulus gave special permission to the Jews to be exempt from military service on religious grounds (Warrior, 14.2). Josephus often writes of the Roman favor towards the Jews, they had the right to meet in assembly when it was restricted to others, as well as being exceptions to holding common meals. Though the Jews were favored at times and had their rights upheld, while some were not, this peaceful cooperation between the people of Rome and the people practicing Judaism did not last.

There were multiple revolts of the Jews during the Roman Empire. The first was because of a conflict in Caesarea, which led to a protest breaking out in Jerusalem. The Romans destroyed the temple and in its place a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus was built. The Romans also forbade proselytizing, and all taxes that originally went to the temple now went to Jupiter.  Tactitus, a historian, wrote that everything the Romans thought as pious was found impure by the Jews and everything the Jews believed in was found impious by the Romans (Rives, 194). He wrote, “ they are extremely loyal toward one another and always ready to show compassion, but toward every other people they show hate and enmity” (Warrior, 14.21). The disrespect and overall difference in cultures, at this point, was a major reason that the two peoples were not able to get along. This work shows a Roman historian’s views on the Jews and how their differences are just too vast.  This Roman perspective would be a problem, because it would become a perspective of the elites, and as they had power and influence, this opinion would be detrimental to the Jews of Rome.

Sibylline Books and The Mithras Cult

hackney@uoregon.edu

There were many advantages to having multiple different esoteric religions in the Roman Empire. Multiple religions gave a way for people to worship whomever they wanted, it gave them a way to make new specific religions to fit their needs. The Sibylline Books were works that the people of Rome went to when they had any questions, to consult in Senate affairs, in case of political strife, and when a great calamity had befallen them ( Warrior, 5.7). The prophesies were vague in that the same verses might be used for different situations at different time for advice. Another example of when the Romans consulted the Sibylline Books was when they had many deformities all at once and they needed to make sure that they were on the right path (Warrior, 7.18).

The cult of Mithras is as mysterious as it is wide spread. The cult of Mithras was practiced as far as Iran and was typically worshiped along with another god, different gods depending on the different traditions. The cult of Mithras has a mysterious and complicated 7 step initiation process for its members, one step for each of the known planets.  The cave of Mithras is a very important part of the cult, the cave represents the cosmos for the people. Most of the people who joined the cult were soldiers, tax officials, people who are well integrated into the state. Something unique is that all of the members of the cult are men, it was popular for middle ranking men in society. The groups of cult followers typically stayed small and would break up if their following became too large in one location.

Warrior’s selections on magic cover the ritual, binding spells, magical cures, sorcery and witchcraft, and astrology. The Romans seemed to have utilized these methods to explain why one man was more successful than another, for example in 12.4 a farmer had a vastly more abundant crop than his neighbors so they set a day for his trial. I think that magic gave people explanations to why things were not always the same for two people who were doing the same thing. It gave them a way to blame an prosecute someone who they thought were cheating at life. This magic also seemed to be a bit centered on women, maybe giving them a power source, or blaming them, for things that were happening that men did not like.

Cult Worship of Isis

hackney@uoregon.edu

In the reading from Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice Isis is the supreme god in a way. She has control over the cosmos, life and death, and most importantly faith. She was worshipped outside of Egypt long before she became a prominent goddess of the Greeks and Romans. In the reading it says that Isis is Demeter in Greek, and that the mysteries of Demeter were an extension of the mysteries of Isis. Isis has three deities she is commonly associated with, Anubis Horus and Sarapis.  She is known as the goddess of a thousand names, each culture has a different name for the goddess, sometimes more than one. We know very little about her mysteries, we do know though that anyone could worship her in daily rituals. They did not have to be initiated into the mysteries.

The writers praise Isis as basically the goddess who has some sort of rule over everything. They praise her as a goddess of all the people and one who hold justice in very high esteem. She is known to calm or agitate the sea, as well as being the rays of the sun. In Egypt, she was responsible for searching for, putting back together, embalming, and reincarnating Osiris, then magically conceiving and giving birth to Horus. Horus would then be reborn and embodied by each new pharaoh.

Isis is worshipped for setting up sanctuaries for the gods and putting an end to tyrants. Her interactions with humanity are that she makes seafaring possible, she watches over people and to her “everything is possible”. I think she was so popular because Isis could claim having a hand in every aspect of someone’s daily life. She was credited for drawing man an women together, making sure children loved their parents, and taught people to honor the gods. So technically she could be praised for all the religious notions that all the Greek people have, and thus should be worshipped. Also since she had control over the seas and safety of seafarers she was the perfect goddess to pray to for safe passage in travels.

Cult, Art, and Ritual of Greek Religions

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There were many ways that the Greeks worshipped their gods. Perhaps the best well known is that of sacrifice but they also gave the gods material things, statues and sculptures made of gold. These were another way to honor the gods, to use as a gift so that they may favorably look upon a request being given. There would be sculptures given to the gods to try to gain favor in upcoming wars or to give thanks for the victory in past war. These different ways that the Greeks used art strengthens their cult worship, it gave them a way to gain favor with the gods by more then just the sacrifices. The panhellenic statues and gifts also strengthened  a larger group of people’s favor with the gods and affected a wider group of people.

There were many rituals carried out by the cults that defined and shaped the ways that the Greeks practiced their worship. For example there were rituals to purify people who had been polluted, this meant that anyone who had been polluted by birth or death was not able to partake in any of the rituals or even enter the temples and sanctuaries until they had been purified. The ritual for purifying was also only to make a person physically clean, being morally clean was not an issue. If worshipping a female goddess then the leader of the sanctuary would be a priestess, if the god was a male then the leader would be a priest. The priests and priestesses also had more rituals and rules to follow then the average worshippers at a temple. The rituals carried out by the people played a more predominate role than that of myth and literature. Myth and literature also played noteworthy roles in the sanctuaries, namely that of  deities that were a creation of the literary tradition or folklore, they did not receive sacrifices, prayer or dedications. These deities were still worshipped and some later transitioned into religious figures, Eirene and Agathe Tyche for example. While both influenced the lives of the Greeks, it seems as though the rituals that they had to carry out influenced their lives more on a daily basis.

All the dimensions of worship and celebration converge at Sunium to form a large and important temple to the Greeks. The flow into each other, the cult uses art and myths to enhance their religious experiences and temples. It would be unusual to have a sanctuary without all these aspects of worship represented. After this chapter my overall impression with the Greeks is that they spent more time on making sure that the gods were happy with them by giving items and sacrificing to the gods than they did on being morally sound. Their “religiosity” was based solely on material things and material gain than it was on them being good people. It seems to me that this wasn’t so much a religion as it was a way to get farther in their world and a way to look good in the eyes of society.

 

Greco-Roman Religions: Introduction

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Mikalson’s chapter highlights the different ways that Greek religion affected the government, culture, artistry, and way of life of Classical Greece. There is an emphasis that events that take place during a religious festival, whether or not they are part of the ritual, are religious in base. Many commonalities that religion has with some of the subtopics rely on the fact the Greeks believe that if you invoke a god’s name in an oath then that oath must be fulfilled; otherwise the god’s wrath would come down. The courts required oaths of innocence and oaths of truths from the jurors, if found lying then the guilty party would be expelled from the city or killed to rid the city of the pollution. The telling of tragedies and comedies were performed at festivals honoring Dionysus, it was not until later that those two genres were anything but religious in nature. There is also an emphasis on how little the gods seem to care about anything relate to politics, court trials and the people’s life after death. If a juror took a bribe then the gods would do nothing about it because it was not the god that had been offended, a similar reaction to the gods’ lack of attention when someone died. They are only willing to interfere in people’s lives, not their afterlife. There was a definite and undisputable influence that the gods and the people’s religion held over the everyday lives of the Grecians though there are parts of the people’s lives that existed outside of religion, their secular art for example. Mikalson’s presentation of Greek religion intersects with our impression in class of Greek religion in that both parties acknowledged that there was a god for certain aspects of daily life, that the gods were generally characterized by immorality and that the Greeks absorbed gods into their fold instead of taking over the religions of conquered peoples. There are many points of agreement between the class list and the chapter, there could be some fine tuning on the importance of the festivals and the specific aspects that correlate to each god.