Another interesting point of comparison is the relation of religion to
the arts and sciences. Their association may be said to have been more
intimate in Hellenism than it has been found to be in any other creed.
We can estimate what music and the drama owed to Apollo and Dionysos,
and how the life of the {23} philosopher, artist, and poet was
considered consecrated to certain divinities. We hear of the Delphic
oracle encouraging philosophic pursuits. The name “Museum” is a
landmark in the religious history of education, and we know that the
temple of Asklepios in Kos was the cradle of the school of modern
medicine. The records of the other religions of this area show
glimpses of the same association, and more extended research may throw
further light on it. The Babylonian gods Nebo and Ea were divinities
of wisdom and the arts, and to the former, who was the inventor of
writing, the library of Ashurbanapal was consecrated. Chaldean
astronomy was evolved from their astrology, which was itself a
religious system. But demonology was stronger in Assyria, Persia, and
Egypt than in Hellas, and demonology is the foe of science. In the
Zend-Avesta the priestly medicine-man, who heals by spell and
exorcism, is ranked higher than the scientific practitioner. A chapter
might be written on the negative advantages of Greek religion, and
none was of greater moment than this--that it had no sacred books or
authoritative religious cosmogony to oppose to the dawn and the
development of scientific inquiry. Asklepios had been a practitioner
in the method of thaumaturgic cures, but he accepted Hippokrates
genially when the time came.
As regards the relation between Greek philosophy and Greek religion,
something may remain to be discovered by any scholar who is equally
familiar with both. It would be absurd to attempt to summarise the
facts in a few phrases here. I wish merely to indicate the absence in
pure Hellenic speculation of any elaborated system of theosophy, such
as the late Egyptian “gnosis,” till we come to Neo-Platonism, when the
Greek intellect is no longer pure. We discover {24} also a vacuum in
the religious mind and nomenclature of the earlier Greek: he had
neither the concept nor any name to express the concept of what we
call “faith,” the intellectual acceptance and confessional affirmation
of certain dogmas concerning the divinity; and in this respect he
differed essentially not only from the Christian, but also from the
Iranian and Buddhistic votary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account