OUP (2016) h/b 361pp £75 (ISBN 9780198737896)
The Greek gods, well as we know their stories, continue to slide away from us because, in the absence of anything like a bible or a church or a body of doctrine, we have no clear view of what Greeks thought they were or thought they were doing when they worshipped them; yet their influence on us through art, literature and in other ways has been, and remains, very strong. So it is no surprise that classical scholars have found this an enticing field to argue in. This entertaining book charts how leading scholars explained the Greek gods during a period when classical scholarship was burgeoning, the differences and conflicts between them (often arising from unacknowledged emotional conditioning), and how the arguments developed under the impact of new discoveries and disciplines.
The book concentrates on German and British scholars writing during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the main chapters concentrate on these, but K. acknowledges that this is not the whole story, and there is a lengthy introduction covering everything up to the 18th century and a conclusion carrying forward into the 21st. The main chapters are themed. The longest chapter (178 pages), headed ‘The tyranny of nature’, deals with the gods as ‘physical interpretations’, i.e. those scholars who saw the gods in relation to natural forces (Apollo as a sun god, etc.), and argued about whether this remained a key principle or developed into something more sophisticated (gods as multi-faceted personalities). Tied up with this was the question whether there was an original monotheism (Urmonotheismus) which sprouted into polytheism as it developed, or whether growing sophistication led Greeks from poly- into mono-theism and a sort of precursor of Christianity. There was also the question of Eastern influence, especially after the discovery of Indo-European comparative mythology that the Sanskrit chief god had almost the same name as Zeus Pater and Iuppiter. The fascination of this chapter is that K. shows how scholars were attracted or repelled by these ideas according to their backgrounds: the romantic movement plus their first ever visits to Greece enthralled some with the natural world; ardent Protestants (and most of them were clergymen) were encouraged to look for monotheism; the experience of Greek art and landscape encouraged idealisation of Greece (which at its worst could tip over into a view of the ‘purity’ of Greece as against decadent Oriental influences).
Other chapters cover the theories opposed to physical interpretation. The most important, which K. calls the ‘historical-critical approach’, saw the gods as originally tribal (e.g. belonging to Dorians or Ionians or other geographic definitions), later becoming universalised. These scholars objected to the physical interpretation view not only on methodological grounds but also because they felt that religion answered deeper human needs that merely explaining nature. An allied idea was of the gods as originally ‘founders’ of a family or group. All the scholars so far discussed were German, but in the final main chapter, headed ‘British responses’, K discusses those British writers, towards the end of the period, who were able to draw on new advances in archaeology, anthropology and folklore, including of course the discoveries of Darwin and Minoan Crete.
This brief summary cannot do justice to the complexity of the subject, and it is a real achievement to have drawn all the threads together and yet made the result so readable. Scholars are shown as arguing about not only methods and evidence, but even about what one ought to be studying: should one look for the origins of Greek religion, or concentrate only on what it became in the historical period, or even, as some modern writers think, look only at ritual and ignore belief altogether?
K. says that the book is based on his doctoral thesis, and it reads that way, because he has been careful not to omit any detail within his defined subject that may be important. On every page there are copious references and notes; there is a bibliography and three indices: general, gods and heroes and scholars and poets (warning: it helps if one can read German, because the many quotations, often extensive, are not translated). At a time when interest in the history of religions is growing again, it is certainly helpful to have an account of how, in an area where evidence is sparse, scholars will be almost pre-programmed to take different points of view. A minor quibble: there are some typos, showing that the standard of proof reading is not quite what one should expect from OUP.
Colin McDonald