An Ancient Theory of Religion

Euhemerism from Antiquity to the Present

Nickolas Roubekas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317535294
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

An Ancient Theory of Religion examines a theory of religion put forward by Euhemerus of Messene (late 4th—early 3rd century BCE) in his lost work Sacred Inscription, and shows not only how and why euhemerism came about but also how it was— and still is—used.

By studying the utilization of the theory in different periods—from the Graeco-Roman world to Late Antiquity, and from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century—this book explores the reception of the theory in diverse literary works. In so doing, it also unpacks the different adoptions and misrepresentations of Euhemerus's work according to the diverse agendas of the authors and scholars who have employed his theory. In the process, certain questions are raised: What did Euhemerus actually claim? How has his theory of the origins of belief in gods been used? How can modern scholarship approach and interpret his take on religion? When referring to 'euhemerism, ' whose version are we employing? An Ancient Theory of Religion assumes no prior knowledge of euhemerism and will be of interest to scholars working in classical reception, religious studies, and early Christian studies.

1 Euhemerus’s Euhemerism

Theories of religion are attempts to interpret and explain phenomena identified and categorized as religions. They are generalizations about the category ‘religion’ rather than explanations of particular religions. There exists a certain classification of types of theories related to the presumptions adopted by the theorist who decides to address the issue of religion. This classification derives from the acceptance or not of the truth of religion, that is, whether God or gods actually exist. An affirmative reply takes religion to be a matter of revelation or divine intervention and does not question the existence of the supernatural or transcendent reality. Such a religionist (or, religious) approach to religion is effectively a theological one and thus prone to rejection when one examines religion as a social creation or human by-product.¹ On the other hand, theories that either deny or simply do not broach the question of the truth of god(s), but rather approach religion as a human creation that addresses specific human needs, are commonly categorized as naturalistic (or social scientific) approaches to religion.

The emergence of naturalistic theories of religion triggered, more or less, the modern formation of a scientific study of religion as a discipline distinct from theology; a historical and intellectual development that has recently been extensively studied and discussed.² This shift, from religion as the result of divine intervention or manifestation into the world to religion as a human creation was accompanied by several questions associated with the phenomenon of religion across time and space. As Jeppe Jensen put it in his discussion of the emergence of the scientific study of religion,

[i]f religion does not emanate from God, where, then, does religion come from? In which human domain does religion have its origin? Is religion primarily an intellectual phenomenon concerned with human thought and reason? Or is it principally an ethical and moral matter concerned with duties and obligations toward the gods and fellow human beings? Or, again, is religion an emotional and aesthetic disposition concerned with the sense of beauty and harmony?³

These were questions that preoccupied the philosophers and thinkers of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment periods that virtually created the space for a naturalistic theorizing about religion. A more careful look at these questions, however, reveals the basic and fundamental issues that theorists need to address when formulating their theory of religion: those of the origin and function of religion. Both questions address the same critical issue; that is, religion arises due to a need and its function is to fulfill precisely that need.⁴ Whereas the need varies from theorist to theorist, what remains common and unaffected is the principle that religion is the creation of human beings rather than ‘something’ in the world revealed by one or more non-human agents. A theory of religion may address both origin and function or simply one of the two questions, but the significance of a need is apparent in all theories, no matter how elusive it might be. As such, in modern theorizing about religion, prominent theorists such as, among others, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Edward B. Tylor, Émile Durkheim, and Friedrich Max Müller approached the issue of origin and/or function as a result of different needs that vary widely, from shelter, clothing, and food to psychological processes pertaining to repressed sexual urges, and from the togetherness sought within a social group to explaining the workings of the universe.⁵

Theorizing about religion is not exhausted, however, to the issues of origin and function. Michael Stausberg has listed, along with his reservation regarding origin and its differentiation from beginnings,⁶ two further questions that need to be addressed by a theory of religion; namely specificity (whether there is anything special or unique about religion) and structure (what is the role of the various elements typically identified as parts of religion, such as rituals, myths, institutions, etc.).⁷ Although specificity and structure are certainly critical when one studies religion, they do not however hold a key role in formulating a theory of religion. Rather, both issues are central to the question of defining or determining what counts as religion to begin with. Although one may argue that a definition is necessary for the development of a theory of religion, some theorists do not offer a definition at all, whereas others do indeed begin their inquiries by proposing one.⁸ However, in order for a theory of religion to qualify qua theory, the introduction of a definition of the subject matter is of course appreciated but not required. The issue of the existence of a need that elicits the emergence of religion, however, effectively implies a definition even if it is absent or not explicitly articulated by the theorist. As such, pre-modern or ancient theories of religion, as we shall see in this and the next chapter, primarily dealt with the issue of origins whereas some addressed the function of religion as well, but they were not preoccupied with specificity and structure. Furthermore, those theories did not include an explicit definition but they did imply one. The vast majority of those thinkers in antiquity—if not each and every one— saw religion largely defined as belief in gods, evocative of Edward B. Tylor’s famous minimum definition of religion as “belief in spiritual beings.”⁹

It goes without saying that neither ancient nor modern theories of religion actually answer in a satisfactory manner both questions of what is religion and how and why it emerged. There is no agreement among scholars of religion when dealing with these questions and all available theories have certain problems, unfilled gaps, and blind spots. A reason for this is that theorists are scholars who approach religion from within their own area of expertise or interest, thus offering an interpretation, explanation, or definition of religion that is usually restricted by the very examples of ‘religion’ that prompted them to deal with this troublesome phenomenon in the first place. Additionally, the problem of religion as a category remains a persisting one, given the lack of the category’s homogeneity and the disagreement among scholars of religion. The very history or genealogy of the term is disputable and justifiably so, whereas what gets to count as religion and how that classification takes place has generated numerous debates within academic settings. It is for such reasons that theories of religion are rarely offered or dealt with nowadays and, when they are, they usually receive severe criticisms.¹⁰ The same ensued in antiquity, with philosophers that offered naturalistic theories of religion being targeted as atheists, while their explanations either fell into oblivion or were utilized by other authors, both contemporary and subsequent ones, in order to serve their own agendas, and thereby were changed, altered, or misrepresented in the process. However, the inability of a theory to explain religion across time and space does not mean that theories of religion are to be scorned or discounted; their success or failure is irrelevant. The process of theorizing about religion is what established the discipline of religious studies itself, since those very attempts were—and still are—the reason that revealed the problematic nature of the category and called for a more scientific and wary study of religion. As Ivan Strenski recently put it, “[u]ntil the time thinkers started studying religion in order to understand and explain it, studying religion was the main business of the religions themselves.”¹¹ Even if theories of religion today seem imperfect attempts, they constitute the very reasons why the study of religion has in recent years detached itself from the ‘insider’ perspective—or, at least, attempts to do so—a project that was initially conceived by thinkers of antiquity in the Greek-speaking world, such as Euhemerus of Messene, the introducer of the theory known today as euhemerism.

Euhemerus’s Euhemerism as a Theory of Religion

We know next to nothing about who Euhemerus was, when and where he lived, or what or who prompted him to address the issue of religion. The majority of the ancient sources indicate the city of Messene as Euhemerus’s birthplace, whereas in three other cases other locations are cited (Tegea in the Peloponnese, Kos in the Aegean Sea, and Acragas in Sicily).¹² Messene (Μεσσήνη), however, can refer to either the city located in the southwest part of the Peloponnese in the province of Messenea, or to the homonymous colony in Sicily. Recent scholarship places Euhemerus in the Sicilian context, without however excluding the possibility of having visited the Greek metropolis. Franco De Angelis and Benjamin Garstad published a lengthy article in 2006 arguing in favor of the Sicilian context, providing solid arguments that urge us to accept the Sicilian cultural background of Euhemerus.¹³ The issue of dating Euhemerus is, however, even more difficult to resolve. Scholars have offered various alternatives but what can be said with some certainty is that Euhemerus lived in the second half of the fourth and the first half of the third century BCE, which situates him in the early Hellenistic period.¹⁴

Euhemerus wrote a work comprising at least three volumes and entitled Hiēra Anagraphē (= Sacred Inscription; Greek: Ἱερà Ἀναγραφή).¹⁵ It is unfortunate that it is not preserved in its entirety but only in fragmentary form and, mainly, through summaries and alleged verbatim renditions offered by later authors. The main source is Diodorus Siculus, the first-century-BCE historian, who preserved parts of the Sacred Inscription in the fifth (5.41.4–46.7) and sixth book (6.1) of his voluminous Historical Library. Unfortunately, the text from Diodorus’s sixth book has not survived as well; instead, we find a summary in Eusebius of Caesarea, the Christian writer of the third and fourth century CE. Author of the monumental Church History, Eusebius preserved a summary of Diodorus’s text in the second book of his Preparation for the Gospel (2.2.59b–61a). Quintus Ennius (239–169 BCE), the father of Roman poetry, translated the Sacred Inscription into Latin with the title Euhemerus sive Sacra Historia.¹⁶ The source problems, however, do not cease here. Ennius’s work is lost and we can only access it through Lactantius, the third- and fourth-century-CE Christian author, who incorporated fragments of Ennius’s translation in the first book of his Divine Institutes. Thus it becomes evident that the Sacred Inscription, written around the end of the fourth or during the first decades of the third century BCE, is only accessible through the writings of authors who lived in a period that expands from the third century BCE to the fourth century CE. This roughly 700-year period of utilization and, subsequently, dissemination of Euhemerus’s work (and theory) holds an equally important role as the theory itself as I will argue in Chapter 3. A summary of what we do have available regarding the content of the Sacred Inscription is offered below.

Euhemerus was a member of the royal court of King Cassander of Macedonia and he embarked on a journey into the Indian Ocean at the behest of the King. During his journey, he reached an unknown archipelago, of which the main island was called Panchaea, situated at the east of Arabia Felix. Panchaea was inhabited by different peoples, such as the autochthonous Panchaeans, Oceanites, Indians, Scythians, and Cretans. The capital city of the island was called Panara. The main site of the city was a temple dedicated to Zeus Triphyllius (that is, of the three tribes). There was a dominant tripartite social system, with certain duties, rights, and roles distributed among the population: the priests comprised the first group, with the artisans assigned next to them. The second group consisted of the farmers, and the third one of the soldiers, which also included the herdsmen. The priests constituted the group in charge of all the other social groups, and it was they who distributed the goods to the people of Panchaea. There was no private ownership, except home and garden. The prominent feature of Panchaea was its sacred character. Euhemerus makes a distinction between the heavenly or celestial and the earthly or human gods. For him, the former are eternal and thus immortal, whereas the latter are mortal. In the firs...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Euhemerus’s Euhemerism
• 2 Before Euhemerism
• 3 Returning to the Sources
• 4 Euhemerism and Atheism
• 5 Euhemerism, Divine Kingship, and Irony
• 6 Citing the Citations: Anti-‘Pagan’ Euhemerism and Identity Formation
• 7 Turning the Tables: Anti-Christian Euhemerism in Celsus
• 8 Seeing ‘Euhemerism’ Everywhere
• Afterword: On the Use and Abuse of a Theory
• Index