Download NT113 Roman Religious Experience

Religious Atmosphere
of The Roman Empire
Religion Basics and Grass Roots
Roman Religions
Traditional
Religious Experience
• Religion was a staple within the Roman experience.
• The Roman people were very religious, and religion
was a part of every aspect of life.
• For example, in the modern world religion and politics
are separated from one another, but in Roman times
they were one in the same.
Religious Experience
• Interesting enough, priestly positions were not an official
profession; rather, these positions were held by a prominent
political person, which makes the religious atmosphere of
Rome unique from other cultures.
• Religion was not just intertwined with politics, but
everything else.
• Athletic events were considered religious activities. The
Roman calendar was full of religious holidays. Life in Rome
was built upon religion and religious activities.
• Similar to the Bible belt where on every street corner there
is a church, in Rome every corner had a temple for the
Roman gods.
Religious Experience
• Another aspect to the Roman religious experience is their
openness to other gods.
• Roman religion was a non-exclusive religion.
• The Romans were known for their worship of many gods and
their acknowledgement of even more.
• There were some gods, like the “state gods,” who received more
attention than others.
• The “state gods,” Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, were highly
worshipped within the city of Rome for they were thought to be
the key to the success of Rome. Other gods were important and
needed attention as well, which explains why the Roman calendar
was full of religious holidays.
Religious Experience
• In the Roman religious experience the relationship
between the gods and humans was completely different
from a modern view.
• In their view, the relationship was mutual. If someone
needed something, like bread, the person would go to
the temple of that particular god that was known to
provide food, offer a sacrifice, and then that god would
reciprocate by providing for his or her need.
Religious experience
• This does not mean that everyone’s needs were answered
though.
• It was well known that the gods were fickle and there was
no guarantee that they would answer a person’s request, but
the Roman concept and practice of honoring the gods
demonstrated this idea of having a mutual relationship.
• This process did not imply that gods not worshipped were
less important. The focus however, was on the gods who
were believed to be able to effect an outcome for the
worshipper. In many ways, this practice mirrored the
patronage and benefaction system in place for Roman
society.
Religious experience
• Furthermore, devotees of one god could just as well
honor any other gods that they wanted.
• In Roman culture honor was given at the discretion of
the devotee. If they needed something from one
particular god, they would go to that god’s temple and
honor him.
• If they needed something from a different god, then
they would go over to the other god’s temple. Roman
religions were non-exclusive. As has been
demonstrated, religion was woven into the fabric of
everyday life, and even into the affairs of the state.
religious Practice
• Knowing that religion was in every part of Roman life,
what did their practices and look like?
• What were the nature of the gods?
Religious Practice
• Roman religion was a religion of doing
• The Roman religious experience was centered upon
sacrifices and rituals. This was the means by which the
gods were most honored.
• Where as in the monotheistic religions belief is a main
component, to the Roman religions, belief was good
but not of utmost importance for the success of the
religion.
Religious Practice
• As Simon Price writes, “’Belief ’ as a religious term is
profoundly Christian in its implications; it was forged
out of the experience which the Apostles and Saint
Paul had of the Risen Lord. The emphasis which
‘belief ’ gives to spiritual commitment has no necessary
place in the analysis of other cultures.” S. R. F. Price, Rituals
and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984), 11.
Religious PRactice
• When understanding an ancient culture’s religion, like
that of the Romans, people must realize their own lens
they are seeing things through and seek to look at the
different culture based purely on its own unique
framework.
• In ancient Rome, belief was good to have, but it was
more important to actually practice the religion
through sacrifices and rituals. This seems opposite
from what Christianity contends that religion is based
upon what one believes.
Religious Practice
• Belief was not the only aspect that was not of huge
importance in ancient Rome; the necessity for emotion
was another one.
• It was not necessary for devotees to have an emotional
attachment to the gods they were honoring. This is
another element modern readers need to be mindful of
when looking at ancient Roman religions. The notion
that emotion is an essential part of any religious life is
not necessarily true.
Religious PRactice
• As Price comments, “The criterion of feelings and
emotions as the test of authenticity in ritual and
religion is in fact an appeal to the Christian virtue of
religio animi, religion of the soul, that is, the
interiorized beliefs and feelings of individuals… That
is to apply the standards of one religion to the ritual of
another society without consideration of their
relevance to indigenous standards.”
• What Price says is vital to understanding the religious
atmosphere of Rome. The “indigenous standard” in
ancient Rome was one of doing.
Religious Practice
• This is not to say that belief and emotion were not
possible and lacked any sort of value, because it was
possible that those elements were a part of the people’s
practice, but the point is that it was not essential to the
religion.
• What was essential was that the gods received the
proper rituals and sacrifices. Rituals were a way for
ancient Rome to conceptualize the world, while
sacrifices were a way of displaying religious honor
(KEY POINT)
Religious PRactice
• The purpose behind this was to mark a distinction
between god and man, showing that the one receiving
the sacrifice was superior to the one giving it. This was
the means by which the Romans were able to relate to
the gods.
• “Certainly some notion of belief is involved. The
Romans believed what they were doing was of value;
otherwise they would not have done it. However, this
was not a unique belief in contrast to other beliefs. It
was the worldview of the empire. It simply was the
state of affairs “ Fantin, 93.
Nature of the Gods
• If rituals and sacrifices were what marked the
distinction between god and man, what was the nature
of the gods?
• The nature of the Roman gods was vastly different
from the nature of the gods found in modern
monotheistic religions.
Nature of the
Gods
• The Roman/Greek gods were
more human-like and had
limited abilities.
• They sometimes needed to be
persuaded by other gods to act.
• They could be impulsive.
• They had limited knowledge.
• In fact, in some instances some
of the gods are hurt in battle.
Nature of the Gods
• In the Roman religion, there was a not a god who
created the world and the universe, like the God in the
monotheistic religions does.
• Instead, the world and the universe were already in
existence when the gods came into power.
• The reason why people honored the gods through
rituals and sacrifices was due to the status gap between
themselves and the divine.
Nature of the Gods
• These gods were still leaps and bounds ahead of their
devotees in status.
• These gods, although not as mighty seeming as the
monotheistic gods, still had the ability to act on behalf
of human beings.
• Even with these gods being temperamental and
impulsive like humans, they still were to be honored by
the standards of the Roman religion.
grass roots
Religious Underground
superstition
• Far more important for daily life than the Olympian
deities or the major imports of the east were the
innumerable demons and malevolent spirits
• These had to be kept at bay or placed as best one could
• By “superstition” we mean a great variety of quasianimistic folk beliefs and magical practices that are at a
variance with traditional conceptions of Greco-Roman
“orthodoxy” and that were commonly disparaged by
the intelligentsia of first-century society
Superstition
• This was seen amongst the masses
• In fact, the townsfolk, travelers, merchants, and magistrates
whom the Apostle Paul encountered daily were deeply
superstitious and envisioned the spiritual universe as a vast,
multistoried insula with swarms of supernatural beings
occupying the floors above and below them.
• Most of us would find it difficult to take seriously the idea
that burying a frog at an intersection could prevent a fever
or that the ground where lightning strikes is sacred or
comprehend why a host would abruptly pour wine under
the table and change the rings on his finger after hearing a
cock crow
Superstition
• Yet these beliefs and actions made sense to the ancients and
were rational in the kind of universe they inhabited: an
enchanted universe; a universe where the line between the
spiritual and physical was only fainted drawn and easily
crossed
• Much of the upper class/philosophers looked down upon
the superstitions held by the masses
• Ex.: Plutarch (Greek historian) writes, “But the ridiculous
actions and emotions of superstition, its words and gestures,
magic charms, spells, rushing about and beating of drums,
impure and outlandish penances and mortifications at the
shrines make one wish there were no gods!”
Magic
• In order to understand the religious context in which
primitive Christianity emerged, one must reckon seriously
the widespread practice of magic, divination, and all
manner of related paranormal activities
• The principal varieties of magic in Greco-Roman antiquity
were: protective magic (protection from evil spirits, black
magic, illness), imprecatory magic (invoking curses on an
enemy or competitor), and love magic (compelling affection
in one another)
• The common denominator among all these is the belief that
one can manipulate the gods through the correct execution
of secret rites and incantations
Magic
• The practice of injurious black magic was not strictly
legal, and perpetrators of such mischief could face
criminal prosecution
• Yet traffickers in magic and black arts were in high
demand
• Both Suetonius (historian) and Horace (a roman poet)
refer to entire books devoted to sorcery and spells, and
understanding the abundance of such works
considerably illuminates the great magical bonfire in
Acts 19:19
divination
• Knowledge of future events, the revelation of hidden truth,
supernatural guidance in pressing decisions… the first-century
pagans had devised a great many methods for plumbing the
depths of the mysterious unknown
• Spiritists, mediums, and soothsayers were in plentiful supply, and
not surprisingly, there was both a low-rent and a high-rent district
for psychic pursuits
• “If the woman be of humble rank, she will promenade between
the turning posts of the Circus Maximus; she will have her fortune
told, and will present her brow and her hand to the seer who asks
for many an approving smack. Wealthy women will pay for
answers from a Phrygian or Indian augur well skilled in the stars
and the heavens” Juvenal, Sat. 6.582-86
divination
• Official divination was a venerated and hallowed form of
discerning the will of the gods and occupied an important
place in Rome’s social and political history
• It involved, principally: studying the flight patterns and
eating habits of birds (augury), examining the entrails of
animals (haruspicy), and observing significant cosmological
phenomena (lightning, eclipses, earthquakes)
• In Cicero’s On Divination, we see divination elevated to a
science, complete with methods, rules, and procedures
• Divination was not confined to cities, political aristocracy,
and the leaders of the empire. Diviners were also common
figures in the forums and farmlands of the Roman world
Oracles
• Oracles, dreams, and astrology were also common currency in the
first century, and the surviving evidence indicates that nearly
everyone made at least some use of this preternatural tender
• Consulting an oracle, like that of Apollo at Delphi, or the Sybil at
Cumae, or Asclepius at Epidarus, was a time-honored tradition in
antiquity and considered to be a valid means of finding a divine
answer to a perplexing dilemma
• Dreams, in fact, were commonly held to be messages from the
gods, and this is not only by the superstitious and unsophisticated
masses.
• Plutarch calls dreams, “the most ancient and respected form of
divination”
• Suetonius believed that “dreams come from Zeus”
Omens
Astrology
• Predicting the future by means of the stars in an
ancient form of divination and one that was
particularly important in the NT era.
• The emperors Tiberius and Nero were avid devotees
of astrology, and in the case of Tiberius, Suetonius
remarks that this led to “neglect of the gods and
religious matters… being convinced that everything
was in the hands of fate.”
• Ancient writers regularly refer to superstitious
stargazers and street corner astrologers ready to plot
one’s destiny or one’s day according to the zodiac or
some other astral phenomena
Astrology
• Horoscopes were often drawn up at the birth of a
child, providing the anxious parents a portent of what
the future would hold
• Although the science of astrology was truly complex,
involving precise calculations based on the position of
the planets, its popularity issued from the conviction
that one’s fate, fortune, character, and temperament
were determined by the heavenly body, often conceived
as deities
What do we see?
• A culture with a huge diversity of religious notions.
• A culture seeping with religion.
• This was what the early church was facing.
NT Context
• The philosophical conflict between paganism
and Christianity would have been constant and
felt at virtually every level of social engagement
• The Judeo-Christian worldview that Paul
introduced to Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus,
and other communities around the rim of the
Aegean would have been the religious equivalent
of a Copernican revolution for inhabitants of
these cities, Jews excepted.
Nt Context
• At every crossroads, at every doorway, in every tavern
and in every shop the new believer would be
confronted with the symbols and assumptions of an
unremittingly polytheistic world
• The challenge for contemporary readers (although
never fully attainable, granted) is to attempt to hear
Paul’s letters with pagan ears and so better appreciate
the impact of their message on their original readers
NT Context
• Stoics proclaimed Zeus as the father of humanity, and
the coins jingling in first-century pockets heralded the
emperor as the divine father
• For example, most readers today take for granted
beliefs such as a bodily resurrection, divine providence,
God as Father, or God as provider, but in the GrecoRoman world each of these notions was either ascribed
to other deities or rejected
• The Athenians scoffed at the idea of a bodily
resurrection (Acts 17:32), and in Corinth some
believers had a difficult time accepting it (1 Cor 15:12)
NT CONTEXT
• Providence and fate were believed to be determined by
the stars, or perhaps the goddess Fortuna/Tyche
• To the Corinthians, whose city boasted an elaborate
sanctuary to Demeter, provider of grain and bountiful
harvests, Paul’s assurance that “he who supplies seed
to the sower and bread for food will also increase your
store of seed” (2 Cor 9:10) might have caused
deliberate, sincere reflection that it no longer does to us
Magic in acts
• Many of the Athenian sophisticates scratched their heads
and wondered, “What is this babbler trying to say?” (Acts
17:18)
• Throughout the book of Acts the supremacy and power of
the gospel is emphasized over any rival claimant while
quietly reminding us of the wealth, influence, and status of
successful magical practitioners in the Greco-Roman world.
• There are episodes featuring shamans, exorcists, and
diviners that further illustrate the religious experience of the
ancient world
• Acts 8: 4-25 (In Samaria); Acts 13:4-12 (On Cyprus), Acts
16:12-16 (In Philippi), Acts 19:11-20 (In Ephesus)