Copyright 1967 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands Ail rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced ‘or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS.TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface . viL I. The Formation of Monotheism 1 Il. The Truth of Myth . eee Tf IIL. Myths of Beginnings and Creation- “Myths . wees IV. Io and Rangi . 37 V. Confession of sins: an attempted general interpretation 43 VI. Confession of sins and the Classics . 55 VII. Introduction to the History of Greck Religion 68 VII. The Religion of Ancient Thrace . 81 IX. The Wheel in the ritual ombeliem of § some “Indo- European Peoples 95 X. Carmenta 110 XL. The Gaulish three- faced God on 1 Planetary "Vases 125 XII. ‘Regnator omnivm devs)... we ee ee 136 XIII. West Slav Paganism 151 XIV. Sarapis and his ‘Kerberos’ 164 XV. Aion—(Kronos)Chronos in Egypt. 171 XVI. The monstrous figure of Time in Mithraism 180 XVII. East and West 193 XVIII. State Religion and Individual | Religion in in the Religions History of Italy 202 XIX. History and Phenomenology i in ‘the science L of religion 215 Index . . 220a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.PREFACE This is a collection of sundry writings on various subjects con- nected with the History of Religion, which have been already published on different occasions in Italian and foreign periodicals. In selecting them, I have thought it best to prefer those which seemed most representative, that is best fitted to give an idea of the subjects which have principally interested me during the last forty years, and of the wider researches which I have devoted to those sub- jects in works on a larger scale. The essays are not arranged in chronological order of their first appearance in print, but regrouped according to the relationship of their subject-matter. Some are more general, some more special; some are of historical character, dealing with the religions of non-civilised peoples, with those of the classical world, of non classical Europe, of the ancient East and so forth, while others are phenomenological, treating of monotheism, myth and mythology, and the confession of sins. The English translation, from the Italian or in a few cases from French, has been made with his usual expertise by Professor H. J. Rose of St. Andrews, who in a spirit of true friendship has once more undertaken the task of making the results, such as they are, of my endeavours accessible to a larger public. To him, who has already so many claims on my gratitude, I express my lively thanks for the improvements made by him in his careful revision and with the ad- dition of sundry notes. I likewise thank the deserving publishers, Messrs. E. J. Brill, who suggested the idea of the present volume to me, and also the editors of the periodicals one and all, who have courteously allowed me to reproduce here the writings originally admitted to their publications. Rome, October 1953. R. Perrazzont {The English version of which the author speaks in such flattering terms has proved a most interesting task. While not always agreeing with the opinions of my friend Professor Pettazzoni, I have always been moved to admiration for his learning and ingenuity. Transtator]a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.4 THE FORMATION OF MONOTHEISM A new theory was soon sketched out. According to it, monotheism, far from being regarded as the latest form of human religion, was thought of as the most primitive. This is the theory of “primitive monotheism” (Urmonotheismus), whose most ardent advocate Father Wilhelm Schmidt has made himself. It amounts to a return, by way of science, to the old position of the doctrine of revelation, The parenthesis which Hume and Rousseau had opened in the eighteenth century was now to be closed, and monotheism brought back to the very fountainhead of religion. If we follow the problem of monotheism in the different stages of its development, as I have outlined them, since the abandonment of the traditionalist doctrine in the eighteenth century, passing through the nineteenth-century evolutionism to be rehabilitation of “primitive monotheism” in the twentieth, we find that the question has always been discussed with reference to the religions of uncivilised peoples. From Hume to Lang, from President de Brosses and Auguste Comte with their fetishist negroes to Father Schmidt's Pygmies, it is always the uncivilised who have furnished the material for the different and mutually contradictory hypotheses concerning monotheism, This is explicable only if we keep in mind that the problem of monotheism was regularly envisaged, not in itself, but especially with regard to the more general problem of the primaeval form of religion. The different theories were not so much the resultant of research having for its object monotheism itself, as the indirect outcome of acceptance or rejection of evolutionism, This being the explanation, indeed the historical justification of the manner in which the monotheistic problem has been stated for two centuries, it still does not follow that that is a legitimate attitude. From an objective point of view, what justifies this preference for the religions of the uncivilised in the monotheistic controversy? Are they really the best qualified to impose themselves upon the study of such a religious phenomenon as monotheism, which for its part has so much greater importance in the history of religion generally? Why then should we not devote ourselves, with as good grounds, to the polytheistic religions of the various civilised nations of antiquity? What I have just said is no merely theor | hypothesis. Welcker, in his great work on the mythology and religion of ancient Greece (Die griechische Gétterlehre, 3 vols., 1857-62) himself, after his owna You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.a You have either reached 2 page thts unevalale fer vowing or reached your ievina tit for his book.8 THE FORMATION OF MONOTHEISM catch a glimpse of the deadly struggle which raged between two rival faiths during an acute crisis. On the one side was the traditional religion of Iran, inseparably attached to its old gods and its archaic structure; on the other, the new faith preached by a Prophet who, in his in- domitable energy, set persecutions and sufferings at naught. “Whither could I fly? in what country could I take refuge?” This is one of the few passages in the Gathas and the whole Avesta which allow us to envisage the real personality of Zarathustra in its living humanity, in the bitterness of its poignant passion, in its expression of black despair. There is a drama in the life of Zarathustra, and it played itself out to the very end. But the drama of Zarathustra is likewise in a way the drama of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Jesus, or if you like of Paul. The negation of polytheism, which expresses itself indirectly in Zoroastrianism by inverting the meaning of the word daeva, is expressed more directly and explicitly in Yahwism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh says to his people, in the Old Testament, “I am the LORD thy God ... thou shalt have none other gods before me.” (Exod. 20, 2-3, cf. Deut. 5, 6-7; 32, 39; Isaiah 43, 11; 44, 6). In the Gospel of Mark (12, 32) we read, ‘He is one; and there is none other but he.” “There is no God but one”, says the first Epistle to the Corinthians (8, 4). As to Islam, it is enough to remember the formula “There is no god but Allah, and Mahomet is the apostle of Allah.” The affirmation of monotheism always is expressed by the negation of polytheism, and this negation is never anything but the verbal symbol of a combat in which no quarter is given, the combat between a faith in its death-agonies and a new religious consciousness affirming itself 4). Of this combat every prophet of monotheism has been the interpreter and at the same time the victim. This, then, is the outcome of the study of the monotheistic religions. We arrive at an idea of what monotheism really is, an idea which is 4) The verbal formula is not in itself a sufficient indication of monotheism. It is found also in use in distinctly polytheistic environments, to exalt a given deity as “unique in his kind”, “without an equal”. Such of course is Aten, the solar disk, the “one” god of Amenhotep IV's “monotheistic” reform, who is praised in a famous hymn as Deus unicus, practer quem non est alius. Such, perhaps by extension, is Amun, the “sole and only one” (Bueasrep, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, London 1912, p. 347); or again, in Vedic India, especially Indra (“Nicht gibt es ausser dir einen anderen, der leicht”, Rg-Veda vi, 21, 10, trans, GeLDNex; ef. i, 81, 55 165, 93 iv, 30, 1 32, 23),