TWO:  ANCIENT ROOTS

The ancient Greeks and Romans tended to differ from other ancient civilizations, except possibly from the Minoans. They were distinguished by their humanistic orientation. The words "humanism" and "humanist" are terms we need to look at fairly carefully. What do you think the expression "secular humanism" means? A kind of humanism which is hostile to religion? In general we find this expression used by fundamentalist Christians who are offended by what they consider to be an atheistic approach to life. So, the term "secular humanism" has acquired a rather negative aura, and has consequently contaminated the term humanism itself. In fact, a humanist is simply an individual who takes human life and life on earth seriously, who thinks that people are important, and that it is both desirable and possible for humans to base their lives on reason. This has traditionally not meant a rejection of the gods, God, or religion in general. Throughout history most humanists have connected respect for humanity with respect for divinity (or at least meaning and purpose beyond immediate satisfaction).

Historians associate the rise of humanism with the ancient Greeks and Romans in contrast to the peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Israel. The ancient Sumerians tended to accommodate their entire lives to what they considered to be the whims of the various divinities. Their gods were capricious, almost totally lacking in love or grace. Hence, the Sumerians spent most of their time trying to mollify those menacing powers. We shape the vision of our gods according to the environment in which we find ourselves. The Tigris and the Euphrates flooded at very irregular times. While they were absolutely essential for life, they tended to be very destructive. Hence, the Sumerians and Mesopotamians in general tended to see the powers beyond them as death bringing more than as life giving. They tended to focus on the negative aspects of those powers, and their lives were spent in the shadow of the fear of inscrutable demonic forces.

On the other hand the Egyptians, who dedicated most of their lives to the careful preparation for death, expected a happy afterlife and depicted their gods as gracious because the Nile was a predictable, gentle river. The Nile was generous. Everybody knew when it was going to flood; the river deposited fertile silt on the land and along its banks, and allowed people to grow onions and barley and hops and olives in a land which was otherwise a desert. Death to the Egyptians was desert and desiccation. The Nile, on the other hand, gave life and was seen as a loving father, as was the sun joined to the Nile. So the Egyptians had a positive image of the gods.  Still their lives were basically determined by their relationship to the gods. Even their ruler, the Pharaoh was considered to be an incarnation of the falcon god Horus on earth.

Everybody knows that the Hebrews lived under a theocracy. They were ruled by God, ruled by their relationship with their one God.  I would also say that the radical uniqueness of this one God had something to do with their desert experience. I've already mentioned the geographic determinants of religion. Contrast the desert to an Indian jungle. In a desert there is a stark contrast of heaven and earth, flat sand and occasional cacti or rocks, light and shadow. Everything is very clear cut, dualistic, seen in terms of mutual exclusivity, either/or. In this kind of environment it is easy for people to think of God as one, easy for God to reveal himself as a solitary force. Now, on the other hand, consider India with its many gods. Would those gods not readily emerge from the jungle which is teeming with countless creatures, which is filled with trickling water, overflowing with burgeoning life and green with vegetation. Pervaded by twining vines and buzzing insects and hissing snakes and chattering monkeys and screaming parrots and roaring lions. So, if you are in touch with the divine through nature, the divine would appear to be not as one initially. It would appear in a billion different forms, just like luxuriant Mother Nature.

On the other hand, there were the Hebrews with their overpowering sense of being a people set apart, above nature. Unique, both because they were chosen and because their God was the one and only. The High God. The Ultimate. A jealous God. A passionate God who revealed himself in a cloud-shrouded mountaintop by day, and a pillar of fire, a distant volcano maybe, by night. A God who was infinitely more than any volcano or storm or flood. A God who acted through his people in linear, progressive history. The sense of difference, a separation from or transcendence of nature, is the distinguishing mark of the Hebrew religious experience. There is a sharp contrast between the Hebrews and their contemporaries and neighbors, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. All, except the Hebrews, worshiped nature, and tended to see themselves caught in the cycles of nature.

The Greeks, too, had their nature gods, and they took worship very seriously and could not imagine their cities without their tutelary deities. But equally important to the Greeks was the dignity of the human being. As a matter of fact, when we read Greek tragedies we discover that human beings pit themselves against inexorable and calamitous fate which seems somehow ordained by the gods. Generally the Greek gods are less ethical and admirable than humans. It is through reason and through one's mind that the Greeks believed people achieved dignity. At this point we have the origins of what is technically called humanism: a focus on humanity, a respect for the human capacity to think.

The Romans felt the same way even though they were less interested in theory and more in practical ways of realizing the human potential. Both Greeks and Romans tended to consider people social beings living in communities. While the Greeks occasionally enjoyed individual combat and personal glorification, overall, no Greek considered himself to be fully alive unless he was grounded in a community (exile was considered a fate worse than death). The Romans became even more concerned with this idea of the community. At least for citizens, alienation was a remote concept during most of the classical era for the Greeks and Romans. The individual Roman was expected always to consider the good of the whole. It was not until the end of the Roman period that a shift began to take place. It is then, over the final few centuries of the Roman era, that we find growing, deepening, wide-spread despair. We also find that people become ever less certain of their ability to control their lives or handle their own affairs.

Both during the decline of the Greek city states and then again during the collapse of the Roman empire a strong sense of dualism asserted itself--a sense that there is a spiritual world which is absolutely good and a physical world which is absolutely evil, and that the two are--and should be-- absolutely separate; a sense that human beings resemble birds trapped in the cage of the physical world who must escape in order to fulfill their true destiny, return to their lost home. At that point we have the birth and development of all kinds of religions including Christianity, religions which focus not on success in this world but salvation (and compensation) in a world beyond.

AD 500-AD 1650] [ONE] [TWO] [THREE] [FOUR] [FIVE] [SIX] [SEVEN] [EIGHT] [Untitled]

Posted 28 August 2000
Last revised: 00-09-08
Text and images copyright © Ingrid Shafer 2000