Institute for Travesty

The Silent Years, if they are considered silent, are unfortunately the end of something, not the beginning of something, specifically they mark the cessation of writings for Israel and typically written in Israel accepted as God speaking officially to Israel.

Acknowledging this cessation focuses directly on Israel. But the contention of this book is virtually demonstrated anywhere except in Israel. In the rest of the world, the world of the goyim, Jewish ideas were having affects. Understanding those affects needs new perspectives and certainly requires perspectives focused outside Israel.

The natural place to start to establish such perspectives seems to be to understand the kind of religious background the European goyim were working from when Jewish influence started making itself felt. For convenience, a date of 800 B.C., before the first Israeli dispersion with the Assyrian Captivity in 722 B.C., seems a reasonable estimate of a time before such influence in the European Mediterranean world would be felt.

It is well to underline that we will here be considering the European Mediterranean, not all the Mediterranean world, as it became part of the Roman Empire at the end of the Silent Years. We note that the Hebrews in 800 B.C. had had a not very positive relationship with the Egyptians for at least a thousand years. Presumably the Egyptians had a thousand years of possibly-influenced behavior. This book is not at all about that possible influence but rather about Jewish influence on what would become the centers of the Greco-Roman classical period.

If we transport ourselves to Greece in 800 B.C., we have entered a world that has had no historical contact with Jews and is still in the Heroic Age. Homer has written the story of the Trojan War.

Rome hasn’t been founded yet and won’t be for almost half a century.

Carthage has been founded in Northwest Africa. Beyond the establishment of Carthaginian trading posts, it is hard to say anything about Spain.

In all three cases, scholars debate exact dates and often even approximate dates. For organized history, such vagaries of dating are problematic. Anything more specific about any of these societies is much more problematic.

In contrast, by 800 B.C. Israel is still intact as a Northern Kingdom and Judah as a Southern Kingdom with a clear sense of documented history since an Exodus around 1400 B.C. and claimed documentation of historical realities before that date, even back to Creation itself. We know a great deal about what religion was like in Israel in 800 B.C. from the Jewish historical books and wisdom literature.

But as for early European culture, we can know only a few basics, and when we try to imagine what religion was like in Europe those many years ago, we have very few documentary records to go on for almost anything, religious or not religious. From later sources, typically hundreds of years later, and with a fair anthropological knowledge of incipient cultures, we can make some ballpark estimates, estimates that equally apply to what we know about Spain, Italy, and Greece in this period.

Animism: A World of Spirits

In most cultures, the incipient period has a substantial reliance on animism. Animism is the seemingly sixth sense that human beings have that they live in a basically dangerous world and that there are large forces (that is, much bigger forces than themselves) almost everywhere that can menace them. These large forces are thought of as spirits; (anima in Latin means spirit). Every animal, every bush and tree in an animistic culture may have a spirit. So can every brook and meadow and swamp.

Animist ideas can vary from there. Some animists may not think of trees as animate but think of ocean coves as definitely ruled by individual nymphs, a characteristic belief in incipient Greek culture.

Similarly, some animists may believe that all spirits are fundamentally biased against humanity (seemingly the case in Greek thought), while other animists can feel that spirits are mainly indifferent to humanity until disturbed. This way of thinking seems well adapted to later Roman thought. And some animists may believe that there are some spirits that are inherently benign if somewhat mischievous (which, going further afield, seems to be part of the natural bent of Irish mythology—leprechauns and all that).

The need for Propitiation

But animists in general are quite easily convinced that the spirits can be irritated. Unfortunately, when they are irritated, they are big enough to seriously hurt those who have irritated them. And thus humanity, the comedic animal who wants and needs to survive, is willing to consider carefully and work diligently not to offend spirits and to conciliate spirits if offended.

In this single psychological conclusion lies the essential nature of animist religion—how animists are “tied back” to the gods. At the core of animist religion is the need for propitiation—getting the spirits off one’s case.

Since it is a common adage in human experience that “A stich in time saves nine,” propitiation can be pushed backward to precede an offense rather than following it. Libations were a common feature of animist-based religion in the Europe of 800 B.C. Are you about to have dinner with wine? Make sure that you pour some of the wine out on the ground before proceeding. It is a reasonable expense as a precaution, a pre-caution rather than a post-caution.

More complex propitiations are, of course, possible. Typically, the head of the family is responsible for taking precautions for the whole family. As society develops, this often means that the oldest son of the oldest son of the whole clan, eventually of the whole tribe, has the obligation of taking appropriate precautions. In Rome from the earliest of recorded documents, heads of the tribal families were responsible for periodic rites at which they officiated and which were attended by the whole tribe in order to stay on the right side of the appropriate tribal spirit.

Incantation--Getting the Words Right

And that raises yet another key point about animist thinking. There is a large bias in animist thinking that propitiations must be done right or they are of no effect—or even disastrous counter-effect. In Rome, the tribal leader was in charge of the periodic ritual, and he had the obligation to do the ritual word-for-word right. If he stuttered, maybe if he cleared his throat, he had to start all over again.

Think of the great Disney classic phrase from Cinderella, “Bibbity-bobbity-boo.” There’s more to the song, of course, than just these three meaningless terms. There are a number of other parts of the formula, all meaningless and odd-sounding and all required. But the “the thingamabob that does the job” (gets the job of enchantment done) is “bibbity-bobbity-boo”!

So, get it right, and don’t forget it!

Incantation and enchantment are thus outworkings of animist mentality.

The Intersect with Folktales

This animist base interacts with something essentially different which has been variously called folktales, oral traditions, or even “Old Wives Tales.” However much these terms may have been disparaged, in the communities where they exist, they are not disparaged but instead are treasured as epitomizing the community’s values.

In other words, they are a literary tradition for the society and are deeply valued. At the short end of this literary spectrum are “sayings,” “maxims” or “precepts.” Note that “A stitch in time saves nine” is just such a precept. A society does not have to sponsor a La Rochefoucauld to find, value, and preserve such short literary efforts. Some nations, in fact, are known for their addiction to making practical decisions on the basis of maxim thinking, so that it is often claimed that Germans base actions on sayings and maxims.

And once literature has entered the equation, it is easy to recognize that in incipient cultures, verbal creativity moves toward literary form, particularly the form of anecdote and story. The mythologies of Europe, which are supposed to be a religion, are based in the incipient-culture literary efforts of the community. It is quite possible, as suggested in the phrase “Old Wives Tale,” that much of this creative work is originally undertaken by women and originally told to very young children as combined entertainment and instruction.

Consider, for example, a vast storm. The children are frightened and scurrying for security in Mom’s arms. Maybe Dad is away from the homestead. What to tell the kids?

Well, how about some story about Zeus. Who is Zeus? Oh, he’s the head honcho male up there in the sky somewhere. He has a wife, Hera. And sometimes Hera isn’t at all pleased with Zeus and lets him know it.

A little indoctrination going on here? Perhaps.

Well, anyway, then in comes Neptune.

Who is Neptune?

Oh, he is Zeus’ brother, and he is in charge of the sea. And look, through the cracks in our front door, you can look out over the sea and the terrible storm that is making enormous waves. That’s all Neptune’s doing. Scary, huh?

So why is Neptune being so scary?

Well, it turns out that Hera was so angry that when Neptune came in, she let her anger out on Neptune and really told him off as well. Zeus was already looking to get out from under Hera’s scorn, so he politely indicated that he needed to go to the bathroom.

Poor Neptune. That left him to bear the brunt of Hera’s fury all by himself. And by the time she had finished, Neptune was in a very bad mood, so when that happens, he goes out and raises horrible bruhahas with the wind and waves.

But don’t worry; he’s done this often enough before. And he’ll get over it.

Is there actually such a folktale in Greek recorded literature? The names of gods are certainly recorded. Whether the rest is real may be anybody’s guess about incipient-society Greece. But there certainly are good chances for some close copies of this kind of creative work having been done and, in fact, being rather typical of the kind of literary fashioning of many attested Greek mythological stories.

It is important to notice that there is nothing about this hypothetical folktale other than the names given to gods that is essentially Greek as opposed to Roman or Spanish. If such a tale gets passed on from one culture to another, there is no particular reason why it will not be as easily accepted in the second as in the first.

If this is how mythology happens, it is essentially a literary event. Mythology can get more complicated from these simple beginnings, and the literary implications can become progressively more involved or more important. An example of the important in mythology is Alexander the Great, whose mother broadcast the story that Alexander was not actually Philip’s son but rather the son of a war god. There are indications that Philip was not pleased.

If mythology becomes mythology by being repeated from generation to generation, Alexander’s birth is still developing as a mythological event 23 or 24 centuries after the event. Presumably, in Alexander’s hearing at least, it was both impolite and impolitic to scoff at this narrative.

A good story is worth retelling, and mythology is retold stories. The feeble attempt above about Neptune’s oceanic fury has little hope of being enshrined in any society’s recorded mythology. But there’s something good in the basic literary undertaking to calm terrified children. Someone with more literary talent almost inevitably will think to try again, resulting in a more literarily talented and thus more likely cherished and rehearsed version.

From Folktales to Literature

So, we have animist-based mythological, creative literature. We can insist on calling it religion as well. If we do call it religion, it is important to think of it as open-ended religion where another good story can easily find a home. Good stories in this sense are enjoyable but they are typically approved because they are instructive as well. Our feeble story would presumably instruct that one should look out for a wife’s anger. If that instruction isn’t socially approved, don’t expect the story, even if masterfully told, to get repeated.

Several additional sub-classes of mythology should also be mentioned: mythological embodiments of basic human psychology, mythological reference to social division, mythological memorialization of real events. While these are sub-classes, they are normally found all mingled together within single narrative structures, providing endless discussion and contention about the “real, underlying” significance of the myth object.

Mythology as History

Mythological literature is thus simultaneously the richest source of information about life in Europe before 800 B.C. and the most intricately ambiguous evidence about that life. Literate objects are the Gold Standard for knowledge about the ancient world and exceedingly rare as archeological finds.

While any scholarly argument is necessarily nuanced and abstruse, a few practical examples of mythological embodiments of historical realities are in order. The ancient literary authority in Greece is Homer’ Iliad. Was there a real Trojan War? The Iliad itself was a good enough source to help Heinrich Schliemann in 1870 find the site of ancient Troy. A real Trojan War seems altogether possible, but much more likely about trade in Black Sea gold and wheat than about a beautiful woman. Where does historical embodiment end and fiction begin?

In Greek tragedic theatre, central figures are routinely kings and heroes. Was Oedipus a real figure? Was he a king? Why was he venerated many centuries later with more than one altar in Athens?

As a second example of the type, it is an anthropological common place that incipient-culture mythologies around the world have a story of a universal flood. A tribe can live at the top of the Himalayas and still have such a universal flood story, and, of course, the Torah itself has such a story with a hero named Noah. The Greeks and Romans both had their own versions of the Flood.

Secularists routinely dismiss such stores as memorializing some local flood, insignificant in world history but devastating to the people who memorialized it as universal. It gets harder to dismiss such stories when one is told that such worldwide stories in obviously separate cultures repeatedly point to a time in late fall, say around November 1, as the supposed timing for such an event. Please note that all of these stories may begin in incipient-culture, but what we are talking about in general terms is directly related to annual commemoration in America of October 31^st as Hallowe’en.

The relevant point is that commemoration or not, what commemoration, how much realism is there in the commemoration, and the like can be subject to unending discussion and controversy. Is all European mythology memorializing something real even if we don’t know what the real was and even though the memorialization heavily depends on symbolic elements that are never clearly defined? In many cases, the developed, recorded myth probably also depends rather strongly on narrative artistic embellishments, also never clearly identified.

European mythologies have typically developed far beyond the incipient-culture stage. For Ovid, writing the Metamorphosis under Augustus in 8 A.D., mythology is simply material for a sophisticated artist. The same Greco-Roman mythology was claimed as literary material for the neo-classical writers under Louis XIV. Shakespeare made his original claim to fame not as a man of theatre but as a reteller of two ancient stories, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the second of which is quite possibly or even probably the mythologized story of a real, early outrage in Roman history. The story was certainly taken as essentially real by later Roman generations. French literature in the 20^th century often chose to go back to mythological stories or pseudo stories: note Ondine (a 2009 film directed by Neil Jordan) and L’Apollon de Bellac (a 1942 one-act play by Jean Giraudeaux.)

The largest applications of mythological ideas in recent times, however, have been appellations of a military-industrial complex intent on the production of Apollo missions, Titan missiles, Triton and Trident submarines, and the like. Mythology dies hard, especially if no one has to really believe it too seriously.

As great literature, mythology focuses and gives names to concepts, and if the concept named and given focus has worth to practitioners in the culture, the mythology is likely to be, to that extent, preserved. (A very simple example might be the Greek Horae, goddesses of natural order and the seasons. Recognizing the mild climate of the Mediterranean, the Horae are often presented as three and at other times as four, either variant representing the regular seasons of the year, but three being the Mediterranean variant of Spring, Summer, and Winter. (A Three-Horae myth isn’t viable in Minnesota.)

That then is a ballpark estimate of the religious situation in southern Europe in say 800 B.C., at least an estimate from a literary perspective, which again is the Gold Standard for documentary evidence about human thought in the ancient past. To the extent that such people had come in contact with the Carthaginians, their mythology might show some influence from the pagan religions, in this case Canaanite religions, of the Old World. Further east, there may be some influence of the Egyptian gods on European ideas or of Baal traditions even further east.

The possibility of such influences from an Old World covering Egypt and the Fertile Crescent emphasizes the obvious but frequently overlooked. In 800 B.C., Spanish and Roman cultural realities are “backwoods.” Populations are few and scattered. Cultural achievement, compared to Egypt or Babylon, is negligible. Greece is perhaps a few hundred years in advance but again insignificant compared to Old- World cultures.

General Characteristics of Mythologies

Open-ended Syncretism

Complexities abound, and working with them is beyond the scope of this study. But there are some generalizations that are worth considering even in the most complex cases. First, such mythologies are inherently open-ended. To the extent that they are informed by animism, there is every animist reason to accept somebody else’s story about some spirit powerful in their own area of the world.

This bias toward acceptance is called Syncretism, “believing together.” Fundamentally, you accept what I say, and I’ll accept what you say. (Note the capitalization on Syncretism. With the capital, it is to be understood as has been explained above. Some other syncretism, without capitalization is just one of many possible variations.) When we have both accepted the same basic stories, we go on living and our own literature grows. That may mean that I now have agreed to your god stories but I have added new material that you haven’t accepted in the sense of retelling for yourself.

The ancient world ran into innumerable examples of such anomalies. But animism isn’t anxious to recognize or understand things as anomalous. Instead, animism adopts the simple device of adding a place-adjective to a god or hero name. Thus, the Greeks tell stories of Zeus, but in the Greek African colony of Cyrene, they may tell their own versions, some of which are not told in Greece. Maybe the additional story borrows from Old-World Egyptian mythology. The problem is obviated simply by saying Cyrenian Zeus did this or that.

Syncretism is thus a basic feature of animism. It is a psychological bias which was endemic to the Mediterranean and allowed a great deal of intermingling during the Silent Year period without significant indications of racial or cultural prejudice. It may be noted that backwoodsmen are typically tolerant people, glad for human interaction when they can get it.

This sense of harmony should not be pressed too far. Greeks still vastly preferred Greeks over anybody else, and the Romans took a middle course of admiring a great deal of things Greek while still thinking that the Greeks had proved themselves incapable of the world leadership which the Romans assumed to be their own destiny.

Propitiation

Second, even in late antiquity, propitiation remains a central sense of what one owes the gods. Given the proclivity of any and all of the gods to hurt human kind, arbitrarily, purposefully or accidentally, it makes sense to put a lot into appeasing them.

A personal relationship to a god is unusual unless it is the relationship of some important political person being the representative of the people generally in rituals of propitiation.

Prophecy, Augury, and Foretelling

Third, everything that has been said so far ignores a very human need to foretell the future. All ancient societies of the Mediterranean had some ways of handling such need. The Romans, just as an example, had augury where birds’ entrails could give important clues when to act and when to refrain from action. A good augur could interpret seeing an eagle flying on one’s right hand as a particularly positive omen. And in the case of great national emergency, the Sibylline Books could be opened and researched by properly indoctrinated, highly aristocratic scholars. Also in an extraordinary pinch, the Romans were known to go beyond their own borders altogether and to consult the Pythoness of the Greek Oracle at Delphi. Later, Rome picked up astrology from Babylonian origins and passed that form of augury down through the ages and through many daughter societies to today.

Early Science and Religion

Fourth, the practice of astrology illustrates that early mythology is easily mixed up with early science. Stonehenge in England suggests that very early on, people worked very hard—and very mysteriously—to build great scientific laboratories that could accurately recognize when the world had started a new yearly cycle. Such information is extremely valuable to farmers, and most of the world were farmers back then. Early science was often reformulated as religious mystery and repeatedly sold, year by year, as a religious commodity. We might want to call it the origins of fictional science.

Mythological Amorality

Fifth, animist and mythological thinking is intrinsically amoral. Stories can be retold to suggest some moral bias, but the idea of a governing spirit in an ocean pool doesn’t carry any intrinsic moral character.

This is not to say that such emerging-culture people are amoral or immoral. But the ideas of higher character are not inherently mythological. The idea of Humility provides a good example of what is lacking in mythological thought and is instead possibly provided in a very different context.

In many different venues, the canonical books of the Jews accept Humility as a governing principle. For example, Moses is said to have been the most humble man on earth. Job’s accusers finally are accused of arrogant pride, the opposite of Humility.

The major animist incipient cultures of Mediterranean Europe exhibited two different attitudes towards Humility. There is little in the history of Greece to suggest that the Greeks had any respect for Humility. They, after all, were the ones to suggest that Man is the Measure of all Things. The Romans, on the other hand, were a humble people, rather glorying in the fact of their origins as “just nobodies,” the mongrel castaways of many peoples. Through the centuries, they became a more and more professional military people, but not the vainglorious type. Instead, they had developed an ideology that Rome was destined to rule the world and with it the idea that no Roman was anything more than a worker within that destiny. Soldierly humility, willingness to be entirely subjugated to higher authority, even unto death, became the sine qua non of Roman character.

Rome found Humility and Greece ignored it, but not from a mythological base and finally not from a religious base either. When first Greeks and then Romans were primary powers and interacted with Jewish influences, the Greeks could be expected to be repelled. The Romans, on the other hand, could be expected to exhibit some often disguised but genuine, respect for another society that respected Humility.

The Mascot Principal

Sixth, despite huge tendencies toward Syncretism, it is nevertheless true that the animist-derived cultures of southern Europe and the Mediterranean generally had their fiercely competitive side, represented in their mythologies and religious practices. We can call this generally the Mascot Principal. Two syncretic societies might find themselves at war with one another even though 99% of their religious understanding and mythological literature was essentially identical. This routinely led to a contest between mascots, the patron deities of the two cultures.

Patron deities were something of a necessity for embodying the state and its authority. In Athens, the local authority was Athena.

Not surprisingly, the patron deity could resemble the state and its people, and the adoption of a patron deity probably created a definite bias for the further development of the state and people. Thus, Athena-ism probably had an inherent regard for wisdom, and in later history with the goddess of Wisdom as patron, the Athenians developed a world-wide reputation for interest in philosophy. The Romans chose ruler gods as mascots, Jupiter and Juno. The better part of a millennium later, they saw themselves as the singular people equipped for world government.

Under the Mascot Principle, by definition ancient societies looked for protection from their patrons. And thus, when war broke out, the question inevitably became whose patron was stronger. An example of this sort of thinking being at the heart of practical affairs can be found from the 8^th century B.C. in Sennacherib’s ultimatum to Jerusalem found in the Book of II Kings (18:28-34).

The Mascot Principle derives from basic human motivations and never becomes obsolete in nature, however different the expression. In modern America, the question has become, Where’s the real power—with the Packers or with the Vikings, with the Bears or with the Lions?

Moreover, the Mascot Principle inevitably morphed into a religion of the state. The patron mascot was necessary for official business. The mascot had always been given special regard in rituals, processions, and the like. Eventually, all that special regard became synonymous with the state itself, and the state itself became the official mascot—Mother Russia for example in the Stalinist period.

The idea of the state as the master deity is very strongly present in the modern world of the 20^th and 21^st centuries A.D. Inevitably all such systems find the Jewish God intolerable.

The Urge to Expand

We’ve considered six general characteristics of polytheistic animism. All of them together probably pale in comparison with a seventh—syncretic animistic polytheism (SAP) has an irresistible urge to expand to more gods. This is such a big topic that we will stop numbering and start lettering sub-topics.

A. SAP is an eager sponge waiting for news of another new god. Any god can hurt you. So, be on the constant look out for new gods to appease before they decide to hurt you in particular. Put otherwise, SAP is entirely credulous, eager to believe, socially tolerant to any new god, anything but skeptical, agnostic, or atheistic.

B. SAP quickly moves to special commemoration for actual happenings, including actual heroes. At first this may be considered “veneration.” Veneration moves easily and seamlessly to acceptance of a new hero god.

C. SAP moves easily, before or after hero worship, into veneration of ancestors. The Romans of upper classes and means did ancestor worship big time, especially by making and maintaining death masks of family patriarchs. Generally, the Romans seem more earnest about such family-centered religion, along with veneration or worship of household idols, the Lares and Penates, than about higher-ranking deities.

D. Acquisition of a new god was an acquisition of power. In this sense proliferation of deities was an economic activity. It fit naturally with human proclivities toward entrepreneurship—get an early title to a new god, and just think what that will be as an inheritance to a descendant who has become High Priest of new rites to this new god!

Hinduism in India by the 20^th century recognized at least 3 million gods. It is impossible to calculate how many gods Europe in 800 B.C. may have sponsored, if only because there is no possible general consensus on when to count a hero as god or when to count ancestors and local idols as separate deified powers. We certainly can affirm, however, that expansive, tolerant multiplicity itself became the pragmatic center of incipient-culture religion in the Europe of 800 B.C., and that character remained unchanged even in imperial Rome.

Readers will not be alone if they have struggled through the discussion above only to be left hopelessly confused, frustrated, and tempted to consider the whole discussion not a careful scholarly analysis but rather a jumbled and total mess.

Nevertheless, despite the messiness of mythology, generally, in Western history, mythology has survived because a good story will always find a new venue in which to be retold. Since the later Middle Ages, appropriate mythological allusions in any literary product have been bandied about, giving the current endeavor an educated cultural credential and thus an entirely new level of value among educated classes.

Expansive, tolerant multiplicity itself became the pragmatic center of incipient-culture religion in the Europe of 800 B.C., and that character remained unchanged even in imperial Rome.

Animistic Analogs in Judaism

There are fairly obvious analogs within Judaism in general and the Torah specifically to these characteristics of animism-based mythological concepts throughout the Mediterranean. For example, animism requires libations, and so does the Torah. The priests in Israel had calendar responsibilities that were made more difficult by a basic year of 12 months of 30 days. As early as Moses, the Hebrews had recourse to the “Urim and Thummim” in deciding about future actions.

But for all the similarities, there were profound differences between Judaism and paganism which any half-witted pagan would recognize on even a cursory acquaintance with Jewish ideas and practices. And in light of the Mascot Principle, any half-witted pagan would sense a vitally important contest between the Hebrew God and their own mascot.

It is precisely the shock, surprise, and contemplation of these great differences that made changing ideas inevitable in response to interaction with Jews. Such interactions became much more common after the Assyrian Captivity 78 years after our 800 B.C. review of animist-based Mediterranean mythology. That interaction intensified with the Babylonian Captivity, and intensified again when descendants of Remnant Jews returning to Palestine found economic and other reasons to emigrate from a poverty-stricken Israel.

The Silent Years turn out, instead of being silent, to be centuries of world-changing consequence in which there was a constant tension between primitive syncretic, mythological, polytheistic animism and a very high, Old-World religious understanding.

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