Book: Mystery Religions of the Ancient World

As I said in my about page, I am particularly interested in the Ancient World and in Early Christianity which explains why, as I was perusing the stacks the other day, I ended up checking out this book: Mystery Religions in the Ancient World by Joscelyn Godwin.  The book is intended as an introduction to a general audience and in that it serves its purpose.  (If this whole topic is new to you, you might want to read the wikipedia entry for Mystery Religions as a basic introduction. Basically the mystery religions were belief systems from classical antiquity that included secret rites and teaching into which religious followers were initiated.)

Some issues discussed by Godwin:

What were the Mystery Religions all about?
“If one had to single out one paramount feature that distinguished all the Mystery cults from other religions of their period, it would be that they sought a personal relationship with their gods….the motive of much primitive religions seems to be to get rid of the gods, to prevent them from troubling mankind. For the Mystery religions the motive is quite the contrary; it is to get closer to them.”

“The Mystery Religions were largely concerned with what happens afterwards. They sought to give foreknowledge of the posthumous state, in order to save souls from the confusion they would otherwise face on entering the immaterial world. Like the Egyptian and Oriental ‘Books of the Dead’, they gave instructions for the journey. Our ideas of this journey are of necessity complied from a large number of fragmentary accounts, some of them seemingly contradictory. This is because the subjective experience of the journey will be different for every person, just as life on earth is differently experienced by everyone.”

Why the mystery and secrecy?
“The experiences and concerns of mystery initiates are not the lot of all people, and are often inaccessible even in imagination to those who do not share them. The more intense they are, the more private they tend to be: if aired in public they only run the risk of being misunderstood. This is why there are ‘mystery’ religions. Mysteries are things which are kept silent, in order to avoid useless arguments and misapprehensions and , at certain time and places, simple to keep one’s head. People in the mass are xenophobic and hate that which they do not understand. If you have found a pearl, you do not throw it to the pigs, ‘lest they turn and rend you’”

(Side Comment: This was written in regards to the ancients but this exact paragraph can answer the questions of those who question the restrictive entrance and common “no comment” response by Mormons on things that take place in the temple.)

Why do never hear about them or know so little about them?
“Silence was maintained with such admirable strictness in antiquity that the inquisitive researcher can discover very little of what went on in the rituals of these religions. The only things that were committed to writing were those which might be generally published; of the rest, memory was the best vault and silence the best guardian. but the most eloquent language of the Mysteries is not verbal but symbolic.”

So what’s my point?
I think it is common in our “modern world” to think that we have surpassed all the knowledge and understanding of past societies. While that may be true in technology and science (although we are still scratching our heads about the construction of the Pyramids, the engineering at Machu Pichu, and the astronomy of the Maya) I am not quite so sure that applies in issues that might be termed cosmic, mystical, or religious. My main feeling after reading this book was that (1) I think it is safe to say that there is more we do not know and do not understand about the ancient mystery religions than what we do and (2) that there was something extremely meaningful and information rich surrounding these mysteries for practitioners.

This talk of mysteries reminds me of things I read in Lost Scriptures that had documents from the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls that have only been discovered in the last 50 years that often have references to “secret teachings” by Christ in his 40-day ministry or other “hidden knowledge”. I am not inferring that all of the information in these documents can be attributed directly to Christ but I do think these documents and books such as Godwin’s, show that there was more going on than what we have in the present canonical Bible. I find it extremely difficult with our present understanding to maintain that the Bible is “complete” or contains all the writings and knowledge that was deemed by the early Christians as being authoritative.

Overall, this book can be a good introduction.  It is particularly valuable for the photos and sketches of ancient artifacts associated with the mystery cults.