August 13th, 2020
I just finished reading Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man by Henri Frankfort and I wanted to do my best to summarize the remainder of that book here (see this previous post for a partial summary of the Egyptian parts) as well as expand on it with my own thoughts. Also, I’m about two-thirds of the way through 2 Chronicles at the moment and should have that finished up soon which will be good because Chronicles and Kings have been very difficult to get through and the next books look better.
While the first section of Before Philosophy dealt with the ancient Egyptians, the second section dealt with the ancient Mesopotamians. The chapters on ancient Mesopotamia were a bit easier to read partly because I am more familiar with Mesopotamian myth and partly because those myths are the roots of Greek and Hebrew myths, however, it was still fairly difficult to comprehend. The gist was that everything in the observable world was somehow alive and had a personality. Take flint for example:
“Dark, heavy, and hard, it would show a curious willingness to flake under the craftsman’s tool though that tool was only of horn softer than the stone against which it was pressed.”
Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Man (pages 143-144)
While flint may not be considered a deity, the idea can be abstracted to more substantial entities. Anu, the sky, represented authority; Enlil, the storm, represented force; Ki, the earth, represented fertility; and Enki, the waters, represented creativity. The myths that have survived reveal the importance of these entities in everyday life. The Mesopotamian deities derived from the observable world. Since the Mesopotamians depended on them, they were also subservient to them and framed their existence around the gods being at the top of the hierarchy. The myths of Mesopotamians reflect how these deities came into being, how they shaped the world, and where they sat in the hierarchy of society. The definition of myth can be taken from Classical Myth by Barry Powell:
“A myth is a traditional story with collective importance.”
Classical Myth (page 2)
The traditional stories of Mesopotamia involving the nature that surrounded them revolved around three things: origin, organization, and evaluation:
“There are, first, myths of origin which ask about the origin of some particular entity within the cosmos or some group of such entities: gods, plants, men. The answer given is usually in terms of birth, more rarely in terms of creation or craftsmanship. The second group consists of myths of organization. The myths of this group asked how some feature within, or some area of, the existing world order was brought about: how some god or other obtained his function and offices, how agriculture became organized, how certain freak classes of human beings came to be and were assigned their status. The myths answer: “By divine decree”. Lastly, in a sense a subgroup under the myths of organization there are myths of evaluation. The myths of this group ask by what right something or other holds its position in the world order. Such myths will weigh the farmer against the shepherd or, in a different approach to the same question grain against wool; they will inquire into the relative merits of the costly gold and the lowly, but more useful, copper, etc.”
Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Man (pages 164-165)
These myths involve divine or semi-divine characters that either act on the world and on each other. The Hebrews transcended this notion. While the Mesopotamians observed their gods in nature, the Hebrews abstracted this and said that their singular God existed outside of nature, but was able to act in nature. Neither the earth, sun, nor heaven was divine, but reflections of God’s greatness, however, their stories still reflect these elements of origin, organization, and evaluation especially in Genesis 1-11: Genesis 1-2 – the creation of the heavens, the earth, plants, animals, and humans (origin); Genesis 3:16-19 – origin of pain in pregnancy, farming for sustenance, death (origin); Genesis 4:1-16 – Cain and Abel, farmer vs. shepard (evaluation); Genesis 6-8 – Returning the world to its pre-creation state and then recreating it (origin); Genesis 9:18-28 – The origin of wine and the organization of the Caananites in the world (origin, organization)(see Genesis 19:30-38 for where the Moabites and Ammonites come from); Genesis 11:1-9 – origin of Babylonia and the variety of languages spoken throughout the world (origin, organization). While it is possible to detect Egyptian and Mesopotamian beliefs and mythical elements in the Old Testament, it is apparent the Hebrew tradition is wholly original. The idea of separating the divine from the observable world was so monumental that it seems to have left the realm of Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythopoeic thought (the only traditionally mythical elements I’ve picked up on are from these stories in Genesis). However, Henri Frankfort mentions that Hebrew thought did not overcome mythopoeic thought and in fact created a new myth, the Will of God. This Hebrew myth was that of a chosen people, a divine promise made, and of a terrifying moral burden. Although the divine transcended nature, it still had a specific relationship with human beings, or rather a specific group of human beings. History itself becomes the origin of meaning for the Hebrews rather than cosmic phenomena. History had become the revelation of the dynamic will of God. Henri Frankfort goes on to say that this separation of nature and divinity can be explained by the nature in which the Hebrews found themselves. While the agricultural Egyptians and Mesopotamians found themselves in richly fertile lands where the phenomena of growth and their dependence on the phenomena of growth for their survival preoccupied their thoughts and were then abstracted to form their deities, the tribal nomadic Hebrews found themselves in deserts where nothing changes or moves (except man at his own free will), resulting in the image of God transcending concrete phenomena altogether. The ancient Greeks did not follow the path of the Hebrews but developed in a different way (and arguably superior way). While they maintained the mythic tradition of the Mesopotamians they did not hold to the divine nature of inanimate things. The sky was not the god Zeus, but rather Zeus was the god of the sky; that was his domain. Likewise, a piece of flint was just a piece of flint and had no personality or divinity associated with it. Henri Frankfort describes in detail throughout several chapters about the function of the political state in Egypt and Mesopotamian and how the philosophical and mythical elements played a part in the narratives of those political states and how they were integral to every daylife. In his discussion about the Ancient Greeks he states that while the Greeks were influenced by near eastern myths and traditions, to the Greeks, these were private affairs and did not form the backbone of their political identity. They were not charged by their communities to concern themselves with spiritual matters and were allowed the freedom to pursue their own desires for an understanding of nature. Henri Frankfort says of the Ancient Greeks:
“Their curiosity was as lively as it was unhampered by dogma.”
Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Man (pages 251)
This is what allowed the great intellectualism of the Ancient Greeks to flourish. While initially primitive in their thinking this thought developed and gave us such philosophers as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle whose works I hope to dive into at some point in the near future. At present though, I want to get back to the Hebrew discussion and talk a bit about some thoughts I had based on some definitions from Classical Myth by Barry Powell:
“Divine myths (sometimes called “true myths” or “myths proper”) are stories in which supernatural beings are the main actors. Such stories generally explain why the world, or some aspect of it, is the way it is.
Classical Myth (Page 4)
While the Judeo-Christian tradition is highly religious and steeped in theology, the stories from the Book of Genesis discussed above can be thought of as divine myths, albeit uniquely Hebrew myths and fundamentally uncharacteristic of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek myths, but myths nonetheless. Barry Powell goes on to distinguish between divine myth and religion in the following passages:
“Divine myth is easily confused with religion, but the two must be clearly distinguished. Myths are traditional stories; religion is belief and the course of action that follows from belief. Belief is best defined as “what you accept (with or without proof) as a basis for action.” For example, the Greeks believe that Zeus caused the rain to fall. Therefore, they sacrificed animals in times of drought to persuade him to bring rain. Myths often justify a religious practice or a form of religious behavior, but we can retell a myth, even a myth about divine beings, without engaging in religious behavior.“
“Divine myths served a function in ancient cultures analogous to that of theoretical science in our own: explain why the world is the way it is.”
“Scientific explanations are based on impersonal general laws and statistical probabilities discovered, or at the least verified, by repeatable quantitative experiments, whereas mythic explanations, expressed in traditional tales, assume that supernatural beings control the world through the exercise of personal will.“
Classical Myth (5-6)
This is why I have an issue with creationism and literalism (and by extension fundamentalism) mainly because we have better ways of explaining why the world is the way it is and that convincing people to doubt science is at the very least counterproductive and dangerous at worst. (See what seems to be my favorite video on this topic). I do recognize that science cannot answer deeply human questions and that the purpose of religion is to help man find his place in the world, but I believe that that can be done without abandoning scientific principles. Related to myths are legends. Barry Powell defines them as such:
“Legends (or sagas) are stories of the great deeds of human heroes or heroines. Legends narrate the events of the human past. The word comes from the Latin legenda, “things that should be read,” that is, originally, morally uplifting stories about Christian saints.
“If divine myth in oral cultures is analogous to science in modern, literate western society, legend is analogous to history. Both legend and modern historical writing attempt to answer the question, “What happened in the human past?”
Classical Myth (Page 4, 6)
These I would argue are more abundant in the Old Testament. There are a number of legendary figures that I’ve encountered including the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Joseph, Moses, Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah, and Elisha just to name a few. Their deeds and conversations with God help to explain the history of the Israelites and provide a national narrative. Even the Kings of Judah that I’m reading about in 2 Chronicles have been given legendary accomplishments. I think it is safe to say that legends as opposed to myths have more historicity, but are still embellished to serve the purposes of the authors. I’ve ordered The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finklestein and Neil Silberman which should hopefully provide an interesting perspective on some of these stories from an archeological perspective. The final type of stories described in Classical Myth are folktales, which are described as being harder to classify but are clearly not myths or legends:
Folktales are stories whose actors are ordinary people or animals. Folktales entertain the audience and teach or justify customary patterns of behavior.”
Classical Myth (page 4)
Folktales are like Aesop’s Fables or Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the only story that I can think of as being a folktale is that of Ruth. The characters are ordinary, there is no divine presence, and there is an overarching theme of loyalty (There’s an old movie called The Story of Ruth from 1956 on Youtube which was pretty good although it did stray a bit from the Biblical story for the sake of the drama). The end of the story does get legendary when it starts to trace the lineage of Boaz and Ruth to David and by extension Jesus, but that is neither here nor there, I found Ruth to be a very satisfying story on its own.
In conclusion, Before Philosophy, while being a bit difficult in certain parts, was a very interesting book and by reading it I feel that I have come to a deeper understanding of the foundations of both the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions. I had wanted to write about this since I read about divine myth, legend, and folktales in Classical Myth, but I felt I didn’t have the full picture yet. The main conflict was that the definition of divine myth did not seem to fit the Genesis myth and so I decided to do more digging. Before Philosophy was listed as one of the Books for further reading along with Mesopotamian Myths by Henrietta McCall which I read before this book and Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman which I hope to read once I finish with the Old Testament. Upon reading the bit about myths of origin, organization, and evaluation, it sort of clicked how the mythical elements in Genesis could be broken down. I feel a sense of satisfaction with what I’ve learned thus far and I’m thinking I might talk to my pastor about it and see what he thinks.