The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun

by Beck, Roger

• ISBN13: 9780199216130
• ISBN10: 0199216134
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

As the capstone of thirty years of research and publication on the cult and its religion, Roger Beck puts forward a radically new description of the 'Mysteries of Mithras'. The Mysteries are presented from the perspective of the initiate as a complex system of symbols created, apprehended, and transmitted not only in the extraordinarily rich and detailed iconography, but also in ritual action and language, in cult life and hierarchy, and in the design of meeting places (mithraea).

Author Biography

Roger Beck is Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xiv
Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction to Interpreting the Mysteries: Old Ways, New Ways	p. 1
An agenda	p. 1
A word on ontology	p. 8
Template for a re-description of the Mithraic mysteries	p. 10
On comparisons	p. 12
On cognition	p. 13
Synchronic versus diachronic; structure and meaning versus historic cause and effect; interpretation versus explanation	p. 14
Conclusion	p. 15
Old Ways: The Reconstruction of Mithraic Doctrine from Iconography	p. 16
A gateway to an interpretation of the mysteries: Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6, on the form and function of the mithraeum	p. 16
The traditional route: from the iconography of the monuments to the myth of Mithras to the beliefs of Mithraists	p. 17
The merits and achievements of the traditional heuristic procedure	p. 20
The shortcomings of the traditional heuristic procedure	p. 22
Some remaining methodological problems for the explication of the Mithras myth as represented on the figured monuments	p. 25
The Problem of Referents: Interpretation with Reference to What?	p. 26
Iconography and the problem of referents	p. 26
Referents in the surrounding culture?	p. 26
Iranian referents?	p. 28
Celestial (astronomical/astrological) referents?	p. 30
Conclusion	p. 39
Doctrine Redefined	p. 41
Back to Porphyry, De antro 6	p. 41
'Induction into a mystery': the doctrinal misconstruction of De antro 6	p. 41
Teaching versus enacting the 'descent and departure of souls': the commonsensical answer	p. 42
An expectation of appropriate behaviour	p. 43
'Reason for the wise, symbols for the vulgar'	p. 44
Mithraic doctrine and its stakeholders: various views	p. 50
Doctrine and belief: the Christian 'faith' paradigm	p. 53
Mithraic doctrine: three main issues	p. 56
(i) Generalizing about Mithraic doctrine from unusual monuments	p. 57
(ii) What do we mean by 'doctrine' in the context of the Mithraic mysteries? An array of answers	p. 59
(iii) Doctrine and the ordinary initiate	p. 63
Conclusion	p. 63
Transition: from old ways to new ways	p. 65
The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I. Introduction and Comparisons	p. 67
Religion as a system of symbols: an anthropological approach	p. 67
Are Geertzian description and interpretation applicable to the symbol system of the Mithraic mysteries?	p. 69
Yes, Geertzian description and interpretation are possible, provided we begin not with the tauroctony but with the mithraeum and the grade structure	p. 70
A culture within a culture: Mithraism as a subsystem within the cultural system of Graeco-Roman paganism. The hermeneutic implications	p. 71
The symbol complex of the grade hierarchy	p. 72
A modern comparator: the symbol system of the Chamulas	p. 74
The construction of space in Mithraic and Chamula cultures	p. 77
Mithraism's second axiom: 'Harmony of Tension in Opposition'	p. 81
On Porphyry's De antro nympharum as a reliable source of data on the Mithraic mysteries	p. 85
Cognition and Representation	p. 88
The cognitive approach: ontogenetic/phylogenetic versus cultural	p. 88
Gods in mind: cognition and the representation of supernatural beings	p. 93
Negotiating representations	p. 94
Reintegrating the wise and the vulgar	p. 96
Comprehending the pantomime: Lucian, On the dance	p. 99
The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II. The Mithraeum	p. 102
The symbol complex of the mithraeum as 'image of the universe'	p. 102
The blueprint for the mithraeum	p. 103
To represent is to be	p. 112
The blueprint continued: the planets	p. 113
An improved reconstruction	p. 115
Symbols, representations, and star-talk	p. 116
The view from the benches: analogies of world view and ethos to 'Scipio's dream'	p. 117
The Chamula church	p. 119
Other 'images of the universe' in antiquity: (i) the Pantheon, Nero's Domus Aurea, Varro's aviary, the circus	p. 120
Other 'images of the universe' in antiquity: (ii) orreries and the Antikythera Mechanism, the sundial	p. 123
The mithraeum as symbolic instrument for 'inducting the initiates into a mystery of the descent of souls and their exit back out again'-with some modern comparisons	p. 128
To 'experience', to 'surmise', and to 'represent': Dio's Twelfth (Olympic) Oration	p. 133
Religious experience as modelled by biogenetic structuralism and 'neurotheology'	p. 136
The 'cognized environment': the mithraeum as material representation of the initiate's cognized universe	p. 141
The cognized universe and celestial navigation: the case of the Indigo Bunting	p. 149
Conclusion	p. 150
Star-Talk: The Symbols of the Mithraic Mysteries as Language Signs	p. 153
Introduction: 'star-talk'	p. 153
Mithraic iconography as 'un langage a dechiffrer' (R. Turcan)	p. 154
Can symbols function as language signs? The question as posed in cultural anthropology	p. 155
Crossing Sperber's bar: the case for Mithraic astral symbols as language signs	p. 157
Star-talk: ancient views concerning its speakers, discourses, semiotics, and semantics	p. 164
Origen's view: 'heavenly writings' and their angelic readers	p. 166
Augustine's view: star-talk as a demonic language contract	p. 167
Origen again: the demonic misconstruction of star-talk	p. 169
Stars talking theology: the 'heretical' interpreters of Aratus as reported by Hippolytus (Refutatio 4.46-50)	p. 170
Make-believe star-talk: Zeno of Verona's baptismal interpretation of the zodiac	p. 175
'Rolling up the scroll': Maximus Confessor and the end of history	p. 177
Pagan views (astronomers, astrologers, philosophers); stars as both speakers and signs	p. 178
The divinity and rationality of celestial bodies: Ptolemy and Plato	p. 179
The Platonist view of how the stars communicate and how we understand them; implications of the cosmology of the Timaeus	p. 183
The celestial location of meaning	p. 186
Conclusion	p. 188
The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III. The Tauroctony	p. 190
Introduction: the exegesis and interpretation of star-talk discourse	p. 190
The exegesis of star-talk in the tauroctony: A. The constellation signs	p. 194
Exegesis (continued): B. Sun, Moon, Mithras, bull (again), cave	p. 197
Exegesis (continued): C. Map and view; boundaries and orientation; time and motion. Similar structures: the augural templum and the anaphoric clock	p. 200
Exegesis (continued): D. Further meanings of the torchbearers: the lunar nodes; celestial north and celestial south; heavenward and earthward. Meanings of the 'typical' and 'untypical' locations (Cautes left and Cautopates right versus Cautopates left and Cautes right)	p. 206
Exegesis (continued): E. Being in the north/above or in the south/below versus going northward/up or southward/down. The solstices, the equinoxes, and yet further meanings of the torchbearers	p. 209
Exegesis (continued): F. Two paradoxes: (1) cold north and hot south versus hot north and cold south; (2) descending from heaven and growing up on earth versus dying down on earth and ascending to heaven. Terrestrial meanings of the torchbearers	p. 212
Exegesis (continued): G. Where and when? 'Mithras the bull-killer' means 'Sun-in-Leo'	p. 214
From exegesis to interpretation. An esoteric quartering of the heavens	p. 216
The implications of Sun-in-Leo and the esoteric quartering. Conjunctions and eclipses; victories and defeats	p. 222
The origins of the esoteric quartering and the definition of an ideal month	p. 227
Excursus: the esoteric quartering, a lost helicoidal model of lunar motion, and the origin of the 'winds' and 'steps' of the Moon. The identity of 'Antiochus the Athenian'	p. 240
Conclusions: a new basis for interpreting the mysteries	p. 257
References	p. 261
Index of Mithraic Monuments	p. 273
Index of Ancient Authors	p. 274
General Index	p. 278
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