Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 2 of 3 / Olympus; or, the Religion of the Homeric Age

by W. E. Gladstone

I know not whether it has been owing to our somewhat narrow jealousies concerning the function of Holy Scripture, or to our want of faith in the extended Providence of God, and His manifestations in the world, or to the real incongruity in the evidence at our command, or to any other cause, but the fact, at least, seems to me beyond doubt, that our modes of dealing with the Homeric poems in this cardinal respect have been eminently unsatisfactory. Those who have found in Homer the elements of religious truth, have resorted to the far-fetched and very extravagant supposition, that he had learned them from the contemporary Hebrews, or from the law of Moses. The more common and popular opinion[2] has perhaps been one, which has put all such elements almost or altogether out of view; one which has treated the Immortals in Homer as so many impersonations of the powers of nature, or else magnified men, and their social life as in substance no more than as a reflection of his picture of heroic life, only gilded with embellishments, and enlarged in scale, in proportion to the superior elevation of its sphere. Few, comparatively, have been inclined to recognise in the Homeric poems the vestiges of a real traditional knowledge, derived from the epoch when the covenant of God with man, and the promise of a Messiah, had not yet fallen within the contracted forms of Judaism for shelter, but entered more or less into the common consciousness, and formed a part of the patrimony of the human race[3].

But surely there is nothing improbable in the supposition, that in the poems of Homer such vestiges may be found. Every recorded form of society bears some traces of those by which it has been preceded: and in that highly primitive form, which Homer has been the instrument of embalming for all posterity, the law of general reason obliges us to search for elements and vestiges belonging to one more primitive still. And, if we are to inquire in the Iliad and the Odyssey for what belongs to antecedent manners and ideas, on what ground can it be pronounced improbable, that no part of these earlier traditions should be old enough to carry upon them the mark of belonging to the religion, which the Book of Genesis represents as brought by our first parents from Paradise, and as delivered by them to their immediate descendants in general? The Hebrew Chronology, considered in connection with the probable date of Homer, would even render it difficult or irrational to proceed upon any other supposition: nor if, as by the Septuagint or otherwise, a larger period is allowed for the growth of our race, will the state of this case be materially altered. For the facts must remain, that the form of society exhibited by Homer was itself in many points essentially patriarchal, that it contains, in matter not religious, such, for instance, as the episode of the Cyclops, clear traces of a yet earlier condition yet more significant of a relation to that name, and that there is no broadly marked period of human experience, or form of manners, which we can place between the great trunk of human history in Holy Scripture, and this famed Homeric branch, which of all literary treasures appears to be its eldest born. Standing next to the patriarchal histories of Holy Scripture, why should it not bear, how can it not bear, traces of the religion under which the patriarchs lived?

The immense longevity of the early generations of mankind was eminently favourable to the preservation of pristine traditions. Each individual, instead of being as now a witness of, or an agent in, one or two transmissions from father to son, would observe or share in ten times as many. According to the Hebrew Chronology, Lamech the father of Noah was of mature age before Adam died: and Abraham was of mature age before Noah died. Original or early witnesses, remaining so long as standards of appeal, would evidently check the rapidity of the darkening and destroying process.

Let us suppose that man now lived but twenty years, instead of fourscore. Would not this greatly quicken the waste of ancient traditions? And is not the converse also true?

Sufficiently proved from Holy Scripture.

Custom has made it with us second nature to take for granted a broad line of demarcation between those who live within the pale of Revelation, and the residue of mankind. But Holy Scripture does not appear to recognise such a severance in any manner, until we come to the revelation of the Mosaic law, which was like the erection of a temporary shelter for truths that had ranged at large over the plain, and that were apparently in danger of being totally absorbed in the mass of human inventions. But before this vineyard was planted, and likewise outside its fence, there were remains, smaller or greater, of the knowledge of God; and there was a recognised relation between Jehovah and mankind, which has been the subject of record from time to time, and the ground of acts involving the admonition, or pardon, or correction, or destruction, of individuals or communities.

The latest of these indications, such as the visit of the Wise Men from the East, are not the most remarkable: because first the captivity in Babylon, and subsequently the dissemination of Jewish groups through so many parts of the world, could not but lead to direct communications of divine knowledge, at least, in some small degree. From such causes, there would be many a Cornelius before him who became the first-fruits of the Gentiles. Yet even the interest, which probably led to such communications from the Jew, must have had its own root in relics of prior tradition, which attested the common concern of mankind in Him that was to come. But in earlier times, and when the Jewish nation was more concentrated, and was certainly obscure, the vestiges of extra-patriarchal and extra-judaical relations between God and man are undeniable. They have been traced with clearness and ability in a popular treatise by the hand of Bishop Horsley[4].

Let us take, for instance, that case of extreme wickedness, which most severely tries the general proposition. The punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins was preceded by a declaration from the Most High, importing a direct relation with those guilty cities[5]; and two angels, who had visited Abraham on the plains of Mamre, ‘came to Sodom at even.’ Ruth the Moabitess was an ancestress, through king David, of our Lord. Rahab in Jericho, ‘by faith,’ as the Apostle assures us, entertained the spies of the Israelites. Job, living in a country where the worship of the sun was practised, had, as had his friends, the knowledge of the true God. Melchizedek, the priest of On, whose daughter Joseph married, and Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, are other conspicuous instances. Later in time, Nineveh, the great Assyrian capital, received the message of the prophet Jonah, and repented at his preaching. Here the teaching organ was supplied from among the Jews: but Balaam exhibits to us the gift of inspiration beyond their bounds. Once more; many centuries after the Homeric manners had disappeared, and during the captivity, we find not only a knowledge of God, but dreams and signs vouchsafed to Assyrian kings, and interpreted for them by the prophet Daniel. We have, in short, mingling with the whole course of the Old Testament, a stream of evidence which shows the partial remnants of the knowledge of God, apart from that main current of it which is particularly traced for us in the patriarchal and Mosaic histories. Again, many centuries after Homer, when all traces of primitive manners had long vanished, still in the Prometheus of Æschylus, and in the Pollio of Virgil, we have signs, though I grant they are faint ones, that the celestial rays had not even then ‘faded into the light of common day’ for the heathen world. It would really be strange, and that in a high degree, if a record like that of Homer, with so many resemblances to the earliest manners in other points, had no link to connect it with them in their most vital part.

The question one of history.

The general proposition, that we may expect to find the relics of Scriptural traditions in the heroic age of Greece, though it leads, if proved, to important practical results, is independent even of a belief in those traditions, as they stand in the scheme of revealed truth. They must be admitted to have been facts on earth, even by those who would deny them to be facts of heavenly origin, in the shape in which Christendom receives them: and the question immediately before us is one of pure historical probability. The descent of mankind from a single pair, the lapse of that pair from original righteousness, are apart from and ulterior to it. We have traced the Greek nation to a source, and along a path of migration, which must in all likelihood have placed its ancestry, at some point or points, in close local relations with the scenes of the earliest Mosaic records: the retentiveness of that people equalled its receptiveness, and its close and fond association with the past made it prone indeed to incorporate novel matter into its religion, but prone also to keep it there after its incorporation.