Latest / Reformed Thinking / Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice | Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Varhelyi

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Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice | Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Varhelyi · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Welcome to Reformed thinking. I I want to start our time today
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by asking you to do something for me.
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Just close your eyes for a second and I want you to picture
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an ancient religious sacrifice. Just whatever comes to mind
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first. I'm guessing for most people
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living in the modern world, the mind just immediately goes to a
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very specific, you know, highly cinematic scene.
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Oh 100%. You picture this massive stone
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altar, right? Maybe it is bathed in the eerie
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light of a full moon. Yeah, and you have got a group
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of a priest. Right, draped in dark robes,
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chanting in some forgotten language, and you picture a
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terrified animal on the altar. And hanging over that entire
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scene is this like thick, suffocating atmosphere of guilt
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and dread and this desperate plea for cosmic atonement.
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It feels heavy. I mean, it feels violent.
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It feels like a Hollywood blockbuster.
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Yeah, honestly, the cultural imagination we have inherited is
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just completely saturated with that specific dramatic framing.
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We assume the ancient person approached the altar trembling,
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you know, burdened by their sin, hoping the blood of the animal
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would somehow balance a cosmic moral scale.
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But what if I told you that for the vast majority of the ancient
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population, none of that was happening?
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None of it. Right.
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For the average farmer or the local tradesman, there was
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number trembling, there was number chanting, and there was
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certainly no agonizing over systemic moral guilt.
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It was, for all practical purposes, a neighborhood BBQ.
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A BBQ. I mean, think about that.
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You had a problem. You slaughtered a goat, you
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cooked the meat, you shared it with your family, and you just
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left a portion for the local unseen spirits to keep them
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happy. That is the reality we are going
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to uncover today. Because you are listening to a
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show designed for people who want to cut through the noise,
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right? We want to grasp the historical
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truth without getting bogged down by academic jargon.
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You are the learner and we want to give you the ground level
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reality of how ancient people actually lived, thought and
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worshipped. And to get to that ground level
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reality, we have to recognize a massive historical illusion.
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I mean, almost everything modern people assume about ancient
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religious practice comes from a microscopic fraction of ancient
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writers. Like how small of a fraction?
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We are talking about less than 2% of the population.
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Wow, 2%. Yeah, less than 2%.
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These were the highly educated literate elites, the
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philosophers, the specialized priests, the state sponsored
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poets. OK, let's unpack this because
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our mission for this deep dive is ambitious.
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We are going to completely dismantle modern assumptions
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about ancient religion. We really are, and we have a
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great resource for. It Yes, we are pulling all of
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our insights today from a single striking source.
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It is this brilliant paper by Stanley Stowers.
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It is titled The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings
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versus the Religion of Meanings, Essences, and Textual Mysteries.
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Quite the title. Right.
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It is published in the book Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice.
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And Stowers provides a paradigm shift that forces us to
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reevaluate our entire historical framework.
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We have based our view of the ancient Mediterranean world on
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the critiques written by the ancient equivalent of cultural
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snobs. Cultural snobs.
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I love that. Well, it is true these elites
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hated mainstream society, but because the literate elite wrote
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the books, their disdain for the common BBQ became the official
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historical record. So to understand what was
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actually happening, we must stop thinking of religion as one
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monolithic category. Right.
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We cannot assume it is a single umbrella covering both the
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philosopher in Athens and the illiterate farmer out in the
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countryside. They are doing totally different
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things. Stour suggests we look at
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different modes of human activity instead, which brings
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us to the first major hurdle. This is Stour's primary critique
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of modern scholarship. He argues that historians and
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theologians have spent centuries hunting for the one true meaning
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of animal sacrifice. And it is a wild goose chase.
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Yeah, they look at all these different cultures, the Greeks,
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the Romans, the various Mediterranean tribes, and they
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try to find a single universal symbolic essence that applies to
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every single sacrificial act across time.
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Which is just a product of modern post enlightenment
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thinking. We expect everything to have a
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neat systematic definition. But Stowers argues we should
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separate the broad human cognitive, practical phenomenon
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of religion from the concept of a religion.
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So let's break that distinction down, the difference between
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religion as a general human activity and a religion as a
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specific noun. So religion with a lowercase R
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is a broad human activity involves the everyday practices,
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habits and assumptions people make about non obvious beings.
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The unseen Realm. Right.
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It is fluid, unbounded and highly localized.
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It does not have a strict boundary line.
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A religion, on the other hand, is a social formation.
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So it is claimed and defined by an elite group.
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Precisely. Usually through political
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structures and written texts, they draw a circle and say, you
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know, this is what we believe, this is our systematic theology,
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and this is who belongs inside the circle.
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And modern scholars look at the unbounded, messy, everyday
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practices of ancient people and try to force them into that
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bounded circle to find a tidy, universal meaning.
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Which just does not work. It is like thinking all
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religious acts across the ancient world have one core
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meaning is like trying to find the one single essence of
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sports. That is a great analogy.
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Right. I mean, you have a guy throwing
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darts in a pub in London, you have a gymnast competing at the
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Olympics in Tokyo, and you have a kid kicking a rock down an
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alley in Chicago. If a historian tried to write a
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unified theory on the theology of moving physical objects to
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explain all three of those activities, they would be
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laughed out of the room. Nobody would take that
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seriously. Because the contexts are
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completely different. But wait, let me push on this.
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If there is no universal theological meaning to ancient
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sacrifice, what actually held these ancient practices
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together? This raises an important
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question. If it was not theology, what was
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the glue? Yeah, if the farmer in Greece
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and the tradesmen in Rome did not share a systematic theology,
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why are they doing such similar things?
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The answer is shared, inherited physical practices.
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The unity was not found in a shared belief system or a creed.
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It was found in the physical act of doing.
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So they shared a set of common practices inherited from their
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ancestors about how to interact with the world and the beings in
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it. The physical action was the
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primary reality. The explanation for the action
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was secondary, if it even existed at all.
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So if theology was not the glue, if it was not about believing
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the right intellectual concepts, we need to look at what average
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people were actually doing on a Tuesday in ancient Greece.
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We need to look at the default setting of human behavior in
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that era. And Stowers calls this first
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mode the religion of everyday social exchange.
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This is the baseline. In this mode, the gods are not
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viewed as distant cosmic principles.
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They are not viewed as abstract moral exemplars holding the
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universe together. What are they then?
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They're viewed as interested parties.
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There are local residents who intervene in highly specific,
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mundane ways in the daily lives of humans.
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The source material highlights a fascinating distinction that
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illustrates this perfectly. Stars brings up the difference
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between Zeus of Olympus and a much lesser known flex is called
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Zeus of the Possessions. The contrast between the two is
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just it reveals the entire mindset of the ancient farmer.
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So Zeus of Olympus is the one we all know from the mythology
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books. He is the guy up in the clouds.
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He brings the rain, he throws the lightning bolts.
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He manages the macro weather systems.
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Right, the big boss. But Zeus of the possessions is
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completely different. The source notes he was
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represented by a simple jar. A jar, not a grand statue.
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Just a jar. It was kept in a storeroom and
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his primary job was keeping mice away from the grain supply.
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And the crucial point Stowers makes is that an ancient Greek
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farmer did not sit around debating whether these two
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versions of Zeus were manifestations of the same
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singular deity. They did not hold theological
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councils to hammer at the exact nature of the Zeus head.
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No, they did not ask how the God of the cosmos could also fit
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inside a clay jar in a pantry. They did not care about the
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theological paradox. They had no reason to care, they
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just knew which entity to interact with to achieve a
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specific goal. So.
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If you need rain for your crops, you appeal to the cosmic Zeus.
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Right. And if you have a rodent problem
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in your pantry, you go to the jar in the storeroom and
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interact with Zeus of the possessions.
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Gods were treated like persons. They had minds, they had
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specific desires, and crucially, they had spatial limitations.
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Spatial limitations. That is a huge concept to grasp.
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It is entirely counterintuitive to how we think about the divine
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today. When we read the scriptures, we
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understand the Lord as omnipresent, filling All in all,
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not bound by time or space. You were saying these Pagan gods
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were thought of as literally being in one physical place at
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one specific time and nowhere else.
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That is correct. They were localized.
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They were inhabitants of the environment just as much as an
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olive tree, a river or a flock of sheep.
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So they basically just part of the landscape.
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Yeah, when Greeks laid out new cities, they first had to figure
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out which deities already belong to that specific plot of land.
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They were negotiating with the local unseen residents.
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Because the gods were not everywhere.
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They were somewhere. That localized view creates a
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very specific psychological state for ancient people.
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If the gods are limited to a certain space and they have
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varying moods and desires, the human being is left in a state
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of perpetual guessing. And Stowers explains this
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psychological state, this epistemology of uncertainty,
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using a brilliant analogy. He says being an ancient person
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was like being in a many windowed house with the curtains
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up after dark. It is a haunting image.
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It is but highly effective for understanding their daily
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reality. Imagine it.
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You are sitting inside the house in the light.
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You know there are entities out there in the dark.
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You know they are watching you from the outside, but you do not
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know who is looking through which window at any given
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moment. You do not know what their
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current mood is. Right.
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You do not know what they want from you.
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You just know you are being observed by forces more powerful
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than yourself. If we connect this to the bigger
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picture, that constant state of uncertainty explains the massive
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industry of divination in the ancient world.
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Divination. Let's talk about that.
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That feeling of being watched by powerful but unpredictable
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neighbors makes divination A practical necessity.
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It was not a fringe mystical hobby for eccentric people.
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It was a basic survival skill. I need to clarify something here
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because my modern brain hears the word divination and I
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immediately think of a fortune teller with a crystal ball.
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Like trying to predict the future.
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Yeah, trying to see 10 years down the road, but that is not
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what you were saying they were doing.
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You have hit the nail on the head.
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That is a common misunderstanding.
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They were not trying to predict distant future events, they were
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trying to read the current mood of the entities outside the
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window. They needed immediate, practical
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information, right? Is the spirit near my field
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happy today? Will this specific entity curse
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my harvest if I plant the wheat tomorrow?
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Because if they have spatial limits and changing moods, you
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are desperate for clues. The source brings in quotes from
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Xenophon and Pindar to illustrate this desperate
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search. Pindar is fascinating on.
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This yeah, Tindar writes. Never yet has anyone who walks
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upon the earth found a reliable symbol from the gods concerning
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a future matter. And then Xenophon, the Greek
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historian and military commander, talks about the gods
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giving 4 warnings and sacrifices, omens, voices and
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dreams. And Xenophon was a pragmatic
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military man. He was not a Mystic, yet he
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relied on these signs. They were reading the tea leaves
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of reality just to figure out the local mood.
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They were looking for traces, yes or no answers.
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Xenophon would literally refuse to March his army if the
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entrails of a sacrificed sheep did not look right.
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Wow, an entire army halted because of a sheep.
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To his mind, the entity governing that specific valley
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was currently hostile, and marching into it would be
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tactical suicide. The signs were the only way to
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mitigate the terrifying uncertainty of the many windowed
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house. So if you are sitting in this
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brightly lit house hoping the entities in the dark are
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friendly, how do you actually build a relationship with them?
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That is the $1,000,000 question. If you cannot speak to them
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directly and you only have these vague signs, how do you keep
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things smooth so your crops grow and your family stays healthy?
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The primary way to interact with these gods was through practices
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of generalized reciprocity, especially giving gifts of food.
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Food. Yes.
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This is the core mechanism of the religion of everyday social
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exchange. Generalized reciprocity.
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Let's differentiate that from how we conduct transactions
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today, because that distinction is heavily featured in the text.
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Well, we operate almost exclusively on market exchange.
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Today. Market exchange relies on exact
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price equivalents. Right.
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You give me a cup of coffee, I give you $5.
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The Ledger is balanced immediately.
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You do not owe me anything and I do not owe you anything.
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The relationship ends the moment the transaction concludes.
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We can walk away from each other completely clean.
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I do not owe the barista Christmas gift.
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We are entirely even. Generalized reciprocity is the
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exact opposite framework. Reciprocity relies on giving
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gifts that never quite balance out.
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The goal is not to clear the Ledger.
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It is to keep the Ledger perpetually slightly unbalanced.
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Yes, that lingering imbalance is what ensures an ongoing,
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permanent relationship. It is like taking turns paying
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for lunch with a friend. I buy lunch this week.
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You say you'll get it next time you buy it next week and say I
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can grab the next one. You never sit down with a
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calculator and figure out who owes who $3.50.
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Because if we did calculate it to the penny, if the Ledger hit
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absolute 0, the social excuse to meet up disappears.
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The mild ongoing debt is the social glue.
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That is a perfect way to look at it.
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But here is my struggle with the text.
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How does killing an animal fit into this friendly lunch
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dynamic? Because to a modern mind,
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slaughtering a goat seems like a massive dramatic leap from
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picking up the check at a diner. The text points out a very blunt
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reality of ancient life that modern people who buy their meat
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wrapped in plastic at the grocery store often overlook,
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which is you cannot eat a live uncooked animal.
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It sounds almost too obvious when you say it out loud, but it
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changes the entire visual. Animal sacrifice for the average
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ancient person was simply a festive meal prepared for
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special, non obvious guests. Let's look at the logic.
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If the gods had demanded a dead animal in a vacuum, if they just
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wanted violence, that would not be reciprocity.
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That would just be destruction. Right.
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But the gods provide the fruit of the land.
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They provide the rain, the grain, the reproductive health
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of the livestock. So the humans take those gifts,
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prepare them as a meal, meal, and share that meal with the
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gods. It was a dinner party.
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The death of the animal was simply the necessary logistical
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step to get meat on the table for the feast.
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That strips away the Hollywood drama completely.
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It was a BBQ with the local spirits.
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You cook the meat, the smoke goes up to the entity and you
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and your family eat the rest. It is a shared meal.
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But the text also adds new ones. Here, not all entities outside
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the window were friendly. It was not all just passing the
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brisket to a benevolent neighbor.
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While The Olympian gods or the friendly local agricultural
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deities might be treated with festive meals, there were other
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entities that required a different approach.
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We are talking about local spirits, the restless dead
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entities known as damones. These were viewed as volatile,
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easily offended, and potentially dangerous.
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If you have a difficult, hostile neighbor, you do not invite them
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inside for a relaxed dinner party.
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You leave a peace offering on their porch, so they leave your
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property alone. This is where we see the concept
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of appeasement and normal people were engaging in all sorts of
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hidden ad hoc practices to deal with these darker entities.
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The text mentions the existence of over 300 cursed tablets found
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in the region of Attica alone. These tablets are fascinating.
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They give us a direct look into the minds of the common people.
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They do. A cursed tablet was typically a
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thin sheet of lead. Lead, not parchment.
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Right lead. A person would write a specific
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request or binding spell on it, fold it up and drive a nail
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through it. Then they would deposit it in a
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place associated with the underworld, like a grave or a
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deep well. And what is wild is that the
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people writing these cursed tablets are the exact same
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regular people who are participating in the sunny
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public festival during the day. Oh, absolutely.
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They are sharing the festive meal with the city gods at noon
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and then sneaking around at night, writing curses to
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leverage the darker underground entities against their
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neighbors. The text notes that many of
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these tablets were used for mundane rivalries.
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Someone would write Buying the tongue of my opponent in court
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tomorrow. Or make my rival's business
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fail. It was a highly pragmatic,
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almost mechanical approach to dealing with the unseen world.
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It highlights that everyday religion was a toolbox.
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You use the tool that fit the specific situation, a festive
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meal for the friendly gods and appeasement offering for the
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dangerous ones, and a cursed tablet if you needed to gain an
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edge in a local dispute. There was no overarching moral
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framework dictating that one was holy and the other was sinful.
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It was purely about managing relationships with the unseen
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powers. This system of food exchange,
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appeasement and practical management seemed to work
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perfectly well for the vast majority of people.
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The farmers felt secure. The local spirits were
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ostensibly fed and the social Ledger was maintained.
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So the massive historical question is this Why did our
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understanding of sacrifice shift?
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How did we get from a simple shared meal to a highly
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intellectual symbolic ritual? Where did the cinematic guilt
17:49
ridden version come from? That brings us to Stour's second
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mode of ancient religion. This is the realm of the
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literate cultural producer. This is where the historical
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disruption happens. The literate specialist, the
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text notes this group made-up less than 2% of the entire
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population. Less than 2%.
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Yet they're the ones who possessed the incredibly rare
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skill of high literacy, and because they could read and
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write, they controlled the permanent historical record.
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These specialists enacted a total shift in focus.
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They moved the attention away from doing physical actions to
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finding the hidden meaning behind those actions.
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Their entire social standing, their livelihood, their
18:28
political prestige relied on their unique ability to
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interpret complex written texts. I want to pause here because a
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modern listener might naturally assume that the literate
18:38
specialist simply knew better. Were these specialists just
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inherently smarter than the illiterate farmers?
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Is this just a case of an educated class correcting the
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foolish superstitions of the uneducated masses?
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Stowers clarifies this point aggressively.
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This is not about raw intelligence at all.
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An illiterate farmer in the ancient world possessed massive
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amounts of practical interpretive skill.
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They could read subtle changes in the weather.
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They understood the complex signs of the seasons.
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They knew the intricacies of agriculture, soil management and
19:09
animal husbandry. Doing all of that without modern
19:12
technology requires incredible cognitive ability and problem
19:16
solving skills. They were surviving in a brutal
19:18
environment. You cannot be stupid and keep a
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farm running through a drought in ancient Greece.
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The distinction between the farmer and the specialist is
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purely about the medium of communication.
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The specialist relied on text networks.
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Texts are completely different kind of technology.
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Exact. Well I should say spot on.
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Texts are mobile, they cross geographic borders.
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They are entirely detached from local soil.
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A farmer's knowledge is tied intimately to his specific plot
19:44
of land. He knows how the water flows on
19:46
his hill. A literate specialist's text,
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however, can travel to Rome, to Egypt, to Syria, carrying
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abstract ideas that have nothing to do with the physical dirt.
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So the medium itself changes the message.
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Because the text can travel anywhere, the ideas inside it
20:02
have to become universal rather than local.
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The specialist is playing a totally different game.
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The text breaks down the field of these literate specialists
20:10
into two distinct poles. On one side you have the
20:13
traditionalists. These are your famous poets,
20:16
your dramatists, guys like Homer or Aeschylus.
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They relied heavily on public patronage.
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They needed the city, state or wealthy aristocrats to fund
20:25
their plays and their poetry. Because of that funding, they
20:29
had to keep the crowds and the politicians happy, so they
20:32
generally supported the traditional civic structures.
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The traditionalists might write epic plays where the gods act
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out grand human dramas on Mount Olympus.
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And we should note that theatrical version of the gods
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was not how normal people viewed the local spirits in everyday
20:46
life. But the traditionalists were
20:48
still broadly supportive of the established order.
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They were not trying to tear down the system of reciprocal
20:54
sacrifice. They just embellished it for
20:56
entertainment and civic pride. But on the other pole, you have
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the independent entrepreneurs. This is where things get
21:02
volatile. These are the philosophers, the
21:05
wandering teachers, the early Orphic sects.
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These independent experts did not have state funding.
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They did not have the security of a public salary.
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So to make a name for themselves to attract wealthy students,
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they had to be radical disruptors.
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They directly criticized the traditional system of
21:23
reciprocity. They looked at the farmer's
21:26
barbecue and claimed the gods could not be bribed with a piece
21:30
of cooked meat. They argued that the gods wanted
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something else entirely. They proposed that the divine
21:36
realm desired inner purity, correct intellectual beliefs,
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and a philosophical understanding of the cosmos.
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This makes sense from a self preservation standpoint.
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If the gods just want a BBQ, the farmer does not need the
21:49
philosopher. But if the gods want
21:50
intellectual purity, suddenly the philosopher is the most
21:53
important man in town. So these literate guys are
21:56
starting to look down on the farmers.
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They are rolling their eyes at the simple jar in the storeroom
22:00
holding Zeus of the possessions. But here is the mechanism I'm
22:03
trying to understand. How did they actually change the
22:06
rules of the game? Yeah, how does a wandering
22:09
philosopher with a scroll convince an entire town of
22:12
farmers that the shared meal they have been practicing for
22:15
centuries is actually wrong? Why didn't the farmers just
22:18
ignore them? They achieved this through a
22:20
process of translating ritual into enigma.
22:23
Translating ritual into enigma, Yes.
22:26
They began treating ancient traditions, everyday practices,
22:29
and physical rituals as puzzles or complex symbols that needed
22:33
decoding. They introduced the concept of
22:36
allegory into the religious framework.
22:38
And conveniently, decoding that allegory was something only the
22:41
literate specialists could do. Yeah, it is the core of their
22:44
strategy. If the ritual's just a shared
22:46
meal to maintain a social Ledger, anyone can do it.
22:49
The farmer is self-sufficient. But if the specialist convinces
22:52
the public that the ritual is actually a symbolic
22:54
representation of hidden cosmic truths, then the physical act
22:58
itself is useless unless you understand the hidden meaning.
23:01
And understand the hidden meaning.
23:03
You need a specialist to explain it to you.
23:05
I love the historical examples the source brings up to show
23:08
this happening in real time. It mentions Aristophanes, the
23:11
famous comic playwright of Athens.
23:14
Aristophanes is great. He clearly found these
23:17
independent literate specialist incredibly annoying and he
23:20
mocked them mercilessly on stage.
23:22
In his play The Birds, there is a scene that captures this exact
23:26
dynamic. A character character named
23:28
Pisthateris is trying to sacrifice a goat to found a new
23:31
city. He is engaging in the normal
23:33
everyday practice of social exchange.
23:36
But suddenly an Oracle speaker shows up holding a book of
23:39
prophecies written by a guy named Basis The.
23:41
Oracle Speaker interrupts the physical ritual and claims that
23:44
his text forbids the sacrifice. He bases this prohibition on a
23:49
bizarre symbolic interpretation of the word a tear meaning the
23:52
lower atmosphere. It is a brilliant piece of
23:54
satire. Aristophanes is showing the
23:56
absurdity of text interruption. Physical life.
23:58
And in another play, Peace, a character rides a giant dung
24:02
beetle to heaven, and the specialists of the day would try
24:04
to allegorically interpret the dung beetle as a representation
24:07
of a specific politician. Aristophanes is mocking a very
24:11
real trend that was sweeping through the Greek world.
24:15
He is making fun of these Ionian philosophers and independent
24:18
experts who were coming into towns looking at everyday
24:21
agricultural practices that have been going on for hundreds of
24:23
years and suddenly claiming they hold secret cosmic truths that
24:27
only the literate class could decode.
24:30
What Aristophanes is reacting to is the colonization of everyday
24:34
practice by the textual specialists.
24:37
They're taking something deeply practical and local and forcibly
24:41
imposing a universal, abstract meaning on top of it.
24:44
Here's where it gets really interesting, because it is not
24:47
just satire. We have physical proof of this
24:50
intellectual gatekeeping happening in reality.
24:53
The source mentions A fascinating artifact called the
24:55
Darvini Papyrus. The Darvini papyrus is one of
24:57
the most vital discoveries for understanding this shift.
25:00
It is an ancient Greek papyrus role found in a tomb dating back
25:04
to the time of Philip of Macedon.
25:06
It contains A philosophical treatise written by an Orphic
25:09
priest or diviner. And the sheer arrogance of the
25:11
author is staggering. This divinatory priest
25:15
explicitly criticizes normal people for doing rituals
25:18
blindly. He writes about the common
25:20
public performing sacrifices, and he claims that because they
25:23
do not understand the hidden cosmological allegory behind the
25:26
physical actions, their sacrifices are completely
25:29
useless. The farmer thinks he is feeding
25:32
the gods, maintaining the social Ledger and protecting his crops.
25:35
But the priest with the scroll tells him no, your physical
25:38
action is worthless because you do not have the correct
25:41
intellectual understanding of the ritual.
25:43
The ultimate form of intellectual gatekeeping.
25:46
The specialist is boldly declaring your physical actions
25:49
have no inherent value. Without my textual
25:52
interpretation, he is creating a dependency.
25:54
He is inserting himself as the mandatory middleman between the
25:58
farmer and the unseen world. This ancient intellectual
26:02
snobbery connects to a massive historical pivot.
26:04
We were talking about the eventual total replacement of
26:07
physical ritual with texts, the textualization of religion.
26:11
This is what Stars calls the triumph of mind over matter.
26:14
The literate specialists eventually succeeded in
26:16
textualizing sacrifice altogether.
26:19
Over centuries, they shifted the definition of worship from a
26:22
physical act in the dirt involving animals and fire to a
26:26
matter of inner truths, correct intellectual beliefs, and the
26:30
study of written texts. The mind replace the altar.
26:34
The source cites the Apostle Paul to illustrate this mind
26:37
mental shift, specifically his words in Romans chapter 12.
26:41
Paul urges his followers to present their bodies as a living
26:44
sacrifice, which he calls their rational worship or spiritual
26:47
worship, depending on the translation.
26:49
Now, looking at this historically, through Stour's
26:51
framework, Paul is utilizing the vocabulary of the everyday
26:55
social exchange, the physical sacrifice, and completely
26:59
bypassing the external offering of animals.
27:01
He is taking the concept and moving it entirely into the
27:04
realm of the renewed mind and the internal disposition toward
27:07
a universal, transcendent God. From a historical and
27:10
sociological perspective, Paul's rhetoric is a masterful example
27:14
of this shift. He is redefining the parameters
27:16
of engagement. The action is no longer an
27:19
external physical BBQ meant to appease a localized spirit.
27:23
It is an internal, cognitive and holistic surrender of the self.
27:27
The mind and the living body become the site of the
27:29
sacrifice, guided by theological truth rather than practical
27:34
appeasement. And we see this shift away from
27:36
the physical altar happening outside of Christianity as well.
27:40
The source highlights the rabbinic tradition that
27:42
developed after the destruction of the Judean Temple in 70 AD by
27:46
the Romans. Before the destruction, the
27:48
temple was the center of a massive, bloody, exhausting
27:51
physical reality. Priests were slaughtering
27:54
thousands of animals. It was a massive logistical and
27:57
physical operation. But when the temple falls, the
27:59
physical altar is gone. The rabbi's do not just give up
28:02
and disappear. They create an imaginative,
28:05
highly resilient, portable religion.
28:07
The Rabbinic solution is one of the most remarkable adaptations
28:10
in history. Since they could no longer
28:12
physically sacrifice the animals, they determined that
28:15
studying the texts about the sacrifices became the substitute
28:18
for the sacrifices themselves. The intellectual activity of
28:22
reading and debating the law replaced the physical activity
28:25
of the slaughter. It is like replacing a physical
28:28
handshake deal with reading a massive legal contract.
28:31
The physical interaction is gone, replaced entirely by the
28:34
activity of the mind. You do not shake hands anymore,
28:37
you just gather together and read the clause about the
28:39
handshake. But this raises a a major
28:41
mechanical question for me. Did the average people just
28:45
accept this? Did the farmers, the tradesmen,
28:48
the vast majority of the population just give up their
28:51
festive meals, drop their local traditions and say cool, I will
28:54
just go listen to a guy read a scroll instead because human
28:57
nature does not usually change that quickly?
29:00
That is the crucial reality check of Sauer's paper.
29:03
The everyday religion never fully disappeared.
29:06
The fundamental human desire to manage the uncertain world
29:09
through physical action remained.
29:11
People still needed rain. They still had mice in their
29:14
grain. They still wanted to share
29:16
physical meals to build social bonds.
29:18
The 98% did not simply become philosophers overnight.
29:22
Instead of the everyday practices disappearing, the
29:24
literate specialists aligned with political leaders to create
29:28
structural overlays. They built institutional
29:30
frameworks that force the two different modes to coexist.
29:33
Structural overlays This brings us to Stowers final two modes,
29:38
which are political structures sitting on top of the foundation
29:41
we have discussed. Mode 3 is civic religion, often
29:45
called Polish religion. Mode 4 is the religion of
29:48
literate specialists tied to actual institutional political
29:52
power. Let's look at civic religion
29:54
first. How did the politicians utilize
29:56
the BBQ? In civic religion, the local
29:59
land owners, the aristocrats and the city magistrates took the
30:02
everyday localized farm practices and centralized them.
30:05
They scaled up the neighborhood BBQ into massive citywide
30:08
festivals funded by the state. And in doing so, they reimagined
30:12
the gods. The gods were no longer just
30:14
Moody, unpredictable entities lingering outside the farmhouse
30:18
window. They were rebranded strictly as
30:20
benevolent, patriotic patrons of the city state.
30:23
They took the local spirits and turned them into city mascots.
30:26
The state Co opted the everyday practices to build civic unity
30:30
and reinforce social hierarchies.
30:32
The local landowner brings his offering to the central temple.
30:36
The state officials oversee the massive slaughter and the meat
30:39
is distributed to the citizens. It satisfies the common person's
30:42
desire for a festive meal and physical ritual, while
30:46
simultaneously demonstrating the power and generosity of the
30:49
political elite. The ritual is no longer just
30:52
about feeding a local spirit. It is about declaring loyalty to
30:55
Athens or Rome or Ephesus. That explains how the
30:59
politicians managed it, but mode 4 is where the literate
31:03
specialists finally get their hands on the actual levers of
31:06
power. We see this vividly in the early
31:08
Christian Church as it became institutionalized within the
31:11
Roman Empire, particularly after Constantine.
31:14
The specialists, the theologians and bishops gained real
31:17
political and institutional authority.
31:20
They had the backing of the state to enforce their textual
31:23
interpretations. What's fascinating here is how
31:25
this tension played out on the ground between the elites and
31:27
the common people. Stowers uses a concept developed
31:30
by historian Ramsay McMullen to illustrate this dynamic.
31:34
McMullen talks about the phenomenon of the 1st and 2nd
31:36
churches. I found this image to be one of
31:39
the most compelling parts of the entire deep dive breakdown.
31:42
The difference between the 1st and 2nd churches for us.
31:45
The First Church refers to the official institutional
31:48
structure. This was the domain of the
31:50
clergy. The literate deletes the bishops
31:54
and the wealthy property owners. They worshipped inside the
31:57
physical basilica. Their religious practice was
31:59
focused entirely on high minded theological concepts, correct
32:03
doctrine, the reading of scripture and the delivery of
32:06
complex sermons. The realm of the mind, the
32:09
domain of the 2% who could read the texts and debate the
32:13
theology. Yes, but the second church was
32:15
located physically outside those walls.
32:18
He was out in the cemeteries, in the rural shrines.
32:20
The masses of average people, the 98%, were still out there
32:24
practicing A modified version of everyday social exchange.
32:28
They were holding feasts at the graves of dead martyrs.
32:31
They were seeking local miracles.
32:33
They were leaving physical offerings at shrines, hoping for
32:36
agricultural blessings or physical healing.
32:38
They took the new figures of the Christian era, the Saints and
32:41
the martyrs, and treated them exactly like the localized
32:45
interested parties from the old Pagan everyday religion.
32:48
From a theological perspective, we recognize this immediately as
32:52
a human heart's stubborn tendency toward works based
32:56
appeasement. They just swapped the names on
32:59
the jars in the storeroom. Instead of Zeus of the
33:02
Possessions keeping the mice away, it became St. so and so
33:05
keeping the mice away. Instead of leaving a piece of
33:07
meat for a local Damon, they poured out wine on a martyr's
33:11
tomb to get a favor. The physical practice of
33:13
reciprocity. The attempt to manage the local
33:16
environment through appeasement remained identical.
33:19
The tension this created must have been incredible.
33:22
The historical records show it was a source of massive
33:25
frustration for the Church Fathers.
33:27
You have the specialists inside the basilica constantly writing
33:29
treatises, trying to enforce the right meanings of rituals,
33:33
preaching about abstract theology and the spiritual
33:36
nature of worship. And right outside the walls, the
33:38
average person is holding a loud drunken feast on a tomb to
33:42
secure a good harvest. The specialist looked down on
33:45
the physical local practices as crude, ignorant, or even
33:49
demonic. Well, the people were just
33:50
trying to use the tools they understood to survive the
33:53
uncertainties of life. It is a perpetual tug of war,
33:56
the elite constantly trying to textualize and intellectualize
33:59
practice and the mass is continually returning to
34:02
localized physical reciprocity. The elite write the rules, but
34:06
the common people live the reality.
34:09
And because the elite wrote the history books for centuries,
34:12
modern scholars assumed that the abstract theological version of
34:16
religion was the only one that truly mattered, even antiquity.
34:20
We adopted the biases of the 2%. So what does this all mean If we
34:24
synthesize this entire deep dive into Stauer's research, Ancient
34:28
sacrifice was not a dramatic, guilt ridden theological event
34:32
for the vast majority of people. It was a practical reciprocal
34:35
meal with the local divine neighbors.
34:36
You give a little food, you get a little protection.
34:39
It was a management strategy for an unpredictable world.
34:42
It was only when a tiny fraction of literate specialists gained
34:45
control of the historical record and later gained political power
34:49
that the concept of religion became universally defined by
34:52
hidden meanings, texts and internal beliefs.
34:56
The framework we used to judge the past was built by the few
34:59
guys who read the scrolls, and they used that framework to
35:02
declare that the practical habits of everyone else were
35:05
invalid. The physical act of the common
35:08
people was hijacked by the textual interpretation of the
35:11
elite. The medium of writing itself
35:13
altered our historical perception of human practice.
35:16
Which leaves us with a massive realization, since almost all of
35:19
human history is recorded by that 2% of literate specialists.
35:23
Our entire modern secular definition of religion, the
35:27
assumption that it always requires a set of intellectual
35:29
beliefs, a holy book, and a systematic theology, is heavily
35:33
biased by the medium of writing itself.
35:36
We have been seeing the past through the glasses of the
35:38
people who held the pens. We assume theology always
35:41
preceded practice, when in reality, for most of human
35:43
history, the physical practice was all there was.
35:46
It forces us to question how much of our own behavior we
35:49
judge through an artificial, highly intellectualized lens.
35:53
We are conditioned to search for deep symbolic meaning in every
35:57
action. I want to leave you with a final
35:59
thought to Mull over as we close.
36:01
Are there parts of your own daily life that you over
36:04
intellectualize just to give them a supposed meaning, when
36:07
really they're simply practical habits designed to keep your
36:10
local world running smoothly? Do you invent a complex
36:13
philosophy for why you arrange your desk a certain way, or why
36:16
you take a specific route to work when really it just feels
36:19
right and gets the job done? We love to construct elaborate
36:22
rationalizations for our routines, just like the ancient
36:24
specialists did. But sometimes a habit is just a
36:27
habit, and sometimes a meal is just a meal.
36:31
Thank you for getting us on this deep dive into the source
36:33
material.