Jon Davies - Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity

Christianity came into existence in a world in which religion was of central importance. In any religious culture, the treatment of death is of central importance.

In Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity, Jon Davies charts the significance of death in the religions and cults of the pre-Christian and early Christian world. He analyses varied funerary rituals and examines different notions of the afterlife. Among the areas covered are:

Isis and Osiris, Baal and Ahura Mazda: the thanatologies of Ancient Near East

Burying the Jewish dead

Roman religion and Roman funerals

Christian burial

The nature of martyrdom

Jon Davies also draws on the sociological theory of Max Weber to present a comprehensive introduction to and overview of death, burial and rebirth in the first Christian centuries which offers insights into the relationship between social change and attitudes to death and dying.

Jon Davies was until recently Head of Department of Religious Studies at the University of Newcastle, where he now teaches part-time.

Edited by Deborah Sawyer and John Sawyer, Lancaster University

Too often the religious traditions of antiquity are studies in isolation, without any real consideration of how they interacted. What made someone with a free choice become an adherent of one faith rather than another? Why might a former pagan choose to become a 'godfearer' and attend synagogue services? Why might a Jew become a Christian? How did the mysteries of Mithras differ from the worship of the Unconquered Sun, or the status of the Virgin Mary from that of Isis, and how many gods could an ancient worshipper have? These questions are hard to answer without a synoptic view of what the different religions offered.

The aim of the books in this series is to survey particular themes in the history of religion across the different religions of antiquity and to set up comparisons and contrasts, resonances and discontinuities, and thus reach a profounder understanding of the religious experience in the ancient world. Topics to be covered will include: women, conversion, language, death, magic, sacrifice and purity.

Also available in this series:

WOMEN AND RELIGION IN THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURIES

Deborah F.Sawyer

THE CRUCIBLE OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY

J.Ian H.McDonald

SACRED LANGUAGES AND SACRED TEXTS

John Sawyer

First published 1999

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

1999 Jon Davies

The right of Jon Davies to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Davies, Jon, 1939

Death, burial, and rebirth in the religions of antiquity/Jon Davies.

p. cm.(Religion in the first Christian centuries)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. DeathReligious aspectsHistory of doctrines. 2. Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient. 3. Future lifeHistory of doctrines. 4. Middle EastReligion. 5. RomeReligion. I. Title. II. Series.

BL504.D295 1999

291.2'3'093-dc21 98-49845

CIP

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ISBN 0-415-12990-7 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-12991-5 (pbk)

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TO JEAN, MY WIFE, FOR THE SOCIETY, HELP AND COMFORT WHICH SHE HAS AFFORDED ME, AND TO MY CHILDREN, DANIEL, JACOB AND ESTHER, MY DAUGHTER-IN-LAW ANNABEL, AND MY GRANDDAUGHTER JESSIE, FOR THE CHEERFULNESS THEY BRING TO MY LIFE

Following page 124

This book is an exercise in historical sociology. It seeks to find patterns or regularities in the processes of social change, in this case in the relationship between social change and attitudes to death, dying and the afterlife. Social statisticians look for variables with the greatest explanatory power: what factor, or factors, explains or explain most of the variance in, or the stability of, a given set of outcomes?

At one level, this turned out to be fairly straightforward. It is clear, for example, that there is a hierarchy in funerary ornament and ostentation (including negative ornament and ostentation) which parallels a social hierarchy. At its simplest and most general, this is reflected in male power. Men dominate the cemetery just as they dominate society. Rich and powerful men dominate both. A similar gender-split characterises behaviour at funerals: men do one thing, women do another.

It proved much more difficult to establish patterns and processes of social change in, for example, the relationship between such matters as attitudes to the corpse and the method of corpse-disposal, including the quality and quantity of grave ornament or grave goods. Ornate sarcophagi can be found in association with rich grave goods, or not. Cremation is sometimes associated with a sense that the corpse is a pollutant, and sometimes not. A benign afterlife is sometimes seen as a 'reward' for this-worldly virtue, and sometimes not. The same society can demonstrate very different behaviour at different times, and for no apparent reason.

What, though, can be found in the data which 'explain' the core beliefs of a culture about death, burial and the afterlife, beliefs within which these other, lesser, matters can be located? After considerable tussle between the Marxist and the Weberian in my intellectual pedigree, I came to the view that Weber was right: first look for the basic values of a society, then for its material reality. I came to the view that we must start with the creation stories of each culture. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is in the stories of origins, the stories of life, that we can find explanations for the stories of endings, the stories of death. It is from the ideational or symbolic record, rather than from the material remains, that we can construct some sense of, some empathy with the death cultures of the Ancient Near East, the Hellenistic world and the early Roman Empire.