Walter Burkert and Sociobiology

[us4-he2-gal2]

considering...

Creation of the Sacred - Tracks of Biology in Early Religions

Walter Burkert, 1996

I've recently picked up the above named book by Walter Burkert - this eminent scholar comes on high recommendation and as his work in the field of classics studies lead to an early movement examining the influence of the ANE world on Greece, we owe him a particular debt. The following wiki gives this description of him:

"Walter Burkert (born Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, 2 February 1931), a scholar of Greek mythology and cult, is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States. He has influenced generations of students of religion since the 1960s, combining in the modern way the findings of archaeology and epigraphy with the work of poets, historians, and philosophers. He has published books on the balance between lore and science among the followers of Pythagoras, and more extensively on ritual and archaic cult survival, on the ritual killing at the heart of religion, on mystery religions, and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context."




Burkert's "Creation of the Sacred" is a interesting and dynamic examination of those early religions and religious texts which might inform the investigation religion from a sociobiologial stand point - what is the raison d'etre for religion in the evolution and culture hitherto? he asks. In focusing on early religious texts Burkert says "the approach based on the earliest written evidence has the advantage of a distanced view, largely exempt from the tensions and anxieties encircling living religions... the older models, being more variegated, experimental, and changeable, may still give clues to the original growth of construction of religion through their apparent "primitivity."


*** However I personally found references to Sumerian texts to be a little thin, an so I post these considerations in the General section at enenuru rather then the Mesopotamian discussion area. Regardless, the below summing of Burkert's approach proceeds as I find his angle fascinating and full of potential should it be applied systemtically to curious and dense Sumerian notions of the sacred.







Sociobiology/


The basic hypothesis of sociobiology is given as "coevolution of genes and culture," with constant feedback between the two. From it's Darwinian inheritance sociobiology takes the concept of survival fitness, related to the chances of procreation, and tries to correlate certain institutions or ideas with such fitness...cultural progress and modification of genes go together." Certain ideas of biologists or even zoologists are given consideration in this approach, Burkert marks particularly some observations of Konrad Lorenz: "In establishing homologies in behaviors of different species and deciphering the function of their signals, Lorenz insisted on the positive role of so-called evil behavior, or interspecific aggression, for the preservation of the balance of life. He showed similarities, analogies, and even continuities between animals and humans in the field of anger, fighting, and war, but in particular he described the bonds of friendship and solidarity through common aggression, symbolized in aggressive display. By extrapolation it would seem possible to explain the success of religious solidarity on the basis of aggressive acts of hunt and sacrifice." Religion however has been suggested as the greatest challenge to socialbiology.

An additional observation from Lorenz quoted by Burkert is the origin of the word "hair raising" - shudders or anxiety or elation we still experience, shivers running down the back etc. are vestiges of an nervous system which are intended to raise the mane on the back and head as they still do among gorillas and chimpanzees. They were originally part of the "aggressive behavioral program." Interestingly Burkert adds, "Today, when we speak of the sacred shivers of awe that characterize religion in particular, we may be forgetting that origin...anxiety linked to aggression through biological inheritance manifests itself in our emotions, including patriotic and religious enthusiasm."




Culture/


"Culture has been defined as a "realized signifying system" a social system characterized by standard forms of communication." Yet there are many varieties of culture which each must be studied in isolation. While some aspects of human cultures are unsurprisingly universal (the need for people to eat, sleep, procreate etc.) other aspects are more surprisingly universal says Burkert, the use of technology (especially fire), language, art and religion - the last two seeming particularly unnecessary for human life yet "they have been with us for all the time homo sapiens sapiens has been in existence."

The Author further muses that the very advantage secured by religion is stability and thus the continuity of culture. Certain things such as the technique to preserve fire are too precious to be lost without catastrophe and so "the permanent authority of ancestors or immortal gods provides the needed stability."





Language and Ritual/


Language is uniquely human, and has a biological foundation, most evident in the development of a vocal apparatus which is missing in chimpanzees and whose presence in Neanderthal man is doubtful. Because language is all important for social functioning, is has been associated by scholars with social functioning and with the evolution of culture - it might be considered "a hybrid of culture and biology" therefore. Language development, Burkert says, "means nothing less than the advent of a common mental world, allowing not only for common actions and common feelings but for common thoughts and plans, concepts and values. All humans are henceforth linked to an uninterrupted chain of tradition, taking over the mental worlds of their elders, working on them and passing them on.... Religion, defined at the level of communication, belongs to this mental world, and by virtue of seriousness, claims preeminence."




on ritual:

Burkert: ""Religion may well be older than any kind of language we know, insofar as it is bound to ritual, which entails fixed behavioral patterns marked by exaggeration and repetition and often characterized by obsessive seriousness- patterns which are prominent even in most modern varieties of religious communications. In principal, ritual reflects a preverbal state of communication, to be learned by imitation and to be understood by its function. Its seems to be more primitive and may be more ancient than speech: it clearly has analogies in the behavior of animals." Ritual he says, refers through formulaic acts to nonpresent partners, and is strongly reinforced by art.




Religion/

In most studies, Religion is now commonly integrated into culture and viewed in relation to to specific groups and epochs. An interesting definition of religion comes from Clifford Geertz; it is: "(1) a system of symbols which act to (2) establish powerful, persuasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conception of general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." Burkert notes, Religion deals exclusively with the nonobvious and the unseen. To get beyond this barrier of unclearness, he says, special forms of experience, meditation, visions, ecstasy, are used. Religion manifests itself through interaction and communication and is thus focused toward the unseen and at the same time toward the contemporary social situation - religion is different that other forms of symbolic communication "such as play and art" as it is assigned the supreme seriousness, and priority over the other two as over other things. "Spartans stopped warfare to celebrate their festivals even at crucial moments: Jews decided to die rather than defend themselves on the Sabbath... this absolute seriousness, derived from dealing with unseen superiors, is the prerogative of the sacred that characterizes religion."

Religion has been called a "new phenomenon" in the course of evolution since it is unique to man - yet the practice is all the same "extremely old" says Burkert. He suggests that it is older than the migration of man to North America, since despite thousands of years of isolation, the basic religion or the American aboriginals "remained comparable to their old world counterparts in many respects." Still earlier, Neanderthals practiced ceremonial burial of the dead; "many think that religious ideas must have accompanied such activities about 100,000 years ago." Turning to a sociobiologic note, a very interesting part of Burkert's discussion reads: "It is notable that many religions urgently advocate procreation within the group. Isolation and procreation became the Jewish strategies for surviving the historical catastrophe of the Babylonian exile; in reinforcement, Mosaic law forbade the use of established forms of birth control such as homosexuality, prostitution, abortion and exposure of children. In effect, a Jewish population explosion occurred in Hellenistic times. A similar sexual morality caused Christian groups to grow beyond proportion within the Roman empire. Until the present day Catholicism and Islam both passionately oppose birth control. Is it biological instinct, the thrust of selfish genes, that works behind the laws of Moses and Allah?" A final surmise reads "the success of religion may be attributed to its providing a heightened endurance in the face of catastrophe, encouraging procreation even in desperate circumstances.... this comes close to the "endorphin" hypothesis. We humans are capable of experiencing states described as "loss of reality" - chimpanzees are apparently immune to this- in such diverse manifestations as extreme patriotism, the fascination of games and sports, the scientists or artists proverbial distraction or rather concentration, and, not least, the fervor of religious behavior."


"Religion, stemming as it does from time immemorial and often characterized by the principal of unchangeable continuity, might well provide a model case for the "coevolution of genes and culture." It is at the same time a transmitter of fear and anxiety: "To transmit religion is to transmit fear. "Fear, first of all, produced gods in the world," primus in orbe deos fecit tremor, Statius wrote. While this is a criticism from his standpoint, which that of ancient philosophical enlightenment, it shares the self-interpretation of many religions. The main word to characterize the gods and religion in Akkadian is puluhtu, fear. An Assyrian king, in all his arrogance, will proclaim himself the one "who strongly knows the fear of the gods and goddesses of heaven and earth." For "the fear of the gods creates kindness," or, as Solomon put it in one of his most quoted sayings, using the Hebrew variant of the same Semitic word: "The fear of god is the beginning of wisdom." Shudders of awe are central for the experience of the sacred. The very means of indelible transmission, threat and terror, are correlated with the contents of the religious part of the mental world: the prerogative of the sacred require the fear of god."






The Propp pattern of basic tale and application to Mesopotamian literature:



Burkert exams briefly the work of Vladamir Propp - this literary scholar examined folklore and classic story telling and proposed what amounts to an overriding and universal schema that all "quest type" folk stories and myths can be seen to fit into. There are other sorts of tales besides the "quest type" but this theme is in any case quite pervasive. The important parts of the quest schema are summed by Burkert as:

The tale starts with some damage, lack or desire (8); the hero is told to go somewhere (9); and agrees to do so (10); he leaves home (11); he meets some being that puts him to a test (12); reacting to it (13); he receives some gift or magical aid (14); he gets to the place required (15) and meets an adversary with whom he has to interact (16); he is harmed in some way (17) but is victorious in the end (18); thus the initial damage or lack is put right (19). The hero begins his homeward journey (20); he is pursued (21) but save (22); he comes back without being recognized (23); there is a wicked impostor (24), a test (25) and final success (26); the hero is recognized (27); the impostor is punished (28); the hero marries and becomes king (31).

Each of these events need not occur in every quest narrative, although the general sequence can be seen says the author, throughout European literature, Russian fairy tales, Greek myth and many others - Burkert sees this sequence as wholly compatible to primal biologic need as in the basic quest of all living animals (including humans): the quest for food, or the hunt. In this was the sequence runs, for example, pursuit of need (8); leaving home (11) .... meeting competitive, often dangerous adversaries (16); success (18) and so on. Thus according to the author, the reason that tales can be told and retold and easily remembered in their basic structure, and the reason the same sorts of sequence appear again and again in folk tales and myths, is because these sequences are on a very basic level mirroring the basic biological quest for food and survival, as with the hunt. As language was forming, tales were an important way of transferring experiences and learned lessons in simple formulaic sequences and so the pattern behind Propps sequence evolved. Burkert also applies Propps sequence to various Mesopotamian narratives including Ninurta and Asakku, Inanna's Descent; Gilgamesh and Huwawa is described as follows:

"It starts with the desire (8) of Lord Gilgamesh to go to the mountain to "put up his name." For this journey he collects helpers (14), foremost among whom is his servant Enkidu. There is also a curious group of seven with animal characteristics - lion, eagle, serpent - and superhuman abilities granted by the Sungod; other young men from his city come too. This early written text displays the duplication of motifs -or rather, gathering of competing variants- which underlines the necessity of this "function." Gilgamesh has to cross seven mountain ranges before he reaches the cedar tree (15) which he feels; the adversary Huwawa, the guardian of the mountain, attacks (16) and defeats Gilgamesh with a kind of superweapon, a beam of awe (17); but Gilgamesh recovers thanks to Enkidu. He then begins to trick Huwawa, offering him his sisters as concubines; finally Huwawa surrenders his wonder weapon, he is struck by force, and Enkidu cuts off his head (18). The head is brought back to the god, Enki (20), who establishes a new distribution of powers. In this way the tale ends on a religious, aetiological note, but the narrative functions have shown up in the recognized sequence."






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I've limited my summation to the above, however that are a scattering of other insights about Mesopotamian religion to be seen in the book, and as is probably apparent, alot to learn about the relation of biology and religion!