VIII. Reading Pagan Texts

Extract

As the argument of the last chapter suggested, one level at which religious change had its most profound and lasting effects was in the character of the language used in religious discourse. This has a double impact on our understanding: first, it is one of the key areas in which we can see religious change taking place; but, secondly, understanding the different uses of language is a precondition of interpreting the different religions themselves. The Christians spoke a far more direct language about the character of the deity, the character of priesthood, about the beliefs that an individual ought to hold or not hold and about the character of the interaction between divine and earthly beings. To some extent, the pagans were forced into making explicit statements by way of competition; but, far more clearly, we should regard them as disadvantaged in the competition with Christianity by the nature of their own traditions of religious discourse. It is easy but dangerous to jump from this observation about pagan habits of speech to making simplifying assumptions about their religious experience. Just because they are inexplicit and guarded in what they say, we have no right to assume that they were either hypocritical or uninterested in regard to the gods and goddesses they worshipped or that the rituals they carefully maintained and practised carried no meanings for them.