Essays on Religion and the Ancient World

1061 Pages·1972·25.3 MB·English

by  Arthur Darby Nock, Zeph Stewart

ARTHUR DARBY NOCK
Essays on
Religion and the Ancient World

Arthur Darby Nock
Essays on Religion
and the Ancient World
Selecteda nd edited,w ith an Introduction,
Bibliographyo f Nock's writings,
andI ndexes, by
ZEPH STEWART
I
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
1972
© OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1972
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 74-135192
SBN 674-26725-7
Printed in Great Britain
IN MEMORY OF
MARTIN P. NILSSON
author of
'that masterpiece of patient brilliance'

PREFACE
FOLLOWING THE DEATH of Arthur Darby Nock there were suggestions
froi_n scholars i~ seve~al countries that a selecti~n of his papers and
reviews be published m book form. In undertaking the project I was
faced first of all with the difficult task of selecting the material. I have been
aided in several instances by the advice of Nock's friends and colleagues
who are more familiar than I with some of his fields of interest. Some
difficulties of choice were resolved by the omission of papers which are
available in standard works of reference; certain reviews of great import
ance in detail (like those of Behn's Mithrasheiligtumz u Dieburg and
Vermaseren's Corpus)h ave been omitted because the remarks of wider
interest made in them are found elsewhere in more discursive papers.
Anyone who talked with Nock or has read his letters knows of the fresh,
direct, and well phrased judgments he could make. Some of these pointed
comments appear in papers otherwise unworthy of inclusion here; so I
have collected some of them in a final chapter of 'obiter dicta'. The
description of Nilsson's Geschichtdee rg riechischeRne ligionw hich is quoted
in the dedication of these volumes is such an 'obiter dictum', taken from
Nock's survey of recent work and trends of scholarship for the reprint of
his 'Early Gentile Christianity'.
Preparation of this collection has been far more demanding than I had
expected. I have made several hundred small corrections in the papers as
originally printed and have tried to standardize the style of reference
within the limits of each paper: I can hope only that new errors have not
been introduced in the process. It has been hard to resist the continual
temptation to add notes referring to more recent discussions, but such a
task should be done thoroughly, if at all, and with wider knowledge than
I possess. I have in fact given references to re-publications of texts and
articles which may be more readily available to the reader, when I have
known them, and very occasionally to a comprehensive later discussion
of a topic which loomed large. This has been done, I fear, with a certain
caprice reflecting my own interests, but I regret particularly that printing
was too far advanced to add references throughout to the invaluable
reprinting of Louis Robert's papers (Amsterdam, 1969). These aids to the
viii PREFACE
reader, cross-references, and other explanatory notes have been added in
square brackets. References to the pagination of later editions of works
has seemed unnecessary when the later editions themselves, like Nilsson's,
contain cross-references. The original pagination of Nock's essays and
reviews is indicated throughout, and original footnote numbers have been
retained in all cases (even of papers reprinted in part) except for those
which had to be changed to conform to continuous numbering. I have
given titles to the reviews in order to indicate their principal interest and
have slightly altered the original title_ of one paper (from Coniectanea
Neotestamentica)t o fit the section of it which has been reprinted here.
Numbers in bold face type are those of the bibliography of Nock's
writings which is placed after the papers.
The aim has been everywhere to make Nock's work more easily
available and useful. A rather complex index of cross-references to all his
papers has been compiled as an added help for those who expect to make
systematic use of his learning. Together with the precis of articles in the
bibliography, the list of books reviewed, and the other indexes, it will
provide, I hope, a partial substitute for that complete index of Nock's
writings for which Nilsson had hoped.
I have received much kindly aid in my work on these papers, most of
it from Nock's many friends. A Fellowship grant from the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation gave me free time and the means to
get the major part of the work accomplished. For this I am most grateful,
as I am for help, advice, and encouragement especially to Professor
Herbert Bloch, Dean Henry Chadwick, Professors Harold Chemiss and
Sterling Dow, Dean Krister Stendahl, and my former teacher and Nock's
long-time collaborator, Father A-J. Festugiere. Much of my work was
done in the vicinity of Oxford, where I enjoyed the hospitality and the
facilities of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, and the Haverfield
Library, and where I was able to consult with profit not only Dean (then
Professor) Chadwick but also Professor E. R. Dodds, Professor Hugh
Lloyd-Jones, Dr. C. H. V. Sutherland, Professor Sir Ronald Syme,
Dr. Stefan Weinstock, and another of Nock's former collaborators, Mr.
Colin Roberts, who as Secretary to the Delegates of the Oxford University
Press has been a chief promoter of these volumes. One of the pleasures of
my association with Nockiana was a visit to the Portsmouth Grammar
School, where through the kindness of the Very Reverend E. N. Porter
Goff, Mr. C. Macdonald, Mr. R. H. Willis, and Dr. F. R. Langmaid I was
able to gather interesting background information and to see Nock's
earliest published writings, his editorials in the school newspaper. Pro
fessor R. A. Kraft had with Nock's help done most of the work on the
bibliography when he and Professor R. B. Ward kindly let me take it
PREFACE ix
ov~r; !"1-rs.F . L. Holmes helped with this and other papers. After some
hes1tat1on I have completed the bibliography in the same very inclusive
manner in which it had been begun under Nock's direction.
J.
Professors M. R. Cormack, F. M. Cross, Jr., Charles Edson, R. N.
Frye, Saul Lieberman, Marsh McCall and C. B. Welles gave me particular
help, as did Mr. G. K. Jenkins and Mr. Aron Zysow, but so many others
have added a suggestion here or there that it would be vain to try to name
them all. I cannot fail, however, to mention the thoughtful encouragement
I have received from four ofNock's closest friends, Professor Georg Luck,
Miss G. M.A. Richter, Mr. John Voss, and Dr. F. R. Walton, and I am
particularly regretful that Professor Nilsson did not live to see the work
completed to which he had given his blessing. These volumes and their
editor, lastly, owe much to the careful and considerate patience of the
staff of the Clarendon Press.
Lowell House,H arvard
January 1970
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgement is due to the following for kind permission to reprint
papers which appeared originally in publications for which they are
responsible: the editor of The AmericanJ ournal of Archaeologyf or 'Sar
cophagi and Symbolism' and 'The Problem of Zoroaster'; the editor of
The AmericanJ ournalo f Philologyf or reviews of Johnson, Otto-Bengtson,
and Wagenvoort; the American Philosophical Society for 'Religious
Attitudes of the Ancient Greeks' (Proceedings)t;h e Director of the
Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire orientales et slaves for 'Seviri and
Augustales'( Annuaire);B . G. Teubner for 'Eunuchs in Ancient Religion'
(Archiv fur Religionswissenscheft)T; he Brooklyn Museum for 'Later
Egyptian Piety' (CopticE gypt); the editors of ConiectaneaN eotestamentica
for 'Word-Coinage in the Hermetic Writings'; the editor of Gnomon
and C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung for reviews of Harder,
Dibelius, Goodenough, and Schoeps; the editor of Gnomon and W eid
mannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung for reviews ofKerenyi, Deubner,Jonas,
Goodenough, and Gundel; the editor of Greek, Roman and Byzantine
Studiesf or the review of Downey; Harvard University Press for 'Lvvvo:os
0e6s' and 'A Cult Ordinance in Verse' (Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology,© copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College),
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
X
and for 'A Diis Electa',' Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire', 'A
Vision of Mandulis Aion', 'The Gild of Zeus Hypsistos', 'A Feature of
Roman Religion', 'Orphism or Popular Philosophy?', 'The Cult of
Heroes', 'The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year', and
'Gnosticism' (The Harvard TheologicalR eview, © copyright by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College); the Secretary of the Hibbert
Trust for 'The Study of the History of Religion' (The HibbertJ ournal);
the editor of the Journal of BiblicalL iteraturef or 'The Vocabulary of the
New Testament' and reviews of Parrot and Klauser (editor); the Com
mittee of the Egypt Exploration Society for 'A New Edition of the
Hermetic Writings' and 'Greek Magical Papyri' (The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology)t;h e Council of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic
Studies for 'Studies in the Graeco-Roman Beliefs of the Empire', 'Notes
on Ruler-Cult I-IV', and the review of Reitzenstein-Schaeder (The
Journalo f HellenicS tudies);t he Council of the Society for the Promotion
of Roman Studies for 'The Genius of Mithraism', 'The Emperor's Divine
Comes', 'Deification and Julian', 'Posidonius', and the review of Bidez
of
Cumont (The Journal Roman Studies); Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd.
J.
for 'Early Gentile Christianity and its Hellenistic Background' (A. E.
Rawlinson, ed., Essayso n the Trinity and the Incarnation)M; acmillan & Co.
Ltd. for 'Paul and the Magus' (Foakes Jackson and K. Lake, The Begin
of
nings Christianity);t he Director of the Imprimerie Catholique for
'Nymphs and Nereids' (Melangesd e l'UniversiteS aint Joseph); the editor
of Mnemosyne for 'Hellenistic Mysteries and Christian Sacraments';
Oxford University Press for the selection from 'Magical Texts from a
Bilingual Papyrus in the British Museum' by H. I. Bell, A. D. Nock and
Herbert Thompson, Proceedingos f the British Academy 17, published by
Oxford University Press; the Franz Joseph Dolger-Institut and Aschen
dor.ffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung for 'Conversion and Adolescence'
(Antike und ChristentumE rganzungsband I); the Director of the Revue des
EtudesA nciennesf or 'Oracles theologiques'; the editorial board of Vigiliae
Christianaea nd North-Holland Publishing Co. for 'Tertullian and the
Ahori'; and the Executors of the Estate of Arthur Darby Nock for all
residual rights which lie with them.