Ancient Mystery Cults (Carl Newell Jackson Lectures)

I find the subject of ancient religions extremely interesting and Burkert gave me a point of view I've not read before. He obviously knows his subject and has an opinion on it. I would have given it a five stars but I found it sometimes difficult to follow all of his ideas. Anyone new to the subject might have a difficult time with this book. Question: why are so many of the books on ancient religions so over priced?

I read _Ancient Mystery Cults_ with great interest. Burkert takes what I would call the "comparative approach" with this book, touching on aspects of the various cults and discussing them collectively. For example, his chapter titles are: 1. Personal Needs in This Life and After Death; 2. Organizations and Identities; 3. Theologia and Mysteries: Myth, Allegory, and Platonism; 4. The Extraordinary Experience. Thus, if you are interested in the general ideas about these mystery cults, and how they were interconnected, you will be most pleased with this book. Now, one thing that I will say that I didn't like about the book was this: if you are looking for info on a specific cult you will be a bit frustrated. There is no single chapter on the Eleusinian Mysteries, for example; he discusses them all throughout the book as they are applicable to the topic on hand. However, that is no reason not to read the book-- no cult existed in a vacuum, and knowing the general atmosphere in which even a single cult thrived is as important as knowing the details of that one particular cult.

I recommend this book as an introduction for everybody who is interested in this daunting subject. Daunting, because it was forbidden for the initiated to speak about the mystery. Nearly everything we know (besides artwork - Athens - architectural sites) came to us indirectly (e.g. the formidable play 'Bakchai' by Euripides).Furthermore, all sanctuaries were destroyed after the imperial decrees (391/392) of Theodosius the Great prohibiting all pagan cults.The author analyses 5 mystery cults : Eleusis, Meter, Isis, Mithras, and the Dionysian and Bacchian mysteries.As we can learn from the work of Karl Kerenyi, the influence of Eleusis on Christianity should not be underestimated. Apparently, through the myth of Demeter/Persephone, the initiated were 'shown' that there was life after death. Plato was initiated (as nearly all Roman emperors) and as Hannah Ahrendt tells us in her book 'The origins of Totalitarianism', Plato must be considered as one of the fathers of the Christian creed.For the mysteries of Mithras, I recommend the work of J. Vermaseren.As Burkert states, most of the mysteries were expensive clubs and the experience was purely individual. That is the reason why they disappeared so rapidly: they lacked any lasting organization as the Christian Church. Another reason for Burkert was the inclusion of the family as the basic unit of piety in Christianity. The Church got the upper hand for demographic reasons.Contrary to Burkert, we know from the work of Kerenyi on Eleusis that the taking of drugs (the kykeon) was important (it was taken after a longer period of fasting).Burkert gives us a very good summary indeed.

Walter Burkert is one of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century in the field of ancient Greek religion, and this contribution is an excellent book which, for the most part, lives up to such a standard. I recommend it to any and all students of Greek religion who are looking to expand their knowledge of the particulars of mystery cults and what they were all about. I do, however, have reservations about recommending it as an overview or introductory work for laymen or students just getting interested in the subject. Burkert's methodology, while a great improvement over the "myth and ritual" debates which dominated earlier scholarship, is very much oriented in a psychological viewpoint which sees ancient mystery religion as somehow fundamentally less psychologically satisfying than religions like Christianity ("confessional" religions). In every chapter he tries to make the point that these cults were nothing like early confessional religions like Christianity because he is responding to another faction of scholars who tried to assimilate the two, but, unfortunately, in doing so Burkert makes a number of misleading (and, some would say, wrong) arguments about the nature of mystery religion and the mentality of its devotees. It is for these reasons that I recommend this book highly to someone who already knows enough to recognize when Burkert is making controversial statements and would not take him at face value.