Excerpt
Evidence supporting this view lies in the fact that, by extension
from the pater familias to the king, as long as this form of organisation
endured, the king was simultaneously the high priest and,
in certain cases, the god himself. This was the case, for example, in
the pre-Hellenic Minoan civilisation of Crete, where the king was
regarded as the embodiment of the deity, just as in domestic religion
this function was attributed to the ancestor. Likewise, the existence
of hereditary priestly families, such as the Eleusinian Eumolpidae
and the Kerykes or the Lycomidae of Phlya, demonstrates that
they preserved mysteries originally belonging to their own families,
transmitted intact and without any interference from public authority.
These constitute, to borrow the language of modern physics,
merely singularities–that is, phenomena opposed to the existence of
a common Greek religious doctrine–much like those logoi, or secret
narratives, scattered throughout the thousands of sanctuaries spread
across the Hellenic world.
The complete absence of a priesthood, sacred books, and rigorously
constituted religious dogmas gave rise both to a distinctive and
unique Imaginative and to a distinctive understanding of the Greek
human being in relation to the world. For this reason, Greece has
been regarded, by comparison with other ancient civilisations, as the
birthplace of the free spirit and of critical, investigative thought.
Yet although liberated from religious dogma, Greek thought did
not arise out of nothing through some miraculous event, as has too
often been claimed ever since Burnet. Like every other spiritual
manifestation of humanity, Greek thought likewise emerged from
the religious determinations of the Hellenic spirit, and certainly not
from the creations of Homer or Hesiod, whose works never possessed
the character of sacred scriptures, despite occasional attempts
to suggest otherwise.
