EP 45: Dead Sea Scrolls / No God but God

You are listening to the MythMaker podcast network. Welcome back to another episode of the Joseph Campbell Foundation podcast, Pathways with Joseph Campbell. I'm your host, Bradley Olson. On this podcast, we at the Joseph Campbell Foundation are excited to share the power of myth through our archive of audio lectures given by Joseph Campbell over the course of his teaching and lecturing career. But for this episode, we'll borrow that classic line from Monty Python. And now, for something completely different. What's different is that today we're listening to two lectures, two separate television episodes, really. I don't know why they were archived in this manner, but this is merely one example of the charming mysteries of our audio collection. However, the themes complement each other beautifully. Joseph Campbell appeared on WNDTTV in New York City in 1963 and '64 and gave these lectures respectively titled Dead Sea Scrolls and No God but God. In their book, Joseph Campbell, A Fire in the Mind, Campbell's biographers briefly mentioned this period of his life writing. In the meantime, Campbell had undertaken a series of lectures for Channel 13. The 34 programs in the series would be his television debut before the American public. The theme, of course, was Campbell's favorite subject in all its variety, The World of Mythology. So, 34 half-hour programs. I mean, that's a lot. This series was called Mask, Myth, and Dream. And must have kept him on WNDT for most of 1963 and '64. While looking into the issue of Campbell TV appearances, I also came across a headline from The New York Times from 1966 describing a series of three programs on the same network airing the week of May 11th of that year. The program's featured Professor Campbell discussing James Joyce's novel, "Thinnington's Wake," with Henry Morton Robinson, co-author of their book, A Skeleton Key to "Thinnington's Wake." One, or perhaps even more of the programs included his wife, Gene Erdman, who in 1962, wrote, directed, and choreographed a musical play called "The Coach with the Six Insides," which was inspired by "Thinnington's Wake." Erdman's dance drama focused on Anna Lydia Purabel and combined dance, mime, and stream of consciousness narrative. Gene herself danced the lead role, and the show ran off Broadway for 114 performances. It won a Vernon Rice Award, which was the precursor to the drama desk award, and an OB award. Of course, by this time, Campbell was already a respected scholar of mythology and literature, but these television appearances brought his analysis of myth and symbolism to a wider public audience, and they opened up an entirely new set of opportunities for Joe to lecture. Unfortunately, we've been unable to find any video recordings of the 34 lectures, and they remain, as my good friend and JCF colleague Stephen Garanger says, the holy grail of Campbell videos. WNDT was the original call sign for the public television station that would later become WNDT, the main PBS affiliate for the New York City metropolitan area. It was a pioneering educational TV station, and the WNDT call letters stood for "New Dimensions in Television." Its mission, introduced by none other than journalist Edward Armurrow on its inaugural broadcast, was to use television to "teach, illuminate, and even inspire," in 1970, WNDT merged with national educational television, NET, to create a new single entity. As part of this merger, WNDT changed its call letters to WNDT, the name it's still known by today. In a nice, even poetic symmetry, WNDT is the public television network that first aired Joseph Campbell in the power of myth with Bill Moir's. So I hope you'll enjoy these two episodes of Joseph Campbell's WNDT television presentation of Dead Sea Scrolls and No God but God. There's something of a curiosity to me, and that Professor Campbell is much less spontaneous and more structured, perhaps even tiny bit uncomfortable. No doubt a concession to the formality of the television broadcast format of the early 1960s. As always, immediately following Professor Campbell's lecture, I'll return with some final remarks that explore some of the important and interesting ideas from this lecture. And now, here's Joseph Campbell. Throughout these talks, we've been distinguishing from major provinces of old world civilization, taking the plateau of Iran as our dividing line, the watershed, in Eastwood. We have the province of India and the province of the Far East. Westwood of Iran, there are the two provinces of the Levant, or the Near East, and Europe. Now just draw this line here, cut those apart. Now, directing our full attention to these two provinces of the West. The spiritual basis for the European world was established in the Paleolithic period, in the period of the Great Chains of Southern France and Northern Spain. Where the form of life was that of the hunt, and the animal world was the dominant image of the secret and mode of life. Furthermore, the leader of spiritual life was the Shaman, and he will recall our visualist these materials, way back there in the beginning of this series. Now, in contrast, to this individualistic hunting world of the Paleolithic Europe, the foundations of Near East and Civilization are to be established in the periods of the Neolithic and Bronze Age societies of the Ziggurat, that's, we see here, the Great Ziggurat, at Nipur, in which the whole society is organized in terms of the Great cosmic image. The society itself being part of that cosmos, like a great organism with the tree, as in the center of this picture that we saw often seen, as its model. The serpent, the goddess of the tree, and the ruler, God, who comes, do die and be resurrected there. In the person of the king himself, who, when he died, as we recall, the whole court was buried with him in a great ceremony of ritual regicide. Now to move one step further, taking our Near Eastern province, there are two sub-provences here. One is the very triple area, the triple crescent, as it has been called, where the early Neolithic and Bronze Age high civilizations developed. The Neolithic was about 7,500 to about 3,500 BC, and the Great period of Sumer, 3,500 BC, on, perhaps about 2000. The second zone, however, is the arid zone of the Serial Arabian Desert, from which the Semitic nomads invaded in a number of waves, being settled communities. Now as I pointed out, the point of view of the desert nomads was entirely in contrast to that of the Seppopopulation. The Seppopimple honored the goddess births who brought forth all the prunes of their life. The nomads of the desert rejected the goddess and heard nature world, and rested on their social order, which was inspired by the dictates of a male deity. And this contrast is very important, one in this zone. The rejection of nature on the part of the Semites, the stress on the male divinity, the notion of man as a creature of that divinity created to be his slave and servant, whose duty it is to obey. And it is the nomads who invade the Semitic territories. Now turning to Europe, we have a somewhat contrary picture. The first phase of the European Union. as I've already said, is that a big paleolithic. But then the Neolithic becomes intrusive here. It comes in first in Neolithic forms, and then into creed in the form of the high bronze age civilization that we've been discussing in many talks. The great goddess of the mountain standing in the midst of her world with the two lions planking her on the side is the principal density of this creed in bronze age European Neolithic. Here we see her on her mountain with the two lions planking her above. She is the goddess of the earth and of the productivity of the earth. And her consort, the useful son, her child, who is the king and perhaps intrigued as elsewhere, was actually subjected to the ritual regicide. Now it was the aliens from the north, who were the earlier hunting people now transformed into nomads who came invading down into this domain, a totally different people as we see here. Here is the gold death mask of one of the great mycenaean kings, one of the early akin invaders, the heroes of Homer's ethics. And they brought with them in later waves the chariot, as we have here the chariot fighters on this seal. Their gods, in contrast to the Semitic gods, were not tribal but nature deities. And these Aryan nature gods easily married the goddesses of the Aegean world into which they had come. And so it was intended to the in the classical world for a harmony, a synthesis thus a union of the old and new religions to take place. Quite in contrast to the situation in the near east. Man, furthermore, like all of nature, was divine for these people. They did not reject the divinity of nature. And man became the model for their gods, also for their divine values. The god Apollo, representing the heroic ideal. And the authority, one might say, of the cosmic water, is rendered in human form. And similarly, when the nature powers it to be rendered, the powers of fertility and the fictitious of the soil and of the rapture of the spirit, they are shown in human guys in a manner that would excite in the observer. Their own sentiments intended. Here is Dionysus, the great god of the ecstasy of the wine beasts. And Amphrodite, the lovely goddess of love, is in this great world in its late period depicted as a young girl who would curse herself, evoke this sentiments that she represents. Now, a question arises as to the impact of the great world on the Levant. The first point that the LA have already made is the Greek ideal of the citizen in the post. We're extended to include the world as a cosmopolist. All men, way to be regarded as equivalent men, not as Greek, Jew, Indian, Egyptian or Persian. The first impact that I want to discuss is that on soil astrianism. The religion of closure, a dualistic religion of light against darkness. This was transformed under Greek influence into the religion of Mithra. And its chief deity, Seravan Akarana, on the ending time is here depicted. Please note, on ending time, this eliminates the Zoroastrian idea that the world is going to be come to an end. Also, this divinity combines the principle of light. He has a lion head on his human body, and the principle of darkness. He is surrounded by the cause of a serpent. That serpent, winding sevenfold around him, we all ready known from today as a couple and Indian yoga. We have returned, in other words, to the point of view of non-dualistic mysticism in the very fold of Zoroastrianism. In this sketch, we see on the chest of the deity, the Thunderbolt, the kings are in his hands to the knowledge of mysteries. The stamp of rules in his left hand, and at his feet, we see the caduceus here at the right, a cop, which represents the dawn, the solar power, the top crying a dawn, a pine cone representing the seeds of life, and at the left, the tongues, the hammer and tongues of the creator. In his manifestation on earth, as a divine hero, this principle is shown in the God Vistra himself, who is cheaply represented, slaying and fool. The model for this hero, Vistra, he's a Ben Ali, Santa the Great himself. I mean, after he's performing the beam, but in the older tradition of Zoroastrianism, was assigned to the evil power. This amounts to a recognition of the world as monstrous and the acceptance of that by the God himself, that there is any guilt in living the God takes it to himself. He is not the one slaying here, but he is the slayer. Now, let us just glance briefly Eastward to see what parallels can be found. We remember the Indian God, Vistra, who here is in his lion incarnation. Vistra also is the God who rests upon the serpent. And so again, we have lion and serpent as in the Tehrvon Akharana figure. For turning to Buddhism, we have the great Buddha of the Todaiji temple in Nara, the Vairachana Buddha, the Buddha of the solar illumination. And he again carries this solar force of our Persian God. Now, let us look to see what the impact of this sort of thinking and symbolizing was on the Jewish communities of the Near East. The most striking clue is that found in certain amulets that have been found many of them on the graves of Jewish people buried in the Alexandria period. Here, you will be surprised to see, there is a picture of Yabe, the Lord God himself. He has serpent feet. This is called the Anger P. Heal aspect. And he has the shield of the warrior and the whip of the God. He also sunned God. And you will note the head of the top upon this figure. Here he is with the God Mars standing upon his head. And here he is as the sunned God himself in the chariot of the solar deity. Now, we see him depicted as Helios as a Greek God, really, with the whip of Helios in his left hand. He is standing on a lion and the lion on a crocodile. So there again, we have the light and dark powers. And now we see the opposite side of this same coin that our amulet that I've shown you where the God has shown as we saw him to the first form. And now for the angels of this God, here, you will be surprised to see, is the angel Michael, who is standing, is a kind of almost Egyptian over figure. And then Michael in purely Greek form with this death of herbys. And finally, we have the Lord God himself precisely in the posture of Zeus bearing in his hand the thunderbolt of Zeus. Now it was because of this very obvious tendency of the ebrooms to relate themselves to the Greeks, that one of the great Greek emperors, or Alexanderian emperors, and Tyakus IV, thought it was possible to place a Greek altar on the Hebrew, in the Hebrew temple compound. And we all know what happened. 167 BC, the Macarbyan revolt, commenced when one sturdy old fellow Macatias had the courage to stand against the whole Alexanderian world and slew the Greek officer who was to have dedicated the altar, even though many of his fellows had to concede that they would worship there. Now I would count this event of the Macarbyan revolt as the counterpart of the king. for the Near East of the Battle of Marathon for the West. That is to say, when the Persian influence was moving into Greece, it or tore Europe, it reached a point where it could go no further. And here, comfortably, when the counter-Greek influence began moving into the Lava through Alexanderism, there came a point where tolerance stopped, and a counter-movement began. Now, from that counter-movement and enormous, return wave of Levante, mythological, and religious forms moved toward Europe. We can say that within another 200 years, great pressure begins to revive, and there is a very strong Persian Renaissance. And then on top of that, we have, as we know, Christianity, which was a Levante religion that came into Europe. And finally, Islam came into Europe, 7-11 AD, is the Muslim country of Spain, and by 723, we're at the very gate of Paris, where another stop took place at the Battle of Placier where Charles the Hammer threw back the Arabs. Now, within the world of the Jews, after this Macabeean revolt, there took place a terrible deterioration. These sons, grandsons, and great grandsons of old Macatias, progressively, we say, turned into tyrants. To begin with, one of his sons, Jonathan, assumed to himself the high priesthood, this was improper. He did not belong to the priestly family. And one of his grandsons, Aristomulus, assumed to himself, besides that, the kingship, to hold both priests to an acutement to make himself a Messiah. Then there were revolts among the Jews against this appropriation, and particularly strong among these people, where the Pharisees became enemies, then of the royal house of the Macabeean house, and the climax came when Alexander Janais actually slew 800 Pharisees in one night, crucified them, slipped those shrubs of their wives before their faces, as they hung their crucified and himself carried on in public with his carpebarings, meanwhile. This was a period when there was a exodus of Pharisees and other orthodox-nicking Jews from Jerusalem. And it was in this period that the death-see-small community at Kuhran was founded, one ten BC. Here is the desert area, to which these people retreated in their attempt to preserve the faith against what was happening in Jerusalem. And now we are on the summit of that clip. These are some of the ruins of the congregations of the principal house, and we look out over the death-see and across the way. Now, the spirit of this community was that of an apocalyptic age. The Jews, particularly the Pharisees, had assimilated the Zoroastrian idea of the coming end of the world. And they had identified the Hebrew notion of the Messiah, named the Messiah, or King who would restore Israel to its place. They had identified this Messiah with the type of Messiah, representative by Sahuashian, the Zoroastrian Messiah, so that the notion arose, that at the end of the world, the Messiah would be the Hebrew Messiah, and there would be an end of time and perfection, then we follow. With the hideous wars that were going on around them at this time, and Jerusalem itself falling to what were regarded as the wicked priests and described as such in the Dead-see Scrolls, the community of the Dead-see Scrolls, who are now identified as "S" scenes, was dedicated to the idea of keeping itself in perfect purity in order to carry through the will of Yahweh at the time of the end of the world. These texts are quite marvelous in their foreseeing of how this little aesthetic community was to have it itself at the time of the Great Crisis. There was going to be a great war, and the Great War of the Zoroastrian Messiah was seven years during which the S-sens at the Dead-see standard here were going to conquer all their neighbors, it would take six years to win the war, and then it would be a sabbatical year. Then it would follow a period of 29 years during which they would conquer the rest of the world, and every seventh year, the enemies as well as themselves, would stop to celebrate a sabbatical year. This is a program that is outlined in a text of the Dead-see group, known as the "S'Roll of the War of the Suns of Light" and the "Sons of Darkness." Now, when gets the Zoroastrian scene right there in the title, next we have a manual of discipline in which the disciplines of the community are formulated. And here we learn that God created men, and He created two principles, a light and a dark principle, so that men follow one group, the Sons of Light, follow the light principle, and the other Sons of Darkness, follow the darkness. This is very much the Jairbhaj Akarana idea, and then will come the end of time. Now, John the Baptist was baptizing not far from the Dead-see scroll area, and he was one of many who were anticipating the apocalypse the end of the world, and it was into his domain that the young Jesus came and commenced his preaching. The Christians in distinction from the S-Dames regarded their teacher Christ as the actual Messiah, so they were, as it were, over me, hump. The S-Sings were still looking forward to the Christness, and they were aligning themselves as the text tells us time again with the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, but now that the Messiah had himself accomplished that dualism had been transcended, and so we read in the words of Christ, "You have heard it said, 'Thee should love your neighbors and hate your enemies. I tell you to love your enemies.'" Well, as you know, the Romans were invited into Palestine, into dualism itself by one of the contenders for the High Priesthood, and it was only 100 and some ideas later. They were invited in 63, 15, by 1678, and 18, the revolt of the Hebrews had commenced. The Romans put it down after a four-year of direct fighting and violence, and we have just seen the panel from the art of Titus, showing the Romans carrying off the sacred objects from the temple. Now, it's by the fact that dualism following this event became very strictly orthodox, the Maseretic text, the Orthodox text, was formulated by ADAD. We find certain temple, the certain synagogue sign of a continuation of Greek influence. Here is our mosaic that showed Abraham, sanctifying his son Isaac, on the floor of a synagogue known as Beth Alpha, just west of the Jordan and so much south of Galilee. As we can see now, Abraham here at all right, there is the ram caught in the bush behind him of the servants, which the donkey and above is God, and is staying the hand of Abraham, just above our nine palm trees which represent heaven. I mean, across this panel, this mosaic, the person entering this synagogue came to this astonishing mosaic on the floor, showing the God, Helios, the Greek, God himself with his span of four horse chariot, surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, and at each corner, the female form representing one of the seasons. Finally, now across this, one came to this mosaic on the floor, where we see a sanctuary within which is the Torah, the very word of God. It is lined by two lines on top, with a triangle, with a lamp hanging within, and a bird at even time. side and above the back of the lion at our right we see a little tree with a bird perched on the top various implements of the Hebrew talto around the bouch. Now this is suggested that these three panels, these three floor mosaics represent the status of mystic illumination that were known to the Hellenistic as well as to the oriental pagans. First in the sacrifice of Isaac is the mystery of self offering the stripping away of self. Next in the passage of the cosmos is the assumption or ascension of the spirit going beyond the heavens and finally the ultimate sign of the ineffable gods word itself is in the center. And so we are led to read finally a hymn from the Dead Sea Scrolls in which the ultimate sentiment is expressed. O Lord, there is no one but thyself to oppose thy counsel to understand all thy holy purpose to gaze into the depths of the bi mysteries or to comprehend all thy marvels who is able to bear thy glory and what them it be, the son of man among thy marvelous works. The ninth chapter of Massmen and Green will be repeated this Sunday evening at 7 o'clock. Be sure to join us next Thursday at 8 when Professor Campbell will present the background for the rise of Islam born in the 7th century AD from the simple utterances of its prophet Bob. In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful, praise me to God the cherishing, sustainer of the worlds, most gracious and most merciful master of the day of judgment. Thee can we worship thy need, do we seek? Show us the way that is straight, the way of those on whom thou hast bestowed thy grace, whose portion is not brass and who go not astray. We hold, fill up that the angel, I will create a vice-meantant on earth. They said, "When you place there one who will make this chiff and shed blood while we are celebrating your praises and glorifying your name," he said, "I know what you do not know." He taught Adam the names of all things, and behold, he said to the angels, "Bow down to Adam." They bowed, "Well, except if this Satan, he was used, he was haughty, he was one of those who reject the faith." God said, "Oh, Adam, dwell both you and your wife in the garden, eat of its bounty as you will, but do not approach this tree, lest you approach darkness and transgression. Satan, however may them fall and cause that banishment from that place in which they were." Now, obviously, this book from which I am reading the Quran is continuing the tradition of these oral-astrian, Jewish, Christian faith. It accepts the prophets, it accepts the legends of the patriarchs, it accepts Jesus as a prophet, not, however, as the son of God. The prophet of the prophet, the prophet of the prophet, was a basic idea of the Quranic legend that the Arabs are related to the Israelites, that they also are descended from Abraham, they are descended from his elder son, Ishmael, when he abandoned in the desert, together with his mother Hadar, when Isaac had been gone. It is also possible that some modern scholars have declared that the Hebrew word "Sold the Law" in Yabeh is actually derived from an Arabic root meaning to grow, suggesting the wind of a stone dark. Now, we have already seen the history of the semites of which the Arabs and Hebrews are the latest representatives, the lenses about 2500 BC with the arrival of the Semitic invaders, so we have discussed already a number of times. First we mentioned Sardin, about 2350 BC, Sardin the Great Sardin the First, and Arabic about 1700 BC. Then, there follows a period of tremendous, early, early and back and forth of invasions in the Middle East. Terminating as far as the Semitic world is concerned with the arrival of the Persians about the day 500 BC. Now, the period before this, for many thousands of years, had been the period of the development of agriculture and higher civilizations in the Middle East. The period first of the Sumerian city-states, commencing about 3500 BC, and before that, for some four or 5,000 years, the great period of the male-lithic villages, from which the art of agriculture and animal hungry were dispersed in the world. Now, as we have seen the chief stability of this period, the period of the male-lithic and the Sumerian city-states, was distinguished by the religion which the goddess was the dominant figure. The goddess, in one or another of her numerous manifestations, as we have seen, for instance, in these figures from the village of Acidara in Anatolia. And again, a late period, continuing even almost because we have figures of this debility in one or another of her forms, for example, this little figure of the Serian goddess from the day around 1400 BC, the period of the arrival or consummate that period of the Hebrews in the near east, in the settled near east from the desert. And the deity, the serpent's deity, who was represented in whom we see many times in this cup of king Vardaya, a reddash, was the difficult and principle, consort image of this goddess and her time. And finally, we have this figure of the lion bird and the great moon bow representing the cycle of the death and resurrection of eternal and every current life. There are the patriarchal period of the semites, on the other hand, the goddess was disbaraged and the chief community was the god, not disbaraged by the earth. The figure of the god, Smei Challat, is the principal representative of this Dinaar system of figurations in the New Year's Eve, through the weeks here. The patriarchal methodologies dissociate the god from the world. They meet the world disenchanted, so to say. The goddess is disbaraged and her children rejected. Man is commanded to obey the laws of the male duranity, my group, in this case. Each of the civic tribes had its own duminities. There is a very interesting thunder and storm god from Rath Shambha in Fanisha. And next, we will see a god, the god of the storm on his will of another of the tribes, the Amarites. And finally, let us look at Asur, the deity of the great Asurian empire. is about the tree, the tree at the center of the house. the dream of knowledge and immortality depicted, writing the word in the sun disc with ways. Now there was an important document known as the vaubite stone dated from the 9th century BC composed by the King Meshah who was mentioned in the Bible in the 2nd King's second book of Kings chapter 3 verse 4. Here we meet on this stone. I am Meshah King of Maura. My God has begun Chimosh, all reeking of Israel humbled Maura many years for the God Chimosh was angry at his people and all reason a hub King of Israel did likewise. But I have now triumphed over him in his house and Israel has perished forever. Chimosh said to me, "Go take new bow from Israel so I went by night and fought against that city for the break of dawn till noon taking it and slaying over the end, 7,000 men, boys, women, girls and made servants, frightened devoted them to destruction for the God Chimosh. We have a similar picture in the book of Joshua 621 at the 4th Jericho. The English took the city we read then they utterly destroyed all in the city both man and woman, young and old oxen sheep and asses with the edge of the sword. This apparent was an almost emitting practice until a period of teacup, ponies of a thread who we saw a few weeks ago. And as I pointed out it was he who invented the idea of transphers that of exterminating populations. This practice was continued for the next 200 years until in the end the home near East had been absolutely devastated and it was not a single people left moving to the soil. So this period on from about the time 500 BC to the nations that arose when I wonder so they were rather powerfully related. The nations that were rather set are churches than vertical, so are rooted peoples. And this great world now is the world in which Judaism was developed, in which Christianity developed and of which the final great development was that of Islam. It's thousands of the periods of Christian and Alexandria rule of the world and rule then of Christian and later pre-New rule and finally the breakthrough of Islam. In this world which Spanel was the first really to identify as a unit, the chief symbol is the doll. As we see here inside the Sophia which was originally a cathedral built in what then was called Constantinople and it was said when Islam concerted not going to a mosque and is now drained back into a museum. In contrast to the classical style of the Parthenon for example which stresses the exterior with these beautiful columns and of which the interior is almost of no particular beauty whatsoever, the dome, the mosque, these great manifestations of this bird under the rock, stressed big inner space, the bounded space and time of the interior where light and darkness wouldn't even play as a duality. There was a magical radiant light atmosphere about this world of enchantment and disenchantment, supernatural treasures to be gained, open sesame, keen words, and terrible dunes. The second manifestation of this Levantine spirit appears already in late Roman portraits where the eyes are poured into the portraits of the emperors. Here is Nerva 96 to 98 AD and we see the eyes are perfectly played. There is no indication of the truth of how other century later in the image of Taladus, 180 to 192, we do see the pupils. As Spaniel points out, these pupils in the eyes of Roman efforts are related to those of the later Rune Tine, those eggs and in a cockpit figure of a young boy from Egypt exactly the date of the rest of the comoders that we have just seen, means magien, all of Antine eyes began to appear and finally we behold them in the image of the Byzantine Christ. These eyes represent the spirit as opposed to the soul, these personal spirit as opposed to the individual soul which is the stress of the Levantine concern. A third motif in these Levantine worlds is the idea of God as a Levantine despot and the despot himself as the image of God is our figure of King Darius who is actually behind him. The idosis is the second who is called the image of God on earth by no less a person than St. Cyril of Alexandria. He was the king as God is who is worthy as law. A king with a special community enjoying his special revelation, the community, the consensus, the body to which the various members are all as members of the church is the emphasis in these cults. One speaks rather of national individuality than of individuals proper. Now to say a word about the Christian faith, the early Christian faith of this development, let me just briefly suggest the main theme of Paul's Christianity as I see in this context. First place I was a Roman citizen but I heep grew in his training and belief and there is some kind of tension to be recognized in his character, received that Bimri Bar resolved for him in his great vision, his great image of the Christian mythos Christ as so to say a unique singular figure. This was a period of the great mystery cults. The idea of the fall and the dawn of Eden of the tree, the tree of the fall was matched in post thinking by the idea of the cross as the tree of salvation, the tree of immortal life. And we have the fall of men and then the gradual preparation for the salvation in the history of the chosen people, the Hebrews and finally the restoration of men to God's grace and goodwill through the entombment of the cross. This is our theme of this and resurrection which is matched in the Alexandria period by the mythology of Adamus, who is a resurrection takes place besides the date of the resurrection of East Step and it is the theme also in another transformation of the Hebrews into Egypt and out again with the passage of the Red Sea. Now the synthesis of great and Christian ideas can be noted throughout Christian thought. Already in the early imagery the Dionysos, the god of red and wine has given his imagery to the Christian mass where God Jesus is incarnate in the bread and wine as Dionysos. The image of the good shepherd here is a great image of the shepherd is carried on in the Christian figures of Jesus as the good shepherd between our three. And finally there is an astonishing figure of obvious crucified from the second century AD which may have been influenced by the Christian idea of the crucifixion but on the other hand the influences may have spread the other way. Here look at this little plaque we see the moon, the moon which is three days dark about the cross and believe it is written, obvious, of back-offs, the sacrifice. The problem of this incarnation, the God who is also man and sacrificed was the chief concern of the early councils of the church and the complications of the Christian theology which were argued out in the various councils finally stretched the tensions of the Christian community to such a point that it split apart. We have the Egyptian church breaking the ray in the historians, Rome and Byzantium in conflict and at this point the very support new notion of theology appeared in the word the cry. of the Prophet Muhammad, there is no God but God. The images in Islam are forbidden. Visual art is reduced therefore to the level of the arabesque, rhythmical, non-objective design, or as we would say today, action painting. The arabesque and the mosque supply the aesthetic environment of Islam. And in the absolutely impersonal tedium of this chased environment, who producing as far as possibly inorganic, so limitedly of the desert, the printable symbolic form is the community of Islam itself at prayer, at prayer by the times of day in complete nourishment. The whole community has one body, all facing from the matter, but trying to encompass the cult center of Mecca as the home of a single, which is the world of spiritual life. No more also manifestation of the idea of a consensus, a national individuality, to be desired than the presence in the world of these millions bowing daily as one. The social worlds of Islam, white-dose of the Old Testament, as opposed to had been derived from God, hence socio-political action and religious action are the same. The social worlds were developed from certain basic statements in the Qur'an, and the Qur'an itself was put together from the inspired references of Muhammad. Let me just say a word now about Muhammad and the development of the community of the astonishing prophet. He was born in Mecca here of the Red Sea, a segment place for the Arabs, and at the same time a prosperous cowland center and trading center. Muhammad used to go to a church some three miles away from Mecca to meditate and pray, and in the year or about the year, 570, when he was about 40 years old, that came to him a great vision and a voice that said, "Proclaim, speak forth," and he began then the preaching of these ordered which came to him in trances. A truerity thought around him which was horrible with somewhat fanatical and the antagonism of the Mecca community developed so that finally, Muhammad had to flee to Medina to gain new position and strengthen this flight to place in the year 622, the year of the Hijara which is regarded as the beginning of Muslim chronology. So the dinner he could control the java and the rooms to Mecca, and so brought the power of his enemies there and returned in victory at a 630 A.B. Finally, himself, 96032, they followed them the problem of the succession. Al-Dubakar, Ola, Othman and Al-Ali, three of these men were murdered and as a result, there was considerable confusion as to the proper succession of the caliphate. Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet, was regarded by one very important said that she was the true successor and these had been jetted the official caliphate of Islam. There is a mysticism, ordered to be invisible to the true caliph of Islam which rejects the Orthodox thinking the shea was terribly persecuted and the personal roles as the probable suffering. Having rejected Islam, they rejected the service of the state of the world and they spoke of suffering as the religious misery, the true shea's ascetic heaven. The second new plundered mystic movement in Islam is that of the Sufist, directly influenced by India and the Christians. Here is a little picture of Sufimistic's in advance going into ecstasy and seeking the union with God. Their great prophet, their greatest exemplar was Al-Kalaj, who in 109.22 AD was crucified as Christ was, for having made the same statement Christ had made. "I am God," he had said, "I am the real." And for in crucifixion itself was the process by which they loved her and the beloved rejoined. He gave the image of the law which loves the flame and its combination of law comes in extinction in the flame. The passionate mysticism of the Sufis gives the background to the whole poetry of Islam for example in the root of a remark tiam where the mysticism of wine is throughout. The cup is the body, the soul is wine, he wrote, "Drift wine to his life eternal and the world itself is seen in a manner now of the Indian mystic tradition as the very body and person of God." New landscapes, these Persian landscapes are the landscapes of the soul and the gardens which the persons are famous are mystical gardens each flower as it were and angel. One of the most interesting facts to be discovered to a comparative study of the myths and literature of the world is that the mystical traditions all come together. It is the various brought-up traditions that all men apart. Seek not the karma, great, or more rather seek the heart. So as when beat in the Quran the true of hell will finish the form of the simple like fire it will burn in their insides but as in the righteous they shall be in a place of security among gardens, among springs. The Orthodox Muslim rejected the way of the mar and stressed the way of the Orthodox pilgrimage to the Kaaba. To God we bow in Islam we read in the Quran and if anyone desires a religion other than Islam in the heraphthen he will find himself in the ranks of those who are lost. There is no God but God, his chosen apostle, his nomad. Say in thy heart therefore I seek my refuge in the Lord, the oft-figilty, the most merciful, the most great. [Bell ringing] Tonight's chapter of Mass, Methan Brein will be repeated this Sunday evening at 7 o'clock. Be sure to join us next Thursday night at 8 when Professor Campbell will discuss the castle of the Grail. He'll describe the influences that brought European mythology to the stage of rock three in romance in medieval times. There are special massment and green reading lists now available for young people through high school age. You may obtain one of these lists and we're sending a self-adressed statin bloke to books, channel 13 to New York, 19 to New York. Don't forget your self-adressed statin bloke and please mention this program in your request. We invite you to stay tuned now for jazz casual and an exciting performance by Turk Murphy's San Francisco jazz band. You've just heard what I like to think of as television Campbell 1.0. To put this WNDT broadcast in the context of his life, in 1963, Professor Campbell had just finished volume three of his Mass of God series, Occidental Mythology, and would begin work on volume four, Creative Mythology, the following year. The depths of scholarship ensure breadth of knowledge that shape those first three volumes of the Mass of God series is clearly on display in these two broadcasts. In the Dead Sea Scrolls episode, Campbell gives a remarkably concise, yet detailed summary of the history of the Levant from the Paleolithic through its occupation by the Roman Empire. This sweeping command of material is made possible by his method of scholarship, comparativeism. Now, I've mentioned this before in an earlier season of Pathways, but it bears repeating. One of the more familiar criticisms of Joseph Campbell is that he is, quote unquote, "mirily a comparativist in his studies of myth." And that comparative lens is indeed at work in this lecture. The tractors are often tempted. to say that Campbell disregards the differences among individuals, groups, and cultures. It's true that comparative methodologies are frequently criticized by particularists, and in the modern humanities there's a strong preference for focusing on difference. But comparativeism, when properly conducted, doesn't look only for similarities between traditions, cultures, and peoples. To compare is to notice both likeness and distinction. Even if one's goal were simply to identify common features, one could only be confident in those findings when no differences remained unexamined. The truth is, comparatives don't deny difference. They deny the ultimate importance of difference. Comparative is seek the patterns that express what it means to be a human being. There is, for example, no human language without nouns, verbs, adjectives. And though the world's societies dance and sing in strikingly different ways, there are no cultures without music or dance. Finally, and Campbell is a model of this, the comparative method is always provisional. Its conclusions hold only until better observations or deeper insights replace them. Campbell's approach doesn't erase the uniqueness of any people or their myths. It stresses their shared structures and symbols, the qualities that reveal the deep kinship of humanity. Intracing these similarities of thought, image, and behavior, whether among the living or the long dead, Campbell finds and helps us find a way of feeling about life, a way of relating to life, that makes the living of it enormously more satisfying. In this lecture, Professor Campbell remarked that Alexander the Great was the model for Mithra. This is a little bit of a confusing statement since Mithraism long predated Alexander. But perhaps he was referring to the Roman cult of Mithra, which, indeed, seemed to incorporate or perhaps even conflate Alexander with Mithra. Alexander increasingly encouraged and cultivated divine honors during his lifetime, though attitudes toward his divinity varied between regions and cultures. His conduct, after as many victories, was often a masterclass in diplomacy. Take his conquest of Egypt, for example. At Memphis, the ancient Egyptian capital, Alexander was crowned Pharaoh. By submitting to this sacred ceremony and offering sacrifices to the local deities, he demonstrated profound respect for Egyptian religious tradition. Crucially, in the Egyptian system, the Pharaoh was not merely a ruler, who was considered a living god. Alexander, therefore, was instantly integrated into the divine order of Egyptian gods. He journeyed alone to the remote C.Y.O. Oasis in the Western Desert to seek out the famed Oracle of Amun, the Supreme Egyptian god. Though the details of Alexander's private meeting are unknown, the result was convenient, and it was publicly proclaimed. Alexander was the divine son of Amun. This declaration was brilliant because it worked on multiple cultural levels. For Greeks like Alexander, Amun was already equated with their own Supreme God Zeus. The fusion created by this new composite deity Zeus Amun, allowed Alexander to claim divine parentage and authority in both the Egyptian and Greek traditions simultaneously. Since early in his life, his mother planted the idea that Zeus was his father, and therefore, Alexander was also divine. The story, as Puthart tells it, claims it on their wedding night, Philip saw Olympus in bed with a large snake. Philip was understandably unnerved, and he learned later from the Delphiq Oracle that the snake was the god Zeus. Most historians, however, consider this myth to be an apocryphal story that emerged after Alexander's visit to the Oracle of Zeus Amun at the Siwa Oasis in 331 BC. The significance of Alexander's deification cannot be overstated. It was a potent tool for political legitimacy that transformed his brief rule into an enduring spiritual foundation. After Alexander's death, his body was taken to the new city of Alexandria, where his tomb became the central focus of a state-sponsored imperial cult, and a major pilgrimage site, even for later Roman emperors. The location of his tomb, however, has since been lost to the dark and backward abysm of time. Ultimately, Alexander's respectful approach to local traditions and religions, especially in Egypt, which are embodied by his deification, allowed for a successful cultural assimilation. Honoring the local mythos didn't just help him conquer most of the known world. It helped to lay the groundwork for what would become the Hellenistic Age, a period defined by the successful blending of Greek and Eastern cultures. In a similar vein, it's speculated that during Alexander's ongoing conquest, he and his army encountered mythraism in Persia, and because there were features of Mithra that were fitting for Brotherhood-based army religion and the vision of a common culture between West and East, it's probable that Alexander, in his habitually syncretic way, adopted Mithra as a Hellenistic God. Perhaps his later association with Mithra is what Professor Campbell meant by the comment that Alexander was a model for Mithra. Now, let's take a little closer look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts discovered between 1947 and 1956 in caves near Kumran, which is east of Jerusalem in the territory of the West Bank, on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. Archaeological excavations have revealed the ruins of buildings probably occupied by a community of Essenes who are thought to have been the owners of the scrolls. Oftentimes, in his lectures, Professor Campbell leaves a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow, and his remarks in this lecture about the Maccabeean Revolt and the Essenes are one such instance. So let's pick up a few of those crumbs. What's known as the Maccabeean Revolt began not as a grand campaign, but as a moment of personal defiance. In 167 BCE, a Jewish priest named Matatias from the small village of Modine refused to comply when a Greek official arrived to enforce pagan worship. When another Jew stepped forward to obey the command, Matatias struck him down, along with the salucid officer. That act, part outrage and part declaration ignited the uprising. Matatias and his sons fled into the hills, drawing his followers to their cause and waging a kind of holy guerrilla war against both the Greek salucid empire and those Jews who had become too comfortable with Greek rule. When Matatias died a year later, his son Judas nicknamed Maccabeeus, which means the hammer, took command. Judas was a formidable strategist using surprise mobility and moral conviction as his weapons. Against the far larger and better equipped salucid army, he won a series of improbable victories reclaiming Jerusalem in 164 BC. Once there, he purified and rededicated the second temple and event still remembered in the festival of Hanukkah. For a time, the Maccabeean managed to restore a fragile Jewish independence, but even this triumph contained the seeds of division. The revolt had fused the roles of King and High Priest, uniting political and religious power in a single hereditary line. A move that for some seemed dangerously corrupting. The Essenes, who at first supported the revolt, eventually turned away from it. Around 150 BCE, the Essenes came to see the Jerusalem temple and its priesthood as polluted illegitimate, no longer a vessel worthy of divine service. So they turned their backs on the city and withdrew into the desert. In places like Cumuron, they formed small, disciplined communities seeking holiness not through power or politics, but through separation and study. Copying and creating sacred scrolls became a central act of devotion, the kind of contemplative labor where writing itself was prayer. Now the Essians were an apocalyptic people. They believed the world stood on the brink of a great final conflict between the sons of light, which was themselves, of course, and the sons of darkness, which included not only their Roman oppressors, but also the corrupt priesthood in Jerusalem. Some of the scrolls they left behind like the war scroll read almost like spiritual battle plans describing in meticulous detail the coming struggle that would bring history to its destined close. When the Roman army advanced through Judea in 68 CE, the community at Kumran hid their scrolls in the caves above the settlement, perhaps knowing they wouldn't survive the war, but trusting that their words might survive. In that single act of concealment, they reached across 2000 years to us. Their foresight, born out of desperation, perhaps, ensured that those fragile remnants of parchment would one day be read again. I want to also spend some time with Professor Campbell's episode called No God But God. The title, of course, comes from the Shahada, the Muslim Declaration of Faith. There is no God but God. It's a simple phrase, but it expresses what Islam calls the 'taweed', the absolute oneness, unity, and uniqueness of the divine. It's not a description of God per se, but rather it's an insistence that there is nothing but God, nothing that stands outside the reality of God. Around the time of the birth of Muhammad in the late 6th century, Judaism and Christianity had been locked in an acrimonious, murderous clash in the region of the Arabian Peninsula. By this time, the Temple in Jerusalem had long been destroyed, and even when Rome became Christianized, Temple Mount was still neglected and had by this time fallen into virtual ruin. The only thing it seems these two religions could agree on was their mutual contempt for the traditional pagan cults of Arabia, one of which hosted one of the Middle East's largest centers of pilgrimage. The goal of pilgrimage was to behold a sacred black stone believed to have been fallen from heaven contained in a shrine called Akhaba in Mecca. A prominent 5th century local family vigorously promoted the shrine and set it on the road to fame and prosperity. And perhaps not surprisingly, from that same family line a century later around 570 came Muhammad. What fascinates me about history and about life itself are its small, almost whimsically random turns of fate. One person falls in another rises, one empire collapses, and another quietly gathers strength in its absence. In the middle of the 6th century, a Christian general named Abraha established a powerful Mayaphysite Christian state in southern Arabia. Mayaphysite Christianity holds that Jesus Christ is the incarnate word, literally the logos, and possesses a single united nature that is simultaneously both fully divine and fully human. Now, I know, this is church doctrine. Now, present church doctrine holds that Jesus Christ has two complete and distinct natures, one fully divine and one fully human, united in a single divine individual. You're with me so far. Myaphysites say that Jesus possessed a single united nature that simultaneously both fully divine and fully human. Present church doctrine says, Christ has two complete and distinct natures, one divine and one human, united in a single divine individual. Now, modern Christianity as a whole can't seem to decide whether the Mayaphysite explanation is heresy or simply an ecumenical misunderstanding or debate as to what the Greek word "physis" or an English nature means. Now, regardless, Abraha's vision might have become the future of the Arabian Peninsula, where it not for an appalling engineering disaster. The Marib Dam, a marvel of ancient construction, which single-handedly made the entire region incredibly prosperous, suffered a cataclysmic failure so profoundly traumatic to the region that it's even mentioned in the Quran as a punishment levied upon the people of Saba for turning away from God in their ungratefulness. Even today, its ruins are so impressive that it's been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The complex, wealthy society that had depended on the dam was ruined forever, and with the ruined dam, much of the credibility of Christianity and Arabia collapsed as well. Within a century of Muhammad's death, Islam had transformed the world. Jerusalem fell to the Muslim forces in 638 after a long siege, and Caliph Umar marked the victory by building a mosque atop the ruins of the old Jewish temple. In 678, Emperor Constantine IV, not Constantine the Great, but a later namesake, repelled Arab forces at Constantinople. The Muslim armies turned south and westward instead, sweeping across North Africa and up into Spain. And only were finally halted in central France in 732. Now those two victories at Constantinople and France preserved the Christian Europe, but caused its Christian center to shift decisively westward. Meanwhile, to the east, an Islamic victory over Chinese forces in what is now Kyrgyzstan opened central Asia to Islam, and effectively drove a stake into the heart of the old Eastern Christian world. You know, as I tell this story, I'm reminded that every new mythology, like Islam in the 6th century, emerges from that deep junction where catastrophe meets the aching longing for renewal, where the world as it had once been, perforce surrenders to the world it must become. It's a difficult space, you know, that junction, that liminality. I think we may well be in such a liminal space right now at this moment in history. It's hard to bear. We feel the shearing force of the past pulling us back while the future drags us forward. An Italian in the first half of the 20th century by the name of Antonio Gromschi described it best, I think, when he wrote in one of his prison notebooks, "The old world is dying. A new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters." But because myth, like nature it seems, hates a vacuum, it's also the time in which new myths form. When the mythoplatic imagination heroically slays the monsters and becomes the reconciling force between the dying world and the one still struggling to be born. Thank you once again for listening to yet another episode of Pathways with Joseph Campbell. Please join me next month and we'll have another brand new episode for you. I really can't adequately describe how grateful I am you've chosen to listen with us. Please make some time to visit jcf.org, check out our other offerings available on the MythMaker podcast network, and while you're there, don't forget to sign up for the weekly Myth Blast newsletter at jcf.org/subscribe, in which we're celebrating the power of myth at the movies all year long. If you're interested in learning more about my own work, please visit Bradley Olsonphd.com and discover what's mything in your life. As always, please join me right here next month for another brand new episode of Pathways with Joseph Campbell. Pathways with Joseph Campbell is a production of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the MythMaker podcast network. It is produced by Tyler Lapkin, executive producer John Booker. Your host has been Bradley Olson, editing and audio services provided by Tristan Bach. All music exclusively provided by APM Music. For more podcasts and information about Joseph Campbell, please visit jcf.org.