My reservations have rather neatly been summed up (by far greater theologians than I!) as the difference between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus. The former is to do with living out the kingdom of God here and now, potentially transforming society; the latter, as promulgated by Paul et al, has to do with individual salvation. I recommend the easy to read yet stunning writings of Marcus Borg (The Heart of Christianity) and Kurt Struckmeyer (A Conspiracy of Love) on this theme, and also Rob Bell's book 'What is the Bible?' Genius. I also very much appreciate the nice distinction Struckmeyer in particular makes between belief and faith: that belief has to do with accepting certain doctrines, theologies, and so on, while faith is, more simply, allowing one's self to trust.
Jesus of Nazareth was, of course, Jewish, and his literally awe-some innovative and universally-applicable teaching and life-style are linked to his historical context: Judaism and Judea in the 1st century CE. All faiths derive to at least some extent from their historical context, and reflecting on that fact has led me to become interested in pre-Christian beliefs and practices in Britain: Christianity is a very recent overlay to the previous thousands of years of human life in the British Isles.
There are various suggestions as to how Christianity first arrived in Britain. Medieval legends told of the conversion of the island/s after missions by the apostle Philip and/or by Joseph of Arimathea, or under the legendary 2nd century CE King Lucius. Alternatively, it is said to have been introduced under the Emperor Tiberius in 37 CE. Certainly by the sub-Roman period (between 235 and 400 CE) the Romano-British population is said to have been mostly Christian, although it was perhaps not formally established until after the mission of Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory, in around 600 CE.
But however and whenever the conversion to Christianity occurred, the question remains: what were the indigenous people being converted from? So, despite a life-time of being very much a non-historian, I have spent a few rainy days delving online into British history and have found it surprisingly fascinating! I may have got some of the following information muddled up - in which case, forgive me, and send me a comment to put me right!
Amazingly - to me at least - it seems that Homo antecessor was present in Britain around 898,000 BCE. Wow. How do we know that? Because his/her footprints were found at Happisburgh, Norfolk, along with stone tools. Other flint tools and bones dating from around 800,000 BCE were found at Pakefield, Suffolk. Here is that very footprint!
Fossils of other early (pre-Stone Age) hominins dating to around 380,000 BCE were found in Kent, and teeth and part of a jaw-bone dating to around 228,000 BCE were found near St. Asaph in North Wales - the most north-western site of early hominins in Eurasia - but due to the extreme cold, including glacial and inter-glacial episodes (between 168,000 BCE and 58,000 BCE) Britain was only intermittently occupied by humans.
Some of those early humans were Pithecanthropus (Java Man), also known as Homo erectus. These hunters were here during the Lower Paleolithic Age (68,000-48,000 BCE), and they may have looked something like this:
Evidence has been found of the use of fire and of tool making by hominins during the Lower Stone Age; in Britain the 'Levalloisian' technique of stone flaking has been identified from tools and waste chippings found in Middlesex and Kent - although it is said that these may have been carried there from elsewhere by flood waters or ancient courses of the Thames and its tributaries.
At this time there was still a land mass ('Doggerland') connecting Britain with continental Europe. This 'bridge' was not lost until around 6,500-6,200 BCE when it was flooded by rising sea levels, and, perhaps, following the tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide, a massive underwater landslide off the west coast of Norway.
During the Middle Paleolithic period (48,000-38,000 BCE) if not earlier, the next evolution of human beings, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, were migrating out of Africa, travelling into Eurasia through Israel, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey, and replacing the earlier pre-existent species such as Homo erectus - although Neanderthals themselves were still hunters. We also know that the Neanderthal people deliberately buried their dead - and, as far as I 'm aware, this is the first evidence of non-essential/non-survival activity (albeit not in Britain) and a significant indicator of their psychology.
At La Ferrassie, a rock shelter in the Dordogne valley in France, eight very well preserved Neanderthal skeletons (two adults and six children) were found in burial pits 40 cm deep. One of the adults had reached the advanced age of 40-55 years, despite evidence of systemic infection and osteoarthritis. To reach such an age, he must have been cared for by other people, despite his being unable to 'work'. Two of the children were approximately 2 and 3 years old; one skeleton was of an infant estimated to be 12 days old.
Ten Neanderthal skeletons were found at Shanidar Cave in Kurdistan. Shanidar 1 was aged between 40 and 50 years, and displayed signs of injury and deformity, all occuring long before his death, including a blow to the head likely to have caused partial or total blindness in one eye, and blocked ear canals, causing deafness. He also had a withered right arm, which had been fractured and had healed in several places, and had lost his right hand.
Shanidar 2, another adult male, is thought to have died in a rock fall inside the cave. However, there are signs of a ritual of some sort: a pile of stones, including worked stone points, on top of his grave, and evidence of a large fire by the burial site.
Shanidar 3 was another older male (40-50 years) with a wound to his left 9th rib: he may have died from complications from a stab wound, although bone growth indicates that he lived for at least several weeks after injury, with the object still embedded. He also suffered from a degenerative joint disorder in his foot, most likely due to a fracture or sprain, resulting in painful, limited movement.
Shanidar 4, an adult male of 30-45 years, was on his left side, in a partial foetal position. Soil samples revealed pollen around his body, indicating that flowers or flowering plants had been part of the burial procedure. The pollen was from yarrow, cornflowers, bachelor's buttons, thistles, ragwort or groundsel, hollyhock, and grape hyacinth - all known to have curative properties, which may indicate that he was some sort of medicine man/shaman. (It has been somewhat prosaically suggested that the flowers/seeds/pollen were introduced to the site by burrowing rodents, but that doesn't sit right with me.)
At La Chapelle-aux-Saintes (in central France), an adult male was buried in a 30cm deep rectangular pit (1.45m x 1m), his body being laid in what has been described as a 'sleeping position'. There were also stone tools and animals bones in the pit.
Intentional burials may have begun much earlier, but there is no doubt that during this period at least some burials were deliberate, and that funeral gifts were left at some. So, what I conclude from that is that around forty thousand years ago, people mattered to each other, enough to care for those who were sick, injured, disabled, old, or newly born. In addition, people were either valued enough to leave gifts in their graves to honour them, and/or there was a belief in an after-life, when the items left might be of use.
The third and last (Upper Paleolithic 48,000-10,000 BCE) period of the Old Stone Age is said to coincide with the replacement of the Neanderthals by Homo sapiens - anatomically modern humans. There is archaeological evidence that at least some people lived in settlements, had hearths, grew plants, fished using boats and harpoons, and hunted using bows and arrows as well as advanced stone and other tools, made of bone, horn, and ivory. They also used pigments such as ochre (which may indicate trade links) and ivory and stone 'jewellery' for personal ornamentation, and they painted pictures, often on the walls of caves, sometimes in remote locations (see below for those at Creswell Crags, Derby/Notts.). Their dead were sometimes buried in such painted caves, sometimes after excarnation - the removal of flesh from the body, indicated by cut marks on the remaining buried bones, which does not necessarily indicate cannibalism.
Many of the cave paintings that have been found are of the larger mammals that were hunted, but during the following Mesolithic period (10,000-4,000 BCE) there was a rise of the hunter-gatherer way of life, as humans returned to Britain (via Doggerland) after the Ice Ages and spread as far as the north of Scotland. It was only from this time onwards (from around 9,700 BCE) that Britain has been continuously occupied by our ancestors.
By the time of the Neolithic period (4,000-2,500 BCE) Britain was an island, following the flooding of Doggerland, but migrants nonetheless began to arrive from central Europe, and the earliest known language to have been spoken in Britain belonged to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Farming was introduced to Britain (having come to continental Europe from the Middle East) and there was a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones. Agricultural communities grew up where the soils were most fertile and the area therefore most productive, such as Orkney, eastern Scotland, Yorkshire, Anglesey, around the Wash, Essex, the upper Thames, and Wessex.
Although the people lived in wooden houses, large megalithic chambered stone tombs were constructed across the British Isles, in the style of those also found across much of western Europe. (Below: Newgrange, Co. Meath.) These were the equivalent of our grave-yards, and contained many interments. It has been suggested that this indicates the veneration of ancestors - but I'm not convinced.
In the later Neolithic period, and continuing into the Bronze Age, stone circles were constructed. Why? What were they for? Neo-pagans of the 20th and 21st centuries have gathered for festivals at sites such as Stonehenge, but there is no known evidence of what their original purpose was, nor that of their nearby cursuses (earthwork enclosures). Suggestions have included their use as astronomical calendars, and as the focus for funerary and other ritual.
Stone circles continued to be constructed during the Bronze Age (2,500-800 BCE), such as those at Avebury, Silbury Hill, and Must Farm. The gene pool during this time was almost completely (90%) replaced by the Beaker People, who came to Britain from central Europe (although they may originally have been from the Iberian peninsula). These people were farmers, weavers, and archers, who wore stone wrist guards to protect their arms from the bowstring. They were also the first metal-smiths, who not only introduced the use of copper and then bronze to Britain but also a patriarchal system of society, the brewing of the first known alcoholic drink in Britain - a form of honey-based mead - and, of course, their eponymous style of pottery, found in their round barrow graves.
They were into round things - beakers, graves, houses, stone circles, and tombs. And in those tombs both men and women were buried with their head to the south, men facing east, women facing west, in individual graves full of grave goods such as pottery jars, gold buckles, bronze daggers, cups, necklaces, and sceptres. Again, does this indicate the worth of the dead person, or the belief that they would need such goods in an after-life? And why were they facing different directions?
Following the Beaker People came the Celts who characterised the Iron Age (800 BCE-100 CE), when the main language spoken was Common Brittonic/Brythonic - a form of Insular Celtic, from which Welsh, Cumbric, Breton, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic, and Pictish were derived, all similar to the Goidelic/Gaelic and Gaulish languages of neighbouring Ireland and Gaul. Settlements now became more permanent, extensive field systems were developed, animal husbandry became more important, long ditches were dug to mark borders, and defensive structures, such as brochs, round houses, and hill forts, were built. Traders from the Mediterranean and from across the North Sea brought new goods and weapons, and Britain exported grain, cattle, gold, silver, iron, hides, slaves, and hunting dogs.
Up to this time, there being no written records of religious beliefs or practices, it has only been possible to speculate and/or, at best, extrapolate theories based on archaeological discoveries - none of which are of images/statues of deities nor of special buildings for worship. The same remains true of the early Iron Age. Suggestions have been made that human sacrifice occurred, citing, for example, the evidence of Lindow Man:
This young man, who may have been of high rank, since there is no indication of heavy work, sometime between 2 BCE and 119 CE, ate a last meal of charred bread (toast?!), was strangled, hit on the head, had his throat cut, and was left lying face down in a peat bog. Worsley Man was also found in a peat bog. He died some time around 120 CE. His head bore a wound beind his right ear, fractures to the top of the skull, the remains of a garotte round his neck, and he had been decapitated. This has been taken to indicate, if not a' cult of the severed head', at least the possibility of a belief that the human soul was contained within the head - worthy, therefore, of capture; and the 'historian' Diodorus (90-30 BCE) recorded that the Britons preserved the heads of their most high-ranking people in cedar oil. Possibly even more bizarre was the discovery in Wiltshire of the body of a woman without her feet. Why? Some say it was to prevent her rising from the dead. Where did that come from?? Odder yet, the bones of at least two sheep or goats were found on her head, prompting one archaeologist (Peter Cox) to suggest that this may have been to protect her soul from bad spirits. Again, why? Or should that be, How?
Enter the Romans - first of all in 55 BCE and then back to stay from 43 CE - and with them, for the first time, written records... albeit very much reflecting their own world view and their own motives in the manner of their accounts - pretty much to diss the natives! So, from them we learn of Celtic festivals, marking the progress of the year, measured in lunar months; of the sacred groves and shrines (on which many Roman temples were subsequently built); and of their 'priests' - the Druids. The term/title 'Druid' possibly means a sorceror, although it is also interpreted as 'oak-seer' and is associated with the wren. Druids were portrayed by the Romans as a religious and learned elite with considerable holy and secular powers, who formed a link between the super-natural Other-world and the natural realm. Caesar said that they believed in reincarnation and the transmigration of the soul. One of their main centres in Britain was Anglesey, and Britain itself may have been the seat of the Druidic cult - but sadly no definitive archaeological evidence of Druidry survives.
The Romans also described a variety of deities worshipped by the Iron Age Celts of Britain and elsewhere in nothern Europe, and Tacitus noted a similarity between the religious/ritual practices of the pre-Roman British and the Gauls. The gods often related to the sky and to particular tribes, while the goddesses were most often associated with fertility, the earth, and water (such as springs and wells), and transcended tribal distinctions. Some deities were common across all Celtic peoples, such as the goddess Brigantia/Brigid, the dawn-bringer or 'bright one', and the god Lugus (aka Lugh/Lleu), whose name may mean the 'shining one', and who in fact was a triple deity or triad (mentioned by the Roman poet Lucan) comprising Teutates ('Protector'), Esus ('Lord), and Taranis ('Thunderer'). The 'Mother' (Matres/Matronae) was also represented as a triad of goddesses, for example, the Morrigan (Great Queen) consisted of Badb (the Crow), Macha (the 'Sun of Womanfolk'), and Nemain (Havoc, who is sometimes known as Anand - mother of the gods). The Mother/Morrigan was believed to be the sister of the land goddess, who was represented by the triad of Eriu/Eire/Erin, Banba, and Fodla.
Celtic religious practices included offerings and sacrifices, which indicate the concept that humanity was required to establish, maintain, and/or restore right relationships with the gods/goddesses. The offerings were possibly sometimes human, but more likely of animals, metalwork (weapons and jewellery), and war booty. Various places, including certain rocks, streams, rivers, mountains, and trees, some of which were themselves sacred, may have had shrines to the deity residing there or for the deity of the local inhabitants.
After the Roman conquest of Gaul and southern Britain, religious practices began to display elements of Romanisation, resulting in a syncretic Gallo-Romanic culture. The Romans equated the Celtic gods with their own, rather than referring to them by their native names. Julius Caesar believed the Celts to honour Mercury Visucius (the raven), Apollo, Lenus (the healer) Mars, Jupiter Poeninus, Dis Pater/Pluto, and Sulis Minerva. Non-Romanised deities included Suleiva ('she who governs well'), Rosmerta (goddess of fertility and abundance), Nodens (aka Nuada/Nudd, the Hunter), Cocidius (the Red One, god of war), Belatucadrus (the Fair Slayer), and Epona (goddess of horses, below).
Some gods and goddesses appear to have been literally coupled together: Nantosuelta (goddess of the earth, nature, fire, and fertility) and Sucellus (the hammer bearing 'Good Striker'), Sirona (the Healing Star) and Grannus (the Sun god), Borvo (the Bubbler - as in a bubbling spring) and Damona (the Divine Cow), and Loucetius (Lightning) and Nemetona (She of the Sacred Groves).
The many deities can be sub-divided according to certain characteristics:
- healing deities, such as Brigid, Airmed, Grannus, Belenus, and Borvo;
- solar deities, such as Lugh, Belenos, Grannus/Grian (the Winter Sun) and Aine (the Summer Sun);
- deities of sacred waters, such as Sulis, Damona, and Bormana;
- Mother goddesses, such as Don, Rhiannon (Great Queen), and Modron (Great Mother);
- gods of strength and eloquence, and/or with hammers such as Ogmios/Ogma, Sucellos, Silvanis, Dis Pater, and Dagda; and
- zoomorphic deities, such as the divine bull Tarvos Trigaranus (does this link in with Mithraism, a mystery religion popular among the Roman military?) and the ram-headed snake, who sometimes accompanies Cernunnos, the antlered Lord of the Animals.
By the 6th century CE, the Celtic region had effectively been Christianised... and here ends my whistle-stop trip through time! And if Time was a 24-hour clock, this, according to the evidence so far found, and my dubious maths, has happened so far:
Between midnight and 01.00, our ancestors left footprints in Norfolk and fragments of stone tools in Suffolk; between 10.00 and 11.00 people were living in Sussex; between 13.00 and 14.00, people were living (or at least, dying) in Kent and, between 17.00 and 18.00, had got as far as North Wales. Between 22.00 and 23.00, people were being buried in caves. From around 23.30 to 23.40, people were making cave paintings in South Wales, the Midlands, and the South West. From about 23.53 until about 23.56 people were being buried in chambered stone tombs, and building stone circles. From 23.57 to around 23.59, round barrow tombs were being used. And everything else, from Celtic paganism and the Roman invasion onwards, has happened in the last minute before midnight.
So, to summarise:
- There is evidence that, at least for the last 40,000 years, people have mattered to each other and have been cared for by each other, including those who are sick, injured, disabled, old, and newly born; and this care includes deliberate burial.
- The dead may have been honoured by the placing of grave goods.
- There may have been a belief in an after-life.
- There may have been a veneration of ancestors.
- By the Iron Age, there was a belief that people were constituted at least of a soul (whatever that means) as well as a body.
- Natural and man-made sites were used for rituals and for festivals, based on an astronomical calendar.
- The Iron Age Celts believed in a spirit world beyond or behind the tangible world, and worshipped a variety of gods and goddesses, many of whom personify aspects of Nature, and some of whom were either tribal, in couples, or triadic (each 'person' of the triad revealing a different aspect of the whole divine being).
- Offerings were made to the deities, indicating a belief in a relationship between humanity and divinity.
To
compare my understanding of pre-Christian Celtic paganism with my
understanding of Pauline Christianity: they share these things in
common -
- the belief in deity (sometimes represented by 'trinities') and in the need for right relationship both with the deity and between people;
- the belief that divine beings can be or must be appeased (for what?) - hence the concept of offering/sacrifice as atonement; and
- the belief both in life after death and that what happens in this life affects the after-life.
In
more general terms, I would sum up the essentials of Celtic/Iron Age
paganism as involving the following:
- a recognition of something other than the tangible/sensory world;
- a personification of both Nature (which we humans cannot entirely control) and certain archetypes (such as the Mother) as the deities; and
- a sense of the need to affect the deities (either by manipulation, and/or by establishing a close relationship) so that human life here and now, as well as in the possible here-after, is easier/more pleasant, this being achieved by 'religious' ritual and practice.
My
conclusion, not only regarding pre-Christian practices in Britain,
but also religious ritual and practice in general (which, please
note, does not include that tricky thing faith/trust itself) is that
it is essentially self-serving.
What do you think?
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