Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (The Wiles Lectures) by E. R. Dodds (PDF)

Description

Drawing on the abundant material available for the study of religious experience in late antiquity, Professor Dodds examines the personal religious attitudes and experiences common to pagans and Christians in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine. World-hatred and asceticism, dreams and states of possession, and pagan and Christian mysticism are all discussed. Finally, Dodds considers both pagan views of Christianity and Christian views of paganism as they emerge in the literature of the time. Although primarily written for social and religious historians, this study will also appeal to all those interested in the ancient world and its thought.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “The outstanding characteristics of [Dodds’] work…are a rather rare union of detachment and sympathy, a combination of precise scholarship and a degree of acquaintance with contemporary psychological theories unusual in a classical scholar, and last, but not least, an ability to write very well.” The Times Literary Supplement Book Description Dodds examines the personal religious attitudes and experiences common to pagans and Christians in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The practical psychological implications of belief in paradise in the afterlife presented in this book now color all my understanding of life and western culture. This short book presents a simple idea that is essential for any heir to christian thought who wishes to understand themselves.

⭐Excellent book. A masterpiece.

⭐This is a series of old lectures on the pagan-Christian transition. The philosophy that it looks at concerns the split between the real world and the platonic ideal, which was expressed by early Christians as the Earthly realm v. heavenly. This is fine as far as it goes, in particular because Christians impressed secular pagans with their willingness to die for an ideal world for which there was no rational proof, but I do not see this political “resolution” of a philosophical question as the principal reason for the transformation of the empire into a Christian state.Dodds barely mentions that this was taking place between the Empire’s golden age (marked as ending with Marcus Aurelius) and the conversion of Constantine, or the birth of a Christian autocratic empire. So yes, there was an existential crisis, but how this linked to said transformation is explored only in philosophy. There is a brief summary of the other reasons (its exclusiveness yet willingness to admit anyone, the dangers that devalued human life at the time, the birth of a new community spirit) but it is badly incomplete. For example, Constantine’s conversion can also be seen as a way to consolidate power, as God vested authority in him; this crisis was particularly acute at the time with the collapse of Diocletian’s tetrarchy as a way to govern by sharing power.I recommend this to those with a philosophical bent, however incomplete I find its analysis.

⭐This book covers religious thought in the Mediterranean world over the roughly 150 years from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine. Dodds has little to say about what peasants believed because this study is based on written works. But rather than describing what was said about particular ideas and doctrines, Dodds describes the religious outlook of the educated. “These are lectures on religious experience in the Jamesian sense”, quoting James’s definition of religion as “the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”The book has a huge number of citations from original texts and from a handful of high quality studies by Daniélou, Festugière, and Nilsson, among others. This book will be useful for those researching the history of philosophy, the history of Mediterranean pagan religions, and the history of Christianity. A huge amount of knowledge is required of an author to write with authority about so many thinkers (such as the satirical celestial voyage in Lucian’s Icaromenippus, the dream books of Aelius Aristides, and the biblical scholarship of Porphyry) and we are lucky that this book exists; it is neither a shallow survey for an undergraduate reader nor a disciplinary monograph that only a professional scholar would bother to read.

⭐This is a series of lectures (4) comparing various aspects of Christian Pagan spirituality. Though it has the quality of a lecture it is very well footnoted and annotated; there are gems and wry comments sprinkled throughout. The method of comparison is one of textual literary analysis, something that might seem a little old-fashioned especially when one considers how little of the writings of Late Antiquity has come down to us. (Ie, you can’t make generalizations on general religious behavior with such scanty evidence.) Get it for its fluent discussion of various Christian and Pagan sects and their sometimes silliness. BTW, the author is an admitted agnostic and is not above an irreverent comment or two on religion.

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