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The Introduction to the Celtic Iron Age was mythological, a fact symbolised in the Arthurian legend of the sword being extracted from the mother-stone. Blacksmiths of this period were seen to be wizards/shamans possessing special powers. The time of the Celts was a time of druidic rituals, sacrifice in forest retreats, learning by rote a number of verses, and fantasy-laden belief in an after-life (“otherworld”). An example of the latter is given in a tale from Celtic mythology relating to a hero who is approached by a strange beautiful girl singing about the “otherland” over the seas and far away. They both sail away and the hero returns after what seems to him to have been a short period only to find that he has been away for hundreds of years and all the people he knew were dead. This is a 8th century tale from Ireland and we find similar romantic tales 4 centuries later connected to Arthurs Knights of the Round Table. Encyclopedia Britannica on-line claims that the word “Druid” means “knowing the oak tree”. Caesar is reported to have claimed that the Druids neither paid taxes nor engaged in manual labour. They were priests without temples . Caesars Gallic wars began circa 58BC and succeeded in limiting the power of the Celts who had been waging war in southern Europe. There were two centres of Celtic Culture, one in the Alps and one in Southern Germany during the early Iron Age. Campbell refers to the scholar Professor Mircea Eliade:
” a fascinating study of the rites and myths of the Iron Age has shown that a leading idea of this mythology was of the stone as a mother rock and the iron, the iron weapon as her child brought forth by the obstetric art of the forge. Compare the saviour Mithra born from a rock with a sword in his hand.”(Pgae 292)
Mithra was originally, one of the more important gods from the Persian Pantheon , equated by some scholars to the Ancient Greek demiurge. Encyclopedia Britannica on-line links Mithra with the Platonism of the Timaeus:
“As in the Timaeus, the human soul came down from heaven. It crossed the seven spheres of the planets, taking on their vices (e.g. those of Mars and Venus) and was finally caught within the body. The task of human life is to liberate ones divine part (the soul) from the shackles of the body and to reascend through the seven spheres to the eternal unchanging realm of the fixed stars. This ascent to the sky was prefigured by Mithra himself when he left the earth in the chariot of the sun-god.” (www.britannica.com/topic/Mithraism/Mythology-and-Theology)
We dont find such talk of the disembodied soul in Aristotle or Kant, both of whom would have seriously questioned the supernaturalistic content in the above mythological account: a supernaturalism that was so dear to the superstitious Roman mind. Campbell argues, concerning the History of the Celtic Culture, that:
“The earliest locus of the culture was Bohemia and South Germany, but it spread in its final century as far as to Spain, Brittany, Scandinavia and the British Isles, to furnish a base upon which the subsequent Celtic flowering of the La Téne period then appeared, circa 550-15 BC.” (Page 293)
This was the period in which the Celts besieged Roman territories and entered Asia Minor. In the early 4th century BC, the Celts crossed the English Channel. Julius Caesar in his work “Gallic War” described the Celts as follows:
“There are two classes of persons of definite account and dignity. As for the common folk, they are treated almost as slaves, venturing nothing of themselves, never taken into counsel. The greater part of them, oppressed as they are by debt, by the heavy weight of tribute, or by the wrongs of the more powerful, commit themselves in slavery to the nobler, who have, in fact the same right over them as masters over slaves. Of the two classes above mentioned, one consists of Druids, the other of Knights. The former are concerned with divine worship, the due performances of sacrifices, public and private, and the interpretation of ritual questions: a great number of young men gather about them for the sake of instruction and hold them in great honour.”(Pages 293-4)
Part of the attraction of the young that joined the Druid movement was exemption from military service, taxes and other liabilities. The Celtic Knights believed in the” lex talionis” form of justice : If a life was taken by someone that person ought to lose their life. Almost all the information we have relating to Celtic Culture comes down to us courtesy of secondary sources (Cicero, Pliny, Siculus) because Celtic cultural objects have not been preserved. Campbells points to the literature comparing mystical Druidic thought with Hinduism.
This romantic fairy-tale Culture peristed right up to the founding of Rome as is evidenced by the legend of Romulus and Remus being nurtured by a Wolf. Romulus we know from the legend eventually slew Remus and the city founded becomes Rome rather than Reme. The Romans developed a number of local sacred divinities. The home and the hearth became sacred, being associated as they were with both Vesta and Janus(the god of the door-threshold). Otherwise the Romans embraced the Greek Pantheon of Gods. Romans, like Plato, believed that the character of the soul was determined by the metal related to it. They believed a Golden Age and a Golden Rome would follow the Bronze and Iron Ages and their associated races. Virgil in his writings prophesied the coming of a wonderful Golden Boy which would signify the return of the Golden Age (Campbell Page 323).
The Roman Spirit was, of course, essentially a military spirit requiring faithful devotion to the Republic in contrast the Oriental spirit of dissociation from all worldly things (Page 328). And yet there is a belief in the afterlife in Cicero’s claim that warriors will have:
” a special place prepared for them in the heavens, where they may enjoy an eternal life of happiness” (Di re publica, Loeb Classical Library, Cmbridge, 1928, 6.13)
Campbell points out, however, that the tone of the Roman combination of duty and detachment is very different to that of the Orient. The implication of this is that the warrior knows hmself to be a God and this sets the stage for the veneration of the Roman Emperor as a God.(Campbell, Page 330). A parallel doctrine to this, namely the divine right of Kings to rule, was, of course a Christian based dogma used by a number of rulers throughout English History. The dogma often referred to the authority of the Bible which contrasts itself to the above Roman dogma based on Roman Mythology. The divine right of kings was never as closely associated with warrior-heros. The palaces of British Kings were never temples. This Roman doctrine may, of course have emboldened Pontius Pilate to give permission for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Both Roman Emperors and British Kings were in a certain sense miraculous beings but as Campbell points out on Page 344:
“If miracles are required India wins every time”.
Indeed what could be more miraculous than a universe created by a dreaming serpent. We, followers of Philosophy and Science dismiss miracles on good grounds with the resultant judgement “This is not the way in which the world works”. Campbell also helps to cast doubts on these miraculous claims when he points out that different mythologies produce different miracles, but the miracles of other mythologies are never recognised as genuine miracles, sometimes regarded as frauds, fabrications or witchcraft. The miracles associated with Christ, must, then be subject to doubt if we are to take New Testament accounts literally which we would seem required to do by the Christian Church. Later “interpretations” however rely on construing some of the books of the Bible as “literary texts”, and claim that the accounts of miracles must be taken metaphorically: intended to help unbelievers enter the realm of the sacred. Christ’s resurrection would seem in this context to be the most wondrous miracle. For the Philosopher, then, if the text relating to this event could not be taken literally then the only realistic alternative is to postulate that that the text is intended to be read metaphorically.
Paul, early on in Christianity, warned us not to be taken in by the “illusions” of Philosophy and perhaps he was thinking in particular of Gnostic challenges to many central teachings, but he may also have been referring to the authoritative influence of Aristotles principle based Hylomorphism. For a long period of history these Gnostic texts were not available to scholars for evaluation purposes. Relatively recently, however 48 works were discovered in an earthern jar near Nag Hammadi. Whether it was these texts which were the target of Pauls concern, or whether Paul was more concerned over powerful Aristotelian arguments against supernaturalism, is not known. The documents discovered contained reference to a doctrine of immantism which the Church for centuries had condemned: “The Kingdom of God is not coming, it is here”. Campbell believes immantism is well expressed in the following:
“I am the light that is above them all
I am the All
The All came forth from Me and the All attained to Me
Cleave a piece of wood, I am there
Lift up the stone, you will find me there.”(Campbell Page 367)
Campbell notes that the source of all of the material for the Gospels was:
“a common stock of sayings (logia) preserved and passed about, at first orally, among the communities of the faithful, which then become fixed in various ways in various writings.” (Campbell, Page 368)
The Gnostic position reminds one of the Aristotelian objection to the Platonic eternal Forms, which could not be found in the external physical world. The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas claims that the sacred Kingdom is not the Kingdom to come but rather that which is both here and now and within you. The Gospel of Thomas dates from circa 140AD which is approximately the time during which all the Gospels were being formed. The “authenticated Gospels of the Bible” were, Campbell, argues, fixed in Rome during the 4th century AD.
Campbell also refers to the Gospel of John in which God is praised thus:
“Glory to the Father!
Glory to thee, Word!
Glory to thee, Holy Spirit!” (Campbell Page 373)
This, Campbell argues cannot be the Father of either the OT or the NT but rather more closely resembles what we can find in Persian Myth, where the saviour “like Zoroaster descends from the sphere of Light; but unlike Zoroaster, partakes only apparently of the nature of the world”. (Page 373)
The Gospel of John characterises the crucifixion in unusual terms, thus:
“And in that cross of light there was one form and one appearance. And upon the cross I saw the Lord himself, and he had no shape, but only a voice: and a voice not such as was familiar to us, but one sweet and kind, and truly of God, saying to me: “John it is needful that there be one who hears these things from me, for I have need of one that will hear. This cross of light is sometimes called the Word by me for your sakes, sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace. So it is for man. But what it is, in truth, as conceived in itself, as spoken between us, it is the marking off of all things, and the firm uplifting of all things, fixed, out of things unstable and the harmony of wisdom–of the wisdom that is harmony.” (Pages 373-4)
The contrasting of form and appearance , truth and appearance which God calls Word or Mind, does align with the Aristotelian position of Ancient Greece, especially if one considers the transition from Platonic to Aristotelian Philosophy which regards God as a Pure Form that thinks about thinking. For Aristotle, contra Plato, the forms are in the external world, which would seem to imply the thesis of immantism cited above by Campbell. Socrates in the Republic, we recall, praised the thesis of Anaxagoras that “All is Mind” which caused Socrates to completely change the emphasis of his philosophical investigations, from exploring the external world, to seeking Knowledge and Truth about the realm of Psuché.
Johns Gospel continues with:
“but what I am, I alone know, and no man else. Suffer me then to keep what is mine, but what is yours behold through me; and see me in mine essence, not as I have said I was but as you, being akin to me, know me.” (Page 375)
The text ends with John claiming to laugh at the multitude because, he held on to one thing in himself, namely:
“that the Lord carried out everything symbolically, for the conversion and salvation of man”
Symbolically? Metaphorically? We know the Gnostic view of the primacy of Knowledge was not shared by Pauls position that man is Justified by Faith alone. History apparantly has sided with Paul since his teaching appeared to have had the greatest mass-appeal. Paulianism claimed that Gnosticism fostered the multiplication of cults at the expense of the one true universal religion. Was this conversation between God and John something John hallucinated, or was it a metaphorical account of a thinking process that must have been a result of contradictions in the “sayings” witnessed by many different disciples and bystanders? The Aristotelian principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason were part of the authority of his Philosophy at this time. Campbell, with considerable insight, sides with both Gnosticism and the Paulian Justification by Faith-thesis on the following grounds:
“Moreover, the paramount concern of a popular religion cannot be, and never has been “Truth” but the maintenance of a certain type of society, the inculcation in the young and refreshment in the old of an approved “system of sentiments” upon which the local institutions and government depend. And, as the documentation of our subject shows, the history of society itself has been marked over the milleniums by a gradual-ever so gradual—enlargement of group horizons: from the tribe or the village to the race or the nation, and beyond that, finally with Buddhism and Hellenism, to the all-embracing concept of humanity—which is, however, not a governable but a spiritual unit of individuals. And in such a unit there have to be many mansions, as there were in Gnosticism. (Page 378)
Wise words, indeed, but everything then hangs on how we construe Hellenism, whether in terms of a mythology or philosophy or alternatively in terms of the Aristotelian Golden Mean of Philosophical Mythology.