been emphasized by a number of scholars: Gould 1985, 1994:94; Rudhardt
1992:88, 90, 101–6; Sourvinou-Inwood 1990:20, 1997:162; also Harrison
2000:191–2) is common to a range of authors, both those we might term ‘‘religious
critics’’ and others usually conceived to be more traditionally pious. Far from being
suggestive of a common religious agnosticism, or from qualifying traditional concep-
tions of the divine (and far from being just a reflection of the lack of clear divine
revelation in Greek religion), ‘‘unknowability’’ in fact serves as anecessary complement
to traditional conceptions: it was precisely because of the fall-back position that
the best way to approach and the best way to envisage the gods were matters
inaccessible to men that traditional attributes and forms of worship could continue
unchallenged.
The Complexity of Religious Discourse in Literary
Sources and its ImportanceWhat are the consequences of this broader literary perspective on Greek religion?
Arguably, it opens up (or reopens) a new dimension of Greek religious experience: a
body of religious thought which – like ritual itself, but often independently –
operates, in the words of John Gould, as ‘‘a framework of explanation for human
experience’’ (1985:7).
These areas have, of course, been the subject of significant study. In general,
however, such work has been marginal in the study of Greek religion. (So,
for example, the subject-matter of Parker’s splendid series of studies of ‘‘literary
religion,’’ e.g. 1997, 1998, 1999, 2004, finds little place in his two major studies
of Athenian religion: 1996, 2005.). At the same time, however, it should be pointed
out that even those major studies that most loudly proclaim the centrality of ritual
cannot exclude this dimension of religious experience entirely. ‘‘[H]owever much the
Greeks may hope that good things will flow from pious acts, they are nevertheless
aware that fulfilment is not guaranteed, but lies in the lap of the gods’’ (Burkert
1985:7). ‘‘Only an atheist will demand statistical proof that pious action is successful’’
in protecting the seafarer from storms (Burkert 1985:55; cf. 268). Here, at least
implicitly, is the acknowledgment in condensed form that the proposition that gods
intervene in ordinary life (through storms, or through the answering of human
sacrifice) requires the existence of ‘‘blocks to falsifiability,’’ or ‘‘let-out clauses,’’ in
order to be maintained. Similarly, for example, in what might be described as the
taxonomical approach to Greek religion – in other words, the classification of deities
and their attributes (see the comments of Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel
1992:183; Burkert 1985:216) – the description of a god’s attributesnecessarily
implies an assumption in the possibility of divine intervention. ‘‘A direct epiphany
of Zeus is lightning’’ (Burkert 1985:126). The storm is the epiphany of the sea-god
Poseidon, ‘‘always to be reckoned with by seafarer and fisherman’’ (Burkert
1985:137).
What is the status of such characterizations? For whom does Poseidon reveal
himself through storms? The available literary evidence allows for the enormous
elaboration of these areas of ‘‘belief.’’ That voyages by sea required the propitiation
of the gods, or that safe crossings demanded thank offerings, is reflected in a wide
380 Thomas Harrison