The Delphic Paradigm by Jacob Piccus

7/23/2019 The Delphic Paradigm by Jacob Piccus

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The Delphic Paradigm

Jake Piccus

Professor Hopper

Senior Project

10/23/2015


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Preface

There is a conundrum too often encountered by those in the field of archaeology with an

inquisitive disposition or so-called romantic resolve for uncovering the truth. That is, alongside

no matter what is unearthedbe it a lavishly adorned vase or an entire structure hidden beneath

a millennias worth of soilthere is the accompanying enigma which, while temptuous intuition

posits an explanation looms close, is alas impalpable and formless. Im talking about context: an

objects immaterial, perspective based meaning as intended by its creators; which, when absent,

denies a discovery real reason for existing beyond sensory level appreciation. Historical context

relies on what we know oras is most often the case with regard to the ancient pastwhat we

think we know rather than what we can actually see, which is limited to the present. This is the

great dilemma of history. Since only the material remains, what is left of the pasts far more

pertinent emotional and philosophical explications are, diluted by time, manifest only in ones

mind as question or possibility...


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Theomphalos

In 1893, a French interdisciplinary team of archaeologists scraped soil from the southern

slope of Greeces Mount Parnassus. The team stripped away layer after layer of historical

buildup, blowing past the medieval and Roman stratifications built atop one another like tree

rings. The dig progressed until, with baited breath, the team uncovered the prized Greek ruins

beneath. They were met with dismay. They had not found the glorious temple which was to

rival Athens great Parthenon. Instead they had found rubble. Remnants. And just like that, an

enigmatic place had become more enigmatic. It seems that around the 3rd century A.D.,

Christian zealots had trashed the temple, likely because theyor someone far scarier than them

or any of temples remaining supportershad deemed the site pagan and unworthy of further

existence.1 Sacre bleu! the French must have exclaimed. Delphi is in pieces, and for such

pettiness. What ignorance! But the marauding culprits likely had good reason for their actions.

Should some act of God given them the chance to explain themselves, these zealots may have

argued in defense of unfair condemnation, that they had leveled the temple during a time when it

no longer served any purpose, when worship of its Greek gods was a crime punishable by death!

A reasonable sentiment; but nonetheless one which would have received in response another

resounding sacre bleu! Strictly speaking, as both the ancient Greeks and their French

contemporaries well knew, the structure now reduced to a few remaining pillar pieces and a

crumbling foundation was much more than any old temple. This was Apollos Templehis

sanctuary at Delphithe Omphalos, or navel of the universe and home to the richest and most

See E.A.G. Archeology in Greece 1892. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 13, (1892) 199-152.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/623901 For a more modern perspective, see the works of J.Z De Boer and J.R. Hale. For

example, J. Z. De Boer and J. R. Hale, The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi, Greece, Geological Society,

399- 412.


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renowned oracle in all the ancient world. For over one thousand years, there had been no place

more sacred.

While the word sacreddraws skepticism today, many of the pasts great thinkers from

Socrates to Alexander the Great visited Delphi, which flourished for over one thousand years as

home to a very Greek sort of premonition which lent itself to philosophical dialectic. It is

important to recognize that for the vast majority of human existence, mankind has thrived off of

being superstitious, having utilized metaphor and allegory as ways to present and then attempt to

solve the fundamental problems humanity has faced in the universe: struggles of interpreting

ideas such as life, death, suffering, and of course, the mind boggling reality of existence. Since

ancient cultures were not nearly as attached to the contentof their words meanings so much as

they were attached to the context, they often expressed ideas poetically rather than analytically.

It is this contrast with modernitys tendency to try and quantify these types of problems

scientifically that represents one of the main obstacles we face when trying to understand how

people lived, and more precisely, thoughtin the past.

Ancient accounts portray Delphi a breathtaking site; they invoke image of a treasured city

nestled against the lower slant of Parnassus: the great limestone mountain which soared above.

Picture its peaks dwarfing the scattered figures of individuals below: pilgrims of varying

personage all seeking premonition at Delphi. Daylight arrival saw travelers privy to fantastic

views of the surrounding landscape, vast and peppered by expanses of olive groves. Nightfall

brought possibility of thunderous claps of lightning; bolts believed born of Zeus shook ground

beneath foot and set skies ablaze with sporadic spectacles of light. According to Greek

mythology, Zeus himself determined Delphi center of the universe after observing two eagles

sent to fly from opposite corners make contact there. A stone called the omphalos marked the


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place navel of the universe; here, supplicants believed the sacred ground allowed for direct

communication with the gods.2

Omphalos stone at the archeological museum at Delphi

Deep within the bowels of the Delphic temple, adjacent to a secretive chamber known as

the adyton, supplicants were granted access to the words of Apollo: the ancient worlds foremost

purveyor of wisdom. Here, alongside the lowly farmer, men of great importance: senators,

philosophers, and even emperors made the pilgrimage to receive the gods advice before making

decisions which would, in certain instances, determine the rise and fall of entire kingdoms. It

was also here, in a world dominated by men, that a woman held the position of power. Indeed,

despite the fact that women could neither vote nor hold property, at Delphi it was a woman

alone, a priestess of the title Pythia, who was nine times a year allowed entrance into the adyton

where she sat upon its sacred tripod and became enthused by Apollo himself.3

She entered

2Pausanias 2.13.7 in W. H. S. Jones (trans.), Pausanias: Description of Greece, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library

(London: William Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918), 319.3

J.Z De Boer and J.R. Hale present a good synopsis of Delphis lore and its historical process. For example, J. Z.

De Boer and J. R. Hale, The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi, Greece, Geological Society, 171, 412


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divine trance and from this privileged state she uttered the gods wordswords of unimaginable

powerwords which despite having come forth from female tongue, embodied strength enough

to sway the decisions of kings.

Archaic Greece and the Delphic Paradigm

The French dig came about during a kind of golden age in classical archeology when

hard evidence was being unearthed and compared against literary sources for negation or

corroboration.4

It is hard to imagine the excitement and anticipation which would have

accompanied finding a legendary site like Delphi, having been referenced countless times in

mythology and written about by great thinkers like Plutarch and Plato. That being said, it is

comparably easy to imagine the let down that accompanied finding the place in pieces! Surely

enough, and as is often the case in history, Delphis excavation brought to light more questions

than it did answers. In one way this is fitting; Apollo was, after all, in the words of Plutarch, the

god of dialectic; and he frowned upon answers which either came too easily or were accepted for

too long absent a later period of fresh examination. In this sense, Apollo still seems to hold the

reins when it comes to providing clues to questions poised regarding his temple. Fittingly,

todays quest to understand Delphi demands one engage in a Greek sort of thought process; one

similar to the way in which Delphis supplicants engaged in dialectic when trying to decode

Apollos enigmatic Pythian oracles long ago. To come up with a conception of the place takes

an interdisciplinary approach, at the very least combining history and psychology with

mythological studies.

4See the following article, which supplements well De Boer and Hales geological work on Delphi: William J.

Broad, For Delphic Oracles Fumes and Visions.New York Times Mar. 19, 2002.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/science/for-delphic-oracle-fumes-and-visions.html


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Let us forget about Apollos temple for the moment and look instead at what remains in

modernity from early archaic Greece.5 Historiographically, prior knowledge must be analyzed

from the cultural, etymological, and interdisciplinary perspectives, as their meanings are time

relative. As time passes, perception of prior knowledge changesrelative to its analysis in

different cultural contexts and timesand is then either built upon further, or discarded as an

erroneous relic of the past. During the Archaic age, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet

that would become Greek; but unfortunately almost no written documents from this period are

available today in their original forms. While some fragments of early pre-Socratic writings

have survived as references within later works, these few, often ambiguous sentences come cited

centuries after their respective times, taintedin more ways than oneby later thinkers who,

while Greek, were naturally left with no choice but to reinterpret the pre-Socratics writings

through the vein of their own temporal context.6 Thus, much of our understanding of Archaic

Greeces written material comes from later analysis within classical sources; and , while this

means we can see the fruits of early Greek labor evident in these later periods, an enormous gap

remains separating the modern scholar from peering into and being able to understand the

mindset and cultural context present alongside those who first created them.7

This paper presents the argument that in lieu of such written sources, it is the analysis of

Delphi which offers us a unique window from which to peer clearly into this otherwise hazy

5The fact that the vast majority of written material from archaic Greece consists of fragments is common

knowledge. Thus, in lieu of this difficulty using written sources to understand Archaic Greece, we can look toward

Delphi for guidance; the temple, famously written about in great detail by Plutarch maintained a strict tradition that

began during the Archaic period and persisted well into Roman times.6Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason, (W.W Norton & Company, 2001). 7

7 Aside from the fact that even for sheer curiositys sake the artwork, sculptures, and temples must be understood

contextually if they are to be appreciated as anything more than a pretty thing to look at, is the far more important

observation that a contextually accurate understanding of the archaic Greek mindset is imperative because it has

been a return to Greek works that has, throughout history, accompanied the Wests most revolutionary periods

of progress. See works of Peterson, Kuhn and Whitehead. In the west, writes Kuhn in Structures: only the

civilizations that have descended from Hellenic Greece have possessed more than the most rudimentary science.

The bulk of scientific knowledge is a product of Europe in the last four centuries. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of

Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 192.


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period in history. Delphi adhered strictly to an ideological tradition well into the classical age

when we do have written material; so an understanding of Delphi as it functioned then offers us a

rare glimpse into how the site also existed centuries earlier. Furthermore, due to its position as a

panhellenic site, the Delphi of Socrates and even Plutarchs day functions like a time capsule

from which we may model how Archaic Greek ideology once existed broadly. During the 8th

century, Delphi became renowned throughout the Mediterranean by the same diverse groups of

peoples who, by means of colonization and transmigration, were actively engaged in manifesting

the genesis of a new Greek culture. Even before these Greek speaking peoples went on to

develop the powerful city states which would later define the Greek World, their shared faith in

Delphis oracle and in its position as worldly center served as a means through which to unite

them culturally. Thus, Delphi came to embody a very Greek sort of ideology all while this

ideology was simultaneously coming into existencein its various formsthroughout the

Mediterranean. More specifically, Delphi represented the homogeneous mixture of shared

religious and philosophical principles that stood in contrast withand perhaps functioned to

balancethe opposing fracturing effect which divided Greek society during the archaic colonial

age. In this respect, Delphi can be analyzed metaphoricallywith regard to its enigmatic,

spiritual, and mythological interpretationsas well as literallywith regard to its historical,

albeit also enigmatic function and place in Greek societyin such a way that elucidates an

overarching paradigm of Greek thought. In particular, Delphi seems to represent the mindset, a

sort of default mode prevalent in thinkers throughout early Greek society who, despite

wholeheartedly embracing the supernatural, are remembered today as great innovators and

pioneers of philosophy, art, and the rationally geared dialectical method.


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The majority of ancient sources concerning the Delphic oracle are literary works, many

of which have been subject to scholarly scrutiny throughout the past one hundred years or so.8

HomersHymns is perhaps the first literary source we have that makes mention of the mythical

Delphic oracle, although it is to Herodotus, who incorporated rudimentary historiography in The

Histories, that Delphis modern conceptualization owes early credit. In addition to introducing

several famous stories about Delphi including the tale of Croesus, Herodotus helped elucidate the

vast scope ofDelphis societal importance as it stood beyond its function in mythology. While

later sources from writers such as Thucydides, Diadorus of Sicily, and Strabo help us understand

Delphi as well, for the purpose of this analysis I will focus on the writings of Plutarch whos

works arguably remain the best primary sources on Delphi.

The Roman Plutarch is a key source because, in addition to his vocations as a prominent

historian and philosopher, the man maintained priesthood at Delphi lasting from A.D. 93 until

his death 30 years later. Contextually, this puts Plutarch in a position far more valuable and

credible than other literary sources since, rather than simply passing through, Plutarch lived at

and actually participated in the functioning of Delphi.9

More indicative of Plutarchs prowess at

Delphi is the fact that in addition to being a priest he bore the title ofagonothete during the

Pythian Games and presided over the Delphic Amphictyonic Council.10

Owing to privileges

8

H.W. Parke and D.E.W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (Oxford 1956). Parke and Wormell undertake the largetask of attempting to categorize Delphis recorded oracular statements by extent of mythical and historical

legitimacy.9

Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of Responses ,

(California: University of California Press, 1978), 200. Also see the following article by Jeremy Mcinerney in

which he details Delphis resurgence in Roman times in a way reminiscent of Archiac Greece. Jeremy McInerney,

Do you see what I see?: Plutarch and Pausanias at Delphi in L. de Blois (ed.) The Statesman in Plutarchs Works.

Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society, (Nijmegen/ Hernen, May

2002) vol. 1. Mnemosyne Supplement. Leiden: Brill, 2004. pp. 43-55.10

Robert Lamberton, Plutarch, (Yale University Press, 2002). 52


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attained through the aforementioned roles, Plutarch would have had access to intimate aspects

and records of the Delphic sanctuary that might otherwise have been inaccessible.

Plutarchs most important writings with regard to Delphi consist of three essays in

Moralia: De Pythiae Oraculis, De E apud Delphos, and De Defectu Oraculornum.11 In these

essays he describes Delphi as encompassing both religious and secular spheres, though he

importantly notes their interconnected nature. Plutarch details in length the oracular process by

which Apollo, speaking through the Pythia, offered premonitory advice nine times a year to the

thousands of pilgrims journeying there. He also paints a more secular picture of the surrounding

city of Delphi which, as a designated sacred land, was not under the control of any Greek city

state, or polis. Throughout Delphis history, the city served as a place where various Greek

poleis, far away states, and individuals would erect extravagant pillars, monuments, and temples

to showcase not only their gratitude to Apollo but their societal prowess culturally,

economically, and physically to one another. So while Delphi was undoubtedly renowned in the

ancient world for being seat of the Delphic Oracle, it was also a place of less mystical, albeit

famous occurrences such as the Pythian games; and, its neutrality served to make Delphi the

meeting place for the Amphictyonic League, a loose alliance between the poleis which over the

years grew increasingly politically charged.12

In the 1960s the philosopher and scientific historian Thomas Kuhn coined the term

paradigm to define the preconceived assumptions he believed to underlie any given field of

inquiry: a disciplinary matrix of sorts.13 Accordingly, he saw knowledge as the understanding

11I have referred to these essays by their Latin translations. In Greek their titles are:

, ,

, and in English: Oracles at Delphi no Longer Given in Verse, The E at Delphi, and On

the Obsolescence of Oracles.12

Robert Lamberton, Plutarch, (Yale University Press, 2002).13

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 224.


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of an idea as seen through the lens of a particular paradigm. For example, in the Structure of

Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn references the Ptolemaic theory, that is, the once prominent notion

that the Earth was center of the universe, as having once been a paradigm because in the context

of its time, the Ptolemaic theory was considered fact by societys most prominent thinkers.14

Astronomers who operated under the Ptolemaic paradigm would have, in effort to further their

knowledge on the subject, based their subsequent rational inquiries on the presupposition that the

Earth was indeed the center. But similar presuppositions are not limited to observational

science; and I believe that with care, the main principles behind Kuhns conception of the

paradigm can be utilizedperhaps more broadlywith respect to the social sciences as well. In

religion, the holy textsthe Bible, the Torah, the Quranwere once upheld, and still are by

many today, as the unquestionable word of God. A scientific law, states Kuhn, to be

considered part of a dominant paradigm, must represent a scientific communitys explication of a

problem or topic as universally accepted to be correct.15

Just the same, a religious text can often

function as well if not better as part of a paradigm since, especially within societies lacking

separation of church and state, religious fundamentalists are far less likely to engage in or lend

credence to anything like the scientific communitys extensive systematic process of ongoing

observation and experimentation. Under this line of thinking, while the Christian raiders blamed

for Delphis destruction would have, centuries earlier, seen such actions as inconceivable, acting

within the scope of their own paradigm they instead saw little need for preserving the temple

since their societys religious ideology was at odds with what had once been the Greek ideal.

14Ibid, 53-54.

15For a general synopsis of Kuhns theories, see: Alexander Bird, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =

.


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Before zeroing in on Delphi, the first part of this paper seeks to emphasize the roles

which Greek religion and mythology played in the Archaic age with respect to shaping the

Greeks shared ideological perspective. In specific, religious ritual and mythology were then so

intertwined with the rest of what comprised the Greeks world view that they must be seen as

having been contextually responsible for the great aspects of Greek innovation which occurred

during this period. Delphi, as a place in part devoted entirely to inquiry, embodied a paradigm of

its own which, though surely religious in nature, encouraged the thought process by which the

Greeks, on a broad scale, came to formulate their ideological opinions on a diverse array of

topics during this time. As a result, an understanding of Delphis symbo lism and of its oracular

process help us better understand early Greece and the way in which Greek thinkers interpreted

the world around them.

To begin our search for understanding thisDelphic paradigm we must first understand

the context which birthed it. For in many ways culture is akin to biology, and comes to be as the

result of some sort of evolutionary process instigated by the changing environment; product of

the unique historical context of the time.

The Orientalizing Age

The Temple of Delphi and its oracle rose to power in the 8th

century B.C concurrent with

the rise of the Greek polis and the adoption of a new system of writing: monumental changes

which helped distinguish the periods drastic shift away from the pasts Mycenaean culture

toward what would characterize Greece during the Archaic and later Classical periods.16

As

mentioned earlier, reliable primary sources pertaining to early Archaic Greece and to the colonial

16 The time period focused on by this paper dates from around 900 BCE to around 500 BCE. For definition of the

term Archaic age, meaning the Old-Fashioned Age and designating Greek history from approximately 750 to 500

B.C. see Thomas R. Martin, Ancient Greece From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1996), 51.


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process leading up to it leave much to be desired. Nonetheless, the historiography we do have is

sufficient to paint a narrative with broad strokes. Catherine Morgan, a current professor of

classical archeology at Kings College London and expert on Archaic Greece, writes that

beginning in the 8th

century and continuing on through the archaic age, was a long process of

state formation in many regions of the Greek mainland.17 Due to factors including war, internal

strife, and stasis, Greek speaking Mycenaeans migrated en masse throughout the Mediterranean,

taking with them their myths and spreading them orally.18 This exodus of sorts fractured the

Mycenaeansboth geographically as well as culturallyand put groups of them in contact with

various near east peoples like the Phoenicians. Diverse colonies popped up in Marcel, Spain,

North Africa, and Ukraine, mostly places near the sea where contact with foreigners would occur

and trade could be easily facilitated.19

Trade evolved into forms of cohabitation. What followed

was a major restructuring of cultural and political life, a Greek Renaissance marked by the

emergence of various permanent city states; each of which evolved to hold uniquely different

perspectives shaped by different types of living situations.20

Scholars have aptly termed this

period of [deep immersion] at every level in the orient the Orientalizing age; since with time,

these, in some cases, vastly different peoples settled and produced children together, children

17Catherine Morgan,Athletes and Oracles, (Cambridge University Press 1990) 1. Morgan continues, changes in

the material expression of religious belief are some of the most widespread and dramatic of all those which occurred

during the eighth century. Martin argues During the archaic age the Greeks developed the most widespread and

influential of their new political forms, the city-state, or polis. See Martin,Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to

Hellenistic Times, 51.18

For a detailed study on Greek colonization see, Carol Dougherty, The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text

in Archaic Greece, (New York: Oxford University Press 1993), 15-21.19

Scholars like Mcinerney, Dougherty, Huffmon, Morgan, among many others support the modern consensus thatGreek civilization, as it came to be, developed as a direct result of east asian influence around 900-700 BCE. This is

in contrast with the more Eurocentric belief system which was prevalent during the 18th

and 19th

centuries. Martin

writes, some Greeks had emigrated from the mainland eastward across the Aegean Sea to settle in Ionia as early as

the ninth century B.C. Starting around 750 B.C., however, Greeks began to settle even farther outside the Greek

homeland...The Phoenicians were active in building commercially-motivated settlements throughout the western

Mediterranean. Within a century of its foundation sometime before 750 B.C., for example, the Phoenician settlement

on the site of modern Cadiz in Spain had become a city thriving on economic and cultural interaction with the

indigenous Iberian population. Martin,Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times, 56.20

See Greek renaissance as described in Morgan,Athletes and Oracles, 1.


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who grew up amidst two different cultures, amidst two differentperspectives. And it was these

peoples who would become the Greeks.21

Delphis early origins remain foggy, but during this pivotal period in history it

underwent the transition from being a relatively unknown sacred site, perhaps relegated to a

nearby cave and presided over by a Pythian cult, to become the mecca of holy places, known

throughout the ancient world by the loose amalgamation of Greek speaking peoples and by those

who hailed from the civilizations in Asia Minor and Persia.22

Various classical scholars such as

Thomas R. Martin have noted that for reasons which remain somewhat unclear, Greek leaders

frequently felt they had to secure the approval of Apollo of Delphi before setting up their new

colonies.23

For this reason, Delphis role as a panhellenic sitemeaning a place accessed by

many different Greeks and held in high esteem,grew exponentially during this time as more

and more colonial leaders came seeking charters.24

It is hard to say for certain whether or not Delphis ancient tradition remained the same

and was embraced by its new supplicants or if it changed during orientalization to accommodate

21See Jeremy Mcinerney,A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean,(John Wiley & Sons, 2014). And

M. Hurwit, The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C, (Cornell University Press, 1988).22 See Ibid., 59. for expansion on evidence supporting that the Delphic sanctuary began to be internationally

renowned in the eighth century B.C. For expansion on pre-8th

century Delphi as a cult of Pytho see William J.

Broad, The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, (Penguin Books, 2007), 30-34. See

Homer 8.46.80 in E.V Rieu (trans.), The Odyssey (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967), 124. (cited in Broad, 2007) for

Agamemnons consultation of the oracle described, in sacred Pytho and Homer Il. 2.511.520 in W.H.D Rouse

(trans.), The Iliad(New York: New American Library, n.d) 110. (cited in Broad, 2007) where Achilles mentions

the treasures in rocky Pytho. See Mark P.O Morford and Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2007), 243. Morford and Lenardon reference the scholarly survey of the problems with a

reconstruction of the origins and procedures of the oracle, as compiled in H.W Parke and D.E.W Wormell TheDelphic Oracle, 2 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956).23

See Herodotus 4.151.1 in A. D. Godley (trans.), The Histories (Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.)

(cited in Martin 1996) for written primary source example pertaining to oracles role during colonization: For seven

years after this there was no rain in Thera; all the trees in the island except one withered. The Theraeans inquired at

Delphi again, and the priestess mentioned the colony they should send to Libya. For a concise explication ofthe

narrative pattern or plot of archaic colonization including such beginning at Delphi, see Carol Dougherty, The

Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece, (New York: Oxford University Press 1993), 15-21.24

Evidence for this exists in the fact that Delphi almost always played a role in the origin myths surrounding each

polis. See, Martin,Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times, 59.


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colonial culture. It is likely that a little of both went on since the Greeks instinctually picked

aspects of foreign culture to then interpret and morph into something uniquely their own.25 At

any rate and for reasons which we may never know precisely, Greek ideology and Delphic

ideology came to mirror each other early on at a very base level, and subsequently remained

intertwined thereafter. The term base level in this sense is intended to describe the Greeks

persisting shared set of cultural principles which existed transcendent from, albeit alongside, an

opposing sense of cultural diversity. While Greek city states developed independently from one

another and lacked any sort of political unity, the Greek people were at the same time united

panhellenically through their shared past: as individuals who spoke the same language and who

believed in the same gods. So ideologically speaking, Greeks from varying poleis identified with

one another consciously at some deep level while simultaneously harboring an often vehement

regard for themselves as being culturally unique.

Delphi physically became the place where all Greeks could congregate despite their many

differences elsewhere.26 Delphi was governed by a conglomerate rather than a single entity and

transcended the aspects of competition and independent progression exemplified by the poleis.

As Delphis oracle grew in prowess and increased its lead in position overvarious oracles

elsewhere, so did the rest of the city in other respects. Of notable importance was that Delphi

became incredibly wealthy; archeological evidence backs this fully, having revealed Delphi to

25Morford and Lenardon argue Delphi was occupied by an oracle of the great mother-goddess of the Minoan-

Mycenaean period, sometimes known as Ge-Themis and that the slaying of the dragon (the traditionalmanifestation of a diety of earth) therefore, represents the subsequent conquest by Hellenic or Hellenized Apollo.

Morford and Lenardon, Classical Mythology, 243. See Herbert B. Huffmon. The Oracular Process: Delphi and the

Near East. Vetus Testamentum, 57, no. 4 (2007): 449-460,

Huffmon shows similarities between near east oracles and the ones in Greece around the 8th

century, further

substantiating the claim of a cross cultural revolution during Archaic Greece.26

See Jeremy Mcinerney, Parnassus, Delphi, and the Thyiades, GRBS38, no. 3 (1997) [1999]: 263-283.

Premonition at Delphi was consistently held on the 7th

day of each of the 9 months, corresponding with Apollos

holy day.


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have been a city no less rich in treasure than it was in foot traffic.27

The oracles services were

of course not free, and payment varied considerably depending on who was doing the paying!

Votive offerings, given on behalf of entire poleis were, for example, quite grand spectacles; such

monuments littered the path leading up to the temple and served as a way in which the city states

could attempt to outshine one another. Monuments came from as far east as Egypt, and the

remnants of several obelisks have been found relatively intact in recent years. Also still visible

at Delphi are portions of its Pythian stadium. In addition to amassing wealth from oracular

payments, Delphi flourished further as result of its hosting the Pythian games: one of four similar

sporting events which took place at important panhellenic sitesthe most famous having been

Olympus Olympic gamesand which drew competitors and spectators from across the Greek

world.28

While the temptation for one single powerful polis to take control of Delphi could be

imagined to have been great; the Greeks were contrarily quite willing to share Delphi with one

another so long as it meant universal access to its oracle was preserved. The place was far too

valuable in their eyes to risk quarreling over and perhaps risking ones right to enter the sacred

space. Thus the more powerful polis leaders came together and founded the Amphictyonic

League, a loose alliance somewhat analogous to an ancient United Nations which was comprised

of city state appointed members tasked with presiding over the city peacefully.29 So the notion

stands uncontested that, when compared to nearly every other place at the time, Delphi was

special in that it served as an escape from the zero sum game which was elsewhere omnipresent

throughout Greece.

27 J.Z de Boer and John R. Hale, The Oracle of DelphiWas She Really Stoned? Archaeology Odyssey, (2002).28

For further elaboration on Delphi as a place which all Greeks might come to honor gods common to their race

and on Delphis evocation of the Greek spirits competitive nature with regard to both athletics and the arts, see

Morton and Lenardon, Classical Mythology, 244. Broad writes that, even in Homers daythe Oracles successes in

prognostication and earthly rewards were seen as so great that Delphi had become synonymous with extravagant

wealth. Broad, 2007, 32.29

Ibid, 48, 49, 254.


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Outside of Delphi, Greek culture was far from being easily identifiable as inherently

Greek; this point is important, since popular culture tends to depict ancient Greece

homogenously whenalthough inhabitants of different polis shared the same languagetheir

culture varied quite greatly. One thing the Greeks did share though was a knack for

reinterpretation. Each polis idiosyncrasies were unique products ofexperiences during

orientalization, as digested from within a shared Greek culture of borrowing and then

reinterpreting new ideas from outside and inside influencers. This is why at a deep level what it

really meant to be inherently Greek was to be an expert at interpretation. Interpretation defined

the process by which colonists refreshed their culture early on during the orientalizing age; and it

just so happens, interpretation, in all of its many glorious forms, was what Delphi was all about.

During orientalization, migrating Greeks experienced a cultural splintering effect when

they diverged from one another and mixed with eastern cultures; and when they came across

each other later, they discovered that they had changed considerably. If one was to smash a rock

and then scatter its pieces in different climates, after some time dissimilar types of weathering

might cause the pieces to appear quite different from one another, even though the rock was once

uniform in appearance. Orientalization cast a similar effect upon the Greeks; they harbored

some sense of familiarity but could not escape their acquired differences. Consequently, this

trained the Greeks to more openly interpret the cultural differences they encountered amongst

themselves through their own subjective lenses rather than reject them flat out. This is how they

made sense of the world, and perhaps this lack of dogma played a role in them becoming so

innovative during this time period.

Theoretically, the notion of changing perspectives from time to time is one which

Thomas Kuhn saw as being crucial with regard to the growth of knowledge, for the simple


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reason that the understanding of a thing changes relative to the context in which it is being

analyzed. Two poignant examples which illustrate the Greeks interpretive approach can be seen

in the way they understood their religious beliefs, that is, as characteristically non-dogmatic, and

in the way they made the transition from linear-b to using a Phoenician alphabet. With regard to

the latter, Greek speaking colonists preserved their oral language but replaced the old linear-b

alphabet of the Mycenaean era with a Semitic one they had been introduced to through contact

with the orient.30 The fascinating thing is how the Greeks actually tailored this alphabet to fit

their own Greek language. While the Greeks used the Phoenicians symbols, they attached to

each symbol entirely new meanings which corresponded to Greek vocalizations rather than

Phoenician ones.31 Using Kuhnian terminology, the Greeks changed the perspective from which

they interpreted the meaning behind each symbol in order to have the alphabet fit the Greek

language. If we consider symbols as being a form of knowledge, we can apply some ofKuhns

ideas to the analysis of the Greek Phoenician alphabet. Objectively speaking, after the Greeks

reinterpreted it, the once strictly Phoenician alphabets characters came to represent two entirely

different languages dependent upon on how it was being perceived. To someone lacking

knowledge of both the Greek and the Phoenician oral language, any form of the writing would

have been impossible to read. On the other hand, a Greek or Phoenician speaker who had been

taught to read the alphabet from either one or both of its correct perspectives would certainly

be able to comprehend it its meaning. Here, context is everything. As to how this

reinterpretation may have come about in this particular case, one might imagine an early colony

and the life of one of its bilingual children, born to Greek and Phoenician parents, and his

internal grasping for identity within a bifurcated culture. It certainly seems possible in such a

30Jeremy Mcinerney,A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean,(John Wiley & Sons, 2014).

31Mcinerney, Jeremy. From Sicily to Syria: The growth of trade and colonization. Lecture 6, Ancient Greek

Civilization, The Great Courses #323.


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scenario to understand how the Greeks might have so naturally come to reinterpret the

Phoenician alphabet from a Greek perspective, in effect preserving a portion of each culture. 32

The Greeks alphabet stands as an important example of the Greek cultural mindset because it so

clearly illustrates their pattern of re-interpretation which elsewhere occurred in much more

abstract ways.

In the same way that the Greeks reinterpreted the Phoenician alphabet in order to express

their own language, the Greeks treated religion as something interpretively moldable. Greek

colonists came into contact with varying forms of oriental mythology and philosophy; Greek and

Vedic myths as an example, hold enough similarities to suggest that the Greeks borrowed aspects

of eastern mythology and then mixed in their own Greek heroes and context to change the

perspective into one which was more familiar.33 This aspect of religious plasticity came

naturally to the Greeks; because mythology, for the majority of its existence, had been an oral

tradition lacking written documentation. Recall that mentioned earlier, the Myceneans brought

with them their mythology during colonization. Without a sacred text to fall back on, traveling

bards introduced the general populace to a diverse variety of often competing myths; and this left

room for interpretation and even debate between Greeks over which myth was right.34 Even

iterations of the same myth had to be at least slightly different from the last; and similar to the

game telephone, after a certain amount of oral repetitions, especially over the course of several

generations, any original story would have probably changed considerably. Furthermore, it

32Mcinerney uses the bilingual child theory as an explanatory tool yet acknowledges the difficulty involved in

actually proving it. Nevertheless, the theory remains an ideal one for illustrating one possible way in which the

Greeks may have been inspired to adopt the new alphabetic system.33

See Mcinerney and Bruce S. Thronton, Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization. (Encounter

Books, 2002). For more on how the similarities between Vedic and Greek Mythologies, see Hector Currie and Juan

Pacheco, Paranada: Beyond Beyond. Integral Review 5 (2009): 187.34

Irad Malkin,Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece, (Brill Archive 1993), 25.


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seems likely that charismatic bards were given the privilege of altering myths on occasion in

order to highlight certain points and lessons when such an opportunity was ripe for presentation.

During a hard harvest season, for example, a bard might highlight the duties performed by a

particular hero with regard to pleasing the gods responsible for crops in effort to inspire the local

farmers to action. Therefore, and in stark contrast to later religions of the book, different

versions of each myth were actually expected under the oral traditiondepending of course,

upon variables such as who was telling it, and under what circumstances. So rather than fight

over differing myths, the Greeks accepted variation as a natural part of their shared mythology,

and this non-dogmatic system of interpretation became a defining factor in the Greeks thought

process as it concerned all forms of knowledge.

Philosophy and the Delphic Paradigm

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of

a series of footnotes to Plato.Alfred North Whitehead35

The Greeks viewing contrast as an acceptable property in myth and in culture was

pivotal with respect to the Delphic paradigm as a whole since this non-dogmatic ideology spilled

over to influence how the Greeks perceived their surrounding world with increasing degrees of

complexity. The discussion of worldly phenomena in particular took on more complex form in

the 6th and 7th centuries B.C.E, when the thinkers we now label the pre-Socratic philosophers

sought to rationalize the holistic and poetic messages inherent within myth using a more

specified language and a narrower scope of focus than had been used before.36

Greeks began to

change the perspective from which they attacked questions posed by mythology, doing so

35Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, (Free Press, 1979) 39.


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procedurally, from a less metaphorical angle that employed reason over rhetoric. But this

process was gradual and compared with modern definitions of philosophy, what it was the pre-

Socratics were doing was more comparable to the religious debates taking place than to any sort

of modern science. In fact, these early practitioners ofphilosophia really only differed from past

thinkers in that they upheld the dialectic process when arguing over what might be the truth of

things; outside of this, they remained nonetheless inspired by the same mythology of their

forebearers.

The Greeks were accustomed to arguing over differing mythologies and over the various

possible messages inherent within them. As we have seen, the Greeks embraced forms of

rational discourse on matters of religious interpretation because they had no sacred text to use as

reference point. Scholars such as Jeremy McInerney have even gone so far as to argue that the

notion of heresy was all but non-existent in Greece as result.37

But with orientalization came a

more cerebral form of this interpretive analysis, likely influenced by some of the philosophical

components encountered through eastern religion; still, what some consider the birth of Greek

philosophy remained at this time a thing by and large religious in nature. It was only as time

went on that the perspectives introduced by the pre-Socratics would congeal into separate,

definitive fields of philosophymany of which, it is important to add, would splinter further to

form subsets resembling many of the modern sciences today. But during the pre-Socratics era

these first practitioners of philosophia were simply lovers of wisdomthinkers concerned

37 See Mcinerneys argument that Socrates trial and death was motivated primarily by political reasons rather than

religious heretical ones. Mcinerney, Jeremy. Socrates on Trial. Lecture 21, Ancient Greek Civilization, The Great

Courses #323.


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with uncovering the truth out of enigmas present in myth for the sake of properly understanding

reality as it was depicted.38 Anthony Gottlieb writes of this transition in The Dream of Reason:

The fact is that the history of philosophy is more the history of a sharply inquisitive cast

of mind than the history of a sharply defined discipline. The traditional image of it as a

sort of meditative science of pure thought, strangely cut off from other subjects, is largely

a trick of the historical light. The illusion is created by the way we look at the past, and

in particular by the way in which knowledge tends to be labeled, chopped up, and re-

labelled.39

For the Greeks, this inquisitive cast of mind as explained earlier, was already present with

regard to their fractured cultures non-dogmatic mindset towards mythology, but Greek contact

with the more philosophical forms of eastern religions sped up the transition toward more

metaphysical rumination. Scholars such as J.W. Sedlar have argued that Greek philosophy

originated in the cities of Ionia on Asia Minors western shorethat portion of the Greek world

closest to the Orient the perfect location from where, writes McEvilley, alongside the exchange

of mythology, occurred an intense metaphysical interchange between the Greek and Indian

cultures around 600 B.C.E. that points to striking similarities between the two metaphysical

schemes.40

According to Martin West, It was the very extravagance of oriental fancy that...

38 Philosophia encompassed the totality of the Greeks fundamental assump tions about reality; assumptions that

would eventually fragment into the highly complex inter disciplinary knowledgebase we have today. ForPhilosophia as lovers of wisdom see "Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.3.8 quoted in Tankha, Ancient Greek

Philosophy: Thales to Gorgias (Pearson Education India, 2006) 104.39

Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. (W.W.

Norton & Company, 2010) viii.40

J.W Sedlar,India and the Greek World. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980) 10. T. McEvilley, The shape of

ancient thought: Comparative studies in Greek and Indian

philosophies. (New York: Allworth 2002) 31.


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...freed the Greeks from the limitations of what they could see with their own eyes, led

them to think of ten thousand year cycles instead of human generations, of an infinity

beyond the visible sky and below the foundations of the earth, of a life not bounded by

womb and tomb but renewed in different bodies aeon after aeon...that god is intelligence;

that the cosmos is one living creature; that the material world can be analyzed in terms of

a few basic constituents such as fire, water, earth, metal; that there is a world of Being

beyond perception, beyond time. These were conceptions of enduring importance for

ancient philosophy.41

So what led to the growth of this pre-Socratic philosophy, like what led to the Greek-Phoenician

alphabet, was a shift in Greek perspective brought about through the contact with and subsequent

interpretation of new ideas introduced during orientalization. In the case of philosophia, this

took the form of a change in which to interpret mythology and explain expressions of the divine.

Philosophia resulted from a change in religious perspective.42

Adam Drozdek argues in his aptly

named book on the subject, Greek Philosophers as Theologians, that philosophia and religion

were, at the time, essentially the same thing; philosophia being separated only through its way of

translating religious ideas into more concise forms and definitions:

...theology was of paramount importance for all Greek philosophers even if theological or

religious language is not used, or if theological reasoning is of apparently secondary

importance, or if religious concepts are rationalized. The emergence of Greek philosophy

coincides with theological elaboration of the concept of the divine.43

41Martin West, Greek Philosophy and the Orient. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1971) 67.

42Early practitioners of philosophia tried to free themselves from the egotistical rhetoric sometimes involved when

debating over emotionally charged issues such as myth.43

Adam Drozdek, Greek Philosophers as Theologians: The Divine Arche, (Ashgate Publishing, 2013) vii


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As an illustration of this, consider that there are at least three different Greek origin myths we

know of today which completely contradict one another.44 In a world of confounding cultural

and interpretative perspectives,philosophia came out of the Greeks desire to elaborate upon

these ideas and perhaps prove one myth as being more correct than the others.45

Of particular

importance to theology, being concerned with making rational sense of the origin of thingswas

the Greek conception of the void, this rip out of chaos during a time ofnothingness which

birthed everything in existenceincluding the gods themselves. Hesiod wrote Theogany right

around the time the Greeks adopted their alphabet and thus stands a credible source detailing a

particular origin myths posited genesis as it circulated (surely alongside others) during

orientalization.46

These things declare to me from the beginning, you Muses who dwell in the house

of Olympus, and tell me which of them first came to be. In truth at first Chaos came to be,

but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold

the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth,

and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the

mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them.

Hesiod. Theogony. 121.47

Hesiod held that realitys origin began with chaos: a yawning void of nothingness. Such an

idea which has in modern terms, been likened to the state before the Big Bang resembles in

44See, Argonautica Orphica 12, Aristophanes Birds, 683ff, Hesiods Theogony, 116ff. not to mention the countless

Asian and indo European origin myths which had been introduced during orientalization.45

This lack of dogmatism gave Greek religion an enormous amount of flexibility and indeed, during such times

there was no such thing as heresy as they lacked a way to discern who was right from who was wrong. But it also

had the effect of encouraging debate and discourse which led to new ideas.46

With the advent of writing it is plausible that some of the prior notions of non-dogmatism allowed with the oral

tradition was challenged using the now more palpable written word.47

Hes.Th.121. from, Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-

White. Theogony. (Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd). 1914.


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many aspects the Indian Rig Veda in that it introduced a variety of enigmatic ideas to be

ruminated over.48 Around 2000 BCE, Vedic Seer Dirghatamas conceived of a state before

existence when:

Then was neither being nor non-being... (line 1)

The breathless breathed breathlessly... (line 2)

All was darkness wrapt in darkness... (line 3)

...Sages searching in their hearts with wisdom found the bond between being and non-

being. (line 4)

...This was before the gods... (line 6)

Creation Veda X.12949

Each line as a paradox, holistically represents a form of knowledge which to be digested into

more palpable terms, must first be dissected into separate arguable premises in order to delineate

possible perspectives of analysis from one another. These types of enigmas were common in

Greek myth, and were conducive to philosophical thought. Such paradoxical ideas actually

demanded a period of dogmatic analysis; and, in line with the fracturing of society exhibited

elsewhere, rumination over concepts as complex as what if anything might constitute that which

could be neither being nor non-being spawned a diverse variety of interpretations.50

According to Thomas Kuhn, enigmas such as these are not only beneficial but are

actually required for scientific progress, since they introduce the various loose ends necessary for

the development of further discourse. Kuhn believed that in scientific fields, both historically as

well as presently, knowledge on any given topic is represented differently depending on the

48Londhe,Hindu cosmology. 2008. Retrieved May 14, 2014, from

http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Hindu_Cosmology.htm49

Currie, 2009, 186.50

Defining what exactly being is and its various forms and what non -being is represent further possibilities for

fracturing into dogmatism.


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particular way in which it is being observed.51

He therefore argued against the notion of

scientific knowledge being objective fact, since scientific knowledge, as he saw it, is based on

the nature of some facet of reality as perceivedand thus limitedthrough a certain perspective,

as opposed to how it actually exists outside of it. Under this line of thinking, when faced with

enigmatic ideas such as the void, Greek thinkers were forced to develop diverse dogmatic

principles from which to build further investigation.

But Kuhn simultaneously relents to the fact that a devout type of dogmatism or adherence

to a particular perspective is in fact a necessary part of scientific progressat least most of the

time. Kuhn divides scientific progress into one of two categories: either normal science or

revolutionary science.52 The former, which Kuhn believed defines science the vast majority of

the time, demands strict adherence to a particular paradigm of thought. In other words, normal

science is dogmatic, and evolves in concordance with the definitions of presuppositions present

in current scientific textbooks; ideas found to be incongruent with the current scientific laws

are deemed misguided and discarded in favor of better hypotheses which play by the

established set of rules. But on relatively rare occasions, Kuhn continues, occur periods of

revolutionary science whereby new experimental evidence proves so contradictory to prior

notions of fact, that thinkers are left with no choice but to discard their prior conceptions and

laws and engage in a non-dogmatic backtracking of sorts. They continue the process of crossing

51For example, science is concerned with understanding natural phenomena from a wide variety of different

perspectives, each of which appear highly different from one another: biology is concerned with understanding

living phenomena while geology deals with rocks. Anatomy includes, among many subdisciplines, physiology and

molecular genetics.52The following is an excerpt from Stanfords archived article on Kuhn; see the link for a more comprehensive

overview of normal and revolutionary science. A mature science, according to Kuhn, experiences alternating

phases of normal science and revolutions. In normal science the key theories, instruments, values and metaphysical

assumptions that comprise the disciplinary matrix are kept fixed, permitting the cumulative generation of puzzle-

solutions, whereas in a scientific revolution the disciplinary matrix undergoes revision, in order to permit the

solution of the more serious anomalous puzzles that disturbed the preceding period of normal science. Bird,

Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

URL = .


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out now defunct theories, troubleshooting until one emerges seemingly without any sort of new

evidentiary doubt. Orientalization saw to a period of something akin to Kuhns revolutionary

science, whereby a new breed of thinkers, influenced by new East Asian thought, were no longer

satisfied with the literal anthropomorphic interpretation of myth and sought to reanalyze these

cosmological stories from a new philosophical angle.53

On an individual level, knowledge is shaped by ones personal conception of reality, a

conception in many ways shaped by ones particular place and experience within society. In this

way, Greek society as a wholecomprised of fractured groups of individuals each holding

unique experiences due to orientalizationwas especially privy to countless expressions of

knowledge. Take for example the Milesian school of philosophy which arose out ofThales

postulate that the archemeaning the first transmutable substance, and that which mythology

asserted had come from the voidwas water.54 Thales, as a resident of the port town Miletus

had been privy to east Asian thought as it arrived alongside trade goods. Jonathan Re and J.O.

Urmson write how many of the problems studied by Thales were found in various forms in

earlier quasi-mythological cosmogonies and theogonies...

53While knowledge of reality today is comprised of countless different fields of science, this was obviously not

always the case. Knowledge according to Kuhn progresses in accordance with a pattern: relatively simple ideas

fragment to form increasingly specialized fields of thought which themselves, in turn, further increase in complexity

at an exponential rate. Its important to understand that knowledge builds this way, evolving throughout history in

accordance with the times historical context and cultural paradigm. Consider the following excerpt from Vasso

Kindi, Theodore Arabatzis,Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Revisited. (Routledge, 2013), 149: Kuhn

notes the apparently inexorable...growth in the number of distinct human practices and human specialties over the

course of human history. (RSS, 116). Rescher interestingly compared how the 1911 and 1974 editions of

Encyclopedia Britannica described physics, which were divided into twenty specialties. The fifteenth edition from

1974 split physics into twelve ranches, which had apparently so many subfields that they were not even surveyed in

their entirety. Further, the National Science Foundation divided physics in its register of scientific and technicalpersonnel into twelve areas with ninety specialties in 1954, and sixteen areas with 210 specialties in 1970.

According to Rescher, substantially the same story can be told for every field of natural science, which is to say that

there has been a continual growth in the taxonomic refinement of natural science. Rescher further claims that there is

every reason to think that scientific speciation has proceeded exponentially and in the standard evolutionary manner

encountered in the biological sphere, just as Kuhn held. (Rescher 1978, 226-230).54 Miletus was the largest city of Ionian Greece, and, being a port city near the mouth of Meander, it conducted an

extensive trade with Egypt where the Greeks founded Naukratis. Surely, not only goods were transported but

information about Egyptian religion as well. Drozdek, 2013, 5.


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...it was the treatment of these problems in straightforward descriptive terms and the

rejection of personification that gave Thales and his successors, for later Greeks and for

us, the title of philosopher. Although they abandoned much of the mythological

language, the pre-Socratics continued to be affected at certain points by pre philosophical

assumptions. When Thales declared that all things came from water, he was probably

giving rationalistic expression to a partly mythic Egyptian idea, paralleled in Babylonia,

that the world arose from Nun, the goddess of primeval waters, which was itself a

reflexion of the annual reappearance of the earth as the Nile recedes.55

This sentiment, accepted as fact by Thales and by his adherents, was thus incorporated into a

world view, a paradigm in the words of Kuhn, and used as a stepping stone from which to

introduce further arguments of increasing complexity. In contrast, Heraclitus of the Ephesian

school in Ionia argued for various reasons that fire was a more plausible arche; and, Anaximines,

a contemporary of Thales, instead took air for his arche noting the substances role both as an

evaporate with regard to water and as an accelerant with regard to fire. Each of the

aforementioned theories was but a different interpretation of what could be the arche; but, as can

easily be conceived, each perspective lent itself to a completely different understanding of the

surrounding world. So from the shared premise, that is, from the shared belief in a single

transmutable substance, it was perspective which served as the engine that drove a diverse

variety of independently progressing interpretations.

While the above examples illustrate the traditional manner in which knowledge is

pursuedby a narrowing of perspectives that splinters existing knowledge into more

manageable, specific chunksthere were several problems with this approach that certain

Greeks attempted to circumvent. The main problem encountered with such a method of

55Jonathan Re, J.O. Urmson, The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy, (Routledge, 2004), 309.


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systematic deconstruction was what Kuhn termed incommensurability. Kindi and Arabatzis

summarize Kuhns observations that disciplines progress through specialization:

Kuhns view is that speciation and the resulting isolation enable scientific disciplines to

specialize, which then permits sciences to better focus on some problems and natural

phenomena, and develop tools and language for this task. This kind of specialization not

only leads to success in individual disciplines because it, permits the resolution of

problems with which the previous structure was unable to deal (R.S.S 250), but it means

that science in its totality manages to solve more puzzles than a lexically homogeneous

science ever could. it is by these divisions...that knowledge grows (R.S.S 101).

56

But as perspectives continue to narrow and form many specialized subsets, it becomes more and

more difficult for knowledge of a thing as seen from one perspective to be translated into a form

equivalently understood from another perspective. As an example, a surgeon and a molecular

biologist, two people representing analysis of the human body from two very different

perspectives, would find it impossible to fully grasp how exactly the other understood the inner

workings of the same human body. Among other variables, both people would be using

terminologies vastly different from each other as descriptors for the various parts of the body: the

surgeon being primarily concerned with understanding organs and other such components on the

macro level, and the molecular biologist far more concerned with the bodys microscopic

components. Similarly, languages which are very different from each other suffer from

incommensurability since when describing the same situation or feeling, much can be lost in

56Vasso Kindi, Theodore Arabatzis,Kuhns The Structure ofScientific Revolutions Revisited. (Routledge, 2013),

141-142. Kindi and Arabatzis citation of (R.S.S) references the following work: Thomas S. Kuhn, James

Conant, John Haugeland, The Road Since Structures. (University of Chicago Press, 2000). For further explication

by Kuhn himself, see pg 141 ofThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions where he describes the transitions,

similarities, and incommensurabilities of the Ptolemaic, Copernican, Newtonian, and Einsteinian theories as

examples of the changing perspectives of knowledge throughout history.


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translation between the two languages. So with regard to knowledge as a whole, at certain

points, the underlying once visible connection linking two perspectives together disappears

entirely amidst each perspectives limiting specificity. In effort to surpass this, Thales student

Anaximander parted ways with his teacher by asserting the first transmutable substance was in

fact boundless. He coined his arche not water, fire, or air, but rather the apeiron, which in the

last remaining fragment we have from Anaximander, can be interpreted as being a transcendent

substance consisting of whatever might be the intangible unity between incommensurable

substances. Thus the apeiron represents that which might be both fire andwater, both hot and

cold, or described another way, neitherhot norcold.

57

By defining the arche as such,

Anaximander avoided having to dogmatically choose a particular substance as being the first;

instead he preserved the initial expression of the first substance as portrayed by mythologys

paradoxical explication of the Chaos. The apeiron, as encompassing the boundless enigmatic

unity between opposing substances, represents that which transcends the inevitable loss of

knowledge incurred when the holistic understanding of a thing is deconstructed into specific

fragments.

But though Anaximanders efforts to maintain some theoretical semblance of unity were

noble, the ensuing cascade of philosophy was unable to resist the pattern of increased

specification. Kuhn argued that the fundamental paradigms for all modern science originated in

historys great works because they were sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring

group of adherents as well as sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the

57See, Currie, 2009, 187-189, 194, 197, 207-208, 212. Also see, Elizabeth Asmis, What Was Anaximanders

Apeiron?Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Number 3, (July 1981) 279-297.

Also see Jurgen Lawrences essay Sources of

Metaphysical thinking in pre-Socratic philosophy, where he explains the roots of Apeirons meaning: As to its

meaning, we may begin with unlimited, which cannot be too far off the mark, becauseperas, its root, means

boundary.


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redefined group of practitioners to resolve.58

The pre-Socratics subsequent discourses injected

new ideas into the intellectual vernacular which, depending on their many possible

interpretations, blossomed into numerous philosophical subsets and schools. This was a time

during which ideas were fresh; philosophy being born rather than acquired from intellectual

interaction with near-east sages and the immense feelings of awe which must have arisen

alongside a new world view with so many unanswered questions. Adherents to opposing

arguments over such matters fragmented into the followers of differing philosophical schools

which themselves splintered into sub schools. In this sense, long before the classical

philosophers and their more specific, refined arguments, it was pre-Socratics such as the

Milesian philosophers on the coast, who, being the first of those privy to orientalizations east

Asian ideas, can be considered both discoverers and creators, the original receivers of previously

inaccessible knowledge they then transformed through interpretation. Later thinkers such as

Socrates carried the flame further by reinterpreting their predecessors ideas in the context of

their own times, but classical philosophy is but result of further digestion of ideas introduced first

during the Archaicperiods philosophical revolution.59

Indeed, part of what defined the Greeks culture was their inclination to form factions

from ideological perspectives; and each faction was out to prove its perspectives superiority

over the others. As Jeremy McInerney argues, what it meant to be Greek in another major way

was to be competition with other Greeks. Strife, that is, a noble struggle to be better than

ones neighbor was a central theme in Greeks zero sum culture.60 This manifested itself in

58Kuhn, 1962, 53.

59One may notice the emphasis on interpretation. This was a defining factor of the Greeks cultural thought

process, perhaps having roots in the non-dogmatic nature of Greek mythology. Without a sacred text to fall back on,

Greek bards, the original knowledge bearers, spawned a diverse variety of often competing myths leaving much

room for interpretation and debate over which myth was right. Similarly, philosophy Greeks which came after the

pre-Socratics similarly reinterpreted philosophy within the contexts of their own times.60

Mcinerney, Jeremy. Delphi and Olympia. Lecture 7, Ancient Greek Civilization, Th e Great Courses #323.


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philosophy with the fracturing of schools and the often heated discourses between thinkers, as

well as in the physical form of competition exemplified in the Olympic Games. So ingrained

was this idea of competition as a central aspect of life, that even the gods and heroes of the

Greeks mythology were engaged in the constant struggle to come out on top, to outshine one

another.

Perhaps ironically, todays notion of religion being detrimental to real world acquisition

of knowledge is in sharp contrast with how religion functioned in 8th century Archaic Greece.

Rather than impeding scientific enquiry, religions enigmatic questions and cosmological

dilemmas meshed with the Greeks holy pursuit of competition to actually encourage the first

fruits of philosophical rumination.61

Competition and the Divine

Delphi was far more than a temple with its sole purpose being a place of worship; rather,

it mirrored Greek religion and dialectic as it functioned in society as a whole, which it stands,

was vastly different from how both religion and scientific inquiry function in modernity. Delphi

was, like Greek culture and ideology, a cultural hearth and place of inquiry which was loosely

though at the same time thoroughly oriented around religion. Like many ancient civilizations,

religion played a fundamental role in every aspect of Greek life, including those aspects which

when taken out of context today, would appear purely secular: philosophy, architecture, tragedy,

comedy etc.

61McInerney argues that the profound sense of awe felt in the face of eternity forms the basis for all ancient

religions. Through this same sentiment, cosmologyas a component of philosophia and the later more specific

fields of astrology and astronomywas born out of the conundrums faced when rationally attempting to make sense

of origin myths.


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Socio-politically, Greek city states were themselves fragmented, but Greek inhabitants

did share a common sense of pride for being Greek; they shared the notion that they were all

descendedwith perhaps varying levels of removalfrom those great peoples of the heroic age

whose stories had been preserved in mythology. Religious ritual also served as a very real way

to bind the Greeks together both on the micro and macro panhellenic scale; and sacrifice at the

city alter, as an example of the former, was an activity of utmost importance within each polis. It

was through these and similar actions that groups of individuals could come together with the

shared purpose of gaining the favor of the gods, who might then impart upon them some

supernatural influence in return making life a bit easier.

62

The ways in which the gods were

worshipped varied from polis to polis, but all Greeks agreed that the gods played an integral role

in their own humanly affairs; thus, the idea of living ones life heroically, and in a way which

would put on a show for the beings above, was a shared sentiment and paramount aspiration for

all Greek individuals.

On rarer more monumental occasions, Greeks would leave their individual polis and

congregate together at massive festivals with sole intent of pleasing the gods with showings of

epic fanfare, competition and pageantry. Olympus held the famed Olympic Games, but at

Delphi the Greeks competed in the Pythian Games to honor Apollo. Indeed, alongside being site

of the most famed oracle, among the multitude of city states, Delphi became one of four cities

which held, every two to four years, one of these panhellenic games.63

But, alongside this

physical form of competition, Apollo demanded dialectic occur at his temple in the name of

religion. Philosophy too became a competitive part of Greek culture, one so intertwined with

62See, section Civic Religion in: Cara L Sailors, The Function of Mythology and Religion in Greek Society, (East

Tennessee State University, 2007). 28. Each polis had a calendar year divided both by unique religious events and

more strictly human activities though the two were often interconnected, a harvest for example, might have

coincided with a religious festival.63

Broad, 2007, 49, 60.


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religion at Delphi that with regard to the Delphic paradigm, the two must be considered

inseparable.

Dialectic was famously made popular by Platos descriptions of the lengthy discussions

Socrates had with multiple other people with different points of view. Dialectic encompassed

the rules of engagement for rational discussion, the purpose of which was finding out the truth of

a matter when faced with more than one plausible answer. As part of this methodology,

rationalism at Delphi might be described more aprocess than an affirmation based on fact;

similar perhaps to how theology might be rightly defined today. The oracle functioned from

seemingly irrational premisesas in the words of the godsbut a very rational method of

discourse followed. What seems to lack credibility today is the idea that benefit may be accrued

from this rational process regardless of where it actually proceeds from; since irrational belief, if

declared a fact, can be rationally analyzed just the same. At Delphi, as in Greece as a whole,

philosophical and what we would deem today secular thought came about as result of religious

stimuli; and, it was not so much the oracle that mattered as it was the discourse that followed.

Since the god Apollo demanded dialectic, a more apt description of Delphi may be that of a place

religiously dedicated to rational discourse in its purest form. As such, within both the context of

its own time as well as ours, Delphi was neither religious nor strictly philosophical but was

something else entirely. The difficulty for the modern scholar is that in his time religion is

strictly separated from more secular matters such as politics and science; and unless abstractly

related, religion and secularism are more or less mutually exclusive. While it is true that many

people consider themselves both religious and scientific, one is required to conform to each

respective ideology and reflect upon each in a fundamentally different ways. When a biologist is

studying organic molecules under a microscope, to be considered seriously he must temporarily


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refute his religious beliefs as he must conversely refute his faith in the material alone when in his

personal life he prays to God. Today these ideologies have been all but completely

deconstructed from how they existed holistically in the Delphic paradigm.

This section of the paper seeks to equate the principles involved with Delphis oracular

process to those same shared principles present in Greek ideology albeit on a larger societal

scale. In other words, Delphis paradigm on the micro scale mirrors the archaic Greeks shared

paradigm on the macro; and in this respect, Delphi becomes a window in which to understand

the shared interpretive headspace of the early Greeks. Delphis oracular process entailed a

streamlined procedure nearly identical to how philosophy fractured out on a cultural scale in

early Greece. The pre-Socratics first pulled knowledge from mythologys non-dogmatic open

ends, which they then subjected to increasing levels of scrutiny perpetuated by fragmenting it

into specific, more dogmatic, perspectives for observation. At Delphi, Apollos enigmatic

oracles were first viewed non-dogmatically before being deconstructed dogmatically into its

various possible interpretations; finally these differing perspectives were debated over through

dialectic in order to yield the most reasonable answer to what might be the oracles true meaning.

The Oracle at Delphi

Most scholars accept that premonition occurred at Delphi on the 9th day of each month.

The Pythia entered a chamber known as the adyton, sat atop a tripod, and after perhaps inhaling

fumes which leaked from a fissure beneath, relayed Apollos oracular response to supplicants in

the form of enigmatic verse.64 Scholarly arguments pertaining to exactly how the Pythia

64The name Pythia comes from Pytho, a reference to the monsterous python mythology (precisely, Homeric Hymn

3 to Apollo) posits to have been Delphis original guardian before it was slain by Apollo. As a side note, while the

third Delphic Hymn is often referred to as Homeric, this relates to its structural similarity to the Iliad and the

Odyssey; the author of these Delphic hymns remains unknown. See, Anonymous. The Homeric Hymns and


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underwent enthousiasmosthe Greek word for direct contact with godgenerally involve

either some sort of intoxication or trance or perhaps more cynically, the simple notion that it was

all an act: smoke and mirrors, manipulation and faade.65

Whatever the case may be matters

very little however, with regard to the much more important interpretative process which

occurred after. Similarly, with regard to the Greeks early cosmology, the precise roots and

historical accuracy of the specific myths that inspired such detailed analysis mattered little in

comparison with the ensuing philosophical discourse over its meaning, at least from a Kuhnian

perspective.66

Much like the ambiguity present in various mythological stories, oracles were almost

always enigmatic, that is, they mirrored mythologys open endedness in such a way which

allowed for multiple interpretations.67

Understood to be of divine nature, the Pythias words

were characteristically vague and poetic; this was believed a challenge posed by the gods since

Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. (Cambridge, MA.,Harvard

University Press; London William Heinemann Ltd. 1914).

Though the oracular statements

were always written in verse, it is not certain that the Pythias exact words were copied down verbatim; somescholars believe the Pythia actually spoke in tongues which were then interpretedby the male priests who

transcribed it into hexameter verse. J. Z. De Boer and J. R. Hale, The geological origins of the oracle at Delphi,Greece, Geological Society, 171, (2000): 399-412., J.Z de Boer, J.R. Hale, J. Chanton, New Evidence for the

geological origins of the ancient Delphic oracle, Geology 29, (2001): 707-710., Daryn Lehoux, Drugs and the

Delphic Oracle, Classical World101, no. 1 (2007): 41-56,

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/classical_world/v101/101.1lehoux.html65 Ibid. De Boer and Hale claim to have found geological evidence for a fissure beneath Delphis temple which had

at one point leaked a type of hallucinogenic ethylene gas. This discovery has had the consequence of exonerating

some classical sources which had mentioned the fissure, but were discredited by 19th and 20th century academics on

the basis of an earlier botched expedition which failed to locate the fissurenow inactiveduring an archeological

survey. In Greek religion enthusiasm (/enthousiasms) refers to being taken by a higher power,

usually personified by the gods (cf. / theiasms, inspiration; /ntheos, possessed by god).

TH.SCH.. "Enthousiasmos."Brills New Pauly. Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , HelmuthSchneider. Brill Online, 2015. Reference. 66

As another example, exact knowledge of the origin of some Greek ideaslike those which sparked them to use

the Phoenician alphabet, to create their myths, and to utilize various perspectives to interpret myths,mattered very

little when compared to the more important process of how the Greeks went about interpreting these ideas.67 Kindt, Julia. Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography: Herodotus Croesus Logos. Classical

Philology, 101, no. 1 (2006): 34-51, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=c6beb027-7d36-42e5-ae9a-

d749ab060ab1%40sessionmgr12&vid=1&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=2

0815191


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they demanded supplicants to engage in dialectic.68

For example, one of oracles the most

commonly referenced statements was uttered in response to Croesus, the King of Lydia who had

come to Delphi sometime around 547 B.C.E seeking advice on whether or not to invade Persia.

The Pythia warned Croesus, that if he went to war with Persia he would destroy a great

empire. Croesus then, blindly interpreting these words within the scope of his own biased

notions of superiority, confidently went to war unaware that the great civilization he was about to

destroy would be his own.69 Oracles were often requested on behalf of entire city states. When

the Persian emperor Xerxes defeated the Spartan force at the battle of Thermopylae in 480

B.C.E, the Athenians, in a panic, sought Apollos advice at Delphi. The oracles response,

according to Herodotus, was Though all else shall be taken, Zeus, the all seeing, grants that the

wooden walls only shall not fail. While many Athenians interpreted this as meaning the walls

and thorny bushes around their Acropolis would protect them, Themistocles argued that it was

his wooden ships which would serve as their saving barrier; and he defeated the Persians at sea.70

Most primary sources indicate that like the Croesus example, most of the Pythias statements

were phrased simply in a manner which allowed

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The Delphic Paradigm by Jacob Piccus