Walter Burkert and A Natural Theory of Religion
Walter Burkert and A Natural Theory of Religion
Walter Burkert and A Natural Theory of Religion
Introduction
What has been the raison dtre for religion in the evolution of human life and culture
hitherto? Is there a natural foundation of religion, based on the great and general
process of life which has brought forth humanity and still holds sway over it, beyond
chance and manipulation, personal idiosyncrasies and social conditioning? (Walter
Burkert, Creation of the Sacred, pp. xxi)
At the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in San
Francisco, the Comparative Studies in Religion Section scheduled a session entitled On
Walter Burkert and the Natural History of Religion. For this symposium Gustavo
Benavides and Robert Segal have revised the papers they presented, and Steven
Wasserstrom has developed his response to the papers into an analysis of problematic
aspects of Burkerts theory of religion. A fourth paper, by C. Robert Phillips, treating
the applicability of Burkerts theory to Roman religion, has been written specifically for
this symposium.
My objective in this introductory essay is to present an overview of Burkerts studies
of religion. As a prelude to sketching the argument of Creation of the Sacred (hereafter
CS), I shall examine selected topics, themes and problems discussed in several previous
books, for the most part neglecting the evidence he adduces to support and test his
interpretations in favour of tracing the development of his theory. I want to consider the
issues that have led him to claim in CS that religion can be traced to pre-human biology
and that religion derives from biology and language. Insofar as CS constitutes a theory
of religion that accounts for the ubiquity and persistence of religion, it will be important
to understand how Burkert composed the theory during more than forty-five years of
scholarly labour. Although from the beginning of his academic career Burkert aimed to
produce a definition of religion based on solid theoretical foundations, and actually does
oer such a definition and theory in CS, he frequently suggests tentative markers for the
term religion to launch his projects. In CS he indicates that religion is distinguished
from other cultural phenomena by the non-empirical character of much of its content,
by its manifestation in human interaction and communication, and by the priority that
many, if not all, cultures grant it. At this point we may also say that his method aims at
historical reconstruction rather than definitive proof. Probabilities are the most he can
produce, according to his principle that social rules must fit the natural landscape.
212
L. J. Alderink
was an early Greek shaman rather than a scientist, mathematician or philosopher. The
knowledge he sought and taught was mystical and secret, and was the possession of
initiates who practiced a way of life, sought otherworldly benefits and relied on an
authoritative tradition. Above all, what later Greek tradition considered the philosophy
of Pythagoras was actually an achievement of Plato, constituting a union of knowledge,
ethics, science and religion in a coherent, if problematic, perspective.
But how does Burkert reach these conclusions? Burkert works at points of
intersection, for the figure of Pythagoras, less a historical person than a name, suggests
a union of religion and philosophy . . . and science (LSAP, p. 3). Quite naturally,
investigators shape material into patterns they are looking for, since tools used in inquiry
shape the results of the inquiry. However, circularity is not necessarily involved since
the tools do not determine the inquiry but merely make it possible. Burkert seeks a
cross-disciplinary pattern, and thus in LSAP he must make and use the kinds of tools
that will enable him to produce the multidisciplinary pattern he seeks.
Moving beyond the procedures of source analysis that most scholars of
Pythagoreanism have employed, Burkert develops the technique of tradition analysis
to enable him to separate and identify the various strands and strata of a particular
tradition and, in addition, to find causes to explain both the continuities and the
discontinuities within the tradition under investigation. Further, no one feature of a
tradition need be construed as its centre or essence, for each will be given its due in the
eort to display the tradition as possessing an identity that undergoes change as the
various features interact. Burkert has thereby abandoned the methodology of source
analysis in favour of the analysis of traditions. This innovation is more than one of
method; it implies a scope of analysis that in principle cannot be limited if traditions
interact. Burkert is well on his way from the Pythagoreanism of his early work to the
Sacred of his most recent book by making tradition the focus of his investigation.
Although the concept of tradition will enable us to account for the extension of a group
over time, Burkert is also on his way to refining the concept of tradition since it, too,
is problematic, containing as it does possibilities of both discontinuities and continuities
as well as the diculties of identifying and tracing the borders that distinguish one
tradition from another.
214
L. J. Alderink
animals kill violently, so human predators kill to eat and indeed imitate the behaviour of
predatory animals. Need for food and the aggression necessary to procure it lie at the
basis of hunting. Anxiety about the food supply becomes intense, since killing too much
game will result in eliminating the supply, but not killing enough will result in
starvation. Further, the act of killing itself is surrounded by anxiety, since a predatory
animal can kill the hunter, and a dead animal can produce no more animals. Ritual
provided our ancestors with a conceptual tool for coping with their aggression and
anxiety. Hunters lived with feelings of guilt with regard to the slaughtered animal. The
ritual provides forgiveness and reparation . . . the ritual betrays an underlying anxiety
about the continuation of life in the face of death . . . the gathering of bones, the raising
of a skull . . . is to be understood as an attempt at restoration, a resurrection in the most
concrete sense. The hope that the sources of nourishment will continue to exist, and the
fear that they will not, determine the action of the hunter, killing to live (HN, p. 16).
Prehistoric hunting rituals continue into historical times. As sacrificial rituals, they
perform a new and even greater function. Characterised by repetitive and stereotypical
actions, they are behavioural patterns that prevent misuse and misunderstanding.
Moreover, in sacrificial rituals the primary function of non-ritualised huntingkilling
animals to eatis displaced by a new function, that of communication by dramatising
the common life and order of a given community. Funeral rituals, for example,
contribute to the continuity of society by honouring the dead and instructing the
young. The social solidarity that derives from hunting and sacrificial rituals also includes
a potentially dangerous threat in the aggression enshrined in the rituals: aggression aimed
at animals can easily turn back upon the hunters, and the aggression performed in the
sacrificial ritual can become socially destructive rather than useful. Once humans have
initiated violence, the violence may overcome them, or strike at unintended or
unanticipated objects. No wonder anxiety lies at the basis of religious activities.
A constructive direction is, however, possible when myths are linked to rituals. A
myth need not grow directly out of ritual but will name that which the rituals intends
(HN, pp. 334). Whereas ritual redirects aggressive energy but remains at an as-if level
of emotion and thinking, myth contributes reality to the ritual:
In hunting and then in sacrifice, aggressive modes of behavior between men are
diverted onto animals; in the myth, on the other hand, is a human victim. Fears are
displayed in the preparatory rituals; the myth names someone who is to be feared. The
ritual is shaped by gestures of guilt and submission; the myth tells of some stronger
being and of his power. The myth develops what the gestures contain in nuce: a
threatening gesture becomes murder, sorrow acted out becomes genuine mourning,
erotic movements become a story of love and death. The as-if element in the ritual
becomes mythical reality; conversely, the ritual confirms the reality of the myth. In this
way, by mutually arming each other, myth and ritual became a strong force in
forming a cultural tradition, even though their origins were dierent. (HN, p. 34)
Together, myth and ritual perform the socially necessary function of redirecting
violence from socially destructive to socially useful purposes. In ancient Greece, they
served the goal of maintaining the cultural tradition in a second way: they were the
foundation for concepts of deities. Because hunters kill and eat flesh rather than
vegetables, hunting involves aggression against animals, big and male, who are one of
the family and thus friends, or at least fellow living beings. Yet they are doomed to die
and to become the source of food and human life. By analogy, animals become father
substitutes and father figures. Since hunting is a demanding endeavour and depends on
skill, a long period of training is necessary, during which the aggressive impulses of the
216
L. J. Alderink
Whereas HN raised dicult issues in the attempt to account for group solidarity in
ancient Greek culture by arguing for a continuity between prehistoric hunting societies
and historical Greek society, GR focuses on the religion of the late geometric, archaic
and classical periods, from 800 to 300 BC. Evidence from earlier times is also taken into
account, from prehistoric hunting as well as Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. The
terminal point of GR is 300 BC, when the Hellenic world passed into the Hellenistic
world. The end of Greek religion coincided with the end of the Greek polis, signalled
first by Platos Laws as presenting a utopian rather than an actual polis and later by the
development of the very large and amorphous city . . . the megalopolis of the ancient
world that Christianity would most easily find a foothold (GR, p. 337).
One result of Burkerts approach is that while the Greek religion of his GR may be
unique and unrepeatable, it is also deprived of the splendid isolation concealed in the
glory that was Greece of poetic fame. Another result is that Burkerts theory of Greek
religion undergoes development and refinement; his Greek religion is an organic
system. Connecting all the diverse phenomena that Burkert coversritual and temple,
Olympian deities, chthonic deities, mysteries and asceticism, and philosophical
religionis the distinctive feature of Greek religion: the polis and its corollary,
polytheism. Since Greek religion was bound to the polis as a public religion with
sacrifices, processions and communal meals, Burkert does not oer a definition of the
religion but instead sketches its chief traits: religion as social rather than personal, a
religion of relations rather than attitudes and a religion of acts rather than faith. Further,
Burkert insists that by considering the Greek pantheon as a closed system, structural
analysis misses both the Greek openness to outside influences and the transformations
the religion underwent. By contrast, a biological basis provides a more fruitful
perspective. Thus in GR ritual is a complex display of basic human experienceseating,
sex and deathand their incorporation into communal life. Myths and rituals are both
forms of intellectual activity and ways to cope with reality (see GR, p. 8).
Myth and Ritual: Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual
The problems that preoccupied Burkert in HN and GR continue in Structure and History
in Greek Mythology and Ritual (hereafter GMR). These problems are, however, treated in
new and extended ways in order to work out the thesis of the book: that historical
evolution and cultural transmission determine the semantic structures of myths and the
persistence of rituals. The organisation of all three books follows a similar pattern: first,
Burkert identifies the theoretical issues he will face (and the scholars who have faced
them dierently) and states the theses and methods that will guide his research; then he
provides the theoretical framework that he will apply to the materials he will use as
evidence for testing, extending, and revising his theories; and finally, he works his way
through the evidence with his theory as the guide to research. In HN, he first addressed
problems of ritual before he turned to those of myth: in GMR, he considers ritual in
twenty-four pages after he devotes thirty-four to myth. He addresses additional
problems in his discussions of both myth and ritual. Previously, he oered clear but
minimal definitions of each. Now he transforms definitions into problems in the process
of fashioning new tools for more ambitious explanations.
The definition of myth in GMR is more ambitious and complex than the definitions
oered in previous works. Working through particular myths of Kumbarbi and Kronos,
Herakles, the Great Goddess, Adonis, and Demeter, Burkert oers four theses, each in
conscious opposition to the theory of Claude Lvi-Strauss. The first is that myth, or
218
L. J. Alderink
Burkert rethinks his ideas about ritual, he increases the range of examples to be
examined as well as the scope of his theory. Hunting rituals remain important, as do
sacrifices and scapegoats, but in GMR the analysis grows in to a general theory of ritual.
Once again, Burkert surveys the current wisdom regarding ritual: Mannhardts and
Frazers theories of fertility and vegetation spirits. Freuds theory of obsessive acts driven
by unconscious motivations, and van Genneps and Victor Turners theories of
structural interpretations. As he moves into his own territory, biology again paves the
way. He defines ritual as action redirected for demonstration. Characteristic features of
ritual in this perspective are: the stereotyped pattern of action, independent of the actual
situation and emotion; repetition and exaggeration to make up a kind of theatrical
eect; and the function of communication (GMR, p. 37).
Stereotypy invites us to compare ritualised with a non-ritualised behaviour that
underlies the ritual. A test case is provided by herms in ancient Greece, those pillars
surmounted by a bust of Hermes and decorated with an erect phallus, from which
Burkert concludes that the basic function of sexuality is suspended for the sake of
communication: every individual approaching from the outside will notice that this
group does not consist of helpless wives and children, but enjoys the full protection of
masculinity . . . the power is neither in the phallus nor the stone; they are signs
conveying a message of potency (GMR, pp. 401).
As a form of communication, rituals distribute information among participants in the
rituals and convey the information from generation to generation. Often they do so in
a particularly dramatic fashion, largely to make a message memorable. Repetition is also
an important aspect of ritual and serves the purpose of transmitting information
eciently by eliminating unnecessary information and background noise. Exaggeration both abstracts crucial elements for communication and imprints the eect of the
ritual on the minds of the participants. A central function of ritual is to direct attention
to the aggression internal to a group or a society with the aim of provoking rather than
relieving the anxiety over the aggression. The aggression is transformed into ritual
anxiety for the purpose of stimulating social reflection and social direction. On this
view, the ritual is a deliberate plan of action designed to provoke and direct social
anxiety. When the social stress is linked to the distribution of goods in a society, social
change is ritualised into a form of giving:
Anxiety is transformed: Dont be too anxious to get, dont be too anxious about losing,
be anxious to give and you will get your due. At the same time, as abandoning turns
into conscious giving, mans anxiety about the future is both aroused and pacified. . . .
Language will spell out the contract of do ut des, or rather quod dedisti, do ut des. Give,
as I gave: these are the terms of ancient prayer. More advanced morality has been
trying to overcome or sublimate the unabashed selfishness of this acts of piety, without
too much success. Expectation of reciprocal altruism definitely is a strategy for ones
own good. Still proposing, as it does, some guarantee of universal stability, it may claim
to be called religious even in a deeper sense. (GMR, p. 54)
Ritual, then, redirects the forces of pragmatic, non-ritualised behaviour from socially
destructive aggression into socially healthy channels, as aggression becomes sociability.
Some rituals, perhaps most, have served their purposes unaccompanied by myths.
Similarly, many myths have served their purposes without corresponding rituals.
However, rituals and myths may coincide as modes of communication, since both
perform social functions and serve as social action programs,
220
L. J. Alderink
A central problem that Burkerts sociobiological project faces is that biology and
culture seem to be so dierent. Whereas religion requires, and is a part of, cultural
learning and is acquired by imitation, biological programs follow predetermined
programs that antedate the human species (CS, p. 17). The discovery of religious genes
would demonstrate the unity of the two, or at least their fusion, but the closest tie that
Burkert finds is a relation of analogy rather than of homology between humans and
other primates. The issues to which Burkert turns his attention are more historical.
Arguing that although, as many interpreters of religion suggest, religion may be socially
dysfunctional, religion may also turn out to function as a stabilising factor in society.
What must Burkert demonstrate to establish his claim?
He begins with assertions about language, that exclusively human universal which
displays a correlation between culture and biology. The vocal equipment necessary for
speech is lacking in our near relatives. Hence a genetic alteration was the biological
precondition for the emergence of language, and human language thus may be called a
hybrid of culture and biology (CS, p. 18). Similarly, art is unique to humans, as is
religion. One of the main aspects of religion, the communicative, is thus a parallel to
language, while another aspect, the ritualistic, is also a form of communication but is
pre-verbal and pre-linguistic. The main conclusion to follow from these observations
about language, art and religion is that all three survived in a symbiotic relation, uniting
biology with culture. Language and religion are the link that ties humans to their genetic
history yet frees them for cultural developments. Genes made possible the emergence of
culture, and culture would alter genetic patterns and successive generations.
How can one demonstrate this tie between culture and biology within a sociobiological perspective? Burkerts proposal is that we use the metaphor of landscape
(cf. GMR, p. 58), imagining that religion did not emerge in a void any more than
language emerged without biological preconditions. He warns against separating
culture from biology or religion from substructures formed within the evolution of life.
Religions hybrid characterbetween biology and culturecalls for an interdisciplinary
meeting of methods: derivation should go together with interpretation. In this sense, an
analysis of religious worlds in view of the underlying landscape may be attempted (CS,
p. 23).
Whereas sociobiological methods using experiment and observation cannot be used
to establish the thesis of the coevolution of genes and culture because of the enormous
temporal span of the evolutionary process, a method of reconstruction may yield
probabilities that shed light on that long history. Reconstruction can proceed by making
a distinction between social rules and the landscape they will fit if they are to function
in a society and be transmitted throughout generations. Rules will fit a landscape or will
be forgotten or replaced. Another feature of Burkerts method is that he construes
culture, religion and the human mind as software, in that they can be copied and passed
from generation to generation yet remain bound to preconditions of the
hardwaregenes and brainsfrom which they were produced. These points do not
drive Burkert into biological or genetic determinism, and they certainly do not
encourage the separation of culture from biology. They do, however, enable him to
propose an interaction between biology and culture that incorporates both biological
conditions and cultural choice, because language and religion together enable humans to
design alternative courses of action as well as to make choices between options.
Whether religion possesses a survival value or contributes to the survival of a group
remains an open question to be answered by testing the sociobiological hypothesis,
particularly since fitness will mean inclusive fitness or the eects of the reproductive
222
L. J. Alderink
What works for individual animals and humans also works for groups with a plan that
is simultaneously rational and emotional. The principle can be extended to group
dynamics in the case of scapegoating, as religious rituals provide mechanisms for dealing
with the guilty consciences by attributing guilt or pollution, or even semi-divine status,
to the victim. Burkerts conclusion is that the biological parallel illumines the cultural
practice in cases ranging from circumcision to demonic activity:
In the situation of the herd vis--vis the carnivorethe zebra attacked by lionswhen
one individual is killed, the others feel safe for a time. The instinctive program seems
to command: take another one, not me. This ancient program is still at work in
humans, still fleeing from devouring dangers and still making sacrifices to assuage and
triumph over anxiety. In this perspective sacrifice is a construct of sense that has proved
almost universally eective throughout the history of civilization. (CS, p. 55)
Chapter 3 of CS, The Core of a Tale, moves from the theme of sacrifice to the topic
of narrative. As sacrifice in human society makes use of capacities not found in the
animal kingdom, particularly rational estimating and planning of outcomes, language
and religion enable humans to generate knowledge and to cooperate in the service of
group survival. Knowledge is thus to be appreciated for its own sake but also for its
utility, with survival in physical or social danger but one of its uses. Knowledge is also
stored in various forms, of which the tale is certainly ubiquitous and perhaps the earliest.
The central feature of talestheir ability to reduce information to communicate
intricate and complicated experiencesprompts Burkert to turn to Propps Morphology
of the Folktale, as he did in GMR, because the functions, or motifemes, of Proppian
analysis, limited in number and fixed in sequence, can be applied to a wide range of
tales. Tales can be reduced to their component parts and the message they communicate. In particular, Burkert applies Propps pattern to the Greek myths of Perseus,
Heracles and the Argonauts as well as to Sumerian myths, the shamans tale and the
maidens tragedy, all to show how tales are a general and transcultural form of
organizing experience (CS, p. 62). Burkert argues that the sequences and functions
comprise a storage system that allows for a variety in content yet retains remarkable
similarity in pattern. The basic functions form a biological program of action that
describes the search for food and the quest for life, with all the obstacles and dangers
involved. Human need is therefore a biological fact taken into religious representations.
If religion and language conspire to produce worlds that lack empirical referents and
ideas for which there is no evidence, it is important to examine closely the relations
among language, social structure and gods, who appear to be one of the distinguishing
features of religion. All three come together in chapter 4 of CS, Hierarchy. In his eort
to account for the concept of gods, Burkert turns to the role of rank and dependence
in religion, which implies subordination and submission in society. Religion as a
pervasive feature of early human societies with traces in the Paleolithic period can be
considered a purely social construction, since we have no reason to think that religion
is inscribed in our genetic code. It can also be viewed as social in the sense that it must
be taught anew to each generation. On this view, religion is social or cultural, leaving
open the possibility that it performs biological services that contribute to human
survival. Religion provides meaning at times of helplessness and perplexity, guidance
when confused, and confidence and comfort when facing danger. These particular
services are directly connected to gods.
Burkert traces gods to the role of ranking in society. Early human societies were
arranged with some members higher and some lower, with some having power over
224
L. J. Alderink
sense before the cultic activity can be eective. As Burkert writes, Sense is created by
finding a way to speak coherently about events (CS, p. 112). Here we see how religion
functions in dealing with problems in a society, for prophets, priests, messengers and
diviners can identify the source of the problem by making sense of it, and thus
integrating new and conflicting information into the mental world or the social system,
thereby restoring the breach caused by the original catastrophe. The experience of
diculty and danger often moves persons to attribute power to the gods and to blame
themselves, rightly or wrongly, for a catastrophe, but if they know what gifts to oer to
which god or gods, the superhuman powers may give in return the knowledge necessary
to expel the polluting agent, overcome a wrong done, restore a lost social harmony or
even avert further disaster. Giving a gift to the highest power may secure favour from
the gods, or at least believing that it will be beneficial to a society. The main
accomplishment is the concept of causality, as Burkert concludes somewhat nostalgically
and even fearfully:
In short, I postulate a dynamic program that operates in dierent civilizations and
epochs, from so-called primitives to high cultures, a program dealing with the causality
of evil. It appeals to unseen powers through what has been called transcendent
diagnosis, and it tends to establish and to reiterate religious ritual in order to restore the
previous situation of normalcy. It turns out to be one of the main factors in enforcing
religious practice. By establishing connections of fault, consequence, and remedy, it
creates a context of sense and premises a meaningful cosmos in which people can live
in health and at rest; it is in fact the postulate and the acceptance of a surplus of
meaning in the world, sharply contrasting with the reductions made by empirical
science. . . . Danger is overcome by constructing or reconstructing a world of
meaning. However fictitious, it often proves eective. Modern science, which is
fascinated by chaos beyond causality while worlds of meaning are fractioned and
pulverized within our multicultural mass society, will not easily prevail. People prefer
to cling to the surplus of causality and sense, and there is no lack of mediators to
explore the hidden connections. (CS, pp. 1278)
Making oerings and giving gifts to gods can be a strategy for turning disaster into
reform or for preventing further diculty, but a further reason for gift giving is the
concern of chapter 6 of CS, The Reciprocity of Giving. The phenomena arrayed in
this chapter range from ancient to modern societies, from the bronze age to the market
economy. In reciprocal giving, the objective is to create a stable and orderly world of
human exchange, which require signs that in turn demand interpretation; nonreciprocal giving, however, dispays the asymmetry of giving away without getting back.
Religious giving involves giving to the gods in the hope of receiving in return,
according to the formula do ut des, which underwrites stability in the network of
exchanges. Burkert argues, further, that reciprocity is a form of morality, even though
the Prisoners Dilemma may instead suggest defection if one of two prisoners does not
know whether the other will cheat in order to receive a lighter punishment; and if
cheating pays well in a single case, then cheating soon and often may oer the more
appealing option. At the same time, religious giving, with its cooperation and
reciprocity, may be beneficial in the long run, since giving to the gods as well as giving
within society creates a harmonious system.
A major problem is that such systemic consistency does not fit all, let alone most, cases
of giving to gods, thus undermining the principle of reciprocal giving as well as the
rationality of the principle itself. Giving to gods in the hope of return may well produce
social harmony and stability. Yet as Burkert himself points out, any gifts the gods may
give in return are not verifiable, so that giving to the gods conflicts with the principle
226
L. J. Alderink
and the psyche which gives them their meaning, and they provided individuals and
groups with the opportunity for orientation. Whereas primitive organisms with simple
brains work within a closed system by reacting instinctively to specific signs, human
brains have no fixed program for structuring and selecting what can and should be
known (CS, p. 161). Thus the human capacity for communication through language
gives culture a range of capacities that biology does not give other species.
Humans must interpret signs and can do so in ways that produce multiple meanings,
with divination the art of interpreting signs based on the assumption of sense within the
universe, and the ordeal a way to receive and interpret signs from gods in times of
conflict or chaos. Humans can also change the environment to adapt it to the
presuppositions and categories of their common mental world (CS, p. 165). Whether
by marking stones or making figurines or designing body markings, human culture
enables human beings to connect the common mental world to the natural environment
through the medium of the human body. Signs thus shape the world and create what
Burkert calls a second level of realityimages for orientation or maps for living in the
world reality (CS, p. 166). At this point the limitations of language become apparent,
for the capacity to deceive and the ability to tell the truth fall equally within the scope
of human communication. Oaths come to play a central role in ancient religions in
order to create a cosmos of sense by establishing univocal and dependable meanings.
Witnesses will be necessary to guarantee the meanings fixed by the oath and rituals will
generate and instill awe and order to leave indelible mental marks and thus to evoke
allegiance to the shared mental world. The parties swearing the oaths can be held to
their words by the witnesses who rank high in society and can thus insure accountability. The highest witness, of course, will be gods:
all the gods and powers venerated by established tradition who guarantee hierarchical
order, who are made partners in gift exchange, who are experienced in terror and held
responsible for the well-being or illness of the individual, the family, tribe, or country,
are used in the context of oath-taking and prove to be useful indeed. The guarantee of
absolute truth is with god. (CS, p. 172)
Where the objective is to create a stable and orderly world of human exchange,
hierarchy and exchange require signs that in turn demand interpretation. We have
communication between humans and divination to transmit information between
humans and gods, with the consequence that social order is enhanced and social sense
becomes necessary for the well-being of the society. With gods as guarantors of human
transaction, beings present as vigilant and truthful partners who hold humans to their
words of promise, the ethical demands of the deities guarantee the social order.
Conclusion
Walter Burkerts theory is that religion has persisted throughout human history because
it is an adaptive strategy for survival in the immense history of human cultures; that its
function has been so to shape societies as to preserve them in the face of external threats
and internal conflicts by transforming aggression into socially useful structures, and by
turning developing biological drives into cultural creations; that religion originated in
the human species as genetic developments made communication possible through
language and ritual; and that common mental worlds, adapted to specific landscapes,
were produced through myths and beliefs, distinguished by superhuman powers or
beings who guaranteed the system in which they were basic elements. No wonder,
References
Burkert, Walter, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology In Early Religions, Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press 1996.
Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion, trans. John Raan, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press;
Oxford, Basil Blackwell 1985 [1977].
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans.
Peter Bing, Berkeley, University of California Press 1983 [1972].
Burkert, Walter, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. Edwin L. Minar, Jr, Cambridge,
MA, Harvard University Press 1972 [1962].
Burkert, Walter, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, Berkeley, University of
California Press 1979.