Walter Burkert (2 February 1931 – 11 March 2015) was a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult.
A professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he taught in the UK and the US. He has influenced generations of students of religion since the 1960s, combining in the modern way the findings of archaeology and epigraphy with the work of poets, historians, and philosophers. He was a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.He published books on the balance between lore and science among the followers of Pythagoras, and more extensively on ritual and archaic cult survival, on the ritual killing at the heart of religion, on mystery religions, and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context.
An excerpt from, "Ancient Mystery Cults" by Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1987, Pg. 51-53:
In summary, ancient mystery cults did not form religious communities in the sense of Judaism or Christianity. Even Richard Reitzenstein had to acknowledge that the concept of church, ekklesia, has no equivalent in pagan religion; it goes back to the Septuagint. It is remarkable that a term borrowed from the Greek polis system came to designate an organization that was to overthrow and eliminate this very system. Ekklesia indicates quite a different level of involvement, and a claim about the organization of life different from that inherent in a private club or a limited and local clergy. A new and contrasting form of politeia was emerging; we find Philo applying this very term of "political activity," politeia, to the Jewish way of life, and Christians following suit in their own terminology. The Jews had refused total integration into ancient society, and with Christianity there appeared an alternative society in the full sense of potentially independent, self-sufficient, and self-reproducing communities. Here we find from the beginning a concern for the poor, economic cooperation at a level quite uncommon in pagan religion, and the inclusion of the family as the basic unit of piety in the religious system. To educate the children in the fear of God suddenly became the supreme duty of parents, as the Apostolic Fathers already taught. And since the believers were at the same time encouraged to multiply, with a new morality ousting all the well-established forms of population control such as the exposure of children, homosexuality, and prostitution, the ekklesia became a self-reproducing type of community that could not be stopped.
No religious organization outside Judaism had developed such a system, least of all the mysteries with their exclusiveness, their individualism, and their dependence on private wealth. It is true that there were initiations of children: they frequently appear in Bacchic mysteries, and even at Eleusis there was a "child from the hearth" initiated at each festival. But this was a special honor or provision of concerned parents, not a religious or moral duty. It was unthinkable that the entire life of the family should be subject to a special religious orientation, and that every child should find himself inescapably merged in a religious system where apostasy was considered to be worse than death. The very idea of Bacchic, Metroac, or even Isiac "education of children" would approach the ridiculous. Mithras, for one, did not even admit women; he stood for men's clubs in opposition to family life.
There is only one slight indication of a possible movement of mysteries in a similar direction: in the case of the Bacchanalia in 186 B.c., the accusation was that there had been a huge conspiracy (coniuratio) that was to overthrow the existing res publica; "another people is about to arise," alterum iam populum esse. This vision of "another people" that is to oust the populus Romanus Quiritium is a frightening one which in a strange way foretells the proclamation of a new politeia, a new civitas by later Christians. This may also explain why repression was so cruel and radical, with some 6,000 executions at a time. There is nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians. One might also mention the movement started in Sicily by Eunous, the inspired prophet and miracle worker of the Syrian Goddess, who became the charismatic leader of the slave revolt that lasted from 136 to 132 B.C. Again, the repression was absolutely relentless. But here the social issues were much more prominent than the religious overtones. Much later, it was for Augustine to proclaim triumphantly that Christianity had swept like a blazing fire through the Oikumene (incendia concitarunt). Earlier pagan charismatics were well advised to beware of arson, and most of them circumspectly avoided launching a "movement."
The basic difference between ancient mysteries, on the one hand, and religious communities, sects, and churches of the Judeo-Christian type, on the other, is borne out by the verdict of history. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sects have demonstrated astounding capacities for survival, even as minorities in a hostile environment. The Samaritans, split from Jewish orthodoxy, have survived in the world for about 2,400 years; the Mandaeans are about as old as Christianity: the Albingensian movement survived even the European Inquisition; countless sects have been active ever since the Reformation. Christian outposts in Ethiopia, Armenia, and Georgia are no less remarkable for this tenacious vitality. It was quite different with the ancient mysteries, whether those of Eleusis, Bacchus, Meter, Isis, or even Mithras, the "invincible god." With the imperial decrees of 391/92 A.D. prohibiting all pagan cults and with the forceful destruction of the sanctuaries, the mysteries simply and suddenly disappeared. There is not much to be said for either the Masons' or modern witches' claim that they are perpetuating ancient mysteries through continuous tradition. Mysteries could not go underground because they lacked any lasting organization. They were not self-sufficient sects; they were intimately bound to the social system of antiquity that was to pass away. Nothing remained but curiosity, which has tried in vain to resuscitate them.
