What makes a text sacred?

Abstract

Although the widespread view holds that the ancient Greco–Roman religions had no normative “sacred texts,” in reality a substantial number of texts were associated with various cults. This article examines in what sense these were considered “sacred” in antiquity. The concept of sacredness was approached primarily from a legal perspective by the Romans—for example, imperial edicts were classified under the category of res sacrae. The sacredness of the Sibylline books and other prophetic texts, ritual instructions, and the hieros logos associated with mystery cults, however, was external: beyond their (mostly fictional) authorship, it was the extraordinary circumstances of their discovery and preservation that rendered them sacred. Their content was usually known only to a few, and the notion of their “unchangeability” was not a factor. In contrast, the works of Homer (and of Virgil among the Romans) were regarded as “internally sacred,” that is, inspired texts, already in the archaic period. The books of the Hebrew and Greek Bible were also considered sacred because of their inspired nature, although certain aspects of “external sacredness” were also associated with them.