Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Mysteries of Isis/archive1

TFA blurb

The mysteries of Isis were religious initiation rites performed in the cult of the goddess Isis in the Greco-Roman world. Alluding to the worship of Isis from ancient Egyptian religion, they were modeled on other mystery rites, particularly the Eleusinian mysteries, which honored the Greek goddess Demeter. By undergoing the mystery rites, initiates signaled their dedication to Isis. Many texts from the Roman Empire refer to the Isis mysteries, but the only source to describe them is a work of fiction, the novel The Golden Ass, written in the second century by Apuleius. In it, the initiate undergoes ritual purification before descending into the innermost part of Isis's temple, where he experiences a symbolic death and rebirth and has an intense religious experience. Some aspects of the mysteries of Isis and of other mystery cults resemble elements of Christianity, but the evidence for their influence on Christianity is unclear. (Full article...)

For May. Feel free to edit or comment. - Dank (push to talk) 16:26, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Comments by Ffranc

• I fixed a bunch of links that went to redirect pages and did some light copy editing. Feel free to revert any error I might have introduced.
• The M in "mysteries" is sometimes capitalized and sometimes not when the article mentions the Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries. I think either way is acceptable, but consistency would be good.

@Ffranc: The sources themselves differ (people seem more likely to capitalize "Eleusinian Mysteries" than the others), but I made it consistently lowercase.

• Note 1, which explains the use of the word "cult", is attached to the first use of the word in the section Spread of the Isis cult. But the word appears already in the section before. Not sure what to do here, and it might not be necessary to do anything. Move the note if you think it's a good idea; it could perhaps even be in the lead section.

I removed instances of the word "cult" (except in one quotation) before this point in the text.

• the only known sites where the mysteries were performed were in Italy, Greece, and Anatolia. The article brings up a theory about a locations in modern-day Egypt, so this formulation may be too strong. Something along the lines of "the only sites where the mysteries are known for certain to have been performed..." might work better. And since these sites are among the few things known for certain about the mysteries, I think it would be a good idea to provide more specifics about them. Where are they and how do we know that mysteries were performed there?

I've adjusted this paragraph to clarify; see what you think.

• Hanson 1989, pp. 333–335 is a reference to three pages, but it's only used to support one short quotation, which presumably is on one or at most two pages. Might be a remnant from a previous version where it was used to support more material.

It's not; the book is one of those that have the original language on the recto and the English translation on the verso, so the quoted sentence begins on page 333, jumps past the Latin on page 334, and finishes on page 335.

Ah, OK. Ffranc (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• "adorned like the sun and set up in the manner of a divine statue", as Apuleius describes it. Similar thing here. Can you add a citation with a page number specifically for the quotation?

I could, but it's really only two pages, for the same reason as in the bullet point above, and the structure of the article text makes it awkward to cite the quotation separately from the rest of the passage, unlike in the bullet point below.

OK, not needed then. Ffranc (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• Apuleius calls it "the nocturnal mysteries of the foremost god" but gives no other details. Same as above. The main citation covers multiple pages and can be complemented with one specifically for the quotation.

Done.

• In either case, it indicates that Lucius's vision transports him beyond the human world. What is meant by "beyond the human world" here? I think this needs to be more clear or more cautious, since it could indicate radically different concepts - a non-human existence within this world, or transcendence to another world entirely.

I've deleted this sentence, as the point I was trying to convey—that Lucius visits regions of the cosmos where it shouldn't be possible for a living human to go—is made clear enough by the rest of the text.

• The commented edition from 2015 could use some basic credential when it's first introduced, like the name of the publisher or just that the authors are scholars.

I've never been sure how to handle it, given that it has five authors, so it's inconvenient to list all their names, and the parts that I cite aren't individually attributed.

Just saying that it's from Brill would be enough as far as I'm concerned. Or you could go with Keulen et al. which is used in the reference section. The way it reads now just makes it look a bit suspicious, like if someone is trying to hide what the source really is! Ffranc (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• The transition from the discussion about symbols to the discussion about Osiris and Serapis could be better. Are Gasparini's arguments written in a polemic against the astrological interpretation, or are they unrelated? The section heading says "contact with the gods" but the last two paragraphs seem to be about Osiris/Serapis in general, not necessarily contact with him.

This one will get thorny; I'll have to think about how to rearrange things in this section.

• Isiac initiation, by giving the devotee a dramatic, mystical experience of the goddess, added emotional intensity to the process. Wouldn't this apply to other mystery cults as well? Is someone arguing that the experience was more intense in the Isiac mysteries than in the others? If so it needs inline attribution.

Bøgh is contrasting conversion in the Isis cult with the Bacchic mysteries, where there doesn't seem to have been a very significant change in religious identity, and with Mithraism, which seems to have been less mystical and more based on abstruse intellectual concepts. I'll try to think of a way to clarify that.

• The article could make it more clear if the term Isiacus/Isiac refers only to those initiated in the mysteries, or to anyone who participates in the cult of Isis. Likewise, this distinction could be more clear whenever other sources than Apuleius are brought up. Did Plutarch write specifically about the mysteries or about the cult in general?

I get the impression that Isiacus just referred to a devotee, not specifically to an initiate, but the sources don't explicitly say so. Plutarch refers to "those undergoing initiation" (Griffiths 1970, p. 121) but doesn't provide detail. I've clarified Plutarch, but I don't know how to address Isiacus.

• Christian emperors increasingly restricted the practice of non-Christian religions, which they condemned as "pagan". I removed the second clause here, but feel free to restore it if you want to. The word "pagan" is such a can of worms - what it "originally" meant, who used it in ancient times, what intent it was used with and so on - that I think it's best to just leave it out, since it's not important here.

No problem.

• The "Influence on other traditions" section could be more clear and concise in general. It's not always entirely clear when it's about the mysteries of Isis, mystery religions in general, or the cult of Isis in general, and some of the info that isn't about the mysteries of Isis might be too detailed for this article.

The discussions on this subject always seem to treat the mystery cults as a group when contrasting them with Christianity, except when citing particular points of comparison found in Apuleius. But The Golden Ass is the most detailed source we have on any of the mystery cults centered on non-Greek deities (Isis, Mithras, Cybele), which are the ones most often compared with Christianity, so it comes up in these debates a lot. Which passages do you think need cutting or clarification?

When it comes to comparisons between Christianity and mystery cults in general, I think there is currently too much detail. There doesn't need to be more than a concise explanation that there is a tradition of comparing them, that it always has been controversial, and then the article can focus on the arguments about the mysteries of Isis in particular. Some of the paragraphs can possibly be summarized in one or two sentences, without creating confusion or losing info about the Isiac mysteries. Some of the other info could be moved to Greco-Roman mysteries, which currently has a shorter section about Christianity than this article, and is missing some of the details mentioned here. Ffranc (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• I think there is an important gap in the reception history. There is a mention of early 20th-century theories about "dying and rising gods" in a footnote, and there is coverage of the impact of Life of Sethos under "Influence in modern times". Were there no other early modern readers of The Golden Ass who commented on the mysteries of Isis? Was the rationalist cult of Isis in France also based on Terrasson, or did it use other sources, and how does it tie in with the mysteries in particular? When did people realize that Sethos wasn't an ancient work, and how did that impact the view of the mysteries? Was there any particular consensus, or major dispute, among 19th-century scholars? Can something be said about contemporary scholarship, does it follow some trend? Take all of this as suggestions; I don't know how much this has been studied, but I think the article should say something about how we got from Terrasson and Masonic mythology to where scholars are today.

As far as I can tell, Sethos was virtually forgotten, starting in the early nineteenth century and lasting until Lefkowitz dug it up in 1996. I've added a sentence to that effect, which is as much as I can squeeze out of the sources. The French revolutionary tradition was drawing on other sources as well as Apuleius, and I'll add something to that effect soon. I can't tell that Apuleius's account of the mysteries had any major effects outside the influence of Sethos until the emergence of the modern scholarly debate about mysteries, in the late nineteenth century.

• Are the temple ruins in the pictures known sites where mystery rites were performed, or are they more general cult sites? Wouldn't hurt to have this explicitly in the image captions.

As far as I know, they're not known sites for the mysteries. These images were added by GPinkerton in December, and I wouldn't mind removing them if they seem to give a misleading impression that the mysteries were performed there.

Up to you. My spontaneous impression was that I wanted to know whether they were sites of the mystery cult or not, but I couldn't find the info in the article. Ffranc (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• I think it would be helpful to have trans-title and trans-chapter parameters for the sources and further reading entries that aren't in English.

I can do that, though Google Translate renders one word in those titles in a way that may be wrong; maybe I can check with Ermenrich. A. Parrot (talk) 10:35, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

That's all I have for now. The article generally looks very good. Will see if I find more things to bring up. Ffranc (talk) 12:51, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

I read through the material about Isis mysteries in Burkert 1987 and Bremmer 2014. Some thoughts:

• On p. 17, Burkert makes a point about how the initiation/conversion in Apuleius does not imply any withdrawal from the world. Could make a good addition to the discussion about conversion and the nature of the religion.

• Bremmer lists what he says are all relevant inscriptions (some with reservations) on p. 114. There aren't that many of them, so all can be mentioned in the article (for example, by naming each location + the number of inscriptions found there). On p. 111 he says there's a total of six Isis aretalogies that have been found "inscribed on stone", and on p. 113 that the two earliest don't mention mysteries, which I think is relevant info. I also think the relevant line from the aretalogies from Maroneia and Andros, "I revealed mysteries unto men", deserves to be quoted. It's already discussed as a link between Isis and mystery rites, and it would help readers to know what the link looks like.

• Burkert says on p. 66 that "The interpretation of romances as mystery texts was inaugurated by Karl Kerényi and ingeniously persued by Reinhold Merkelbach", with some more details in a footnote. Bremmer comments very briefly on "the older literature" in a footnote on p. 114. It's not much, and it might be better covered in other sources, but this is the kind of material I think the article is missing. Since so much is unknown about the mystery rites, the study of them becomes an important topic in its own right. Various aspects of this are already present in the article but the coverage seems incomplete.

• The abstract of this paper (I haven't read the paper itself) says a "visual indicator" left by the Isiac mysteries is "the mystical cista". A web search on Isis and cista gives several other hits but it's not mentioned in the Wikipedia article.

• I see several sources bring up Tibullus ("The oldest literary witness for mysteries of Isis is in fact Tibullus", Burkert 1987, p. 40) but he's not mentioned here.

Nothing more for now. I hope I'm not sounding too negative. The article is impressive and there's not much that needs to be done before I can support on comprehensiveness. Ffranc (talk) 09:26, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ffranc: I'm working on significant revisions to address these concerns, but it's slow going and may take a couple of days. A. Parrot (talk) 04:09, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ffranc: I've reorganized somewhat and incorporated better treatment of the evidence outside Apuleius. Some of it is based on machine translation of Veymiers 2020, so I'll have to check with Iry-Hor to confirm that my text is correct. As for Kerényi and Merkelbach's hypothesis, I'm not sure what to do about it. Despite Merkelbach's significance, I'm not sure how current it really is—the only recent source to discuss it is Alvar 2008, which mercilessly derides it. And, as is the problem with a lot of the sources' discussion of the history of the study of mystery cults, I'm not sure how much the hypothesis was applied to the mysteries of Isis specifically as opposed to mystery cults in general. A. Parrot (talk) 05:24, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Looks good at a first glance, I'll read through it more properly soon. One thing I spotted is a sentence that ends abruptly: One possible piece of evidence is a stela from Thessalonica in the late second century BCE that [41]. I might be misreading Burkert, but the point doesn't seem to be so much about specific arguments in Kerényi's or Merkelbach's works, but the very concept of treating romances (i.e. Apuleius) as serious sources for the mysteries in modern scholarship. If that's the case, it seems relevant considering how prominent Apuleius is in this article. But my main concern - how we got from Sethos to something approaching current scholarship - has been addressed with the addition about 19th-century Egyptology, so it's not of major importance. Ffranc (talk) 10:22, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Comprehensiveness looks excellent now. I only have a few minor issues about clarity:

• Scholars dispute whether the mysteries of Isis existed before the time of the Roman Empire... This is from the Sources section, after the Origins section already has discussed the dispute over the origin of the mysteries (and potential earlier dates). I think it would fit better in the Origins section, where it can introduce the dispute and make it unecessary to repeat the same discussion under Sources.

I moved it into this section because discussing these details requires going into the evidence, and I wanted to collect and survey all the non-Apuleian evidence in one place. But I've moved it up per your suggestion, and it does seem more fluid.

I see your point. I was really just thinking about the introduction of the dispute. I left that sentence in the Origins section and moved the survey of the evidence back down to Sources. But either way could work, I won't mind if you restore it or move it around some other way. Ffranc (talk) 09:43, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

• Several texts from Roman times refer to people who were initiated in the Isis cult. Similar thing here. This is relevant in the Fragmentary evidence section above, and should be superfluous in the section about Apuleius where it currently is.

Yes, I meant to cut this line when adding the new section, but I missed it. Gone now.

• Do the aretalogies really say that Isis "gave sacred or hidden writings to initiates"? The line quoted by Bremmer only says she "revealed mysteries", which doesn't have to mean writings. Are there other lines in the aretalogies that talk about writings?

On p. 113, Bremmer quotes the Maroneia aretalogy as saying "She (Isis) has invented writings with Hermes, and from these the holy ones for the initiates, but the public ones for everyone". Pakkanen, incidentally, quotes the one from Andros as saying "I terrifyingly pronounced the sacred words to the mystai".

Yes, I misread that, sorry. Maroneia and Andros don't include the "I revealed mysteries" line, but they do talk about holy writings. Ffranc (talk) 09:43, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

• I'm somewhat hesitant about describing aretalogies as "poems in praise of the goddess". I'm sure they can be said to have poetic qualities by modern definitions, but aren't they primarily lists of attributes and achievements, not written according to any particular poetic form?

I was under the impression that they were poems (because they're often likened to hymns), but looking back I see that the sources don't say so explicitly, so I changed it to "texts".

• Such inscriptions are only found in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean ... In Egypt itself, there are only a few texts that may allude to the mysteries of Isis. This would benefit from more cautious language to avoid contradiction.

Done.

• the evidence about Mithraism suggests it was less the process of joining it was less mystical and more intellectual. I think you've formulated this in two different ways at the same time.

Yes; I've fixed it. A. Parrot (talk) 04:13, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Hopefully that's it. I'll take a few more looks at the article but I doubt I'll find anything major. You've done a really good job. Ffranc (talk) 09:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC)