The evolution of religious structures

Returning to the history of religions has convinced me of the inadequacy of theories of religion—whether Aristotle’s, Hegel’s, or Durkheim’s—that is, both those grounded in individual subjectivity and those based on their social function. It is not possible, in fact, to remain at this level of generality and to ground these historical phenomena in the psychological structures of the human species, nor to remain within this sociological functionalism (Durkheim) any more than in the representation of a people’s truth (Hegel), given their connection to material conditions (hunter-gatherers, farmers, city-states, empires).

Once again, the issue will be to substitute multiple external causalities for lived interiority, emphasizing the political and military aspects that have been prominent at least since the earliest city-states. Here, as elsewhere, ex post facto selection—often through violence—is decisive, though it remains obscured by a supposed autonomy of ideology (belief). Indeed, religions are merely one example of the dialectic between ideology and material causalities that are ultimately decisive. These causalities may well be material, but they are neither mechanical nor immediate, leaving a certain autonomy to ideology, which is indeed a decisive actor in the dialectic while being subordinate to it in hindsight. We see a three-way interplay between forms of social organization, political-military selection, and ideological progress, moving from tribal or pagan animism to the polytheism of city-states, with their tutelary god (totem), before the (never fully realized) monotheistic tendencies of empires that must integrate diverse populations and move beyond clanism, thus becoming universal. Comparisons between these different configurations will shed light on the functions of religions and their history, particularly the role of mixed immigrant populations, cut off from ancestor worship, in the invention of gods.

1. 1. 1. Aristotle

There could hardly be a true theory of religion when all philosophers believed in the existence of the gods (even Democritus and Epicurus, who neutralized them). Yet in Aristotle we find the outline of a theory of religion that he would have expounded (according to Werner Jaeger, “Aristotle. Foundations for a History of Its Development") in his lost work *The Protrepticus*, which retained a religious tone (still believing in premonitory dreams) but which is subsequently found in a fragmented manner, and as if in passing, in various later works (*Metaphysics*, *Politics*, *Rhetoric*, *Ethics*).

For all his commentators, Aristotle’s religion seems to be limited to his conception of God as the first cause, the unmoved mover, and thought that thinks itself (which does not prevent him from equating the stars with gods!). This “god of the philosophers” is, however, very un-religious, quite distant from both civic religions and mystical sentiments. In his Metaphysics, he attributes the same origin to philosophy and religion, both of which arise from wonder and the need to find answers to what we do not understand, to provide explanations for what we do not know or fear and which is beyond us. The primary religious need would thus stem from a cognitive imperative (as philosophy does for Hegel: “If the power to unify disappears from human life and if opposites lose their living relationship, their interactions, and gain their independence, then philosophy becomes a necessity.” G.W.F. Hegel, The Difference Between the Philosophical Systems of Fichte and Schelling, p. 110).

However, this cognitive issue (which recedes as scientific advances push back against obscurantism) does not account for the political importance of religion, which Aristotle nevertheless recognizes, nor of the inner experience of the sacred or of devotion, which he attributes to the fear and respect that seize us in the presence of the divine, in the presence of that which is superior to humans (The Starry Sky Above Me)—reasons that are purely individual but are said to be universal (yet, while the feeling is individual, the sacred is social). This psychological experience, which shakes our very being, is thus assumed to be universal—an emotion of the soul detached from any particular theology, just like contemplation—but this is not enough to constitute a religion or anything other than mere superstition. By remaining within the realm of sensibility, one also overlooks the important function of religions as guarantors of truth and social order, and ultimately as the foundation of morality.

This anthropology of religion is highly inadequate, especially in that it fails to account for the content of religions—something Hegel sought to do by making religions the representation of a people’s spirit. He considered, in fact, that “it is absurd to believe that priests invented a religion for the people out of deceit and self-interest. It is as shallow as it is foolish to view religion as a capricious invention, an illusion.” The problem is that this leads him to believe that the most absurd religions and myths arise from an inner essence of peoples, through a sort of immanence and spontaneous generation that imposes itself, in symbolic or coded form, either through immediate certainty (conviction), or through an oceanic feeling (participation), or through abstract intellect (cognition). We will attempt to show, on the contrary, that the determinants of religions are external and that peoples adopt the religion of the prince. When Heidegger, in his Phenomenology of Religious Life, sought to reduce religious experience to the apocalyptic temporality of the early Christians—which is highly reductive and idealistic—what he took to be an existential tendency actually testifies, in the adoption of a new religion, to the initial shock of tragic upheavals witnessing the disappearance of one’s world —a shock that is completely diluted after its institutionalization.

1. 1. 2. Religious subjectivity

One can certainly identify a religious subjectivity, but one that hardly differs from culture itself, providing a general explanatory framework that gives meaning to all aspects of life, along with a whole system of duties and prohibitions. This is why many cannot imagine living without religion, which would seem to them like living without culture or morality—Gandhi even claimed that a life without religion is a life without a rudder. What is clear, in any case, is that religions are indeed part of a particular culture (belonging) that justifies social organization.

What is surprising is that this cultural heteronomy imposed by common language is completely internalized by individuals (prohibition, guilt, debt, sacrifice), yet this internalization is deceptive, reversing the real causes. To account for subjective adherence to myths and religions, one must combine several sources: cultural transmission, community belonging, the enthusiasm of the masses, the presence of the Other in language (the imaginary friend or demon), the collection of prayers, the supreme judge as guarantor of final justice, the dream of paradise or hell, but also acts of charity that engage us, solidarity in action. Institutionalized religion, which seems to embody a divinity that is merely external, nonetheless leaves deep marks on subjectivities.

If, indeed, we believe at first out of ignorance—and we understand the terror of lightning and the questions raised by death and spirits—we believe what we are told because these beliefs are passed down to us by our parents, our community, supported in particular by mothers who bear daily witness to their reality by scrupulously following the rules. More concretely, there is a subjective experience of prayer that serves as proof for most. This imaginary companion who speaks to us may be precious or burdensome, fostering hope or guilt, but to believe is always to believe in Santa Claus and that our hopes will be fulfilled, to believe that Good will be rewarded and Evil defeated, that everything has meaning (everything is language). Faced with powerlessness in the face of the unpredictable, the religious attitude (prayer, sacrifices) logically becomes the only possible strategy to appease powers perceived as angry and dangerous. Beyond individual feelings, there is above all a sense of community that makes us feel more brotherly toward our fellow believers, with whom we can interact and who can offer us support—other religions inevitably appear more hostile. The formation of close-knit communities is at the heart of both sects and circles of the faithful, driven by a desire to experience genuine and wholehearted relationships; yet, as soon as large cities emerge (not to mention empires), the community must expand in a more impersonal way to include strangers, extending beyond the family clan.

Ultimately, the three theological virtues of Christianity aptly summarize the three dimensions of religion: faith (symbolic), affirming one’s belonging (credo quia absurdum); hope (imaginary), in some magic that would save them; and finally, charity (real), which is not limited to Christianity, as temples have served as redistributors since the beginning, ensuring social reproduction. It must be reiterated that the hope of being saved in an afterlife can be just as much a fear of judgment and divine punishment, but it is a fact that religions mobilize subjectivities, capable of unleashing tremendous energy (the construction of pyramids or cathedrals), which proves vital for war. One might even conclude that, as long as religions exist, it will be impossible to extinguish conflicts—and religions remain largely dominant, continuing to poison our lives...

1. 1. 3. Chronology of Religious Transformations

To understand the genealogy of religious structures, one must start with the tribal cultures of hunter-gatherers and the narrative language that sketches out a shared world beyond the immediate environment and what is visible. This shared world is, however, fragmented into a multitude of languages and cultures. Thus, in Papua New Guinea, there were more than 800 languages! Languages form totalities, distinct from other languages, yet encompassing within these totalities an entire culture of myths and rites that organize oppositions and classifications, communication between groups, the definition of identities, and the regulation of exchanges (of alliances, goods, and signs).

This apparent arbitrariness of the sign must, however, be strongly tempered by the fact that there are very few inventions. Myths are always modified versions of previous myths, most often inverting one of the themes to justify opposition or even hostility toward neighboring societies or the former ideology that has disappointed. Maurice Godelier has shown that societies formed and divided along the lines of shared beliefs, ensuring the group’s unity and its common law or taboos. While this identity-forming function prioritizes ideological causes—which are themselves overdetermined, as we have seen—this does not prevent material causes from subsequently selecting beliefs compatible with the imperatives of survival.

We may call these hunter-gatherer societies “primitive” societies because they are oriented toward the past, the cult of founding ancestors, and their original state—a state that must always be reestablished because it is constantly transgressed and must be restored through sacrifices. Sacrifices are, in fact, a form of gift-exchange with the spirits or natural powers over which one claims to have command (this is the role of magic and sorcery) through incantations, fetishes, and offerings. There are no natural causes of illness or death, which are systematically attributed to evil spirits who have cast spells or disrupted the natural order. There are only good or evil intentions.

It was not until after the volcanic winter following the catastrophic eruption of Mount Toba, around 70,000 years ago, when populations from the Iranian plateaus spread across the Earth, that we witnessed the cultural explosion that led to the decorated caves—which have been interpreted as a “religion of presence” (or rather, contact with the other world by pretending to press one’s hand against the cave wall, covering it with pigment, and then leaving a “negative handprint”). The hunter-gatherer tribes of the time were quite similar to the last “primitive peoples” studied by ethnology, but rather than religion, we must speak of a mythical era with a profusion of myths related to those of surrounding societies (Lévi-Strauss mapped this out for North America). We already see the identity-forming function of myths attached to a tribe (totem) and their normative character in the group’s practices and unions.

The next stage, which is a transitional phase and has only recently been recognized, confirms what Jacques Cauvin had emphasized—amidst general incomprehension—regarding a religious revolution preceding and facilitating the Neolithic transition, rather than the opposite pattern with which we are more familiar. The cause is not, however, an internal one, purely symbolic, or the fulfillment of a prior potential, but rather results once again from an external shock. This is, in fact, what is suggested by the discovery of the temples at Göbekli Tepe and the surrounding area (9,600 BCE), which can be interpreted as a reaction to a cosmic catastrophe (comet/asteroid) around 10,800 BCE, which is thought to have caused a sudden cooling over 1,200 years (the Younger Dryas period), leading to mass extinctions of megafauna (mammoths, giant sloths, etc.). The depiction of a falling star supports this theory, which is contested by some despite fairly convincing evidence, though not the cooling itself; and while this remains, of course, speculation, one can imagine that this devastating episode may have given rise to a new belief system and rituals bringing together hunter-gatherers from across an entire region, prompting them to gather regularly for grand ceremonies featuring feasts and the drinking of grain beer. A similar reaction can be observed in Mexico during the same period, with large ritual gatherings featuring feasts and mammoth hunts, though these did not result in monumental constructions. However, these territorialized customs preceded and facilitated sedentarization, initially around these sacred sites. This is what ultimately ensured their evolutionary advantage, in hindsight and indirectly. The existence of an entire complex of temples near Göbekli Tepe indeed attests to an initial small-scale semi-sedentarization (just as in Jericho), thousands of years before definitive sedentarization (Çatal Hüyük, one of the oldest true cities, dates to 7000 BCE).

We thus find ourselves, following this spiritual upheaval, at the tipping point between nomads and sedentary peoples (as between myths and religion), a transition that would be very gradual. Religions emerge as we move beyond animism and simple magic, beyond clan-based beliefs tied to territory and the worship of founding ancestors. However, in later religious forms, we will find most of the rites of animist hunter-gatherers, albeit in attenuated or spiritualized forms. Nothing disappears completely—neither sacrifice (the blood of Christ) nor initiation (bar mitzvah), nor totemism (the cross); myth becomes a tale or folklore, but everything is recycled and reinterpreted in later stages, even witchcraft and magic (transubstantiation). With Göbekli Tepe, it seems we have an early form of religion—an intermediate form, no doubt—of collective rituals that do not yet involve deities but invoke higher powers, centered on preventing the return of past trials.

If this new religiosity does indeed predate sedentarization and agriculture—which would merely be a “perverse effect”—the original cause is clearly external: an anxious reaction to the catastrophe that destroyed confidence in earlier cults. These groupings nevertheless seem to attest to the fact that distress fosters solidarity and shifts in representations, along with symbolic productions intended to address it; subsequently, they bring material benefits that facilitate their reproduction and prevent any return to the past (agriculture ultimately increasing the population tenfold), as we shall see on several occasions.

It is difficult to know what may have remained of this initial religious revolution, which seems to have been renounced (its temples buried several times), and which would undergo profound transformation with sedentarization and the beginnings of agriculture and then livestock raising, this time following the pattern of an ideology reflecting the relations of production (hence, in hindsight). One of its very earliest manifestations was notably the new cult, focused on reproduction, of “the Good Mother and the Bull” (Isis/Apis, etc.), appearing as early as 9,500 BCE, following Göbekli Tepe. Jacques Cauvin emphasized the precedence of these figures over agriculture and livestock farming, which is true on a global scale but not necessarily on a local level, where these practices began with grain storage. It is more accurate to say that the proliferation of these prehistoric representations (similar to those found in decorated caves) may have accompanied, or even prompted, the first isolated attempts at agriculture, as one should not imagine an immediate Neolithic transition; agriculture spread only very slowly, driven by the climate change that made it necessary.

The next stage, which never completely disappeared, is thus that of pagan religions—the religions of the peasants—who were also rooted in their land but more attuned to cycles (death and resurrection) and the whims of the elements (divination). First, there is a continuity with the original religion, evident in the construction of small Göbekli Tepe miniatures, integrated into the earliest Neolithic villages and later into domestic architecture before they were abandoned. The gods of rain or storms, just like the goddesses of fertility or springs, are hardly distinguishable from shamanic spirits, being local incarnations of natural forces (there is no hierarchical pantheon). We observe that sedentarization is accompanied by a veneration of the skulls of the dead, which were shaped and displayed around the houses, while the bodies of the deceased were often buried within the house itself—evidence of a more intimate ancestor cult than that of the group’s founding ancestors, a veneration of one’s parents and lineage (valued through livestock raising), with a family altar dedicated to them, such as the Roman lararium or, even today, in China. However, the agricultural settlement that gave rise to these religious developments would, particularly due to food storage, come into conflict with the former nomads (predators).

We then enter the historical periods, those of polytheism and the Sumerian city-states, where religion became political, with priests linked to power (the Priest-King). Initially, there were once again major climatic upheavals that both made Mesopotamia fertile and flooded the Persian Gulf as sea levels rose between 7,500 and 6,000 years ago, prompting the Gulf populations to migrate northward as far as Eridu, effectively becoming climate refugees. Furthermore, this rise in water levels is believed to have caused, around 5600 BCE, the rupture of the Bosphorus, triggering a sudden flooding of the Black Sea (the Great Flood), which in turn forced farmers from the north to migrate southward. All these episodes contributed to the formation of the flood myth recounted in the Epic of Gilgamesh, when everything had to be rebuilt (and which would later be conflated with the later submersion of Uruk around 3100 BCE).

This was a major ecological upheaval, the main feature of which was a mixing of immigrant populations of different origins (as attested by genetic analyses of graves), populations uprooted, cut off from their ancestral lands, and thus from the worship of their ancestors. The situation would be much the same a little later in Egypt, which welcomed climate refugees from a rapidly desertifying Sahara and who also found themselves cut off from their ancestors. Similarly, comparable situations of population displacement can be found in Mexico at Teotihuacán, whose Aztec name means “the place where the gods are created.” A comparison with China and other godless countries (Japan, etc.) suggests that this characteristic was decisive in the invention of gods, distinguishing them from natural forces and the local spirits of animism as well as pagan cults. This religious evolution thus fills, for immigrant populations, the void created by an ancestor cult stripped of its substance despite formal survivals. Once again, this is particularly evident in China, which did not experience such population movements and was able to perpetuate its ancestor and local spirit cults without needing gods, unification being achieved solely through the formalism of a rigorous bureaucratic administration.

We must put into perspective the degree of invention in these new religions, which transform ancient local deities (such as Yahweh, originally a volcano god) into a true God (of war) while clearly distinguishing him from the ancient natural spirits through a series of characteristics, the first being their deterritorialization, a consequence of immigration and uprooting, alongside the construction of temples dedicated to them. These deterritorialized and personalized gods are described as “functional,” but far more than mere functions (god of war, love, fertility, etc.), they are mobilizable forces that can be invoked (through prayer or sacrifice) and capable of rallying disparate populations, primarily for war, giving them an identity in conflict with other cities. These tutelary gods are a kind of totem but acquire an autonomous personality, giving rise to an entire mythology. No longer tied to a single place, and believed to dwell in the heavens, temples are built to worship them; but as a result, the heavens become populated by a whole gallery of figures—the subject of clerical speculation—forming a hierarchical pantheon. This is the other defining feature of the emergence of polytheism: the establishment of a hierarchical pantheon of gods that dogmatizes these religions, distancing them from popular beliefs and establishing a canon with its own rites—a development that could only occur with the advent of writing and a specialized clergy, thereby blurring the lines between the theological and the political (priest-king). None of these elements were present at the outset; the new religion appeared as the condition for their emergence, which then brought about their synergy.

Once again, in fact, we have a post-traumatic symbolic revolution that precedes an economic and social revolution, for this invention of the gods would only take on its full scope once coupled with city-states and then with writing, leading to its subsequent adoption by others (such as the Greeks). Civilization and the written codification of a pantheon seem to be sufficient explanations for the formation of political religions (priest-kings, pharaohs) as well as a clergy, except that, once again, the symbolic invention preceded their emergence—serving as a prerequisite before becoming the instrument of it. The abandonment in major cities of ancestor worship and clan affiliations is undoubtedly useful for forming larger communities; however, this is not a subsequent artificial political creation but rather the starting point. When there is no break in the connection to ancestors, there is no need for gods or religious evolution. The gods of polytheism emerge precisely in contexts of state formation and the mixing of populations cut off from ancestor worship, through the reconfiguration of earlier religious strata (powers, ancestors, heroes).

The new form of religion would thus develop before the advent of writing, first in Eridu, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, in a small temple dedicated to Enki, god of underground waters (gushing springs), who would also become the god of knowledge and techniques (including magical and ritual ones), and the creator of humankind, whom he is said to have warned of the flood in a dream. In fact, if we are to believe Sumerian myths, the floods were experienced as acts of destruction by jealous gods who wiped out their creation, age after age, just as Cronus devoured his children. The solution offered by the myth (Enûma elis) is that humans can only escape destruction by serving the gods, working for them, in their place (in place of nature) to offer them sacrifices. This relationship with the gods indeed constitutes a new religious regime, characterized by figures in prayer (the orants), arms outstretched toward the sky (in the Enûma elis, Marduk is celebrated for having “created the Incantation so that the gods might be appeased,” p. 646). This new original debt left by the catastrophe (as in Teotihuacán) establishes a relationship of submission in which the serf, having lost his natural “freedom,” produces through labor the powerful human freedom (notably through the maintenance of irrigation canals).

The city will be built around the temple according to a plan that will be replicated later, notably in Uruk, which will be the first city-state, though this time dedicated to Inanna (goddess of love and war), illustrating this totemic practice of a different tutelary god in each city, administered by the temple priests with the Priest-King himself at their head. We are no longer dealing with popular beliefs but with a hierarchical pantheon of gods, a gallery of functions found in other polytheistic systems (notably Greek) and which is more familiar to us but now stems from scribes and writing—barely invented—defining the dogma. It is a fact that civic cults, with their displays of power and grand ceremonies or sacrifices, have a persuasive effect, reinforcing social unity and easily winning over the enthusiasm of crowds ready to believe any spectacle or state propaganda. City-states undoubtedly represent a key milestone in the peasantry’s shift toward populous, mixed cities—economic and military powers—distinguishing themselves from the empires that would follow through their local roots, yet no longer clan-based, and giving rise to a different kind of subjectivity and practices.

It should be noted that the early empires of Akkad and Egypt did not alter the functioning of city-states or local religious practices, although Akhenaten felt the need to unify the various peoples under his authority through the sun cult of Aten, "god of all nations"; however, we know that this met with widespread rejection. On the other hand, while the dominance of Indo-European chariots and horsemen—which would lead to the Hittite Empire—did not alter local cults either, as they were integrated into the syncretism of a “religion of a thousand gods,” the elevation of Shamash to supreme judge brought a modicum of imperial unity—a judge who sees all, guarantor of oaths and treaties, unifying his territorialized polytheistic pantheon in the name of the One Truth—though without real power. This was a new dimension, magnified by the Persians (whether in good faith or bad), which would prove essential in empires needing an external judge as the guarantor of Truth and contracts.

The final act will once again be triggered by a climatic catastrophe causing the general collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age (around 1200 BCE), when cities and civilizations disappear (Egypt will withstand it), a period of chaos and bands of looters, which will further pit sedentary peoples (farmers) against nomads (Indo-Iranians). We enter the Iron Age and the widespread use of the horse, which expands spheres of influence. We must also mention the impact of the introduction of currency by Croesus around 550 BCE, which will be a factor in abstraction and even a certain egalitarianism (commercial isonomy). All of this would lead to what Jaspers would call “the Axial Age,” particularly around 500 BCE, which would see the emergence of numerous sages (Confucius, Buddha, Zarathustra, Socrates) and foundational texts that still speak to us today. Indeed, we find there the same moral internalization, the same spiritualization of ritual, the same critique of the clergy and bloody sacrifices, and even of witchcraft. These trends would reappear much later in Christianity, which is the very example of the Empire’s co-optation of an apocalyptic spiritual movement (with its martyrs)—a movement it did not initiate but provoked in spite of itself, since it arose from the catastrophe of the crushing of the Jews and the destruction of the Temple. It would nonetheless transform it quite radically, but the Roman Empire found in it a universalist foundation (catholicon) more powerful than the cult of the emperor for unifying all its peoples (“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female”), a religion of slaves perfectly suited to an empire in which all citizens are slaves to the emperor, and which would reveal its full value to soldiers sensitive to the promises of resurrection. This time, religion is no longer clan-based or localized (except in Rome), claiming universality yet unable to deny its connection to power and social organization.

We can stop here so as not to overburden the demonstration we are attempting of the interplay between traumatic events that disperse populations, mix them together, and invalidate previous beliefs, the spiritual responses that arise in reaction, and their adoption by the powers that be, who adapt them to material conditions and the actual social organization. Far from a simple “religious need,” where one might have sought, like Alain, the objectification of subjectivity, we encountered an entire chain, ranging from an external shock (catastrophe, collapse) → to collective trauma and emigration from ancestral lands → the invalidation of ancient cults → then religious innovation → then institutionalization in the service of power (which does not preclude a wealth of representations). Religious innovation precedes its selection for social efficacy, which validates it retroactively—a material determination, in the final analysis, of a symbolic production that is in principle independent but materially constrained. This description provides an external cause for an effective symbolic revolution, and a concrete origin for the theologico-political identity, depending on the form of the state (Cities or Empires), just as it does for the sense of debt and guilt toward the gods, which is also submission to established powers.

The external cause may be a collapse, a catastrophe, unlivable chaos, or a crushing defeat. The cause of the rupture may be overpopulation or another dysfunction (internal cause) as well as climate change and a mixing of populations or even a radical technological change, but this introduces, as in natural selection, an element of dramatic urgency that subjectively involves the believers. It cannot therefore be reduced to a mere cognitive or individual evolution. All religions employ the same forms of enchantment and primarily respond to the need for communion and a common law, but we must not lose sight of what constitutes general cumulative progress (abstraction, universalization, rationalization)—achieved through a kind of “trick of reason” in communicative action—which is also constrained by its historical position, belonging to the same cognitive/technical stage, which depends on what precedes it and must be overcome.

Finally, it must be emphasized that in the scientific age and the age of the death of God, this dialectic of ideology with power and production relations can apply just as much to Soviet communism, an ideology built on the utopia of an escape from capitalism and history, supposed to bring paradise on Earth but which could only endure through a dictatorial imperial power supporting this ideology despite its perversions.