Orphic Hymns
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of inscriptions were discovered in Asia Minor, leading to the ritual function of the collection being established among classicists and historians of religion.
[4] The most significant piece of evidence linking the collection to this region is the inclusion of deities – such as Mise, Hipta, and Melinoe – who are otherwise attested only in western Asia Minor, and whose presence in inscriptions from the area indicate they were the subject of worship there.
[18] Gabriella Ricciardelli, who supports a date in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, points to the prominence of the worship of Dionysus (who occupies a central role in the collection) in Asia Minor around this time.
[85] The development (also referred to as the amplification)[86] makes up the main, central portion of the hymn, and is the longest section;[87] it follows immediately from the invocation, with the point at which it begins often being difficult to distinguish.
[99] According to Rudhardt, in terms of vocabulary and grammar, the Hymns find a "distant model" (modèle lointain) in the works of Hesiod and Homer, but also contain a number of words and forms from later literature, spanning from the 5th-century BC to the first centuries AD.
[108] The use of the word boukólos and the prominence of Dionysus in the collection indicate that he was the central god of the cult which used the Hymns,[109] and a number of scholars describe the group as Dionysian or Bacchic.
[134] Graf also sees the epithet euántētos (εὐάντητος, 'good to meet'), which appears in five hymns (usually in the final request), as a reflection of the terror which initiates would have felt during the rite at the prospect of encountering a deity who was hostile, as such an experience was supposedly capable of driving one to madness.
[139] Morand, however, points to, within the collection, the references to souls, and the roles played by memory and purity, as well as parallels between the Hymns and similar evidence such as the gold lamellae, ultimately concluding that this information is "reconcilable with Orphism" (conciliable avec l'orphisme).
[152] To this end, and to gain the goodwill of their addressee, a variety of appellations are used, each of which serves to highlight an aspect of the deity, such as elements of their power, locations of worship, or their part in myths.
[154] A number of the epithets in the collection are derived from earlier literature, especially the works of Homer and Hesiod,[155] while others are neologisms,[156] some of which, though without prior attestation, are references to the deity's role in an existing myth;[157] others still are allusions to known cult titles of the god, which were utilised in certain geographical locations.
[158] According to Rudhardt, while the paratactic clusters of epithets in the Hymns may seem to indicate "rudimentary thought" (pensée rudimentaire), within them is contained a sort of syntax, where adjacent terms bear relation to each other in subtle ways.
[180] The collection also references the myth of Persephone's abduction, alluding to her capture by Pluto in a meadow and later describing Mother Antaia (a name of Demeter) as searching in the underworld for her lost daughter.
[188] Though Jane Ellen Harrison, writing at the beginning of the 20th century, saw this identifying tendency as conferring upon the collection an "atmosphere of mystical monotheism",[189] this idea of a monotheistic bent to the Hymns has been rejected by more recent scholars.
[200] The earliest definite reference to the Hymns comes from the Byzantine writer Ioannes Galenos, who mentions the collection thrice in his scholium on Hesiod's Theogony,[201] which has been dated to the 12th century AD.
[220] From this manuscript were derived four apographs (or transcribed copies) – namely φ, θ, A, and B, in chronological order of transcription – which were produced as the archetype gradually suffered damage.
[231] Estienne's volume remained the standard edition of the text for the following two centuries, until the publication, in 1764, of Johann Matthias Gesner's Orphica, which included a number of corrections that had been put foward by 18th-century scholars.
[243] In the mid 15th century, following the arrival of the codex brought by Aurispa to Venice, the Orphic Hymns seem to have attained a level of popularity amongst the educated of Renaissance Italy.
[251] Daniel Heinsius, writing in 1627, attributed the collection to the Athenian Onomacritus, to whom Orphic poetry had sometimes been ascribed in antiquity, and this idea of the Onomacritan authorship of the Hymns became the dominant view in the 17th century.
[254] In the late 18th century, the Göttingen school of history lambasted the idea that Orphic literature was a product of early antiquity; Johann Gottlob Schneider argued, on the basis of their lack of mention among ancient authors, that the Orphic Hymns were produced (likely in the 3rd century AD) for use in the debate over Orphism and Orpheus which raged in late antiquity between Christian and Neoplatonic apologists.
[255] Schneider decried the Hymns as a "hogwash of mystical sayings and allegorical prattlings", while his contemporary, Christoph Meiners, described their style as horridus, and supported a late dating, viewing the collection as containing a kind of confused Stoicism.
[258] In contrast to this sceptical approach, Taylor, writing in his translation of the Hymns, adopted a mystical view of the collection, and claimed they had belonged to the Eleusinian Mysteries.
[260] Christian Lobeck, writing in his 1829 work Aglaophamus, held that the collection was composed by an individual from the Byzantine era,[261] and rejected the idea of them belonging to a cult community, believing that their author produced them as a scholarly exercise.
[262] Several decades later, Christian Petersen posed a challenge to Lobeck's view, conceiving of the collection as an expression of Stoic thought, pointing to its tendency to treat deities as though they are aspects of nature,[263] and dating it to either the 1st or 2nd centuries AD.
[13] In the late 19th century, excavations in western Asia Minor brought to light epigraphic evidence which led to the establishment of the idea that the Orphic Hymns had been liturgical in function.
[264] The discovery of inscriptions containing the word boukólos (βουκόλος), around the time of Petersen's work, led Rudolf Schöll to postulate in 1879 that the Hymns had belonged to a Bacchic mystery group.
[265] Around a decade later, Albrecht Dieterich, in a study of the Hymns recognised by scholars as definitively establishing their ritual nature,[266] concluded that the collection belonged to a cult community which engaged in mysteries, and judged that this group possessed an internal hierarchy.
[269] Ernst Maass, writing in 1895, claimed that the term boukólos referred to Orpheus himself,[270] while, ten years later, the Czech scholar Zdenko Baudnik studied in detail the Stoic characteristics of the Hymns, and supported the idea of an Alexandrian origin.
[271] Around the beginning of the 20th century, the discovery of inscriptions in western Asia Minor to deities featured in the Hymns, such as Hipta, Erikepaios, and Melinoe, led Otto Kern to conclude in 1910 that the collection was composed in Asia Minor, for use by a Dionysian cult;[272] a year later, he argued that the Hymns originated specifically from Pergamon, and that the cult community which used them existed at the sanctuary of Demeter in the city, where inscriptions to a number of deities addressed in the collection had been discovered.
[278] Several years later, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff would judge that the Hymns lacked all poetic merit, and half a century afterwards, in 1983, M. L. West would dismiss them as evidence merely of "cheerful and inexpensive dabbling in religion by a literary-minded burgher and his friends".
[279] After the publication of Quandt's edition, the Hymns received little attention until towards the end of the 20th century,[280] when scholarly interest in the collection was rekindled, driven mainly by the work of Jean Rudhardt [fr].
