BMCR 2008.10.16, Alberto Bernabe/ Pajares, Instructions for the Netherworld

Alberto Bernabe/ Pajares, Ana Isabel Jime/nez San Cristo/bal,
Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets. Religions in
the Graeco-Roman World, v. 162.  Leiden/Boston:  Brill, 2008.  Pp. xii,
379.  ISBN 9789004163713.  $188.00.

Reviewed by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Bryn Mawr College
([email protected])
Word count:  4612 words
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This new edition and English translation (by Michael Chase) of the 2001
Spanish study of the gold tablets by Bernabe/ and Jime/nez (henceforth
BJ) is a welcome, if not unproblematic, addition to the recent spate of
scholarship on the fascinating and mysterious gold tablets.  This
volume follows upon several recent editions of the tablets: by Pugliese
Carratelli in 2001 (Le lamine d'oro orfiche) and the French translation
in 2003, the Italian edition of Tortorelli Ghidini in 2006 (Figli della
terra e del cielo stellato), and the study of Graf and Johnston in 2007
(Ritual texts for the afterlife).[[1]]  BJ's edition is the most
complete and up-to-date collection of texts, and their critical
apparatus for these difficult texts far surpasses all of the other
editions, making this volume the best source for serious study of the
texts of these tablets.  The translations and interpretations are more
problematic, however.  The translations are at times awkward, and they
are separated from the Greek texts, which are located in an appendix at
the end, as well as divided up into different chapters.  Anyone seeking
a quick overview of the tablets would have to flip back and forth
between chapters and the appendix, making the book less user-friendly
than other recent studies.  The interpretations are even more of a
problem, however, since the argument of the book seeks to use the
tablets to establish a particular idea of Orphism. The argumentation is
often weak and circular, presenting a deeply flawed model of Orphism as
a religious movement that is like a Christian sect.

The book is organized into twelve chapters, with two appendices devoted
to the texts of the tablets and to various images associated with the
netherworld.  A detailed, four page, table of contents outlines every
section of each chapter, and there is a good index locorum as well as a
general index to the book, so even uninitiated readers can find their
way with relative ease to particular points.  However, despite such
handy instructions, the uninitiated reader may well find herself
wandering in circles through the arguments of the book, since the
structure of the argument often presumes knowledge of the tablets or
their context that is discussed at later points.  The first eight
chapters treat different types of tablets within the corpus assembled
by BJ, while chapters nine and ten sum up the arguments about the
Orphic religious context which the authors imagine to have produced the
tablets.  Chapter eleven provides an unsystematic comparison of
elements in the tablets with similar elements that appear in other
cultures, while the final chapter revisits, with slightly different
emphasis and conclusions, the nature of the texts.  For the most part,
this English edition follows the Spanish edition, although new sections
are added in several chapters, and chapters ten and eleven are new to
this edition.

Graf and Johnston provide the only other translation into English, and
anyone intending to offer these texts to an audience without Greek
should prefer their translation, which is free from the numerous
infelicities and awkward choices that mar Michael Chase's rendering of
the tablets in this volume.  While most of his translation of the book
is of good quality, some of the translations of poetic verses,
including those from the tablets, rely too heavily on cognates with the
Spanish, creating distortions of meaning in English.  The Spanish "los
li/mpidos" for Greek <greek>eu)age/wn</greek> is rendered as 'the
limpid ones' rather than 'the blessed' or 'the holy ones'.  In English,
however, 'limpid', when not applied to pools of water, merely recalls
'limp', making the blessed dead seem flaccid rather than pellucid.  A
more serious problem is the translation "you must go to the right
thiasos", where 'right' renders <greek>decio\n</greek>, making it seem
as if the choice is of the correct thiasos, rather than the one on the
right.[[2]]

Unlike the recent editions of Graf and Johnston and Tortorelli Ghidini,
which arrange the tablets geographically, according to their findspots,
BJ follow the lead of Zuntz[[3]] in arranging the tablets
typologically, according to the nature of the text, and the order of
the first eight chapters follows this division.  In each chapter, BJ
provide a translation of the tablets discussed and then commentary upon
selected features of interest.  The texts themselves are not given in
the chapters, but in the appendix, which occasionally creates some
problems, and the commentaries are not systematic or comprehensive, but
follow the shape of BJ's argument about the nature of Orphism.

The first set of tablets to be considered are those in which the
deceased identifies herself as the Child of Earth and starry Heaven,
the B group of Zuntz's classification.  BJ consider these tablets, both
the long versions from Hipponion, Entella, Petelia, and Pharsalos and
the shorter ones from Crete, to describe the arrival of the deceased in
the underworld and to provide instructions for his actions there.
Next, following the order of Bernabe/'s 2005 edition of the Orphica,
come the two tablets from Pelinna, whose text differs from any others
found. However, BJ place these in between the first set and the tablets
from Thurii in the following chapters, because of the reference to
bacchoi in the Hipponion tablet and to Bacchios in the Pelinna tablets
on the one hand, and the appearance of the bizarre 'animal in milk'
formula in both the Pelinna and Thurii tablets on the other.  These
tablets from Thurii, the A series in Zuntz's typology, take up the next
four chapters, since BJ treat the inner tablet from Timpone Grande,
which has yet another different text, in one chapter, the three tablets
from Timpone Piccolo, which all bear similar texts, in another, and the
anomalously late, second century CE text from Rome in the third.  The
peculiar outer tablet from Timpone Grande (Zuntz's C tablet) has its
own chapter, in which BJ explain the enigmatic tablet as a sort of
"'word search puzzle' for deceiving non-initiates"  Here the choice to
separate the translation from the text is particularly deceptive, since
BJ print in the translation only the words they imagine they can find
in the jumble of letters that makes up the text on the tablet, and they
arrange these words according to a logic of relations that fits with
their preconceived ideas of the Orphic context of the text.  (I would
suggest that this tablet is better compared to a Rohrschach blot than a
word search puzzle, since every scholarly reconstruction of its
contents has tended to reflect the presuppositions of the
reconstructer.)  Chapter seven is devoted to the tablets from Pherai
that contain greetings to Persephone and/or passwords for the deceased,
while chapter eight discusses the various gold tablets with little text
on them that have in recent years been classed with the tablets that
actually do contain instructions for the netherworld.  BJ spend little
time justifying their inclusion, merely commenting that they "seem to
belong to this same religious atmosphere" (p. 164).[[4]]

This religious atmosphere, of course, is BJ's construct of Orphism as a
religious sect, defined by its doctrines as Christian sects are by
their creeds.  In chapters nine and ten, BJ elaborate on their
hypothesis of such a sect, although its existence is assumed throughout
the commentaries of the previous chapters and is, indeed, crucial to
many of their interpretations of the enigmatic texts.  Not only can
such circular argumentation be confusing to those not already familiar
with their ideas, but the circular arguments undermine the validity of
their entire reconstruction of the religious context of the gold
tablets.

Consider, for example, this argument from the final chapter: "The fact
that the tablets were folded as a ritual act intended to conceal the
sacred words is an attractive hypothesis" (p. 239). This kind of
confusion between fact and hypothesis troubles the whole book.  It is a
fact that (some of) the gold tablets were folded; it is a hypothesis
that such folding was a ritual act with such a purpose.  However
attractive or even plausible such a hypothesis might be, there is no
actual evidence to support it.  BJ take the fact as evidence for the
hypothesis, creating a vicious circle in which the hypothesis is
created to explain the fact and then the fact is used as evidence to
support the hypothesis.

While the conflation of fact and hypothesis is not always as
grammatically clear as in this example, this type of logic underlies
their entire argument for the Orphic nature of the tablets.  BJ put
forth a hypothesis of a single religious movement they term Orphism to
explain the facts of the gold tablets, but then use the gold tablets as
the primary evidence for that movement, claiming that the tablets "give
us direct access to the most ancient stages of Orphic religion and
literature" (p. 1).  The access that these puzzling texts provides to
their religious context is, however, not direct, but necessarily
mediated by the interpretive hypotheses used to make sense of their
abbreviated, obscure, and fragmentary contents.  BJ put forth the
hypothesis of a single sect, with a clearly defined set of doctrines,
to explain the whole mass of facts provided, not just by the gold
tablets, but by all the references to Orphic texts and rites and indeed
to all the doctrines they imagine as Orphic.

BJ aver that a single sect is the simplest explanation of the facts,
and they claim that calling that sect Orphic further satisfies the
demands for simplicity. "It is obvious, however, that if we do not do
so, the explanation becomes more complicated" (p. 203). They repeatedly
fall back on the protestation that, "Although each of these features
may perhaps be found in other environments, there exists no other
religious movement in which they all coincide." (p. 204, cf., e.g. p.
184, 189, et al.)  Such an argument, of course, raises the question
whether there is actually any single religious movement that underlies
all of the tablets or whether the grouping of these texts on gold
lamellae into a single category blurs and distorts the differences
between the religious contexts that produced the different texts.  The
appeal to the coincidence of features is problematic in any case,
since, although the various tablets do indeed show a certain "thematic
continuity" (p. 184), all the features that make up BJ's definition of
Orphism never in fact coincide in any of the individual tablet texts
(or, indeed, in any of the other pieces of evidence they discuss).
Once again, the collected facts of particular features of the tablet
texts are used to "prove" a hypothesis formed to explain the variety of
facts.

Even the specious appeal to the simplicity of a single sect explanation
founders when the evidence is considered in the broader context of
Greek religion.  As recent decades of research into the nature of
ancient Greek polytheism have made clear, the modes of social
organization that shaped religious practice were significantly
different from the more familiar ones of later Christianity.  The
apparently simple hypothesis of a single sect defined by its doctrines
is only simple if one presumes a context in which such sects are the
familiar mode; in another context, such as that of ancient Greek
religion, hypothesizing such an exceptional entity becomes much more
complicated, since one need also explain, among other things, the means
by which the sect preserved its organizations and transmitted its
doctrines throughout the more than a millennium from which BJ's
evidence is drawn.  Orphism has often been uncritically treated as the
exception within ancient Greek religion, but such an exceptional and
anomalous status is hardly the simplest or best explanation of the
evidence.

The model of Orphism that BJ put forth throughout their arguments in
this volume owes too much to later Christian models to be a plausible
explanation for these ancient Greek gold tablets.  BJ imagine as the
source of the tablets "a minority group, with a certain unity of
beliefs, probably initiates, or followers of a religious movement
which, after several years of doubt, we must now, without hesitation,
call 'Orphic'" (p. 2).  Although BJ do not, like scholars in the first
half of the twentieth century, explicitly attribute to the Orphics the
ideas of sin and the soul that shaped Christianity, this sect is still
significant for them because of the way their religious ideas
infiltrated into mainstream thought.  They "exerted a powerful
influence on other Greek authors and thinkers: some Pre-Socratic
philosophers, lyric poets like Pindar, Plato, and then the
Neoplatonists" (p. 1). Like the religious movements in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam (and unlike anything else in ancient Greek
religion), BJ's Orphics rely on their sacred scriptures for authority;
Orpheotelests "depend on the holiness of the written word; in other
words, it is the possession and control of Orphic writings that confers
on them their authority" (p. 91), while "constant recourse to the text
is one of the key differences between Orphism and Dionysism" (p. 190).

The members of this group are often explicitly compared by BJ to
members of Christian sects. This group, like a sect, is a distinct set
of initiates, who maintain a way of life separate from that of others,
and the <greek>teletai/</greek> are understood as rituals that confer
admission into this brotherhood of the elect. "Among the conditions
that must be fulfilled during life, first and foremost is that of
belonging to a select group, to which one is admitted by initiation"
(p. 171, cf. pp. 100-1).  Itinerant religious practitioners who make
use of Orphic writings are referred to as "missionaries" (p. 58), while
the members are called "the faithful" (e.g. p. 113, p. 234) and are
even imagined as Bible-toting congregants: "it might be argued that the
faithful came to the ritual with their own tablets, in order to use
them as a reminder of what they were to do or say" (p. 235).  Their
characterization as "the faithful" underlines the way in which BJ
define Orphism by belief in certain doctrines; they refer repeatedly to
"Orphic dogma" or "Orphic doctrine" (e.g. pp. 109, 113), and, in
another revival of early twentieth century models, Orphism itself is
compared explicitly to Puritanism (p. 109).[[5]]

The doctrines that define Orphism for BJ are a belief in an original
sin, committed by mankind's ancestors, the Titans, that leads the
faithful to renounce mundane living for a life of purity and penance, a
hope of salvation from this sin and reward in the afterlife, a doctrine
of reincarnations for those who have not been absolved, and the idea of
an ultimate identification with the salvific god Dionysos for the
initiate.  None of these ideas is entirely without basis in the ancient
evidence, but they all represent serious distortions of that evidence,
a problem compounded by the assumption that all of these doctrines are
found in any context that provides some kind of evidence for one.

The puritanical rejection of mundane living, for example, is a
composite of all the purificatory taboos associated with the name of
Orpheus in all the evidence. "According to what we know of the Orphics,
expiatory purification included the observance of a series of precepts,
such as a vegetarian diet, abstinence from beans and eggs, and the
prohibition of wearing wool, as well as a certain degree of sexual
renunciation" (p. 101). While all of these purificatory practices are
indeed attested, there is no evidence that anyone observed all of these
taboos at once or that these were all lifelong, rather than temporary,
practices.  BJ's picture of the Orphic life curiously omits any
reference to the one mention of an Orphikos bios -- a passage in
Plato's Laws (782 c = OT 212 = 625iB, not in BJ's index locorum) that
refers to refraining from blood sacrifice.  Instead, they repeatedly
cite a fragment from Euripides' Cretans (fr. 472=Porphyry De Abst. 4.56
= OF 567B), in which the chorus claims to have lived a pure life since
their participation in the rites of Idaian Zeus, nightwandering
Zagreus, and the Mountain Mother.  However, our source for this
fragment, Porphyry, who elsewhere shows familiarity with Orphic
writings, does not associate these figures with Orpheus or an Orphic
life, although the reference to Zagreus, the sixth century CE Nonnos'
favorite name for the dismembered Dionysos, has caused scholars to
consider the passage to present an image of Orphic initiates.  BJ
choose to emphasize the evidence that fits with their conception of
Orphism rather than to use the actual evidence for an ancient concept
of the Orphic life.

This idea of Orphic puritanism leads BJ to some problematic arguments
in their explication of the tablets.  For example, they reject the idea
that the reference in one of the Thurii tablets (L9) to passing beneath
the lap or bosom could be linked with the story of Zeus' rape of
Persephone in the form of a snake or the Sabazian formula of the god
through the lap, since "the sexual atmosphere seems particularly far
removed from the Orphic rituals and from Orphic life in general, which
is characterized by unadulterated puritanism" (p. 129).  An even more
troubling example is when they dismiss the archaeological context of
the tablets with the generalization that "This renunciation is
accompanied by an almost complete absence of funerary furniture in
these tombs" (p. 45). While it is indeed true that the Hipponion tablet
(L1) was found in a grave with only modest grave goods, most of the
graves in the huge Hipponion necropolis had similarly modest grave
goods, whereas the Pharsalos tablet was found in an elaborate bronze
funeral hydria and the tombs at Thurii and Pelinna had a number of
valuable grave items.  The circular argumentation that maps the
hypothesized doctrines back on to the evidence thus leads to
distortions or deletions of important evidence that doesn't fit the
hypothesis.  The consequences of their generalization about Orphic
puritanism are even more striking when one considers the tomb in which
the Derveni papyrus was found, a grave stuffed with a variety of grave
goods, the martial character of many of which belies any Orphic
separation from the world.[[6]]

The topic of the supposed Orphic idea of original sin, stemming from
the Titans' murder of Dionysos, has been debated elsewhere, and BJ do
little more than refer to Bernabe/'s articles on the subject to support
their hypothesis of "the founding myth of Orphic doctrine" (p. 113).  I
have detailed my arguments elsewhere against this idea, so I will
confine my comments to the effects this hypothesized doctrine has upon
BJ's interpretation of the tablets.[[7]]  Although only two (nearly
identical) tablets from Thurii (L10a & b) mention paying the penalty
for unjust deeds, BJ see the idea of absolution from the Titans' crime
as a central motif in all the tablets.  The reward for this expiation,
they claim, is escape from the cycle of reincarnations, and they see
this as the desired reward after death for all those buried with the
tablets.  This conclusion has implications for a number of their
interpretations of particular passages in the tablets.  They reject the
reading of <greek>h)ri/on</greek> "tomb" in the first line of the
Hipponion tablet (L1), because a "believer" would think that his soul
would escape the tomb of the body (p. 13), and they interpret
<greek>yu/xontai</greek> in line 4, not as refreshing but revivifying
in the sense of returning the souls to new bodies in the cycle of
reincarnations (pp. 31-33). However, the only hint of the idea of
reincarnation in the tablets is the reference to a
<greek>ku/klos</greek> in one of the Thurii tablets (L9).  To support
the idea that a cycle of reincarnations is Orphic, BJ combine a quote
from Proclus' commentary on the Republic (in Remp. II.338 = OF338lB)
that mentions a cycle of reincarnations with another passage from his
commentary on the Timaeus that explains in the Neoplatonic sense of the
cycle of genesis a verse of Orpheus that refers to escaping from a
cycle (in Tim. III 296.7= OF 348, cp. Simplicius, in Arist. Cael.
377.12). Such reliance on Neoplatonic interpretation is dubious enough,
but, even if the cycle in L9 refers to reincarnation (rather than the
more plausible sense of the cyclical affairs and seasons of human
life), the importation of the doctrine into the other tablets, none of
which mentions a cycle, creates distortions in their eschatologies.

The cycle of reincarnations is only one of the Platonic ideas about the
nature of the soul that BJ project onto their contruct of Orphism.
Although they rightly reject (p. 54) Guthrie's reconstruction of the
Orphic view of the afterlife from Plato's myths, they make the same
mistake themselves of collecting a number of ideas from Plato (only
some of which are linked with Orpheus), hypothesizing that Plato drew
on Orphic sources, and then using the Platonic details to reconstruct
the lost Orphic evidence.  They do admit that Plato transformed earlier
ideas about the soul and its destiny for his own purposes, but, in a
series of circular arguments, they take the Platonic ideas that fit
with their definition of Orphism to be Orphic and those that do not to
be Platonic innovations. For example, they disregard the word play that
Plato uses in the Phaedo to twist the ideas to the situation of
Socrates' imprisonment in the dialogue, arguing that "In the Orphic
conception, whoever commits suicide is guilty of a fault similar to
that of someone escaping from jail before serving his appointed
sentence" (p. 107). This is a Platonic transformation, not an Orphic
doctrine, even if Plato makes allusions to the mysteries elsewhere in
the dialogue.  Such distortions do an injustice both to Plato's
philosophical innovations and to the diverse religious traditions upon
which he was drawing.

Relying on discredited ideas of Rohde and Dodds about the union of the
bacchic mystic with Dionysos, BJ propose that the ultimate reward of
the faithful is an identification with the salvific god, Dionysos. "The
result for the initiate, both in initiation and death, is the passage
to a state of felicity, coinciding with identification with the god"
(p. 98, cf. p. 185).[[8]]  So complete is this identification, for BJ,
that they interpret the reference to a Mother among the jumble of
tablet L12 from Thurii as Persephone the mother of Dionysos, "also
alluded to as a mother by the speaker of the prayer, because he aspires
to be identified with the god." (p. 149) The references, in L8 and L9
from the Thurii, to transformation into a god are better explained with
reference to other kinds of models of apotheosis (Semele, Herakles,
Asclepius, Lysander, etc.), and the other afterlife rewards mentioned
in the other tablets should not be obscured by the assumption of a
single goal for all.

A number of other weak or circular arguments undermine the validity of
the authors' idea of Orphism.  Their arguments from parallels are among
the weakest, since they often make the claim of some connection based
merely upon a few points of similarity.  Their section (10.6) on the
parallels between the gods mentioned in the gold tablets and in other
Orphic texts disregards the fact that most of these same deities are
found in other texts as well.  Likewise in section 10.3, it is true
that Southern Italy, Thessaly, and Crete, where many tablets have been
found, have associations with Orpheus, but many places, from the
Laconia to Thrace, have associations with Orpheus and no tablets.  The
weakness of such arguments is unfortunately most clear in the chapter
(11) on parallels to the tablets in other cultures, where similarities
between elements are unsystematically compared to draw conclusions
about cultural influence. For example, because some later Persian texts
refer to demons as potential obstacles in the afterlife, BJ conclude,
"Above all, the double existence in the Beyond of demons and Eumenides,
as described in the Derveni Papyrus, or alluded to by the Aristophanic
<greek>*E)/mpousa</greek>, are very obvious proofs of an Iranian
influence on the Orphic texts" (p. 223).  Comparative religion can be
very illuminating if specific points are being made through precise
comparisons that take into account the socio-historical contexts of
both cultures compared, but, in the absence of such scholarly rigor,
the vague parallels listed in chapter eleven are left as mere
historical curiosities, convincing neither as influences or
coincidences.[[9]]

The second appendix, treating images of the netherworld, is a similar
collection of unsystematic connections.  While the iconographic
evidence, like the cross-cultural evidence, is too often neglected in
studies of Greek religious ideas, Ricardo Olmos' treatment of the
images in this appendix offers speculative and often wildly imaginative
explanations to go with his detailed descriptions (accompanied by some
useful line drawings by Sara Olmos) of Greek images that might be
connected with the netherworld.  Some images, however, like no. 1 of a
woman holding a scroll, are included only because the scroll might be
an afterlife text, while even images more clearly associated with death
and afterlife are linked to the tablets through weak and unconvincing
speculations. An Etruscan sarcophagus, no. 9, of a woman holding a
kantharos with a fawn nearby is compared with the imagery of the kid in
milk formula, with the conclusion that, "The woman from Tarquinia, a
noble aristocrat, will have held Orphic-Dionysiac beliefs that were in
full bloom at the time in Greek colonies of South Italy...The animal
would be the image of a god-child, nursed after his birth, and the
maenad his divine nurse-maid, a veritable kourotrophos goddess, freed
from her mortality, raised up the sphere of the dii animales" (p. 304).
Treating these images as evidence for the spread of BJ's imagined
Orphism obscures the significance such images might have had in their
real cultural context, detracting from, rather than adding to,
scholarly understanding of Greek religion in this period and region.

In sum, BJ's treatment of the gold tablets is deeply and substantially
flawed, with problematic arguments producing conclusions that, because
of their speciously simple model of Orphism as a sect, have the
potential to seriously mislead scholars trying to understand these
fascinating relics of ancient Greek religion.  Nevertheless, despite
its flaws, there are many interesting and useful observations on the
tablets and their texts scattered throughout the book.  The
philological elements of the volume, however, are stronger than the
religious historical models and reasoning.  BJ's edition of the tablets
in appendix 1 is a valuable addition to the scholarship on these texts,
particularly the critical apparatus that outlines the past hundred
years of scholarship on these enigmatic texts.  Their conclusions about
the origins of the tablet texts, rejecting a single archetype, are
sound, even though they contradict BJ's acceptance of Riedweg's
hypothetical archetype elsewhere in the volume. "Each poet strings
together these well-known, formulaic utterances that derive from
tradition, mixed with varied mortar of other verses from the Orphic
corpus, Homeric formulas, etc., according to the greater or lesser
competence of their author.  This diverse origin also gives a
satisfactory explanation of the dialectical mixtures we constantly find
in our documents" (p. 231).[[10]] This bricolage model for poetic
composition would work better to explain the religious context of the
tablets than the single sect model BJ propose.  As Burkert showed over
twenty-five years ago, the ancient evidence for Orphica is not
compatible with the kind of coherent religious movement BJ imagine.
Instead, a model of independent religious craftsmen plying their trade
for a broad range of clients provides a better explanation of the
data.[[11]]  BJ's reconstruction of the context as a sect, rather than
a craft, coupled with the awkward translations and the book's circular
structures of argument, limit the usefulness of this volume to scholars
looking for instruction to guide them through the murky netherworld of
the gold tablets and their religious contexts.


------------------
Notes:


1.   My review of Graf and Johnston may also be found in BMCR
2007.10.35. My own 2004 study of the tablets does not include an
edition or translation, but a collection of essays (edited by? title?),
forthcoming from Cambridge, includes an edition of the texts (based
largely on Bernabe/'s), my own translations, and essays from a number
of scholars in the field, including Graf and Bernabe/ & Jime/nez.

2.   <greek>eu)age/wn</greek> at L10 a & b, line 7, cited a surprising
number of times to refer to the collection of the 'faithful' in the
afterlife (see the index locorum). <greek>decio\n</greek> in L8.4.
Other noteworthy translation problems include "respite from disgrace"
rather than "from misfortunes" or "from evils" for <greek>a)nayu=xai
kako/thtos</greek> in OF348, quoted on pp. 73, 119, and 120. "Striving
for the realization of their impious ancestors" is a peculiar rendition
of <greek>lu/sin progo/nwn a)qemi/stwn maio/menoi</greek> in OF350
(quoted on pp. 74 and 106), but the translation of
<greek>tuxai/</greek> on p.137 as "Avatars of Fortune" makes little
sense with either the original meaning of avatar or any of its more
contemporary uses.

3.   Guenther Zuntz, Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought
in Magna Graecia, Oxford, 1971.

4.   They are omitted by Pugliese Carratelli and Tortorelli Ghidini,
but Graf and Johnston also include many of these tablets with minimal
text, again with little justification for their classification with the
longer tablets.  The choice to include or exclude seems to be based on
implicit (and unargued) definitions of what is Orphic.  Interestingly,
BJ choose to exclude the gold tablet from Manisa that they included in
the Spanish edition, rightly concluding that the presence of the word
'guardians' is not enough to classify the text as an Orphic gold tablet
rather than a gold protective or other sort of magical amulet.

5.   This comparison dominates the scholarship on Orphism in the early
twentieth century, most explicitly in Watmough, J. R. (1934). Orphism,
Cambridge.

6.   BJ also ignore the archaeological context of the Hipponion tomb
when they suggest (p. 237) that the Hipponion deceased may have
intended the lamp in her grave to read her gold tablet's instructions
for the netherworld journey, since nearly all the graves in that vast
necropolis had lamps.  The significance of a lamp in a grave must be
understood within the broader context of local burial practices, not
taken in isolation to support a hypothesis that ignores other evidence.

7.   Bernabe/ has argued, against my critique in Edmonds 1999, for the
centrality of the Zagreus myth to Orphism in two articles. (Edmonds, R.
(1999). Tearing apart the Zagreus myth: a few disparaging remarks on
orphism and original sin. Classical Antiquity 18(1): 1-24.  Bernabe/,
A. (2002). La toile de Pe/ne/lope: a-t-il existe/ un mythe orphique sur
Dionysos et les Titans? Revue de l'histoire des religions 219.4:
401-433; Bernabe/, A. (2003). Autour du mythe orphique sur Dionysos et
les Titans.  Quelque notes critiques. Des Ge/ants a\ Dionysos.
Me/langes offerts a\ F. Vian. D. A. P. Chuvin. Alessandria: 25-39.)  I
have offered a detailed response in an essay published online at the
Center for Hellenic Studies, ("Recycling Laertes' Shroud"
(http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/redmonds) ), to be expanded and reworked in
my forthcoming study, Redefining Ancient Orphism.

8.   Henrichs has effectively refuted such outmoded ideas, pointing out
that the similarity between the god (Bacchos) and his worshippers
(bacchai) lies in the fact that the god joins in the ritual
celebration: "it does not amount to a 'fusion' of god and mortal, let
alone to an 'identification' with the divine through some kind of
sacramental union or even communion." (Henrichs, Albert (1993). "He Has
a God in Him": Human and Divine in the Modern Perceptions of Dionysus.
Masks of Dionysus. eds. Faraone and Carpenter. Cornell: 20)  The
Durkheimian idea of Dionysos as the projection of the thiasos group
with which the primitive ecstatics identify in their frenzy is not a
helpful way of understanding the aims of those buried with the gold
tablets.

9.   The footnotes indicate that several of these cross-cultural
comparisons are the subjects of dissertations in progress by some of
Bernabe/'s doctoral students, so perhaps the brief summaries and
unconvincing claims in this chapter are not representative of the
potential arguments to be made.

10.   BJ elsewhere in the book accept the reconstruction by Riedweg of
a single hieros logos from which all the elements of the tablets are
excerpted, arguing explicitly for it on p. 181.  (Riedweg, Christoph
(1998). "Initiation - Tod - Unterwelt:  Beobachtungen zur
Kommunikationssituation und narrativen Technik der orphisch-bakchischen
Goldblaettchen." Ansichten griechischer Rituale:  Geburtstags-Symposium
fuer Walter Burkert, ed. Fritz Graf, B.G. Teubner:  Stuttgart und
Leipzig: 359-398.)  Such a model of a single sacred scripture fits
their hypothesis of a single sect that relies on the authority of its
scripture better than the more sophisticated bricolage model
articulated in their concluding chapter, but the bricolage model fits
the evidence better.

11.   Burkert's 1982 article remains fundamental understanding the
evidence for Orphica in ways that escape the Christianocentric
scholarly models of the early twentieth century (Burkert, W. (1982).
"Craft Versus Sect: The Problem of Orphics and Pythagoreans." Jewish
and Christian Self-Definition: Volume Three - Self-Definition in the
Greco-Roman World. Meyers and Sanders. Philadelphia: 1-22.)