The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology, and Interpretation (review)

The ancient manuscript found in 1962 near Thessaloniki among the remains of a funeral pyre is the most extraordinary piece of new evidence about Greek philosophy and religion since the Renaissance. It contains a treatise written in the 420s BCE by someone who, like Empedocles, sought to combine Anaxagoras's materialist physics with "Orphic" or Pythagorean doctrines of reincarnation. Its author ridicules believers in traditional religion for taking the rites and sacred texts literally rather than allegorically; by so doing, they risk losing their faith. When these things are correctly understood, the most outrageous myths are shown to be accounts of the latest pre-Socratic physics. In my view, the author of this bizarre work was the "atheist" Diagoras of Melos, whom the Athenians condemned in 415 for belittling the Eleusinian Mysteries, in a "Counter-Reformation" whose victims would also include Socrates. This is the first book-length study of the papyrus since its crucial opening columns were published. Although Betegh does not share my interpretation of the papyrus, his work contributes greatly to unraveling its difficulties.