A RENAISSANCE OF MINOAN RELIGION? 739
renaissances, in Orthodox and in Western Christian history, of a Juda-
ism embedded in a Christianity that was these two Hellenistic civiliza-
tions* religious heritage from their Hellenic predecessor. This analogy,
however, so far from corroborating Nilsson's view, actually militates
against it a priori; for the hypothesis that there has been a renaissance
of some element of an antecedent civilization's religion in the history
of an affiliated civilization pre-supposes the survival, through an inter-
vening social interregnum, of a religious tradition in which the even-
tually resuscitated element of an earlier religion has been latent all the
tune; and in a previous context1 we have found reason to believe that
a religious link of this kind, such as is provided by a chrysalis church,
between two civilizations of different generations is the distinctive mark
of the historical relation between a civilization of the second generation
and one of the third—as, for example, the Orthodox and Western
Christian civilizations were affiliated to the Hellenic through the link
provided by Christianity, By contrast, the normal link between a
civilization of the first generation, such as the Minoan, and a successor
in the second generation, such as the Hellenic, seems to be, not a
chrysalis church, but an external proletariat; and in a previous inquiry,
after we had raised the question whether a religious legacy from a
Minoan past was to be detected in 'Orphism',2 our judgement inclined
tentatively towards the alternative view3 that the un-Hellenic elements
in 'Orphism', if such there were, were not revivals of a Minoan past,
but were importations into Hellas from the contemporary Syriac and
Indie worlds.

Between the date of publication of the fifth volume of this Study in
A.D. 1939 and the date of writing of the present Annex in AJ>. 1950,
our doubts about the hypothesis of an Hellenic renaissance of Minoan
religion had been confirmed by the authoritative verdict of a lucid-
minded scholar who had re-examined all the extant historical evidence
regarding 'the arts of Orpheus' by a stringently scientific method.4
Professor Linforth's most significant conclusion is the negative one that
there is no-cogent evidence for there ever having been anything in the
nature of an institutionally organized 'Orphic Church', or even anything
in the nature of a systematic body of Orphic doctrine;5 and he finds
no 'trustworthy support' for the view, which had received some
countenance in previous works of scholarship,6

'that the teletae and the poem of the dismemberment [of Dionysus] were
actually the work of Onomacritus, and that therefore "the Orphic Reli-
gion" originated in Athens, or was introduced into Athens, in the time of
Peisistratus.'7

In the dry light of Linforth's salutarily ruthless criticism of theories
without warrant in the sources, the supposed evidence for the presence
of Syriac and Indie elements in pre-Alexandrine Orphic rites, poems,

* In VII. vii. 392-419, * See I. i. 95-100.

3 See V. v. 82-87 and 697-8.

+ Linforth, I. M.: The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley, Cal. 1941, University of California
Press). s See ibid., pp. 288, 291, 304~5> and 35°-

6 See the references in V, v. 697-8. » Linforth, op. cit., p. 353.