Baubo and Demeter in Clement's Exhortation to the Hellenes

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Ken Olson
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Baubo and Demeter in Clement's Exhortation to the Hellenes

Post by Ken Olson »

Can anyone point me to scholarship on the relationship between Clement's Letter to Theodore and the passage about Baubo and Demeter from the second chapter of Clement's Exhortation to the Hellenes? I see some parallels between Clement's comments on Secret Mark and his interpretation of the mystery cult described in this passage. I couldn't find anything on this in Carlson's Hoax, Brown's Other Gospel or Smith's Clement.
Well, then (for I shall not refrain from the recital), Baubo having received Demeter hospitably, reaches to her a refreshing draught; and on her refusing it, not having any inclination to drink (for she was very sad), and Baubo having become annoyed, thinking herself slighted, uncovered her shame, and exhibited her nudity to the goddess. Demeter is delighted at the sight, and takes, though with difficulty, the draught- pleased, I repeat, at the spectacle.

These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians; these Orpheus records. I shall produce the very words of Orpheus, that you may have the great authority on the mysteries himself, as evidence for this piece of turpitude:- "Having thus spoken, she drew aside her garments, And showed all that shape of the body which it is improper to name, And with her own hand Baubo stripped herself under the breasts. Blandly then the goddess laughed and laughed in her mind, And received the glancing cup in which was the draught."

And the following is the token of the Eleusinian mysteries: I have fasted, I have drunk the cup; I have received from the box; having done, I put it into the basket, and out of the basket into the chest.

Fine sights truly, and becoming a goddess; mysteries worthy of the night, and flame, and the magnanimous or rather silly people of the Erechthidae, and the other Greeks besides, "whom a fate they hope not for awaits after death." And in truth against these Heraclitus the Ephesian prophesies, as "the night-walkers, the magi, the bacchanals, the Lenaean revellers, the initiated." These he threatens with what will follow death, and predicts for them fire. For what are regarded among men as mysteries, they celebrate sacrilegiously. Law, then, and opinion, are nugatory. And the mysteries of the dragon are an imposture, which celebrates religiously mysteries that are no mysteries at all, and observes with a spurious piety profane rites. What are these mystic chests?--for I must expose their sacred things, and divulge things not fit for speech. Are they not sesame cakes, and pyramidal cakes, and globular and flat cakes, embossed all over, and lumps of salt, and a serpent the symbol of Dionysus Bassareus? And besides these, are they not pomegranates, and branches, and rods, and ivy leaves? and besides, round cakes and poppy seeds? And further, there are the unmentionable symbols of Themis, marjoram, a lamp, a sword, a woman's comb, which is a euphemism and mystic expression for the muliebria.

O unblushing shamelessness! Once on a time night was silent, a veil for the pleasure of temperate men; but now for the initiated, the holy night is the tell-tale of the rites of licentiousness; and the glare of torches reveals vicious indulgences. Quench the flame, O Hierophant; reverence, O Torch-bearer, the torches. That light exposes Iacchus; let thy mysteries be honoured, and command the orgies to be hidden in night and darkness.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ation.html
Thanks,

Ken
Secret Alias
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Re: Baubo and Demeter in Clement's Exhortation to the Hellenes

Post by Secret Alias »

Doesn't he call the Christian religion the TRUE mysteries - i.e. the true original from which the demons (or maybe I am channeling Justin here) copied their false mysteries. But I get where you are coming from.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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