Résumé
The polis-religion model was born to explain the dynamics of authority in a tradition without church and dogma. A good way to test the efficacy of the model is therefore to assess it in the light of the Greek vision of authority understood as exousia, the ‘faculty’ to act and speak attributed by an external source. In the light of this vision, what are the sources of exousia and the institutions with authority in religious matters for the Greeks? With regard to the latter, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood has shown, without forgetting individuals and sub-groups, that in the Greek world it is the polis that assumes the role played in Christianity by the church. With regard to the former, Angelos Chaniotis has noted that the provisions contained in Greek ritual norms are generally based on ‘ancestral traditions’ of an oral nature (ta patria) and written ‘laws’ (nomoi). Our goal is to reflect on the differences between these two kinds of norms and Judeo-Christian scripture as sources of religious authority. The comparison will serve to highlight the structures of thought and action specific to Greek polytheism and to verify whether the category of polis-religion is useful for describing them.
