One famous aspect of many Christian denominations, including Catholicism and Orthodoxy, is auricular confession. This is the practice of confessing one’s sins to a priest to be forgiven. Interestingly, there is some evidence that confession might actually have an origin in the pre-Christian religious customs of ancient Greece.
Confession in the Bible
One reason to speculate that the practice of auricular confession might have a pre-Christian origin is the fact that it does not explicitly appear in the Bible. The Bible does talk about confessing sins, but this is primarily in the context of confessing them to God in prayer.
The Bible also mentions confessing sins to the elders (or ‘priests‘) when one is spiritually sick. However, the same passage which mentions this makes it clear that this would involve multiple elders. It also explains that they would pray with the sinner and attempt to help them to recover spiritually.
The concept of going to a priest, confessing a sin, and the priest then granting absolution does not appear in the Bible. So, what was its real origin? There is a lot of speculation about this, but one theory is that confession comes from ancient Greece.
This would not be surprising, since there are many aspects of Christian denominations today which actually originate from ancient Greek philosophy or even mythology.
The pre-Christian Samothracian mysteries of the Cabeiri
The Cabeiri were a group of gods worshipped in ancient Greece who are believed to have originated in Anatolia. In the ancient world, they were particularly firmly associated with Samothrace, an island in the northeast Aegean.
The Samothracian mystery cult became popular far and wide in pre-Christian times. As far away as Thebes on mainland Greece there is extensive evidence for the worship of the Cabeiri.
Within the traditions of the Samothracian mysteries, there is evidence of a form of confession. Since this occurs long before the emergence of Christianity, and certainly before the earliest trace of auricular confession in Catholicism or Orthodoxy, this practice of confession in ancient Greece may be very significant.
Confession in ancient Greece before Christianity
The primary evidence for a type of auricular confession in ancient Greece before its presence in Christianity comes from Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartans. Scholars also know this work as Apophthegmata Laconica.
In this source, there are three instances of a Samothracian priest asking someone for a confession. The first instance reads as follows:
“When Androcleidas was being initiated into the mysteries at Samothrace, he was asked by the priest what especially dreadful thing he had done during his life, and he replied, ‘If any such deed has been committed by me, the gods themselves will know it.'”
According to this, part of the initiation ritual in this cult involved confession to the priest. It is worth nothing the differences between this type of confession and the type that we find in the Bible.
While the point of confession in early Christianity was to receive the help of the elders, this was evidently not the purpose of this auricular confession in ancient Greece. Otherwise, Androcleidas’ remark that the gods already know his worst sin would be irrelevant, since he would still need help from the priest to spiritually recover if that were the purpose.
Hence, this type of confession in ancient Greece is completely different to the type found in the Bible, but it is fairly similar to the auricular confession in Christian denominations today.
Could the confession of Christianity have come from ancient Greece?
With these facts in mind, what does this reveal about confession? Does the confession of Christianity actually come from ancient Greece? As we have seen, the type of confession involved in the Samothracian mysteries of the Cabeiri cult was auricular.
In other words, it involved simply confessing one’s biggest sin to the priest evidently for absolution. It had nothing to do with receiving help to recover spiritually and avoid committing the same sin again. While not matching the Bible’s description of confession, this matches the auricular confession in Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Furthermore, in each case that appears in Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartans, the confession is to be given to a single priest. Again, this matches the type of confession generally seen in Christian denominations today, rather than the confession in the Bible.
In summary, we cannot confirm that the auricular confession of Christianity actually came from ancient Greece. However, from the evidence that we have seen, it is a plausible explanation.
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