Are there any surviving ancient Pagan texts?

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Are there any surviving ancient Pagan texts?

The I Ching, which has commentaries over 2000 years old, and was likely written down at least 3000 years ago.

How much older than that it may be is anybody's guess.

[sionnach]

Re: Are there any surviving ancient Pagan texts?

As pointed out it varied depending on the group of people you are talking about. The northern European pagan religions which included the Celtic and Germanic people had an oral culture thus the never wrote anything about their religion. There were people in the social group especially in Celtic society including druids, filidh, and bairds that kept the sacred knowledge through learning the oral tradition and training others to learn the knowledge through the oral tradition. It was the Romans who brought the written language. There was Ogham symbols in Celtic areas and runes in Germanic culture which appear later in their respective cultures but there were not true written languages. By the time Irish and English were being structured to fit a written language Christianity had taken hold and so what is written for Germanic and Celtic and really for Norse religions was written by Christians including Christian Monks. This has been one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome because the writings were done long after the religion had been functionally lost. Still we are grateful that the Monks did write down what they did otherwise we would know even less. The problem is that it was influenced by the Monks own viewpoint and influenced by Roman concepts of Gods and Goddesses. Still within these writings there are elements of true pre-Christian beliefs. Figuring out what was true is where comparing archaeology, folk lore, linguistics, laws against paganism, negative remarks from Christians and anthropology help understand what they believed in. But as for any writing or manuscripts, or sacred scrolls, we have nothing from the pagan in the north western part of Europe.