How, asks Adam K. Webb ( Beyond the Global Culture War (Global Horizons) ), did the ethos of “atomism” spread throughout the world? Atomism “rests on the two principles of homogeneity and detachment” and has as its “two pillar principles . . . a lack of transcendence . . . . Continue Reading »
In 1943, Hendrik Bolkestein published his dissertation in a German translation, Wohltatigkat und Armenflege im vor-christlichen Alterlsum: Ein Beitrag zum Problem “Moral und Gesellschaft . According to the reviewer in The Classical Journal , Bolkestein’s thesis was that Greek and Latin . . . . Continue Reading »
The Reformation, it is charged, secularized and de-sacralized European culture with its iconoclasm, its attack on relics, its revisions in sacramental theology. Isaiah 3-4 suggest a different assessment. Isaiah describes the stripping of priestly ornaments from the daughters of Zion (3:16-26), but . . . . Continue Reading »
The cult of an ancient temple was largely cultivation of the cult image. Paul Johnson describes the activities in a typical Egyptian temple: “Except for Re, the sun-god, who was cultivated in the open, images were placed in the innermost sanctuary of the temple and the rite might even take . . . . Continue Reading »
Theodore Lewis assesses Tryggve Mettinger’s comparative study of Israel’s aniconic tradition in a 1998 issue of JAOS . Lewis’s enumerated conclusions are (the next few paragraph are directly quoted): 1. Aniconic traditions (i.e., Mettinger’s “de facto . . . . Continue Reading »
A 1984 article by Baruch Levine and Jean-Michel de Tarragon in the JAOS examines a Ugaritic liturgy that commemorates the accession of Ammurapi and includes honors to his dead father Niqmaddu. The liturgy begins with a summons to the Patrons of Ugarit, including the “Rephaim of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Othmar Keel ( The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms ) has shown that much of the symbolism and theology of temple is common throughout the ancient world. Of Egypt, he writes, “Almost all the great Egyptian sanctuaries claimed to house . . . . Continue Reading »
Assmann points out that monotheisms of various sorts arose in the ancient world along various paths. Gods might be translated from one religion to another, from one nation to another. Gods might take on an ever-expanding list of hyphenated names. Gods might eb re-imagined as the soul of the cosmos. . . . . Continue Reading »
“It used to be believed by the vulgar,” wrote Evelyn Waugh, “that there were enough pieces of this ‘true cross’ to built a battleship.” Waugh disagreed: “In the last century a French savant, Charles Rohault de Fleury, went to the great trouble of . . . . Continue Reading »
Assmann again, on “the fantastic but probably not totally inaccurate statements made by Herodotus about the purity commandments observed by the Egyptians in their contact with the Greeks and probably with all foreigners.” Herodotus reports, “No Egyptian would touch a knife or . . . . Continue Reading »
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