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Peter Van Nuffelen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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BEYOND CATEGORIZATION “Pagan Monotheism” and the Study of Ancient Religion
Common Knowledge, 2012Co-Authors: Peter Van NuffelenAbstract:The term “pagan Monotheism” was coined to describe monotheistic tendencies in Greco-Roman religion. Its usefulness has been strongly disputed on various grounds: for introducing a cognitive perspective on ancient religion, which was basically ritualistic; for implicitly taking Christianity as the norm by which to measure classical religion; and for confusing scholarly categories by classifying phenomena as monotheistic that are much better described as henotheistic. This article suggests that these arguments have been attempts to create a supposedly objective and universal scholarly vocabulary, while that new vocabulary would serve to obscure the history and ideological origin of the concepts it promoted. Arguing for a reflective, hermeneutical approach that incorporates an awareness of the origin and charged meanings of our concepts into scholarship, the author proposes methodological pluralism as a way out of these unfruitful terminological debates. Each concept sheds light on some aspects of reality while obscuring others. In particular, the often-criticized ambiguity and fuzziness of the term “pagan Monotheism” may help us to formulate questions that otherwise would remain marginal in studies of ancient religion.
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one god pagan Monotheism in the roman empire
2010Co-Authors: Stephen Mitchell, Peter Van NuffelenAbstract:1. Introduction: the debate about pagan Monotheism Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen 2. Pagan Monotheism as a religious phenomenon Peter Van Nuffelen 3. Pagan ritual and Monotheism John North 4. The case for pagan Monotheism in Greek and Graeco-Roman antiquity Michael Frede 5. Monotheism between cult and politics: the themes of the ancient debate between pagan and Christian Monotheism Alfons Furst 6. The price of Monotheism: some new observations on a current debate about late antiquity Christoph Markschies 7. Megatheism: the search for the almighty god and the competition of cults Angelos Chaniotis 8. Deus deum...summorum maximus (Apuleius): ritual expressions of distinction in the divine world in the imperial period Nicole Belayche 9. Further thoughts on the cult of Theos Hypsistos Stephen Mitchell.
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Monotheism between pagans and christians in late antiquity
2010Co-Authors: Stephen Mitchell, Peter Van NuffelenAbstract:The fourth century was a major religious battleground. The rise of Christianity, and in particular its dominance from Constantine onwards, marked an important shift in the religious history of the Mediterranean. Christianity saw this change as the victory of its Monotheism over the polytheism of paganism. This volume studies how similarities between paganism and Christianity were obscured in the polemic that was waged by Christianity against paganism and in the pagan responses to it. The volume includes papers on Porphyry, Augustine, Themistius, Latin verse inscriptions, as well as dealing with the different ways in which Christian and pagan thinkers conceived of Monotheism. A recurring theme in the papers shows that a concrete religious issue lay at the heart of such polemic: who can one worship? Christians would restrict worship to their God, whereas pagans accepted cultic acts for the many traditional deities. The debate about Monotheism was therefore not just about conceptions of the divine, but was part of the creation and defence of social, cultural and religious identities in Late Antiquity. In exploring how the notion of Monotheism was shaped by Late Antique polemic and how this still influences our understanding of it, this volume also hopes to inform contemporary debates about the dangers of Monotheism.
Koji Yamashiro - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Trauma and Monotheism: Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the Possibility of Writing a Traumatic History of Religion
Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture, 2020Co-Authors: Koji YamashiroAbstract:Can we rewrite the birth, development, and death of the monotheistic religions as a traumatic history? The present chapter aims to serve as a starting point for such an attempt. For this purpose, I shall, first of all, critically reevaluate some theses of Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and then offer a new approach to the relation between trauma and religion. Subsequently, a brief sketch will be attempted for the composition of a traumatic history of Monotheism as the cyclic process of the execution machine. In the concluding section I shall shed some light on the problem of trauma in modernity by giving a new interpretation to Walter Benjamin’s vision of the messianic machine.
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trauma and Monotheism sigmund freud s moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion
2016Co-Authors: Koji YamashiroAbstract:Can we rewrite the birth, development, and death of the monotheistic religions as a traumatic history? The present chapter aims to serve as a starting point for such an attempt. For this purpose, I shall, first of all, critically reevaluate some theses of Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and then offer a new approach to the relation between trauma and religion. Subsequently, a brief sketch will be attempted for the composition of a traumatic history of Monotheism as the cyclic process of the execution machine. In the concluding section I shall shed some light on the problem of trauma in modernity by giving a new interpretation to Walter Benjamin’s vision of the messianic machine.
Jan Assmann - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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around exodus Monotheism difference and violence
Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 2014Co-Authors: Jan AssmannAbstract:The article aims at a revision of the notion of « Mosaic distinction ». A closer look at the book of Exodus shows not one, but three « Mosaic » distinctions, which are not about truth and untruth, but about slavery and freedom, the chosen people and the rest, friend and foe. The Monotheism of truth comes only later, with Deutero-Isaiah, Jeremiah and other late- and post-exilic prophets. The false religion, i.e. idolatry, is an object of scorn and derision, but not of violent persecution. The other gods are deemed inexistent. This new idea, however, never supersedes the Monotheism of faithfulness that remains dominant in the three Abrahamic religions.
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the price of Monotheism
2009Co-Authors: Jan AssmannAbstract:Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion. In this nuanced consideration of his own controversial Moses the Egyptian, renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann answers his critics, extending and building upon ideas from his previous book. Maintaining that it was indeed the Moses of the Hebrew Bible who introduced the true-false distinction in a permanent and revolutionary form, Assmann reiterates that the price of this monotheistic revolution has been the exclusion, as paganism and heresy, of everything deemed incompatible with the truth it proclaims. This exclusion has exploded time and again into violence and persecution, with no end in sight. Here, for the first time, Assmann traces the repeated attempts that have been made to do away with this distinction since the early modern period. He explores at length the notions of primary versus secondary religions, of "counter-religions," and of book religions versus cultic religions. He also deals with the entry of ethics into religion's very core. Informed by the debate his own work has generated, he presents a compelling lesson in the fluidity of cultural identity and beliefs.
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of god and gods egypt israel and the rise of Monotheism
2008Co-Authors: Jan AssmannAbstract:For thousands of years, our world has been shaped by biblical Monotheism. But its hallmark - a distinction between one true God and many false gods - was once a new and radical idea. "Of God and Gods" explores the revolutionary newness of biblical theology against a background of the polytheism that was once so commonplace.Jan Assmann, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient Egypt working today, traces the concept of a true religion back to its earliest beginnings in Egypt and describes how this new idea took shape in the context of the older polytheistic world that it rejected. He offers readers a deepened understanding of Egyptian polytheism and elaborates on his concept of the "Mosaic distinction," which conceives an exclusive and emphatic Truth that sets religion apart from beliefs shunned as superstition, paganism, or heresy.Without a theory of polytheism, Assmann contends, any adequate understanding of Monotheism is impossible. This work will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the relationship between God and gods.
Mark S Smith - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism
Shofar, 2009Co-Authors: Mark S SmithAbstract:Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism, by Jan Assmann. George L. Mosse Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. 196 pp. $26.95. This volume comes from the hand of one of the best- known figures in the field of Egyptology. The topic is"the relationship between God and the gods" (p. 1). It concerns what Assmann calls the "Mosaic distinction," which is "the idea of an exclusive and emphatic Truth that sets God apart from everything that is not God and therefore must not be worshipped" (p. 1). Exclusivity, though, is not exclusivity of divine existence, as the other gods exist; rather, it is the exclusivity of Israel's belonging to God and not to any other deity. Chapter One surveys basic concepts of ancient polytheism, specifically three dimensions: "shapes" (cult images and representations of a deity in the temple cult); "transformations" (cosmic manifestations as sun, moon, and the like); and "names" (linguistic representations that include not only proper names, but also titles, pedigrees, genealogies, and myths). These categories suggest how polytheism made sense to ancient peoples, gave them meaning and shaped their identity. Chapter Two addresses the relationship between violence and various forms of theism. Assmann points out that polytheistic cultures are hardly peaceful, tolerant, and non-violent and that their acts of violence may be sanctioned by deities, but that they do not promote religious intolerance. This distinction is not nearly as prominent in the corpus of biblical texts as Assmann's discussion would suggest. Assmann also raises the question of the intolerant Monotheism of Akhenaten, which he sees reflected in some of the Seth traditions (pp. 44-48). In this respect Assmann shows an affinity for Freud's theory, expressed in his 1939 work Moses and Monotheism, that the Monotheism of Moses can be connected with the alleged Monotheism of Akhenaten in the Amarna Age. This theory has enjoyed wide currency since Freud, and it is not uncommon to hear it expressed in scholarly and non-scholarly circles alike. However, the impact of this influence has little to do with "Monotheism" in Israel. Chapter Three examines a number of ancient texts from across traditions and time periods for their "translation" of divinity. Deities from different cultures were equated or identified with one another. Assmann suggests that this intercultural discourse about deities led to the idea that various nations basically worshipped the same deities. Assmann cites the notion of "the Highest God" in the later period, a sort of super-god recognized across the Mediterranean world, as well as deities with multiple names ("hyphenating gods"), and various expressions of single gods whose characteristics are identified as the other deities. This series of stunning non-biblical texts is followed with a cursory contrast with biblical Monotheism. Chapter Four discusses the impact of "the Axial Age," a period around the middle of the first millennium when cultures from Rome to China questioned fundamental notions of reality. Assmann notes cases in ancient Egypt, which makes for fascinating reading, and ends with a brief consideration of ancient Israel. Unfortunately he does not address the story in ancient Israel. Assmann makes rather dramatic claims about biblical Monotheism, how it operated and what it meant, but without sufficient discussion or documentation. Chapter Five traces the path from tradition to Scripture: (1) codification of law; (2) the trauma experience of the exile; (3) the development of scribal collection of texts and a"culture of exegesis" in the Persian period; (4) the combination of "book culture" and "memory culture" in the Gteco- Roman period; and (5) the biblical "concept of idolatry. …
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the origins of biblical Monotheism israel s polytheistic background and the ugaritic texts
2001Co-Authors: Mark S SmithAbstract:As the bible tells us, ancient Israel's neighbours worshipped a wide variety of gods. It is now widely accepted that the Israelites' God, Yahweh, must have originated as one among these many, before assuming the role of the one true God of Monotheism. Mark Smith here seeks to discover more precisely what was meant by "divinity" in the ancient near-East, and how these concepts apply to Yahweh. Part One of the book offers a detailed examination of the deities of ancient Ugarit, known to us from the largest surviving group of relevant extra-biblical texts. In Part Two, Smith looks closely at four classic problems associated with four Ugaritic deities, and considers how they affect our understanding of Yahweh. At the end of the book he returns to the question of Israelite Monotheism, seeking to discover what religious issues it addressed and why it made sense at the time of its emergence. He argues that within the Bible, Monotheism is not a separate "stage" of religion but rather represents a kind of rhetoric reinforcing Israel's exclusive relation with its deity.
Christoph Schmidt - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Monotheism as a Metapolitical Problem: Heidegger’s War Against Jewish Christian Monotheism
Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and the Future of Theology, 2020Co-Authors: Christoph SchmidtAbstract:This essay presents Heidegger’s thought as a unique form of political theology which is defined by a radical antithesis. Heidegger’s theopoetics of the Greek gods is constructed against Judeo-Christian Monotheism as the ultimate form of a metaphysics of ground, power and violence culminating in the modern totalitarian state. This tendency unfolds first as a radical anti-Catholicism and reveals later its relation to a radical anti-Judaism. Astonishing enough, Heidegger develops this ‘metapolitics’ in light of the encounter between the Goddess Aletheia and the Kyrios Christos as two different phenomenologies of the face which remind the reader of Levinas’s ethics.
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Monotheism as a metapolitical problem heidegger s war against jewish christian Monotheism
2017Co-Authors: Christoph SchmidtAbstract:This essay presents Heidegger’s thought as a unique form of political theology which is defined by a radical antithesis. Heidegger’s theopoetics of the Greek gods is constructed against Judeo-Christian Monotheism as the ultimate form of a metaphysics of ground, power and violence culminating in the modern totalitarian state. This tendency unfolds first as a radical anti-Catholicism and reveals later its relation to a radical anti-Judaism. Astonishing enough, Heidegger develops this ‘metapolitics’ in light of the encounter between the Goddess Aletheia and the Kyrios Christos as two different phenomenologies of the face which remind the reader of Levinas’s ethics.
