Comparative History of Religions

Who was Flavius Josephus? Answering this one question, leads to answers to virtually all other questions about ancient history. The answer is that he was Arrius Calpurnius Piso, a royal Roman. He wrote under the alias of Flavius Josephus and pretended to be a Jew. He was of Jewish descent, on his mother's side. Please read on and learn.

Lansând o viziune interdisciplinară (elemente de istoria culturii și a ideilor, religii comparate, sinologie, teologie comparată, literatură comparată), China harului vă invită la o călătorie în profunzimea universului cultural chinez, în dimensiunea sa mitico-religioasă, privit prin ochii protagoniștilor contactului dintre lumea creștină europeană și cea chineză — misionarii ajunși în China din Siria în secolele VII-XIII, catolici franciscani și iezuiți în secolele XIII-XVIII, anglicani, ortodocși. Cartea oferă prima dată cititorilor români o amplă panoramă istorică a impactului — adesea dramatic — dintre cele două lumi. E totodată povestea uneia dintre cele mai frumoase aventuri ale spiritului din istoria umanității: epopeea întâlnirii a două mari civilizații care au evoluat, câteva milenii, aproape independent una de alta.
La temelia Chinei se află o semioză sacră, un model
arhetipal sau cod exemplar, care consacră o origine
mitică a poporului chinez și codifică o anume relație a
lui cu divinitatea. Această semioză exemplară traversează întreaga cultură chineză, ce stă sub semnul fulgurantului grafem, al oximoronicei hieroglife înscrise de divinitate în trupul unei muritoare prin zămislirea lui Fu Xi – legendarul inventator al scrisului și autor al Yi Jing-ului.
Rafinați și cultivați, manierați și erudiți, cărturarii Rú erau o elită intelectuală cu o noblețe dobândită prin studiu și cizelarea propriului caracter moral prin practicarea virtuților, în primul rând omenia și dreptatea. Termenul ce desemna virtutea, De 德, a fost echivalat și cu cel de har. În China antică termenul Rú 儒 avea sensuri ca delicat, moale, fraged, blând, a alina, a educa, fiind asociat cu purificarea rituală dinaintea ceremoniilor religioase pe care le oficiau ca „preoți” în dinastia Zhou, dar și cu natura lor amabilă, curtenitoare, conciliantă, ce contrasta cu duritatea și brutalitatea altor clase sociale precum războinicii. Mandarinii Rú cultivau Calea vechilor împărați-înțelepți, căutând să creeze o societate a armoniei, regulilor cuviinței, virtuților și guvernării binevoitoare. Inițierea ritual-religioasă, ceremonială, filosofică, științifică (astrologică, matematică, geomantică) și morală a clasei Rú era inseparabilă de cea a scrierii. Doar literații Rú aveau competența grafică: puteau descifra și desena caractere ce neinițiaților le păreau simboluri sacre. Dacă scrierea chineză va fi fost la origine o revelare a sacrului prin incizii și tușe de pensulă – o hierofanie grafică sau o grafofanie –, mai putem crea un termen pentru puterea clasei Rú – cel de grafocrație: puterea cunoscătorilor hieroglifelor. Rú erau stăpânii semnelor scrise. Scrierea ideografică privilegia o cultură de tip vizual, generând un tipar mental ce opera cu asocieri concrete, nu cu noțiuni abstracte. Îi putem numi așadar și optocrați, stăpânii vizualului.

The present work aims to illustrate, through a mythocritical approach, how the product of Lucian Blaga’s lyrical mythopoiesis, specifically the moon named “zeul” ("god") in «Cântecul spicelor» («The Song of the Wheat Ears», published posthumously in 1970), may be classified as the divinity-type known as the “Fecundator” in the history of religions. In the first part, after identifying the waxing crescent with the phallus – the symbol par excellence of the Masculine principle –, a “lunar” Fecundator is associated with Blaga’s astral god. From his place in the sky this god has a “spécialisation génésico-taurine”, and the power to inseminate the earth through his spermatic rain, since he is endowed with a “phallic” horn. Moreover, the ophidian hypostasis of the moon, which further justifies its virility, is presented: the serpent – in the same way as the taurine horn – is isotopic with the phallic waxing crescent. The second part of the article describes how the Blagian moon awakens, in the virginal ears – symbolizing the daughters and hypostases of the Goddess Earth –, a fervent “dor” ("desire") . However, at the same time the Blagian moon produces a tremor of death due to its “seceră” form, since the sickle is the tool that severs the plant’s life, while also promising its future rebirth. Finally, this work underlines the key-role played by the fire element as an instrument of Eros: it is evoked in “în arderea vântului”, a syntagm epitomizing the ears’ hope for a kind of death which would allow them to ascend to the sky and rejoin the moon-god. Thus, the transience that the vegetation drama imposes upon them would disappear, and the moon’s harvesting would fill the chasm separating the sub-lunar world, which is the realm of eternal becoming, from the sempiternal dominion of the lunar world, i.e. the celestial realm.

In the present article, we propose an analysis of mythocriticism about Arkay, a divine figure created for the religious-historical domain of «The Elder Scrolls», a series of fantasy Computer Role-Playing Games. In particular, we aim to illustrate that it is possible to recognize, in this deity, the powerful action of the "Child God" archetype. In the first part we trace a brief profile of the "Child God", concentrating on its main mythemes: the agro-cyclic destiny, the centrality of death and the fatal relation with the Mother Goddess. In the second part we track these mythemes in Arkay, who holds the title of "God of the Cycle of Birth and Death", oversees burials and funeral rites and has a maternal-mortuary connection with two goddesses, Mara and Namira. Through the fil rouge of the "Child God" archetype, our research proves the extraordinary coherence characterizing a portion of «The Elder Scrolls» Lore, whose creators, not differently from every artist of any age, always draw on the same archetypal material stored in the collective unconscious.

This study in Egyptology reviews the myth of Ptah, the creator god of Pharaoh Menes of Memphis. Ptah creates by thinking and speaking; he thinks with his heart and speaks with his mouth. This article explores (1) the phenomenology of speaking to cause action plus it (2) compares Ptah's creation with that of Israel's God in Genesis 1:1-2:4a. Actually, the Ptah myth is better thought of as an example of Henotheism rather than Monotheism.

This essay investigates the theoretical and methodological challenges undertaken in the research of “religious pluralism” which aspires to use comparison as a method to achieve inter-religious dialogue. In particular, the essay addresses the debate at the heart of Comparative Theology and Hindu-Christian Studies, which today are moving beyond the legacy of John Hick’s theoretical works to a new research track, adopting comparison as a means of stripping theological inquiry of its essentialist and ideological assumptions and, at the same time, promoting a comparative and inter-religious approach. The essay also analyses the strategic role of “comparison” as a cognitive tool in the methods and theories that historians of religions have used over the past five decades. In doing so, it also pays close attention to the destabilising effects that recent postmodernist critiques have had on “comparison.” Finally, the purpose of this essay is to establish whether comparison, a well-accepted method in the history of religions, could be adopted to evaluate inter-religious practices.

Este estudio brinda al lector una primera aproximación histórica a la presencia protestante en la Amazonia colombiana empleando una amplia gama de archivos que junto con su experiencias de campo entre los Nukak permitieron al autor reconstruir en profundidad el caso de la organización religiosa fundamentalista de origen norteamericano New Tribes Mission o Misión Nuevas Tribus. Con un énfasis hacia los llamados pueblos aislados, tema que se aborda también en este libro, los primeros miembros de esta organización arribaron a Colombia hace más de 60 años y la representante más mencionada en diversas fuentes fue Sophie Muller, quien es reconocida como el agente que mayor cambio cultural produjo entre los indígenas de la zona trifronteriza de Colombia, Venezuela y Brasil.

Despite the explosion of interest in Jewish mysticism in recent decades, scholars have only recently begun to explore in any depth how mystical texts function as literature. This includes not just literary readings of Jewish mystical texts, but also extends to questions of mystical and literary efficacy. In other words, what kinds of strategies are employed in Jewish mystical writing to convey mystical content and ethos, to shape religious subjectivity in distinctive ways, or even to influence the cosmos through specialized acts of writing and reading (i.e., producing and consuming literature)? Moreover, how do these literary and mystical projects intersect, reinforce, and possibly even place limits upon one another in different textual settings? Finally, how might consideration of these topics change the way we think about Jewish literary studies more broadly?

The article is devoted to study the Medieval stages of spread of Islam in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia according to the historical sources. The authors from the Kyrgyz State University (nowadays the Kyrgyz National University named after Jusup Balasagyn, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) stressed that the groups of the Kyrgyz and other local Turkic ethnic groups became the Muslims during the multi-religious Karakhanid era. The authors criticize some Soviet Kyrgyzstani historians who suggested in 1960s–1980s that the Kyrgyz allegedly were Shamanists until the 16th century. The sedentary Kyrgyz and other Turkic people were more strict adepts of Islam than their nomadic tribesmen. The population of nomadic and mountainous parts of Kyrgyzstan were Islamized voluntarily thank to the peaceful and long-term, step-by-step activities of the Sufi missionaries starting from the 10th century in compare with the methods of sword and persecutions by the Arab invaders in the early stages of Islamization of western parts of the Central Asian regions.
Tchoroev Tyntchtykbek, Urstanbekov Beishe. The Main Stages of the Spread of Islam in Kyrgyzstan in the 7th-14th Centuries // Questions of the History of Material and Spiritual Culture of Kyrgyzstan: Collection of scientific articles / Ed. by Abylabek Asankanov. – Frunze: Kyrgyz State University, 1987. –– pp. 28–44.
In Russian: Tchoroev T.K., Urstanbekov B.U. Osnovnyye etapy rasprostraneniya islama v Kirgizstane v VII-XIV vv. // Voprosy istorii material'noy i dukhovnoy kul'tury Kirgizstana: Sbornik nauch. statey / Otv. red. A.A.Asankanov. - Frunze: KirgizGU, 1987. – S. 28-44.

La figure du singe en Grèce ancienne interroge autant l’historien
de l’imaginaire, capté par une créature dont l’analyse iconographique
reste embryonnaire, que l’anthropologue des religions, tenté d’y voir
une expression emblématique de conceptions ontologiques et religieuses grecques. Si l’introduction de l’animal en Méditerranée et certaines de ses représentations fi guratives doivent beaucoup à l’Orient, son univers, empreint des mystères des représentations de passage, doit d’abord à la Grèce du Ier millénaire av. J-C ses contours particuliers. Le singe, miroir de l’homme, présentait sans doute un enjeu théologique que cette étude introductive, pensée en contrepoint avec les débats philosophiques du darwinisme, choisit d’éclairer.

The monkey as a mirror for man? The issues surrounding
a confrontation in ancient Greece.
The figure of the monkey in ancient Greece appeals both to the historian
of the imagination, who is captivated by this creature whose iconographic study remains embryonic, and to the religious anthropologist, who is tempted to see in it an emblematic expression of Greek ontological and religious concepts. While the animal’s introduction into the Mediterranean region, like some of its fi gurative representations, owes much to the East, the imagery surrounding monkeys, imbued with the mysteries of representations of passage, owes its particular contours to Greece in the fi rst millennium BC. The monkey, a mirror for mankind, certainly presented a theological issue and this introductory study (conceived of in juxtaposition to philosophical debates on Darwinism) will attempt to shed
light upon it.

Desde la Asociación de Jóvenes Investigadores en Ciencias de las Religiones, nos complace anunciar la celebración del III Encuentro, con carácter internacional, que tendrá lugar de forma semipresencial los días 13, 14 y 15 de octubre de 2021 en el Salón de Actos de la Facultad de Filología (Edificio D) de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

En el Encuentro, siguiendo con la trayectoria de los años anteriores, se aceptarán propuestas de una amplia variedad de disciplinas científicas para fomentar un diálogo no solo multidisciplinar, sino también interdisciplinar y transversal. La creación de sinergias constituye un aspecto fundamental para la comprensión de las realidades tan poliédricas que constituyen las diferentes religiones, tanto pasadas como presentes. Diferentes miradas que surgen desde la iconografía e iconología, los estudios históricos o la literatura, pasando por la Antropología, los estudios culturales o la Filosofía. Pero también desde la materialidad de las religiones, sus paisajes sonoros, los enfoques políticos o la Historia del Arte. Todas ellas son teselas imprescindibles para la formación de ese mosaico que es el estudio de las religiones. El propósito último de nuestros coloquios reside en ofrecer un espacio científico de debate sobre determinados aspectos del fenómeno religioso que no siempre son objeto de investigación en los estudios estandarizados de Ciencias de las Religiones.

Los interesados en presentar propuestas inéditas deberán cumplimentar el formulario y remitirlo vía email a esta dirección de correo electrónico
(contacto.ejicr@gmail.com). La fecha límite de presentación de inscripciones es hasta el 20 de julio de 2021. Las propuestas remitidas se someterán a un proceso de revisión y selección por el Comité Científico en el que se valorará equitativamente la calidad y originalidad de las mismas en aras del rigor científico. Se aceptarán intervenciones en los siguientes idiomas: castellano, inglés, italiano y francés.

Las comunicaciones deberán adscribirse a una de las mesas temáticas configuradas. A saber:
A. Género y religiones
B. Magia y religiones
C. Iconografía e iconología del hecho religioso
D. Música, silencio y sonoridad en las religiones
E. Teologías políticas
F. Literatura y religiones
G. Diálogo Interreligioso e Intercultural
H. Filosofía, Sociología y Antropología de las religiones
I. Materialidad y religiones

Teniendo como eje las misiones católicas, este libro traza un panorama completo de la penetración al río Vaupés que se inicia con el temprano ingreso de religiosos carmelitas al Río Negro y el posterior establecimiento de misiones capuchinas y franciscanas en el Vaupés durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. El estudio permite comprender las características particulares de cada orden, la ubicación de sus aldeas de misión, las poblaciones misionadas y los efectos que sobre éstas tuvo la presencia de religiosos. Así mismo, se describe y analiza el contexto particular de las relaciones entre las distintas órdenes religiosas con la corona portuguesa, y los Estados de Colombia y Brasil, bajo los que se dio su ingreso en la región.