Eliade and Goethe

Author(s): Mac Linscott Ricketts / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2002

The purpose of this article is to establish to what extend the influence of Goethe’s morphology of plants on Eliade’s methodology in the history of religions is traceable and sustainable. In this respect, Ricketts makes use of as many as possible quotations from Eliade’s work, from the single article ever published by Eliade explicitely referring to Goethe, “Encheiris Naturae” (Cuvântul VIII, 1932, no. 2486) to the numerous autobiographical passages (in the Journal, Autobiography or the correspondence). An important, central, part of this article is devoted to the discussion of the possible major influence of Goethe’s Morphology of Plants on the construction itself of the Traité d’histoire des religions, question bought to light by Jonathan Z. Smith in an old article, “Adde Parvum Parvo Magnus Acervas Erit”, History of Religions 11 (1971), no. 1, reprinted in Map Is not Territory, Leiden, Brill, 1978. In response to this article, Ricketts gathers many, rather biographical, testimonies of Eliade concerning Goethe in order to sustain, as conclusion also, that Eliade “was unwilling to concede that his methodology was simply an «adaption» of Goethe’s because, in his mind, it was his own creation".

A History of Religion of the Other. Eliade’s Dialogical Methodology

Author(s): Michiaki Okuyama / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2002

Researcher at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (Nagoya, Japan), the author provides a short synthesis on Eliade’s theoretical discourse concerning the encounter between the East and West, from both the cultural and religious points of view. The main passages brought into discussion are quoted from Eliade’s works: Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, Princeton, 1991, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, Harper Torchbooks, 1960, Patterns in Comparative Religion, University of Nebraska Press, 1996 and The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, University of Chicago Press, 1984. Divided in two main parts, under the subtitles: “The Age of Encounter and Confrontation” and “Dialogue and Hermeneutics”, the articles ends up with the “Conclusion”, where Michiaki Okuyama takes also into account the critics brought to Eliade’s “dialogical methodology” by contemporary scholars, such as Douglas Allen and Carl Olson.

Publications reçues par la bibliothèque du Centre d’histoire des religions,Université de Bucarest (décembre 2001 - novembre 2002)

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

Le dialogue interreligieux dans une société pluraliste

Author(s): Jacques Dupuis / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

Divised in two parts I. "The theological foundation of the dialogue", respectively II. "The challenges and the fruits of the dialogue", divised also in three parts: 1. "Engagement and opening", 2. "Personal faith and experience of the other", 3. "Mutual enrichement", the article of Jacques Dupuis, professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, proposes a series of interogations concerning the possibility of a real dialogue between religions in the framework of the contemporary society, of its new conditions. "Which is the new theological evaluation of the other religious traditions which we, as Christians, should maintain and promote? Which are the new attitudes face the members of the other religions that we should entertain and promote among the others?" - are leading questions to which this article tries to give reasonable answers.

SOMMAIRE: fasc 3-4

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

Le dixiéme régal des Kernophoroi

Author(s): Gabriela Cursaru / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

The tenth Feast of the Kernophoroi” depicts the most prodigious pathways of the ancient Greek route crossed by the heroic category and by the associated functional typology in its increasing complexity. The original Greek heroic character generates a polyhedral category that escapes a fixed classification while being liable to dangerously permissive and polysemous generalisations. The editors and the contributors to this Colloquium’s Acts inferred a series of this matter’s difficulties (such as the semantic ambiguity of the notion of heros, the heterogeneity/rarefaction of sources) and illustrated the main currents and approaches without the pretence of exhausting all potential perspectives on the subject. The achievement of this Colloquium spanned all areas of the heroic typology, from the lyric poem with its epic and elegiac precedents to tragedy, epigraphy, iconography, archaeology, from the archaic and geometric époque to the syncretism of the end of Antiquity.

European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR)

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2002

Minutes of the Committee Meeting and the General Assembly, September 2002 EASR Constitution, 2002

„Wissensethik“ versus „Willensethik“. Zu Walter F. Ottos Sokrates Vorlesungen

Author(s): Alessandro Stavru / Language(s): German Issue: 01-04/2002

The author, researcher at the “Oriental Institute” of Napoli, aims to bring new data and analysis about one of the most influential German historian, philologist and thinker, Walter F. Otto, a very respected name in the field of the history of Greek religion in the first half of 20th century. He discusses here the topic of his German lectures on Socrates thought in a difficult, but very rich period of his career and life (1940-1958), having access to his unpublished writings preserved in the “Deutschen Literaturarchiv”, Marbach. Greek religion and thought are seen equally as crucial for the understanding of ancient Mediterranean religious movements and as a paradigm often structured by the very interpretation of Socrates’ figure. All the relevant material still accessible is carefully examined, and a future critical edition of it is finally foreseen.

SOMMAIRE: fasc 1-2

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2002

Eranos im Spiegel der geistesgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts

Author(s): Hans Thomas Hakl / Language(s): German Issue: 01-04/2002

After the publication of the Der verborgene Geist von Eranos. Unbekannte Begegnungen von Wissenshaft und esoterik. Eine alternative Geistesgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Bretten, 2001) - the first, very complex and comprehensive monograph on the Eranos movement -, Hans Thomas Hakl provides a shorter synthesis on the main spiritual orientations of the principal representatives of the Eranos, namely Henry Corbin, Gershom Scholem and Mircea Eliade. One also finds a more integral view on the development of the general program of these annual meetings, intially limited to the problem of the encounter between the Eastern and the Western cultures, respectively. (It is worth remembering that for the first Eranostagung, at which C.G. Jung, Heinrich Zimmer and Erwin Rousselle took part in 1933, the subject of debate was “Yoga und Meditation im Osten und im Westen”. Later, the area of discussion was enlarged, reaching an inter-disciplinary profile, comprising disciplines such as Psychology, History of Religions, History of Art, Music, Philosophy, Politology, Physics and Biology. Particular attention is given the personality of the founder and promoter of this memorable series of meetings, Olga Frœbe Kapteyn.

Deux problèmes d’histoire des religions au monde antique : i. Le dieu sabazios et le judaïsme

Author(s): Martin Bodinger / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

The author proposes a reconsideration of the complex discussion regarding the figure of the God Sabazios, taking into debate the questions of the origin, the attributes, the name, the iconographie and the cult of this pre-christian God. It is on the problem of the cult that Bodinger’s article is mainly focussed on. As concerns the origin, the author stresses upon the hypothesis of the Thrace origin, taking as principal argument the fact that Thrace is the only place where Sabazios was not associated with other divinities; moreover it is here that one finds the most important ammount of representations and inscriptions, the traces of sanctuaries devoted to this God. As concerns the name, rejecting the arguments of Vernadsky and Bonfante, Bodinger is inclined to give favour to the solution proposed by the Romanian researcher Gh. Mu]u, according to which the name "Sabazios" comes from "sap", solution sustained by the classical sources which certify that sabaos means spring like sap. As concerns the cult, Bodinger discusses the threefold problem of the association between Sabazios, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, Dionysos, Yahwe, respectively Hypsistos. In the framework of the whole article, it is the second ecquation, Sabazios=Yahwe, which receives the main attention. Bodinger rejects Cumont’s hypothesis of a syncretism between Sabazios and Yahwe, leaning on the argument that the main source Cumont had used was not Valerius Maximus’ epitomes, but a later copy of these. In this way the author brings his analysis to the principal conclusion that it is out of discussion to have ever existed, in Rome or in any other place, any community of Jews devoted to the God Sabazios.

Deux problèmes d’histoire des religions au monde antique : II. Tacite et la « persécution néronienne »

Author(s): Martin Bodinger / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

By a critical approach of Tacitus’ Histories, as well as of an important part of the historiographical works devoted to this classical source in the 20th century, Martin Bodinger subminates the ancient cliché, according to which the well-known persecution of the Christians under the rule of Neron is rather a fiction, propagated by Tacitus and assumed as such. Was Tacitus a lier in respect to this very historical fact? If Tacitus was wrong, why did the Christians accept and preserve his “invention”, which under no circumstances looks favourable to the image of Christianity? The conclusion is firmly argued at the end of Dr Bodinger’s study: “There was no persecution of the Christians under Neron. In fact, the persecutions did not take place but beginning with ‘70s of the 2nd century a.J.-C.”.

Straightening Some “tangles” in the Tale of Traité

Author(s): Mac Linscott Ricketts / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2002

La fonction catalytique de l'exaiphnes chez Denis

Author(s): Evanghélos Moutsopoulos / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2002

The well-known historian of Ancient Philosophy, distinguished by his research of the concept of kairos, discusses a particular chapter of the more general problem concerning the means by which the Neo-platonic authors, from Philo of Alexandria to Plotin and Proclus, alleviated the difficulties inherent to the Parmenidian dualism. The focus of Dr Moutsopoulos’ article is the question of the discontinuity of the interval between being and non-being, which the Neo-platonic authors saturated with different intermediary ontological values. Furthermore, Moutsopoulos’ study tackles the category of suddenness (fr. brusque, soudain, prompt, fulgurant, subit), expressed in the writings of the neo-platonic authors by the Greek adverb exaiphnes. This was contrasted by another category of the discontinuous temporality, namely kairos. If the notion of kairos indicates a form of temporal discontinuity established by the active function of the conscience (i.e.: the intentionality), the notion of suddenness denotes something independent of the conscience, which is affected by it but remains fundamentally passive against it.

The Unfolding of Truth Eunomius of Cyzicus and Gregory of Nyssa in Debate over Orthodoxy (360-381)

Author(s): Mihail Neamţu / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2002

This study is a new attempt of reading the rich theological debates of the fourth century, which designed in different ways the Christian Creed of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), focusing more especially the debate between the radical Arians (epitomized by Aetius and Eunomius) and the defenders of orthodoxy (represented at best by St Basil of Caesarea and St Gregory of Nyssa). By a short presentation of the struggle for orthodoxy during the forth century, I try to place St Gregory of Nyssa’s polemics with the radical Arians into a historical context. Subsequently, I pay attention to Aetius’ legacy in Eunomius’ works and biography, and their strong breaking points with the former tradition. The argument is carried on by a short presentation of Gregory’s explicit rejection of Eunomius’ theology. Consequently, I ponder upon the differences between the conflicting methodologies assumed by Eunomius and Gregory of Nyssa, respectively. The usage of rhetoric and dialectics for theological purposes is, in each case, highly significant. In contrast, I point out the importance of Basil and Gregory’s doctrinal and spiritual commitments, which I regard in continuity with the apostolic confession of Christ as ‘Lord and God’ (John 20: 24). I suggest that the Trinitarian controversy can be ultimately traced back to the most important question for the early Christian Church: the confession of Christ’s divinity and lordship. The present study also try to show that this confession is intimately related to the hermeneutical task of reading the Scriptures, which can always (and very easily) become an object of controversy when the ‘hypothesis’ of Christ’s natural sonship is lost on the way. Without this ‘hypothesis’, the texts of the Old and the New Testament were open to endless and polemical interpretations, and the borderline between ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ is lost.

Content and introduction

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): English Issue: 01+02/2011

Annonces

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2003

Letter From the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) Concerning the Affiliation of the RAHR

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2003

Minutes of the Third Congress of the European Association for the Study of Religions (Bergen, 8-10 May 2003)

Author(s): Joanna Morawska / Language(s): English Issue: 01-04/2003

Hiéroglyphes, clés, énigmes. Sur la vision de la Kabbale chez G.G. Scholem: Entre Franz Molitor et Franz Kafka

Author(s): Moshe Idel / Language(s): French Issue: 01-04/2003