RELIGION AND SCIENCE IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH EGYPTOLOGY

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1083-1103 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID GANGE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Higher Criticism ◽  
Objective Interpretation ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The late nineteenth century is generally considered to be the period of Egyptology’s development into a scientific discipline. The names of Egyptologists of the last decades of the century, including William Flinders Petrie, are associated with scientific technique and objective interpretation as well as colonialist agendas. This article’s thesis is that rapid developments in scientific technique were largely driven by spiritual objectives rather than any other ideologies. Egypt – after being derided and ignored during the mid-century – became of great significance to the British when spectacular finds suggested that Egyptology might offer conclusive evidence against Darwinism and the higher criticism while proving events of the Old Testament to be historically true. Other groups used ancient Egypt – professing Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley as inspirations – but the teleologies they invariably produced owe more to spiritualism than to scientific naturalism, blurring boundaries between science, the occult, and religion. In terms of popularity traditional Christian approaches to ancient Egypt eclipsed all rivals, every major practising Egyptologist of the 1880s employing them and publications receiving large, demonstrably enthusiastic, audiences. Support for biblical Egyptologists demonstrates that, in Egyptology, the fin de siècle enjoyed a little-noticed but widely supported revival of Old-Testament-based Christianity amidst a flowering of diverse beliefs.

An Apt and Noble Gift: Gorham's Rebekah Pitcher

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
amy miller dehan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article explores the significance of a silver pitcher, given as a wedding gift from a father to his daughter in 1854. This early example of Gorham silver hollowware, now part of the Cincinnati Art Museum's collection, is decorated with scenes from the Biblical Old Testament story of the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24). The popularity and significance of the Biblical Rebekah in the mid to late nineteenth century reveals the symbolism behind the pitcher's design and a father's gift.

scholarly journals Negotiating the Past in the Present: Italian Prehistory, Civic Museums, and Curatorial Practice in Emilia-Romagna, Italy

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Cova
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Reggio Emilia ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of prehistoric archaeology as a scientific discipline in Italy, as well as the founding of the Italian nation state. Evolutionism, positivism, and a sense of national identity informed prehistoric research and the activities of individuals, such as Strobel, Pigorini, and Chierici, who are regarded today as the founding fathers of Italian prehistory. It is in this dynamic cultural and political climate that the civic museums of Reggio Emilia, Modena, and Bologna were created, both as a response to intense local archaeological activity and in reaction to the centralizing structure of the newly formed kingdom of Italy. These civic museums were among the first museums of prehistory in Italy and the products of the cultural and political climate of late nineteenth-century Europe. This article explores the circumstances surrounding the foundation of these museums and considers how the work of the first prehistorians and the museums' own histories, as civic and cultural institutions, continues to affect their role and management in the present.

scholarly journals Physiology and philhellenism in the late nineteenth century: The self-fashioning of Emil du Bois-Reymond

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Lea Beiermann ◽  
Elisabeth Wesseling
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Persistent Elevation

ArgumentNineteenth-century Prussia was deeply entrenched in philhellenism, which affected the ideological framework of its public institutions. At Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelm University, philhellenism provided the rationale for a persistent elevation of the humanities over the burgeoning experimental life sciences. Despite this outspoken hierarchy, professor of physiology Emil du Bois-Reymond eventually managed to increase the prestige of his discipline considerably. We argue that du Bois-Reymond’s use of philhellenic repertoires in his expositions on physiology for the educated German public contributed to the rise of physiology as a renowned scientific discipline. Du Bois-Reymond’s rhetorical strategies helped to disassociate experimental physiology from clinical medicine, legitimize experimental practices, and associate the emerging discipline with the more esteemed humanities and theoretical sciences. His appropriation of philhellenic rhetoric thus spurred the late nineteenth-century change in disciplinary hierarchies and helped to pave the way for the current hegemonic position of the life sciences.

Reginald Scot and his Discoverie of Witchcraft: Religion and Science in the Opposition to the European Witch Craze

1983 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leland L. Estes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
European History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Scientific Rationality ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Intellectual Integrity

Recent discussions of the major literary works of the witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have advanced significantly our understanding of this important episode in European history. Clearly, our efforts no longer are controlled by the anticlerical and even antireligious sentiments that corrupted so much late nineteenth-century scholarship on this subject. Yet a more subtle nineteenth-century prejudice still remains with us. We still wish to believe that those who opposed the craze did so because in some fundamental way they were more enlightened, or more rational, or more scientific than those who accepted and even supported witch hunting. Recent anthropological research, however, stressing both the ubiquity and the intellectual integrity of a belief in witches, suggests strongly that this modern viewpoint is probably not correct. Certainly, this prejudice has seriously distorted our understanding of one important contribution to the witch debate, Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Modern commentators have invested this book with an aura of scientific rationality that it ill deserves. A closer inspection, I believe, reveals an entirely different source for Scot's ideas and, more importantly, sheds some new light on what it really was that brought witch hunting in Europe to an end.

Did Moses Write the Pentateuch?

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-38
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
The Church

This chapter analyzes the consensus view of biblical scholars that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. It explains that the Pentateuch is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. It also mentions the Church father Jerome's suggestion that Ezra the Priest wrote the Pentateuch in the fifth century BC based on notes made by Moses. The chapter explains that since the sixth century AD, doubts have been expressed about whether Moses was the author of all the Pentateuch. But it was only in the mid-seventeenth century that the first relatively systematic discussion of the issue appeared and by the late nineteenth century, the scholarly consensus began to turn against Moses being the author of any part of the Pentateuch.

Contents of Western Sociology of Religion as a Science and Educational Discipline

2002 ◽  
pp. 106-110
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Society ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Sociology of religion in the West is a field of knowledge with at least 100 years of history. As a science and as a discipline, the sociology of religion has been developing in most Western universities since the late nineteenth century, having established traditions, forming well-known schools, areas related to the names of famous scholars. The total number of researchers of religion abroad has never been counted, but there are more than a thousand different centers, universities, colleges where religion is taught and studied. If we assume that each of them has an average of 10 religious scholars, theologians, then the army of scholars of religion is amazing. Most of them are united in representative associations of researchers of religion, which have a clear sociological color. Among them are the most famous International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) and the Society for Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).

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