cosmogonies and theogonies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina López-Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Salient Feature ◽  
Birth Stories ◽  
North West ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Homeric Hymns ◽  
Intimate Relation ◽  
Creation Stories ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Point Of Reference

Early Greek cosmogonies and theogonies are mainly preserved in the form of hexametric poetry, rarely in systematic accounts, such as Hesiod’s, but more often within texts of broader mythical scope, as in Homer’s Iliad and the Homeric Hymns. The differing assumptions about the origins of and relations among the gods in these poems demonstrate the wide variety of cosmogonic traditions available in the Greek world and the poetic freedom to express or emphasize aspects of them. This is also evident in other sources for Greek theogony/cosmogony, such as the longer of the Homeric Hymns, which focus on specific gods, sometimes including their birth stories and framing their familial relations with other gods and with humans. The strand known as “Orphic” cosmogony or theogony runs parallel to the mainstream epic tradition (not without intersections), and underscores the connection between cosmogonic ideas and spiritual and philosophical movements. These alternative cosmogonies also served as a narrative and theological framework for mystery cults, which revolved around the figures of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus (e.g., Eleusinian and Bacchic groups). Other forms of expression of cosmogonies/theogonies (e.g., lyric poetry, tragedy, iconography) tend to follow the Homeric and Hesiodic traditions, which become a pan-Hellenic point of reference, but local and regional idiosyncrasies were always possible. A salient feature of Greek cosmogony/theogony is its intersection with the creation stories of the Near Eastern world, especially in the Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and North-West Semitic traditions. The study of Greek cosmogonies in recent decades has focussed heavily on disentangling and understanding the intimate relation between common motifs and the importance of adaptation and innovation. In turn, in the Roman world we see two main strands: the reception and creative adaptation of Greek cosmogonies (e.g., Ovid’s Metamorphoses), and the elaboration of different cosmogonic narratives driven by philosophical enquiry (e.g., Stoicism, Epicureanism), a movement that had in part already begun with the Presocratics and Plato.

Hegel's Antiquity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will D. Desmond
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Greek World

Hegel’s Antiquity aims to summarize, contextualize, and criticize Hegel’s understanding and treatment of major aspects of the classical world, approaching each of the major areas of his historical thinking in turn: politics, art, religion, philosophy, and history itself. The discussion excerpts relevant details from a range of Hegel’s works, with an eye both to the ancient sources with which he worked, and the contemporary theories (German aesthetic theory, Romanticism, Kantianism, Idealism (including Hegel’s own), and emerging historicism) which coloured his readings. What emerges is that Hegel’s interest in both Greek and Roman antiquity was profound and is essential for his philosophy, arguably providing the most important components of his vision of world history: Hegel is generally understood as a thinker of modernity (in various senses), but his modernity can only be understood in essential relation to its predecessor and ‘others’, notably the Greek world and Roman world whose essential ‘spirit’ he assimilates to his own notion of Geist.

The Ritual Background of the Dying God in Cyprus and Syro-Palestine

1982 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
General Type ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Common Culture ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Literature

In Frazer'sGolden Boughthe leading instance of the central figure whom he called “the dying god” was Adonis, famous from Greco-Roman literature and art but firmly localized in Semitic Phoenicia, Syria, and Cyprus. Since Frazer wrote, his other Near Eastern instances have been so transformed by increasing knowledge that it can be doubted whether they severally belong to the same type or indeed whether any general type exists. Adonis has hardly shared in these discoveries and debates, for research has emphasized instead the large developments which overtook his worship within the Greco-Roman world. Most of this research does not bear at all on the origins of Adonis, but scholars have sometimes been so bemused by the Greek elements as to forget or deny the Semitic. Everything has been called into question at different times. Such features of his myth as the boar and the myrrh tree and the incest are discounted as Greek embroidery; his peculiar festival, with mourning women and miniature gardens of lettuce, is traced to the preoccupations of Greek urban society; even the Semitic derivation derivation of his name is disputed. This Greek exclusivism cannot be sustained. All accounts of Adonis' life and lineage, and all analogies for his worship converge in the Levant — not in a single site or land, but in Phoenicia, coastal Syria and Cyprus together, lands which from the Late Bronze Age onward display a distinctive common culture, above all with respect to religion. This is where Adonis is at home, and where we may look for evidence to explain the figure of the dying god.

Near Eastern Precedents of the “Orphic” Gold Tablets: The Phoenician Missing Link

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-91
Author(s):  
Carolina López-Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
North West ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Magna Graecia ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Egyptian Iconography ◽  
Funerary Texts ◽  
Book Of The Dead ◽  
Close Parallel

The Greek Gold Tablets (also called “Orphic Gold Tablets”), have often been compared with Egyptian funerary texts, especially those comprising theBook of the Dead. At the same time, North-West Semitic gold and silver leaves (Phoenician-Punic and Hebrew) with protective formulae offer a close parallel to them in aspects of their function and form. Although this group of funerary amulets are also said to follow Egyptian models, the three corpora have never been discussed together. Egyptian afterlife motifs and magical technologies may have indirectly influenced Greek Orphic funerary ideas and practices. I suggest, however, that this transmission happened through adaptations of Egyptian materials in the Phoenician-Punic realm, with evidence pointing to southern Italy and Sicily (Magna Graecia) as likely scenarios for this exchange. Intersections between Orphic and Phoenician cosmogony and the selective use of Egyptian iconography in Phoenician funerary amulets reinforce this hypothesis.

The Intertextual Network of Job and the Selective Nature of Genre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Salient Feature ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Recent Scholarship

The Wisdom Literature category has never been able to contain Job’s vast intertextual potential, and the category’s exclusive application distorts the book’s meaning through canonical separation, theological abstraction, and hermeneutical limitation. Job is embedded in a dense intertextual network. Appreciating the book’s distinctiveness requires reading it in relationship to as many literary groupings as its content and form justify. These include pre-modern genre designations, such as poetry, prophecy, and drama, as well as those produced by ancient Near Eastern parallels, such as the exemplary-sufferer texts. In recent scholarship, some of these have been resurrected, along with proposed adapted genres, such as dramatized lament or metaprophecy, and meta-genres, such as parody and polyphony. As selective perspectives, each of these proposed textual groupings underscores some salient feature of the book and thus combining them reveals the complexity and nuance of its meaning.

The Healing of the Man with Dropsy (Luke 14:1-6) and the Lukan Landscape

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-354
Author(s):  
Chad Hartsock
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Form Criticism ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Commentary Tradition

The healing of the man with dropsy is a surprisingly under-noticed passage in Luke. Few commentaries give much attention to it at all. Where attention is given, the passage is usually heard in one of the following ways: (1) in the context of healing stories or Sabbath healings in general, and thus through the lens of form criticism and how this story participates in the larger context of healing stories; or (2) in the context of the symposia or meal stories since this passage introduces such a scene, and the background for understanding the passage is thus the literary topos of meal stories in the Greco-Roman world. In either reading, the fact that the man has dropsy specifically is essentially irrelevant to the story; he might as well have been blind or lame or deaf. Yet this is the only occurrence in the NT of this specific condition, and I would like to suggest that dropsy is not incidental to the story at all. Rather, the dropsy is itself key to the story. Dropsy is used widely in the ancient Greek world, particularly in the writings of philosophers, and it is frequently a metaphor for greed and wealth. Among the commentary tradition, few scholars take notice of the dropsy metaphor. This paper will mine the Greek philosophical tradition for examples of dropsy to build the case for its metaphorical usage, and it will apply that metaphor to this passage in Luke to see how it might serve the Lukan narrative.


Satire's Censorial Waters in Horace and Juvenal

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Kirk Freudenburg
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Point Of Reference

AbstractThis paper concerns the water imagery of two iconic passages of Roman satire: Horace's figuration of Lucilius as a river churning with mud atSat.1.4.11, and the transformation of that image at Juvenal,Sat.3.62–8 (the Orontes flowing into the Tiber). It posits new ways of reckoning with the codifications and further potentials of these images by establishing points of contact with the workings of water in the Roman world. The main point of reference will be to the work of Rome's censors, who were charged not only with protecting the moral health of the state, but with ensuring the purity and abundance of the city's water supply as well.

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