Foreigners and Religion at Ugarit

During the Late Bronze Age, Syria was mostly dominated by the larger powers of the ancient Near East—Mitanni (the Hurrians), the Hittite Empire, and Egypt. The ancient city of Ugarit yielded numerous texts and artifacts that attest to the presence of foreigners and their influences on local religious traditions. Textually, the best-preserved influences are those of Hurrian origin, although these were probably promoted thanks to the Hittites, who incorporated many Hurrian deities and cults. Hurrian traditions thus influenced both Ugaritic cults and divine pantheons. Egyptian influences, in contrast, are observable mostly in art and material evidence. Art of Egyptian origin was considered prestigious and because of that was prominently seen in trade and international exchange gifts, but it also entered the religious sphere in the form of cultic statues and ex-voto gifts for deities. Egyptian art was also often imitated by local artists. The same can be said of art from the Mediterranean area. Some evidence suggests that foreigners actively related to local traditions as well. Ritual tablets from Ugarit (namely KTU3 1.40 and its variants) illustrate that there were always frictions in a multicultural/national society. These tablets also indicate that such frictions could have been dealt with through ritual action, and thus emphasize the role religion played. The city of Ugarit is used in this paper to illuminate some processes that can be observed in the whole of ancient Syria. Nevertheless, every site has its own outcome of interactions with other cultures.

Practicing Communicability, Redeemability, and Educability: The Response of Christian Education to Violence against Women during the Covid-19 Pandemic

This article explores violence against women in Yogyakarta, which increased rapidly during the pandemic. The study showed that violence against women is also the result of deep and troubling cultural structures that oppress women. Based on a see–judge–act analysis, this article proposes that church educational ministries can build relationships with women victims and their families through a variety of transformational ways, even amid a pandemic. The church can develop communication, healing, and education through a holistic approach in Christian education (practicing communicability, redeemability, and educability). The paradigm of gender equality should be integrated into our attitudes and actions in daily life and in the whole range of the church’s ministry to create spaces for women’s voices not only through education and ritual action but also actual transformation.

Starting From and Beyond Matteo Ricci

Between 1500 and 1600, the Jesuit Ricci carried out a real process of inculturation of Christianity in China. Subsequently, he operated according to acculturation: a form of colonialism. This process consisted also in the construction of churches, which were built in the neo-Gothic style. In 1926 dom Gresnigt was sent to China with the aim of creating a new Sino-Christian style, supported by Bishop Costantini and the new missionary policy. These attempts at architectural inculturation, however, focused on stylistic issues. We must act according to an intercultural dialogue. Starting from a textual translation of the liturgical books and the ritual action, this dialogue can provide the architect with images of experience that can be implemented as places and movements within the horizon of the sacred. Metaphors must be found, and even better affordances must be constructed to increase the effectiveness of ritual actions, making even those that can only be imagined emotionally perceptible.

Plant-women, senses, and ecological considerations: Rethinking ritual plants and their taboos among the Pangcah of Taiwan (1920–2020)

Anthropologists have made strides in theorizing non-human subjectivity in cosmologies but, emphasizing animals, they underestimate the importance of botanical beings. Pangcah rituals and taboos cannot be separated from plants. Through ritual action, they divide plants into three categories: the first is cereals that have deities and soul, which are the center of animistic and shamanic rituals. These spirits will stick to people (like the substance of cereals) asking for food or aggressively make people ill. The second type is leaf vegetables forbidden to eat before and during rituals. They are regarded as unmarried females and have sexual connotations. The third includes ‘enveloped’ plants (beans and bamboo shoots) that are eaten only during rituals. From the important position of plants in the Pangcah lifeway and cosmology, this article explores the Pangcah ontology and analyzes the mediating role of sensory experience played in the people–plants–spirits encounter.

CULTURAL UNIVERSALS IN THE RITUAL TRADITION OF THE TURKIC-MONGOLIAN PEOPLES: VOCABULARY AND CONTEXT

В данной статье рассматривается в семантическом контексте с обрядовым действом лексика в сибирских тюркских и монгольских языках, связанная с культом гор, земли и воды. Основными языками исследования являются алтайский, бурятский и якутский с привлечением монгольских, хакасских, тувинских параллелей. У тюрко-монгольских народов прослеживаются общие принципы организации сакрального пространства, концептуально схожие ритуальные действа в коллективном обряде, посвященном духам-хозяевам местности, присутствуют универсальные атрибуты и символы, характерные для шаманизма и буддизма. Впервые проведен сопоставительный анализ лексем, семантики и символики слов, связанных с обрядовыми действами и сопровождающий их вербальный контекст. Целью работы является выявление сохранности, распространения и трансформации культурных универсалий, имеющих вербальное выражение. Актуальным представляется исследование древнейших культурных кодов, сохранившихся в предметной и акциональной сферах обрядности. Понятие культурного кода в изучении обрядности позволит получить ключ к пониманию культурной картины мира и расшифровать глубинный смысл составных частей обряда (смыслов, знаков, символов, норм и т. д.). В итоге констатируем, что некогда существовала единая тюрко-монгольская традиция шаманизма, имевшая общую культурно знаковую систему, что подтверждается лексическим материалом и их обрядовым контекстом. Рассмотренные два основных ритуала жертвоприношения (кровавые и бескровные) доказывают как древние связи, так устойчивую универсальную последовательность и сохранность акциональных кодов в обрядовом событии монгольских и тюркских народов Сибири. Выявлено, что ключевые лексемы, используемые в предметном коде, имеют универсальную семантическую нагрузку в обрядовом событии. Лексические соответствия и схожие ритуальные предметы и действа, скорее всего, доказывают восхождение обряда к единым корням с последующими региональными и временными трансформациями. Установлено, что одинаковые атрибуты ритуала со схожим или разным лексическим обозначением являются архетипами, отражающими общие культурные коды тюркских народов Сибири и монгольских этносов. The authors consider the vocabulary of Siberian Turkic and Mongolian languages, related to the cult of mountains, land and water in a semantic context with the ritual action. The main languages of the study are Altai, Buryat and Yakut with the involvement of Mongolian, Khakas, and Tuvan parallels. In rites of Turkic-Mongolian people devoted to the host spirits of the area, the general principles of the organization of the sacred space, conceptually similar ritual actions are traced. There are universal attributes and symbols which are illustratory of shamanism and Buddhism. For the first time, a comparative analysis of lexemes, semantics and symbolism of words related to ritual actions and accompanying their verbal context was carried out. The purpose of the work is identifying the preservation, dissemination and transformation of cultural universals with verbal expression. A study of the oldest cultural codes preserved in the subject and actional spheres of rite seems relevant. The concept of a cultural code in the study of rite will provide a key to understanding the cultural picture of the world and allows deciphering the deep meaning of the components of the rite (meanings, signs, symbols, norms, etc.). As a result, we state that there was once a united Turkic-Mongolian tradition of shamanism, which had a common culturally significant system. It is confirmed by lexical material and their ritual context. The considered two main rituals of sacrifice (bloody and bloodless) prove both ancient ties and a stable universal sequence and the preservation of national codes in the ritual event of the Mongolian and Turkic peoples of Siberia. It is revealed that the key lexemes used in the subject code have a universal semantics in the ritual event. Lexical correspondences and similar ritual objects and actions most likely prove the ascension of the rite to single roots with subsequent regional and temporary transformations. It was established that the same attributes of the ritual with a similar or different lexical designation are archetypes reflecting the general cultural codes of the Turkic peoples of Siberia and Mongolian ethnic groups.

The Use of Sarum and Other Liturgical Uses in Later Medieval Britain

If the late medieval liturgy could be characterized by anything, it was diversity of practice from one place of worship to another, not only in the texts and music used in the services, but also in other areas, including the observance of saints’ days and of special practices with local traditions as well as in the patterns of ritual action that accompanied them. Each pattern of text, music, and ritual is most frequently called a liturgical “use” (from Lat. usus, i.e., “custom”). In medieval England, the most famous of these uses were “Sarum” or Salisbury Use, so called from its emanation from Salisbury Cathedral, and the Use of York, which derived from the practices of York Minster. Both came to be used, on an increasing basis, in their local area and were then adopted on a large scale in the southern and northern ecclesiastical provinces, respectively. These so-called secular Uses (as distinct from the liturgical patterns of monastic or conventual institutions) all stood within the Latin Rite, but they could be distinguished from one another by particular details of ritual and, more noticeably in their written witnesses, by the choice and order of the texts and chants of the Mass and Divine Office. By the turn of the 16th century, the uses of Sarum and York held a near monopoly on the secular English liturgy; by contrast, nearly every diocese on the Continent had its own Use, while other institutions adopted the Use of the Roman Curia. This article includes some of the historical scholarly efforts that have laid the groundwork for further research. Some of these are included for historiographical interest, especially to reflect on the long-held belief in the textual and musical fixity of English liturgical books, which has inevitably led to misconceptions about the ways that modern resources can be used. Catalogues and secondary sources tend, for instance, to use unrepresentative modern editions of liturgical texts and music (often really transcriptions of a single source) with the result that a single reading becomes normative. More recent investigations suggest a more complex textual and musical picture than philology can readily reveal. This bibliography is replete with references that seek to explore the variation in written witnesses, and other witnesses to practice, in order to illustrate the diversity of practice in worship and the richness of liturgical influence on the rest of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages.

The Everyday Power of Liturgy: On the Significance of the Transcendental for a Phenomenology of Liturgy

The task of this article is to articulate the everyday power of liturgy by clarifying the transcendental significance of ritual action. The paper makes three major claims: first, that liturgical practices function transcendentally, and therefore alter how we experience the world; second, that liturgical practices therefore exercise an immense formative power in our everyday living, including the power to open up or close down the possibility of encountering the sacred in our everyday lives; third, that this power of liturgy can be articulated theoretically through a transcendental phenomenological approach, thereby suggesting that a rigorous phenomenology of liturgy must necessarily include a transcendental element.

Tantric Buddhism in Nepal

Tantrism is the science of practical spiritualism. Tantrism is the practical way out of enlightenment. It is the perfect mix of theoretical and empirical knowledge of liberation. Although there are different arguments for and against tantric Buddhism. To find out the basic overview of Tantric Buddhism the study has been conducted. It is a literature review of Tantric Buddhism in Nepal. In conclusion, the study found that there is a great contradiction between Buddhist philosophy with the law of cause and effect. It is difficult to make ritual action conform to such a law, as he demonstrated.

The rite of Malanka is its origin, mutual influences and modernity

The article considers the area of distribution of the Malanka rite on the territory of Ukraine, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, focuses on its existence in Bukovina. The essence and results of research are to determine the original sources of origin. A comparative analysis of its existence in neighboring nations: Ukrainians, Romanians and Moldovans, fix common and distinctive features, mutual borrowings in past and nowadays. The purpose of this investigation is to clarify the main parameters of the changes made today in the rite on the example of the village of Krasnoilsk in Bukovina. The methodology is based on the analysis of source materials and own field of research. The method of comparative analysis helps in comparing the rite Malanka of Ukrainians and Romanians in Bukovina, and the methods of analysis and synthesis provide researcher in determining the parameters of changes in the elements of Malanka. Scientific novelty. For the first time is made a comparison with the current state of existence of the rite Malanka. Conclusions. The existence of the Malanka rite in the Bukovynian ethnographic zone is only a part of the huge area of its distribution, which is a marginal space in the zone of ethnocultural contacts and the interethnic border of Ukrainians and Eastern Romans. Conservation of the rite was facilitated by remoteness and isolation from the main area of their ethnic group. And today the evolution of this ancient ritual action takes place under great pressure of modern social processes. In the rite of “pereberiya” that accompanies Malanka as an organic element, dominates modern reality figures and historical characters as well.

Words that Burn: On the Manners and Implications of Oath-Taking Practices in Ethiopian Amhara Customary Law, Nineteenth–Twentieth Centuries

Between the spoken word, ritual action, and legal processes, the studies of oath-taking practices have developed a broad literature. This article provides an additional layer of materials and analysis on speech acts and ritual procedures involved in the manners of taking an oath in the Christian societies of Ethiopia, as recorded from the midnineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Some samples of Amharic discourse specific to the manners of oath-taking in the customary legal system of Christian Ethiopia are presented here through extracts from unpublished field notes recorded in the 1840s by the French traveller Arnauld d’Abbadie. This source is then compared to other ethnographic observations of oath-taking statements and rituals in the context of Ethiopian Christian societies. The implications of swearing an oath in Ethiopian customary law lead to the critical re-examination of the history of Ethiopian law in a comparative outlook, particularly with the canonical laws of Eastern and Western Europe.