Spread Of Religion Research Articles

The wild and the cultivated: Wine in euripides' Bacchae

Like other classical cults, the religion of Dionysus was assimilative, incorporating pre-Hellenic elements into the traditions of the Indo-European migrants to the Greek lands. The viticultural aspects of the god must have originated with the cultivation of the vine, and as the religion spread to the Aegean from its eastern homeland, it assimilated deities and shamanic rites that involved magical plants in use before the advent of wine. In the final incorporation of the god into Greek religion, Dionysus became a son of Zeus and assimilated the migrants' own traditions of Asiatic shamanism. As a god who had now been born into the Olympian age, his gift of viticulture, like Demeter's cultivation of the grain, was indicative of the evolution toward superior Hellenic civilization and of the successful hybridization of cultivated plants from what were supposed to have been their wild forms in more primitive times. Primitivism, which was associated with the dead, was thought, however, to pose an atavistic threat to civilization if it were not accorded an honored role in the final Olympian settlement, and in terms of the Dionysian religion, the pre-viticultural aspects of the god were part of his total identity and had to be balanced in maenadic rites against other enactments that centered upon the god in his Olympian evolution. In the Bacchae, Euripides told the story of the god's advent from Asia Minor, where he has discovered the vine plant, to Thebes, the pre-viticultural kingdom where the first of his two births had taken place. Pentheus and the Theban women discount the claim of his Olympian birth and reject his gift of the newly discovered wine. Pentheus represents the primitive identity of the god and is presented in the play as having a temper that is the antithesis to the calming and pain-relieving effects of the cultivated intoxicant. Appropriately in his kingdom, only the wild identity of the god can function. By a reenactment of the two births, this primitive enemy of the god is consecrated for his role as sacrificial surrogate, whose violent death will vindicate the Olympian identity of Dionysus. Since Thebes has refused the assimilative evolution, the maenadic revel there is not a function of the god's totality, and atavistic forces undo the civilization that Cadmus had founded when he planted the first crop at Thebes and the whole kingdom, at the end of the play, reverts to primitivism. Such a reversion is the theme in other tragedies about Thebes, and traditionally the rejected pollution of that city is transmuted into a source of chthonic fertility for Athens, a city, unlike its neighbor, that has struck an eternal accord with its own primitive origins and has welcomed the god, as is obvious in its festivals of drama, where Dionysus functions in his higher aspect as a founder of culture.

Faith and Factionalism among the Senecas: Theory and Ethnohistory

A dramatic decade in Seneca history provides the starting point for an analysis of factionalism in that tribe. In the early 1790's the Senecas were still bargaining for favors from two White contestants struggling for control of a portion of the North American continent. Earlier in the 18th century the conflict had been between England and France; later the straggle was between England and some of her former colonies. The Senecas still continued, however, to wheedle the two sides for advantages. With the battle of Fallen Timbers, won by General Anthony Wayne in northwest Ohio in August of 1744, and the Jay Treaty, between England and the United States signed in November, 1794, the Senecas learned that the English would not support their claims against the upstart Yankees. In 1796 the British troops withdrew from Fort Niagara, New York, and in the next year the Senecas were placed upon reservations for the first time in their history. Within a few short years, they had moved from a position of coexistence with the Whites to one of being controlled by the Americans. In 1798 Quakers arrived in Seneca Chief Cornplanter's village on the Allegheny River to commence training Red men to become like White men in the arts of social and economic life. Thirteen months later, Cornplanter's stepbrother, Handsome Lake, awoke from a two-hour trance and uttered the first of his good words that launched the religion named after him. In the succeeding two years, his religion spread to other Seneca reservations. Quaker work was also extended to another reservation in the early years of the new century, while Presbyterian missionaries began their labors among the tribesmen at this time.

Mohammedanism, an Historical Survey

Combining a scholar's command of fact with a narrator's ease of style, the noted scholar H.A.R. Gibb presents an historic survey of Islam, from the days of the prophet, through the religion's spread in Asia and Africa, to its confrontation with the modern world.

TOWARD A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE SPREAD OF RELIGIONS

International Review of MissionVolume 20, Issue 3 p. 367-380 TOWARD A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE SPREAD OF RELIGIONS K. S. LATOURETTE Ph.D., K. S. LATOURETTE Ph.D.Search for more papers by this author K. S. LATOURETTE Ph.D., K. S. LATOURETTE Ph.D.Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1931 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1931.tb04074.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume20, Issue3July 1931Pages 367-380 RelatedInformation

The Philosophical Background of Ethnological Theory

Every student of the early history of mankind, and their numbers have greatly increased of recent years, must be well acquainted with the recent conflict between the advocates of diffusion in interpreting the origins and world-wide manifestations of civilization and those of independent development, or, in more exact terms, of the spontaneous generation of cultures. To an unbiassed observer of the evidence, it must also be a matter of astonishment that the ethnologists of the latter school have for so long refused to admit a distribution of ideas, beliefs and customs which are not only of proved historical but daily and common occurrence. It is impossible to enter a library or a club, or to walk down Regent Street and look into the shop windows, without realizing that world-diffusion is the very stuff of civilized existence. It is impossible to travel the remoter regions of the globe to-day without being constantly reminded of London, Leeds and Manchester. Nobody, again, would dream of controverting the known phenomena of the spread of great religions, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, from a single original centre. The school of independent development of cultures not merely ignores or twists to its own purposes a gigantic mass of evidence bearing upon the subject in dispute and capable of being interpreted in only one way; it displays a singular disregardof common sense and human nature. The innate conservatism of humanity, its readiness to live on the.