Theological Texts Research Articles

An Anti-Catholic Georgian Theological Treatise (Eighteenth Century) in the Context of Georgian-European Relations

For centuries Orthodox Georgians had a cordial disposition towards Roman Catholics. This was evident in everyday secular life, as well as in the religious sphere, marked by prayerful union, joint missionary activities in other countries, and theological openness. This is corroborated by written sources, such as official epistles of Georgian monarchs and church leaders—in which a readiness to recognize the supremacy of the Pope was expressed—and theological texts. In the entire history of Georgian theological literature there is one exception: a theological treatise written in the eighteenth century by a Georgian author, Catholicos-Patriarch Bessarion Orbelishvili. The treatise is the only text written in the Georgian language criticizing the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrine. The content of the work is quite biased, crude, and full of mistakes and inaccuracies; despite the vitriol, however, its status as the sole extant written text in Georgian critical of the Latins, as well surrounding historical circumstances, confirm that it was not indicative of Georgian feelings about Catholics overall.

The Problem of Translating Theological Texts (German and Russian)

The Problem of Translating Theological Texts (German and Russian)

Borderline Virginities: Sacred and Secular Virgins in Late Antiquity by S. Undheim

Reviewed by: Borderline Virginities: Sacred and Secular Virgins in Late Antiquity by S. Undheim Chris L. de Wet Undheim, S. 2018. Borderline Virginities: Sacred and Secular Virgins in Late Antiquity. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0367495985. Pp. 238. $49.99. The notion of virginity in the ancient world has received a great deal of attention in the past decades. One aspect of virginity that tends to stand out in the majority of these works is its elusiveness to definition and conceptualisation. The present study of Undheim1 does a good job of problematising our understanding of virginity in its ancient cultural context even more. Undheim demonstrates convincingly that virginity cannot simply be understood in physiological terms, but that social, cultural and, indeed, religious aspects often undergird ancient constructions of virginity. Undheim’s focus is on sacral virginity—that is, virgins who have been "assigned" this status through an act of dedication or consecration in a religious context. The book does well to demonstrate both continuities and discontinuities of virginity in both Christian and non-Christian (Vestal) contexts in late antiquity. Rather than being a fixed phenomenon, virginity was something that was discursively negotiated. Undheim uses a helpful notion of demarcations or "borderlines" to demonstrate the fluidity of late antique constructions and negotiations of virginity. The most important contribution of this book is that the perceived dichotomy between physical and so-called "spiritual" virginity is problematised and rightly deconstructed. This is especially done by means of the critical comparison between Vestal and Christian virgins. The concept virgo (in Latin, but other ancient cognates should be included), in late antiquity, is a word that is used in various ways and to various [End Page 536] purposes. In this regard, aspects such as one’s age, family and social status and the virginal symbolism seen in a virgin’s clothing, all coalesce to shape the notion of "Roman virginity," as Undheim notes. In the church fathers, for instance, we see a curious interest in discerning the virgin, virgo, from the notion of the girl (puella) or woman (mulier). She quotes Ambrose in noting that "womankind is the sex; virgin is the species." Virginity was, therefore, a concept that was subject to intense classification and clarification. Sources from the theological texts of the church fathers are used, along with numerous other prose and poetic texts. She also does not disregard the epigraphical material, which lends to the strength of the book. In the second chapter, Undheim unpacks the notion of Roman virginity, especially how it is envisioned rhetorically and in terms of "ideals" and "realities." In this regard, a great deal of discussion focuses on social status and virginity, especially aristocratic virginity, as well as the possibility of virgin slaves. On the latter point, Undheim demonstrates that slave modesty and virginity—even though it might seem paradoxical in the Roman world—was complex and still embedded in the kyriarchal social structure. In other words, slave masters (in Christian contexts) still had the say whether a slave girl might become a virgin. Because late ancient Christianity made virginity more of a universal ideal, the fact that virginity could extend to individuals outside of the ruling classes is a real possibility. However, the metaphor of virginity did not do much to add distance between virginity and nobility. From church fathers like Ambrose and Jerome, we still see a common link between virginity and nobility also in early Christian discourse. Along with social status, the chapter also focuses on the age of virgins (the child virgins usually associated with the Vestals as opposed to Christian virgins admitted at a marriageable age), and virginal insignia, or clothing. In terms of clothing, most forms of Roman virginity had some type of external markers, especially because virginity was such an honoured state. This was the case in Christianity as well, showing that virginity, in this context, was not only a matter of the soul. Chapter 3 addresses the gendered aspects of Roman virginity, with some very interesting findings. Perhaps in no other chapter do we see the discursive variations of virginity as it relates to ancient concepts of gender. The fact that virginity moves away from the biological and physical realm...

Religião Redimida pela Razão

O artigo pretende fazer ver até que ponto um certo Esclarecimento não é necessariamente um movimento de combate à religião estabelecida. Pode se revestir mesmo de um impulso para salvá-la, por mais que seu projeto não seja religioso, e sim humanista. Mais precisamente, o texto se propõe a mostrar de que modo salvar a religião de si mesma para emancipar a humanidade pela racionalidade e pela educação seria bem o projeto de Lessing, notadamente em Natã, o sábio. Para tanto, contextualiza-se o cenário intelectual alemão cotidiano à época do autor, cenário este pautado por escritos teológicos, não iluministas, passa-se pelas várias teologias existentes à época na Alemanha e também pelo modo como o próprio Esclarecimento assumia ali dimensão teológica, com Christian Wolff. A maioridade iluminista de Lessing é visitada mediante sua vocação plural, seu gosto pelas querelas e sua argumentação sem posições fixas ou demarcadas, assim como pelas noções de educação e de humanidade.

The New Soviet Man With a Female Body: Mother, Teacher, Tractor Driver…

The “New Man” is a utopian concept that involves creating an ideal man and replacing the imperfect human being. The beginning of the ideas of creating the new man can be found in ancient Greece and Rome, in the works of utopians and educators, as well as in theological texts. Although this ideologeme as one of the constructs of modernity was fully formed by the end of the 19th century, the efforts to practically implement it are connected with the establishment of (para)totalitarianism. One of the best-known examples of such an attempt was the ambition to create the New Soviet Man. After giving up aspirations to create a perfect biological individual, in the long-term perfective, the main focus was laid on forming an ideologically correct New Man, a builder of communism. Education was seen as one of the key means of achieving this objective. Seeking to identify how the image of the New Man was reflected in the curriculum (primary in particular), 36 textbooks published between 1925–1985 and used in the state schools of Soviet Russia and the Baltic States were analysed.Although the concept of the New Man includes both the male and female person, the most frequently considered is a male. This article aims to discuss how textbooks represent the Soviet woman by considering the following aspects: what was specific to the New Soviet Man – Woman? What did the Soviet regime expect from women in the context of the New Soviet Man project? How did the project of New Man reflect the gender equality idea?

Mainstreaming of Gender Equality in Islamic Family Law: Opportunities and Challenges

This study discusses the mainstreaming of gender equality in Islamic family law. As it is known, gender equality and Islamic law have axiological links in realizing family household that practices the universal values such as justice, literature, peace, love, compassion, etc. This research is a qualitative study with a gender perspective linked to Islamic law. The discussion showed that a number of opportunities were found as normatively affirmed in the Qur'an which has the same spirit as the mainstreaming of gender equality in Islamic family law. Likewise, legal rules such as the Compilation of Islamic Law and the development of Islamic studies caused the normative theological understanding to support gender equality. However, it cannot be denied that the understanding of theological texts has begun to erode in the context of the implementation of Islamic family law. For the challenges, there were several aspects that hinder the mainstreaming of gender equality in Islamic family law, namely marginalization of women, community stereotypes against women, subordination of women, double burden on women, and violence against women.

Polemic and Literature Surrounding the French Wars of Religion. Edited by Jeff Kendrick and Katherine S. Maynard

The idea that ‘reading and writing are the source of […] conflict’ (p. 2) is the driving force behind this collection of essays. The Wars of Religion are shown to be a war of words; the ‘lexicon of weaponry’ (p. 1) is the subject of investigation, and its impact on warring communities of readers. Such an approach is a very welcome addition to the current interest in polemical literature in this era, coming on the heels of Tatiana Debbagi Baranova’s À coups de libelles: une culture politique au temps des guerres de religion (1562–1598) (Geneva: Droz 2012), and drawing its influence from Luc Racaut’s Hatred in Print: Catholic Polemic and Protestant Identity during the French Wars of Religion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). The poets and writers considered here are part of the existing canon: Pierre de Ronsard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, Joachim Du Bellay, Théodore de Bèze, Antoine de Chandieu, Marc Lescarbot, and Jean Bégat. The three essays devoted to d’Aubigné are a timely contribution to the field, given Valerie Worth’s new translation of Les Tragiques (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020). The collection as a whole is thoroughly modern in its approach. The ‘material turn’ is given due consideration; Amy Graves Monroe writes about the importance of paratextual battles, places of publication and title pages, reading the question of anonymity from the perspective of the internet age. Ashley Voeks examines the spatial dimension of Les Tragiques in an elegantly constructed analysis. Katherine S. Maynard introduces an international feature to the collection in her examination of Lescarbot. Other contributions are even more modish: Phillip John Usher takes us into new territory in ‘Atmoterrorism in the Humanist Anthropocene’, using Ronsard and André Thevet to explore contemporary debates on the climate crisis. The category of the ‘polemical’ is thus understood broadly, to include political, juridical, and theological texts and their paratexts, viewed from a literary perspective (p. 2). The advantage of this approach is the close attention paid to the relationship between literature and polemic, as explored in Kathleen Perry Long’s chapter. Students and scholars of the literature of this period will enjoy, and gain a great deal from, this achingly trendy collection of essays that prompt their readers to ask new questions of these established texts. Historians, however, will want to critique the notion that historical events are ‘born of narrative’ (p. 8), and may finish this collection with some questions unanswered. While Christopher M. Flood and Graves Monroe work thoroughly with scriptural sources and confessional difference, others are more removed from the religious context of the wars. Marcus Keller observes that ‘it is necessary to abstract from the religious dimension between French Catholics and Protestants’ in his reading of d’Aubigné (p. 118). Such a level of abstraction neutralizes the confessional dimension of the conflict, which is precisely where the interest lies for many historians of the period. This is not to suggest that historians won’t gain from this collection: they will; but they may find there is more work to do in terms of contextualizing the polemics under consideration here.

Theological texts in the formation of the Ukrainian scientifi c discourse of the second part of the 17th century (on the example of Nauka o tajně s(t): pokaęnїę of 1671)

The author analyzes the cognitive-discourse aspect of the semantic structur e of the treaty Nauka o tajně s(t): pokaęnїę (a translation from the Polish original) printed in 1671 by the imprimery of the Kyivan Cave Monastery. Found on the boundary line between theological literature and the secular genres, the Ukrainian scientifi c discourse was rather vague at that time; the text under consideration can be viewed therefore as a popular scientifi c one. The text is connected with the academic discourse through a complicated structure, typical of scholastic treaties, heterogeneous markers of the intertextuality, the use of indirect performative markers as well as markers of the prospection and retrospection. Its connection with the popular discourse is maintained through the elimination of authorship, the prevailing glossing rather than defi nitions of the respective terms. The dialogue model of addressing with the help of singular ‘you,’ which is common for preaching, is found in this treaty side by side with the inclusive ‘we.’ The treaty’s heterogeneous syntactic organization is marked by the combination of diff erent genres, namely, literature of practical purpose and sermons.

Tale of a plaster – Different versions of a story and possible meaning of the phrase Lo shmiʿa li (Bavli Eruvin 102b)

This article deals with different versions of a story in Tractate Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud (102b). This story has different versions in various sources, including in one page from the Genizah fragment Cambridge U-L T-S F2 (2) 23, numbered C98948 in the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society. Each version changes our understanding of the story’s content, and in this article we will display these variations and examine the feasibility that they reflect about the original version. The story ends with the phrase Lo shamiʿa li, for which we shall offer a new alternative meaning. Contribution: The main contribution of this article is in revealing the importance of comparing the different versions to the same story which implies a change in the content of the story. This has future implications when considering a story that has different versions. In addition, exploring and examining a particular phrase can offer a different interpretation or meaning than it was commonly thought. These insights are based on story and phrase found in the theological text, so that the article fits to the focus and scope of this journal.

God’s Body: The Anthropomorphic God in the Old Testament

God’s Body: The Anthropomorphic God in the Old Testament

The temple in images of the Annunciation: A double dogmatic symbol according to the Latin theological tradition (6th-15th centuries)

This article aims to unveil the doctrinal meanings that many Church Fathers and theologians have deciphered in some Old Testament terms such as templum, tabernaculum, domus Sapientiae, arca and other similar expressions related to sacred spaces or containers. In many specific cases, they have interpreted these expressions as metaphors or symbols of the Virgin Mary’s womb and Christ’s human nature. As a consequence, these interpretive approaches are reflected in some images of the Annunciation of the 14th and 15th centuries. So this article will analyze first a selected set of patristic, theological, and liturgical texts, and secondly, will examine eight paintings of the Annunciation with a temple-shaped house to see if there is an essential relation between those exegetical texts and these pictorial images. Based on that double analysis, it seems reasonable to conclude that the temple depicted in these Annunciations is a visual metaphor that illustrates the doctrinal meanings decrypted by the Fathers and theologians in their interpretations of the textual metaphors mentioned above.

Kenarchy as a Counterpolitical resource: Re-imagining our understanding of land and nature

This paper seeks to address what the author perceives to be a common misinterpretation of the commandment to subdue the Earth in Genesis 1, using Kenarchy as a means of critiquing sovereignty and re-imaging what a Kenarchic approach to land and the environment might look like. Beginning with an overview of the politics of sovereignty and the development of the nation state, it moves on to consider the impact of this with respect to land, its use, ownership, power, control and borders. It proposes a wider understanding of biopower to include land, its use and the displacement of peoples from their lands, particularly that which has arisen since the industrial revolution, up to modern-day industrialised agriculture. Drawing on contemporary nature writing alongside academic theological texts, this paper aims to open a wider discussion around the ‘othering’ of land and nature, and how this leads to the exploitation of people, land and resources. Disconnection from land and nature has broken a deep-rooted human need for nature-connectedness and encouraged the myth of state soteriology. The paper calls for humanity to rediscover our place within creation with a life-laid-down loving approach, where we work for the well-being of the natural world rather than dominance over it. Citing practical examples, the paper concludes with a challenge to reconsider the command to dominate the Earth, rather hold a new kenarchic perspective to undo the long-held emphasis on subduing nature and rediscover the Earth as a shared resource.

El concepto de carne en la primera teología y el «cuerpo hablante»

El texto propone, a condición de contextualizar y releer históricamente el significante carne de la tradición judeo-cristiana, que el «margen más allá de la vida» que Lacan sitúa entre cuerpo y significante en 1960 remite a un lugar análogo al que ocupan tanto semántica como sintácticamente, los significantes latino caro y griego σαρζ, que traducen el hebreo bá-sar (carne). Por retroacción histórica, y dando prevalencia a la letra sobre el sentido, se vería que los primeros textos teológicos sitúan este significante en un lugar de «béance», o por lo menos de contradicción insostenible, donde nada representable ni pensable permite producir una síntesis. Interrumpiendo el dualismo platónico alma/cuerpo, la carne del cristianismo, que no es ni cuerpo ni alma, desorganiza la dualidad, abriendo a un sistema ternario cuerpo/carne/espíritu, referente conceptual que alimenta probablemente la última enseñanza de Lacan y donde la «carne» responde a un Real.

Dieva īpašību atainojums latviešu tautasdziesmās teopoētikas kontekstā

An innovative view to theological texts as a literary genre has been established in research of the modern religions and designated as theopoetics, because, irrespective of whether a theological text is written in the poetic genre, in the form of a story or the style of a more dense, theoretical prose, it is based on the poesis: innovative, intuitive and an imaginary composition of the authors where the central figure is God. Therefore, approximately ten thousand recorded and published folk songs, as well as other Latvian folklore texts about God, are equal to theopoetics as a genre of creative writing with its specific expression tools. Folk songs are a product of purposeful human spiritual/intellectual activity and imagination, a typical cultural phenomenon of the relevant society, which helps to study the public’s views about the perception of God. To approach adequately to analysis and interpretation of such texts, in the late 20th century, a new method of research on religious texts – theopoetics – was established. Theopoetics is a method of analysing religious texts that encourages us to look at the ancient metaphors of God from another angle. It explores the language possibilities of figuratively creating God’s patterns, unlike the previous “scientific” God’s theories as the systematic attempt of theology to find God through the living (“incarnated”) God. Theopoetics theorists accept reality as a source of divine revelation as well as personal experience and metaphor-influenced divine understanding in various religions. This method allows to establish the essence and possible interpretations of the basic metaphors used in every individual religion: 1) critically weigh up the previous explanations of God; 2) study the interaction of applied metaphors, models and concepts within religion; 3) offers the potential of transformative, revolutionary models, using the language and metaphor layer that is widely understandable and used by people in everyday life. Research of metaphors does not impose objective or general criteria for assessing understanding of God; therefore, the aim of theopoetical discourse is not to prevent competing interpretations but to multiply the number of perceptions of God, to extend the emotional feeling, and to reveal new opinions. Folk songs figuratively represent God in metaphors and comparisons, but the theopoetics method has not been applied in the previous studies of God either because it is a relatively new methodological system, or because God’s perception in the folk songs has not been the focus of researchers of contemporary religions.

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart

Reviewed by: That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart Taylor Patrick O'Neill That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 222 pp. What can one say about David Bentley Hart's That All Shall Be Saved? It does not seem to be a text which admits of moderate responses. Its readers seem almost exclusively to laud it as a new epoch in Christian theology or to condemn it as a screed of ad hominems which rejects the vast majority of Christians throughout history. Still, one wants to be as positive as one can, if for no other reason than that after reading That All Shall Be Saved one thirsts desperately for even a drop of irenicism. I have three major thoughts about Hart's work, which is broken up into four "Meditations." My first thought deals with the mode of Hart's prose and argumentation; the second and third deal briefly with two of the arguments themselves. First, much has been made about the form of Hart's delivery (both here and in previous works), and I think justifiably so. Even after completing the work, I am still unsure as to what Hart's intentions with the book were. It often reads more like a personal journal or the beginnings of a comprehensive work which is still gestating than a work of speculative theology. Hart spends substantial time earlier in the book discussing his own experiences and history. He never directly engages any particular theological text, historical or contemporary. Names and ideas are referenced in passing but never cited. A single contemporary text is mentioned but hardly explored (Brian Davies's The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil takes that honor). One keeps expecting the rhetorical setup to punch through to a complete argument on the next page, but the blow never lands. There are the beginnings of very interesting ideas here, but the times in which they are argued forcefully or even fleshed out are few and far between. The work concludes with a basic re-hashing of the post-modern trope on the genesis of the doctrine of hell: the Church, especially when it mixed with temporal powers, duplicitously concocted an error to keep the rabble in line. The rhetoric is rich, but there is not an ounce of historical evidence to back up the claim. On the very final pages of the book, Hart seems to be alert to [End Page 1399] the lack of argumentation, saying: "I could go on. I could, if nothing else, spend a few hundred pages more dealing with certain highly technical issues of Christian metaphysical tradition. … But I do not think that it would actually add anything to the essential arguments of these pages," (207–8). It is hard to overstate how frustrating it is to find this statement nestled at the end of over two hundred pages. Indeed, the debate about the existence of an eternal hell is in so many ways a debate which absolutely must take place upon the metaphysical level. I would like to see this argument in its fullest and most robust form. Instead, all we receive is, frankly, a lot of preaching to the choir with rhetorical flourishes. Hart's grasp of the English language is probably unmatched by any living theologian, and yet he transgresses the fundamental principle of writing: show rather than tell. One particularly disappointing trend throughout the work is the use of false dilemmas. Hart tends to pick the lowest hanging fruit as a bogey man, threatening you with the most radical of positions as the only alternative to his own. One is either a Hartian or a double-predestinarian, Calvinist infernalist. And gleeful about it too! One agrees with Hart that St. John's Revelation is "hazy to the point of unintelligibility" or else one is looking for "some kind of visionary script for the end of time, a magic mirror for scrying out things yet to come" (108). Either universalism or else radical individualism where "the ethos of heaven turns out to be 'every soul...

The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing ed. by Mariken Teeuwen, and Irene Van Renswoude

Reviewed by: The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing ed. by Mariken Teeuwen, and Irene Van Renswoude Gaelle Bosseman Teeuwen, Mariken, and Irene Van Renswoude, eds, The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 38), Turnhout, Brepols, 2017; hardback; pp. xii, 783; 41 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €140.00; ISBN 9782503569482. This edited collection of papers is focused on studying the practice of annotation in medieval manuscripts, with examples ranging from late antiquity to the thirteenth century. It comes as the result of a conference held in The Hague in 2015 but additionally displays a wealth of research led by a team of Dutch scholars involved in the project 'Marginal Scholarship: The Practice of Learning in the Early Middle Ages (c. 800–c. 1000)' under the supervision of Mariken Teeuwen. The main purpose of the project was to decentre the gaze from the text to its edges, the marginalia, in order to consider 'the responses of the readers to text' (p. 2) and to study the intellectual work at stake behind them. The book gathers twenty-five contributions by specialists from all over the world, nearly all written in English, and divided into four parts: 'Scholars and Their Books: Practices and Methods of Annotating'; 'Textual Scholarship by Means of Annotation'; 'Private Study and Classroom Reading'; 'Annotating Orthodox and Heterodox Knowledge'. With the aim of offering an overall approach despite the disparity of case-studies, the editors diligently included general indices and a list of illustrations that allow readers to navigate between contributions. The introduction provides a general overview and explains the coherence of the sections; it also supplies a brief historiographical survey, complemented by an initial contribution by Mariken Teeuwen. She presents the database that her team built (<https://database.marginalscholarship.nl>), [End Page 288] consisting of a searchable interface that gathers observations on annotated manuscripts as a tool for systematic research. In contrast, several contributions show how the detailed study of one manuscript (chapters by Giorgia Vocino, Luciana Cuppo) or one author (chapters by Giacomo Vignodelli, Warren Pezé) may allow us to identify a milieu of production and investigate characteristic practices of intellectual history. The first part illustrates the diversity of the forms of marginalia, which encompass notes, letters, or symbols (Evina Steinová), whereas the three last sections introduce the reader to the variety of their functions or uses. The second part is dedicated to annotations used for text-criticism or editorial purpose. Thanks to marginalia, medieval scholars could correct or supplement texts, indicating for instance their sources (notably through stenographic notes, as studied by Martin Hellmann) or textual variants, a practice that, with its roots in late antiquity (Franck Cinato), was the object of erudite renewal under the Carolingians (Markus Schiegg). This practice created upgraded editions or critical editions (Erik Kwakkel, Alberto Cevolini). Attention to the text transmission is also illustrated by the care with which copyists preserved some lacunae in texts, scrupulously following their models (Justin Stover). The third part deals with annotations assisting study and reading tasks, notably for schooling purposes (Anna Grotans, Ad Van Els), although in some cases the tangle of notes and paratextual additions indicates an evolution of their functions throughout the life of the manuscript (Silvia Ottaviano) and eventually challenges the traditional definition of a classical schoolbook (Paulina Taraskin). Finally, the fourth part gathers contributions examining annotations to theological texts, such as signs of censure (Irene Van Renswoude), critical notes on patristic texts (Janneke Raajmakers, Pierre Chambert-Protat), reading aids (Jesse Keskiaho), or 'visual paratexts', that is, images and elements of mise en page (Patrizia Carmassi). Margins can also be the site of or summarize exegetical and patristic traditions as in annotated Bibles (Cinzia Grifoni). The diversity of case-studies presented in this volume highlights the continuity of the practice of annotation in the Middle Ages as well as the diversity of its media: all kinds of texts could receive notes or reading marks. If in general they manifest a practical and intellectual use, in some cases the function of marginalia remains uncertain, as for instance the addition of single letters in interlinear space...

King Yima — Jam — Jamshid: From Mythological Hero to Literary Image

The article is devoted to the evolution of the mythological personage, ancient king, and cultural hero Yima in Persian literature of the Muslim period. With the help of translations of the Avesta as well as commentary and theological texts of Middle Persian literature, the work depicts Yima’s main creative functions as the keeper and protector of living beings, ruler of the world in the “Golden Age,” grantor of corporeal immortality, upholder of the cosmic and social order, and savior of the world from a natural catastrophe. These functions are opposed by the role of Yima as the first sinner, through whose fault the “Golden Age” was lost. The rudiments of the complex of mythological legends that have developed around Yima are reflected in Shahnama, the great epos that continued the Iranian narrative tradition of ancient times and the early Middle Ages. All the motifs based on Jam-Jamshid’s legends in different genres of lyric and lyric-epic poetry of XI–XIV centuries can be divided into three groups and they reflect the dual attitude towards this hero. The choice of a motif of a certain group in Persian classical poetry directly depended on genre context (panegyric, didactic, mysticallegoric, anacreontic). In lyric-epic and lyric poetry (qasida and qhazal), the circle of motifs connected with Jam-Jamshid are concentrated around Jamshid’s Throne and Jamshid’s Cup. Some similarities of Jamshid and Suleiman stories led to a merging of the two heroes in the Iranian tradition and even to a contamination of their roles and attributes. Sufi poets often used the motif Jamshid’s Cup showing the entire Universe (jam-i giti-nama) as a symbol of mystical knowledge.

The Semiotic Method of Cognition of Reality: Limits of Applicability

This article discusses the degree and usefulness of the applicability of the semiotic method in science, philosophy and academic theology. The philosophy of the semiotic method and its relationship with Orthodox theology are considered. A specific case of application of the semiotic method in Russian science in the study of theological texts in the works of S.S. Averintsev is presented and studied. It is concluded that the extensional universality of the semiotic method in all spheres of knowledge and its limitations in the ability to adequately reflect reality.

Al-Azhar University in the Events of the Arab Spring (Case of Egypt)

Due to the comprehensiveness of Islam, the role of the “Islamic factor” in political processes in the Middle East and North Africa is great, while the nature of the manifestations of the “Islamic factor” largely depends among other things on the current state of modern religious educational institutions, including those serving as a forge of Islamic personnel today. One of the most prestigious universities in Islamic oikumene, giving religious education for Muslims from all over the world, is AlAzhar al-Sharif (the shorter Al-Azhar is more common). It was here that some famous thinkers studied, who further significantly contributed to the development of the so-called “political Islam”. This study is an attempt to clarify the role of Al-Azhar University and related Islamic scholars in the socio-political processes of the Middle East and North Africa. Conducting the research, the author largely turned to the sources of the Islamic religion (the Qur’an, Hadith), theological texts of a number of thinkers (for example, the interpretation of the Qur’an Rashid Rida), religious polemical works (the work of Sheikh Osama al-Azhari against the “Muslim Brotherhood” and other “Islamist” trends), documents compiled by the leadership of Al-Azhar; academic literature on related issues. The author came to the conclusion that the “Islamic factor” did not play a crucial role at the beginning of events, but vividly manifested itself subsequently. The actual suppression of Islam by secular dictators created a fertile ground for the acute discontent of believing citizens and activists of various movements who uphold a particular version of the Islamic political alternative. The most influential university in the Islamic world, Al-Azhar, in an official document, “Arab Spring”, indicated the possibility of a shift in despotic power, while emphasizing at the same time the inadmissibility of violent suppression of peaceful protest. Certain Azharite theologians were directly involved in the events of the “Arab Spring”, in particular, the passionate scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood movement and graduated from Al-Azhar, as well as Sheikh Emad Effat, who died during the suppression of an unarmed speech 15 December 2011. Such activity of various Islamic forces in the political sphere is primarily due to the very nature of the Islamic tradition, which does not separate the “sacred” and “profane”.

„Drzwi zamknięte” czy „otwarte bramy”, czyli tłumacz między profanum a sacrum

The paper reflects on the specificity of the translation of texts belonging to the religious and theolog- ical literature. Religious and theological texts have been translated for millennia, many of them — originating in the sphere of Judeo-Christianity — lie at the core of Western culture. Their trans- lation, especially the translation of the Bible, was accompanied by theoretical reflection (see, for example, Jerome of Stridonium, Martin Luther or Eugene Nida), which permanently influenced the way of thinking about translation in general. The present study answers the question of how the translation of religious and theological texts differs from the translation of other texts and what the translator must or should take into account, translating religious and theological texts. The paper discusses, among others, the role of the word in Christianity, spiritual preparation, openness to the Holy Spirit, tradition and inculturation.