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33 results

Page 1 of 2

Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions
  • An Inaugural Lecture by the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths Given in the University of Cambridge, 4 December 2013
  • Garth Fowden
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    09 April 2015
  • Judaism, Christianity and Islam - the three scriptural monotheisms, still often studied separately - are here intertwined within a historical frame. The approach outlined in this lecture pivots around the Qur'an as it emerged in seventh-century Arabia on the peripheries of the two world-empires of Iran and Rome, and variously refracts rabbinic Judaism and patristic - especially Syriac - Christianity. The formation and exegesis of scriptural canons helps define the major religious communities and identities both before and after Muhammad. The latter part of the lecture concentrates on the interaction of these communities, and especially their scholars, in the Abbasid Baghdad of the ninth and tenth centuries, and on the theological and philosophical debates that flourished there. The lecture interrogates the newly fashionable concept of 'Abrahamic' religion and proposes a fresh historical periodization inclusive of both late antiquity and Islam, namely the First Millennium.

  • 17b - The individual and the gods

  • from 17 - Late polytheism
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 538-552

  • Summary

    The late polytheist world-view affords the historian a first orientation amidst an exceptionally complex body of evidence. But daily contact with the Gods came to most people not through philosophy or theurgy, nor even the occult sciences, but through public and domestic cult, dreams, the rites of the dead, and so on. The building of temples was among the most fundamental human social acts. During the major festivals of Artemis, the emperor too was honoured - it was on such occasions that the imperial cult came closest to everyday life. The need for special relationships with Gods arose either from some objective problem, such as illness, or, less commonly, from what one might call intellectual or spiritual curiosity. Walls and floors were adorned with frescoes or mosaics depicting, not just mythological scenes, but also rituals of the mysteries and other cults, and allegories of mystical philosophical teachings. The individual's last encounter with his gods came of course at death.

  • 17c - Public religion

  • from 17 - Late polytheism
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 553-572

  • Summary

    The Severan dynasty's attitude to religion was well exemplified by Caracalla. It was in the nature of things that an emperor's personal piety could not remain a private matter. The significance even of well-known gods varied widely from place to place. Roma, the emperor, the Capitoline Triad and the 'Twelve Gods' were revered throughout the empire, but in a way that varied according to the degree of their assimilation to local tradition, and of the natives zeal for Rome. Tripolitania and Trier illustrate well the variety of the regional perspective. The historic centre of Lepcis Magna was the old forum, whose shrines offer a first orientation in Tripolitanian religion. Earthquakes, nomad invasions and failure to effect repairs were probably more significant than Christianity as causes of the ruin that overcame many temples in the coastal cities, Sabratha, Oea and Lepcis Magna, during the latter part of the century.

  • 17a - The world-view

  • from 17 - Late polytheism
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 521-537

  • Summary

    The only late polytheist thinker considered worthy of serious study by historians of philosophy was Plotinus. Since Plotinus' attitude to conventional religion was misunderstood no less by his contemporaries than by modern scholars, it must be emphasized that he was recognized to be a focus of holiness, a holy man. In polytheism, the pursuit of virtue and the spiritual life were primarily the domain of the philosophers. The effect on the broad polytheist community of hearing the street-corner preaching of a wandering Cynic was scarcely to be compared with the regular instruction received by the Christian community from its bishop during the weekly house-church liturgy. The common ground between the Hermetica and the theurgists' sacred texts, the Chaldaean Oracles, lies not just in their Graeco-Oriental character, but also in their acceptance that humans may attain to the divine by many routes, in which cultic practices as well as philosophical intellection have a part.

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