Infos
"Test Everything": Sceptic and Believer in Ancient Mediterranean Religions
A Jointly Sponsored Conference on "Insider Doubt" in Christianity and Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Veranstaltet vom Lehrstuhl für Alte Geschichte (Prof. Dr. Babett Edelmann-Singer) und dem Lehrstuhl für Exegese und Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments (Prof. Dr. Tobias Nicklas)
Gef?rdert von der Regensburger Universit?tsstiftung Hans Vielberth und der Lucia und Dr. Otfried Eberz-Stiftung
??????
Ist die kritische Distanz zu Aspekten der eigenen religi?sen Tradition ein Ph?nomen der Neuzeit?
Die Konferenz besch?ftigt sich mit verschiedensten Formen antiker Religion und der Frage, inwiefern Skepsis und Zweifel an der eigenen religi?sen Tradition eine Rolle spielten. Die TeilnehmerInnen werden in ihren Vortr?gen und Diskussionen danach fragen, welche Inhalte konkret bezweifelt wurden, in welchen Kontexten und in Bezug auf welche Inhalte Zweifel oder Skepsis akzeptabel waren oder wie Zweifel und Skepsis innerhalb einer religi?sen Gemeinschaft zum Ausdruck gebracht wurden. Ferner wird es auch um die Reaktionen gehen, die Zweifel ausl?sten, und um die Frage, inwiefern sich Zweifel unter Anh?ngern einer religi?sen Tradition von jenen der Au?enstehenden oder gar Gegner unterschieden?
Die Tagung, die einen komparatistischen Ansatz verfolgt, umfasst eine Zeitskala vom Klassischen Griechenland bis in die Hohe Kaiserzeit (5. Jh. v.Chr. bis Ende des 2. Jh. n.Chr.). Durch die Teilnahme von VertreterInnen unterschiedlichster Wissenschaftsdisziplinen – so beispielsweise dem gesamten Spektrum des frühen Christentums, der Judaistik, der Allgemeinen Religionswissenschaft oder der Alten Geschichte – erhoffen sich die Veranstalter tiefere Einsichten in Fragen des individuellen und kollektiven Glaubens in antiken Kontexten.
?
Archiveintrag vom 13.12.2018 13:33 Uhr
Abstracts
“Test Everything”:
Sceptic and Believer in Ancient Mediterranean Religions
?
A Jointly Sponsored Conference on “Insider Doubt”
in Christianity and Ancient Mediterranean Religions
?
Regensburg: 18-20 October 2017
organized by Tobias Nicklas, New Testament,
and Babett Edelmann-Singer, Ancient History
?
?
Abstracts
?
Tim Whitmarsh, Cambridge, UK
Were the atheoi atheists? Religious scepticism and Greek polytheism
?
It is a truism that there are few exact ancient equivalents to the modern atheist, who denies all and any possible supernatural power. To reach that position, one has to have both a rigid, identifiable line of differentiation between the natural and the supernatural, and a more or less coherent concept of the divine. Neither of these was fully available in ancient Greek polytheism. Nevertheless, I argue in this paper, the Greeks did have a firm concept of the distinctiveness of the sphere of contact between human and divine, a sphere that they named ta theia (’the divine things’); and once we grasp that point, we can offer a more robust conceptualisation of what ancient Greek ‘atheism’ was, namely a denial not so much of ‘gods’ as of ta theia.
?
?
Jan N. Bremmer, Groningen, Netherlands
Atheism in Greek Tragedy and Its Audience
?
The recent appearance of Tim Whitmarsh’s book Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (2015) and the massive 2017 Ghent dissertation by Alexander Meert, Positive? Atheism?in Antiquity: A Social and Philosophical Analysis (500 BC – 200 AD = biblio. ugent.be/publication/8513548/file/8513552.pdf2016: supervised by Peter Van Nuffelen), invite a new look at the evidence of the fifth century BC in Athens, our most important, albeit perhaps not only source for early scepticism, even perhaps atheism. In my contribution I will first take a fresh look at the problem of belief in ancient Greece. Recent scholarship has advanced several arguments to accept belief as an important aspect of Greek religion, others have distinguished between a low-intensity and a high-intensity belief, and again others have totally rejected the usefulness of the concept of belief for ancient Greece. Second, I will look at various passages in Greek tragedy that suggest an atheistic current in late fifth-century Athens. I will pay attention to these passages and look especially at their place in the tragedy and their speakers. Finally, I will briefly analyse two famous scandals, that of the profanation of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms, which have long been interpreted as signs of irreligiosity in Athens. I will weigh these arguments but, especially will connect these scandals with the sentiments in tragedy. In conclusion, I will investigate to what extent we can speak of skeptics and believers in classical Greece.
?
CV and Key Publications:
Jan N. Bremmer (b. 1944) was professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen (1990-2009). Since then he has been a visiting professor or research fellow in Cologne (2010-2011), Munich (2011-2012), New York (2012-2013), Erfurt (2013-2014), Freiburg/Br (2014), Erfurt (2016) and Bochum (2016-2017).
His main recent monographs are: Greek Religion & Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008), The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Groningen, 2010), Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) and Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity: Collected Essays I (Tübingen, 2017).
?
?
Janet Downie, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA????? ?
Truth, Credibility and Coherence in Aelius Aristides’ Prose Hymns
?
Aelius Aristides, a Greek rhetorician of the second century, is well known to modern scholars for his devotion to the healing god Asclepius. Because he wrote extensively about his attachment to Asclepius, and about other gods of the Greco-Roman tradition, Aristides offers a valuable pagan perspective on the relationship between belief and skepticism in this period. Aristides’ personal investment in the traditional Greco-Roman gods is such that it is difficult to regard him as anything other than a “believer,” and when he writes about the gods he embraces the subject with conviction. Yet this is not a matter of na?ve religiosity – nor is it, I think, a rhetorical pose.
In this paper, focusing on two of his prose hymns, I argue that Aristides offers an oblique perspective on the notion of belief. In the prologue to his hymn To Sarapis, Aristides proposes his own set of criteria for talking about the gods: truth, credibility and coherence (Or. 45.1). I argue that it is his understanding of the relationship among these three terms – none of which corresponds, precisely, to our notions of belief and skepticism – that guides his assessment and presentation of the pagan gods, both here and in his other hymns. In the second part of the paper I present as an example a passage from his Corinthian Oration: To Poseidon (Or. 46), in which he discusses the relationship between Poseidon and Ino-Leucothea. Keeping in view the principles he sets out in the Hymn to Sarapis, I argue that Aristides gives this mythological episode a prominent place in his hymn for personal reasons, and that he rewrites the story to satisfy the intellectual challenge of his inner skeptic.
?
CV and Key Publications:
Janet Downie is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She specializes in Greek, and her research focuses on literature of the Roman imperial period. She is the author of At the Limits of Art: A Literary Reading of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi (Oxford 2013) and has published articles on a range of texts and authors of the imperial period including Philostratus (“Palamedes and the Wisdom of India in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana.” Mouseion. Volume 13.1 (2016): 65-84) and Artemidorus (“Narrative and Divination: Artemidorus and Aelius Aristides.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 15.1 (2013): 97-116). She has an essay on Aristides’ prose hymns in a forthcoming volume in the SAPERE series (“Literarischer G?tterpreis zu Zeiten Lukians: Die G?tterhymnen des Aelius Aristides.” In Lukian, Dialogi Deorum, edited by F. Berdozzo and H.-G. Nesselrath.? SAPERE. Mohr Siebeck), and is currently working on a book project on the perception and description of the landscapes of Asia Minor in imperial literature.
?
?
Kai Trampedach, Heidelberg, Germany
Plutarch als Apologet des Orakels von Delphi
Nur wenige Berichte sind im Rahmen der antiken Literatur überliefert, die nicht einzelne Konsultationen, sondern das delphische Orakel als solches thematisieren. Die wichtigsten und ausführlichsten von ihnen stammen von Plutarch, mithin einem Autor, der als Priester ein wichtiger Funktionstr?ger des Heiligtums von Delphi war. Zu Plutarchs Zeit, um die Wende vom 1. zum 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert, war der Ruhm von Delphi und insbesondere seines Orakels l?ngst ferne Vergangenheit, und das Heiligtum zog vermutlich mehr Touristen als Pilger an. Obwohl das Orakel zu dieser Zeit immer noch konsultiert werden konnte, waren sich doch alle Beteiligten darüber im Klaren, da? sie ein Abgrund von der Glanzperiode des 7. bis 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. trennte. 百利宫_百利宫娱乐平台￥官网en Abgrund gedanklich zu überbrücken, setzte sich – so die These, die ich vertreten m?chte – Plutarch zum Ziel. Seine delphische Dialoge reagierten auf eine weitverbreitete Skepsis sowie manifesten Unglauben, indem sie auf jeweils originelle Weise eine Fülle von (physischen, metaphysischen, rituellen, soziologischen, politischen) Argumenten er?rterten, um den sagenhaften Erfolg Delphis zu begründen. Dabei lie? Plutarch Probleme diskutieren, die noch den heutigen Forscher besch?ftigen: Wie ist die hervorgehobene Rolle, die das Orakel von Delphi einst in der griechischen Politik spielte, zu erkl?ren? Wie funktioniert(e) das Orakel? Welchen Ursprungs und welcher Art ist bzw. war die Inspiration der Pythia? Warum weissagt sie nicht mehr in Versen? Was sind die Gründe für den allgemeinen Bedeutungsrückgang der Orakelkommunikation in Griechenland?
In meinem Beitrag m?chte ich die Antworten auf diese Fragen, die in den delphischen Dialogen Plutarchs gegeben werden, mit Befunden der klassischen Zeit konfrontieren, um besser einsch?tzen zu k?nnen, aus welchen Quellen sich Unglaube und Skepsis speisen und welche Argumente Plutarch als Apologet des Orakels von Delphi dagegen und gegen die eigenen inneren Zweifel aufbieten konnte.
?
CV and Key Publications:
Kai Trampedach is a professor for Ancient History at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg. He has published articles and books on the relationship of philosophy or religion/theology and politics, political anthropology in the Ancient World, Hellenistic and Roman Judaism, and political rituals and hagiography in Late Antiquity. His dissertation deals with Platon, die Akademie und die zeitgen?ssische Politik (Steiner Verlag 1994). He edited (and contributed to) Practitioners of the Divine. Greek Priests and Religious Officials from Homer to Heliodorus (Harvard University Press 2008), and Theokratie und theokratischer Diskurs. Die Rede von der Gottesherrschaft und ihre politisch-sozialen Auswirkungen im interkulturellen Vergleich (Mohr Siebeck 2013). Quite recently, he published a book on Greek divination: Politische Mantik. Die Kommunikation über G?tterzeichen und Orakel im klassischen Griechenland (Verlag Antike 2015).
?
David P. Moessner, Fort Worth, Texas
Luke as Sceptical ‘Insider’: Re-configuring the ‘Tradition’ by Altering the Story???????
?
The author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles challenges the tradition represented by Mark by changing the epistemological contours of Mark’s narrative construal.? What has become the template in contemporary historical-critical scholarship for ‘the synoptic tradition’— and thus the epitome of the trifecta of ‘Synoptic’ Gospels—Matthew—Mark—Luke—actually runs counter to Luke’s attempt to break this ‘synoptic’ mold.? Luke not only registers his dissatisfaction with the Markan ‘narrative,’ but he also re-‘arranges’ the whole of the received tradition into an entirely new narrative hermeneutic for the emerging Christian traditions of the late first and early second centuries ce (cf. Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-8).?
Luke’s ‘Gospel’ and his ‘Acts’ that follow re-configure the Markan story into a tri-namic diorama of the Messiah of Israel’s enactment of salvation for the whole world.? By re-figuring Mark’s ‘bio-graphical’ silhouette of Jesus of Nazareth, Luke drafts a new, more comprehensive narrative arc of multiple actors through multiple periods of Israel’s history—patriarchs, prophets, saints, holy women, apostles, witnesses and counter-witnesses—all configured around the Anointed One who was pre-announced, predictably rejected, and preeminently enthroned as the Lord and Christ of God’s final “reign.”? Luke’s two-volume enterprise is nothing less than a new conceptualization of “all” [the traditions] (π?ντα, Luke 1:3) that go back to a beginning of “all that stands written” about Israel’s Christ and his bequeathing of a “new covenant,” crafted according to this “plan of God” pre-‘scripted’ in Israel’s scriptures.
?
Trevor Thompson, Chicago, USA
“Believe the Lie”: The Letters of Paul, Trust, and the Mask of Authenticity
?
Paul’s genuine letters address people (ο? πιστε?οντε?) who trust, with varying degrees of confidence, his message about the past, the present, and the future (1 Thess 1:6–10). Paul describes a person—Jesus—whom the letter recipients never met, a place few (if any!) have visited (Jerusalem), and events they did not witness (e.g., crucifixion [1 Cor 1:23]). Paul’s motives (1 Thess 2:3–8) and his message were impugned (perhaps rightly? [cf. Rom 3:7; 2 Cor 12:16–17]). In response, Paul famously avers, “I am telling the truth in Christ; I am not lying” (Rom 9:1; cf. 2 Cor 11:31; Gal 1:20). Separated by distance, Paul defends himself and the veracity of his message with letters. These documents often carry an explicit affirmation of genuineness: marks from Paul’s own hand (1 Cor 16:21; Gal 6:11; Phlm 19). These signs of authenticity were copied by those who wrote in Paul’s name to secure the trust of readers: “The greeting is from Paul, in my own hand, which is the mark of authenticity in every letter. This is my handwriting” (2 Thess 3:17; cf. Col 4:18). The author of 2 Thessalonians composed, in the words of Wilhelm Wrede, eine F?lschung (a forgery), a carefully crafted document that successfully concealed its true origin for centuries. The writer, wearing the mask of “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,” secured the trust of readers in order to achieve a particular rhetorical goal, recrafting of Paul’s imminent eschatology in 1 Thessalonians. Remarkably, the unidentified writer crafts a “false letter” (ψευδ?? ?πιστολ?)—“a deluding influence” [?ν?ργεια πλ?νη; cf. 2 Thess 2:11]—while warning about possible deception (2 Thess 2:3). In fact, the activity of the author in crafting 2 Thessalonians mirrors the depiction of the two divine actors, σαταν?? and θε??, as dueling eschatological deceivers. The former effects false signs and wonders (2 Thess 2:9–10); the latter causes people to trust falsehood (2 Thess 2:11). Both the author and his θε?? need a credulous populace “to believe the lie.”
?
CV and Key Publications: