This article is intended as a contribution to the debate on the nature of the early Islamic state (especially 1–70 AH/622–690 AD), as regards both its government and its ideology. It presents and ...discusses new documentary evidence that sheds light on these subjects and tries to advance a little further the discussion of two questions that have been particularly hotly debated in recent years. These are: whether the Muslims merely continued the administrative practices of the Byzantines and Persians or introduced innovations, and why recognizably Islamic messages do not appear in the material record before the reign of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (65–85 AH/685–705 AD). Finally, this article attempts to draw attention to the relative under-use of documents, whether papyri, coins, rock inscriptions or the like, and to illustrate the different ways in which they might be deployed to enhance our knowledge of this very important topic.
All of the historical religions emerged in a context of religious plurality and, at times, bitter inter-religious rivalry. In our late modern age, the challenge of plurality has become all the more ...pervasive. This paper examines the varied traditions of knowledge and practice developed by Muslim jurists, political leaders, and religious thinkers to engage people of non-Muslim faith, from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to today. It highlights three themes. First, there was never any single message with regard to how the Muslim community should engage plurality. Second, the historical practice of Muslim rulers has often shown greater variation (and occasional "liberality") with regard to questions of plurality than has jurisprudence. Third, and last, however, as with the practitioners of other faiths, Muslims in modern times have had to revisit and rethink their traditions with regards to plurality, and both inclusive and exclusive currents have emerged. The challenge of plurality is likely to remain a core issue in Muslim politics and public ethics for some years to come.
The present dissertation offers a study and the first translation into English of an important but overlooked work by the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775- 1854), ...namely his treatise Der Monotheismus. This text belongs to the corpus of Schelling’s later philosophy (Spätphilosophie), which he developed and expounded over the last four decades of his life. In addition to offering a detailed analysis of the text, the present study considers the genesis and development of the treatise. Through an analysis of the concept of monotheism in Schelling's so-called "middle period" works, and an evaluation of recently published diaries containing the earliest materials of his later works, it shows the importance of Monotheism in the formation of the later philosophy. Further, the study sheds light on the significance of this work by considering its place and role in the structure of this later philosophy. It notably considers the function of the treatise in the construction of Schelling's positive philosophy of religion. Together with the Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, to which it is formally connected, Monotheism presents a historical-analytical or inductive access to the positive concept of religion. Based on an analysis of the universally accepted concept of monotheism, the treatise explains how the unity (and therefore truth) of God should be understood. After defining God as a unity in plurality, it shows how the constitutive potencies of God's being operate in creation and human consciousness. The historical emergence of mythology is consequently proven to be the product of a theogonic process in human consciousness. The study concludes with a consideration of what it means for Schelling that all religion derives from monotheism. It explains the entire history of religions as passage from a monotheism that is blind and innate to the essence of the human being, to a freely recognized monotheism, a monotheism of the spirit.
This thesis will analyse the influence of the Presocratic philosophers on the tragedies of Euripides. My concern will not be so much with the Sophistic Movement immediately contemporary to Euripides ...(on which much work has been done since the 19th century), but rather the earlier schools of philosophers concerned with physical phenomena and their relationship to the divine. In this regard, my primary interest is in those philosophers who manifested ideas of Material Monism, particularly the Milesians, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and later in the fifth century Diogenes of Apollonia and the Derveni Papyrus. I take the position that this group of philosophers, although different in a number of ways, preserve a common notion that there is a unity underlying all things which may also be regarded as divine, and that the manifestation of this in the mortal sphere is though unity in opposites, or else a unity in a multiplicity of different instantiations. The hypothesis of my research is that Euripides’ portrayal of the gods embodies this intellectual current of monistic Presocratic thought. Euripides’ gods are in the old anthropomorphic form, but coherently display every characteristic of what this current of monistic Presocratic thought considers to be divine through a manifestation of unity in opposites or multiplicities. I also contend that a number of the apparent inconsistencies and contradictions in Euripides’ surviving work, for example questions of plot and morality, may be explained by reference to this intellectual principle.This thesis will make a contribution to the study of Euripides by taking a different approach to the only recent works on the field by Assaël and Egli. By looking for the manifestations of this Presocratic monism in Euripides, it will offer a new perspective on his approach to contemporary philosophy and ideas of the gods.
...the rise of Judaism as a religion of the book seems to have stopped quite suddenly, more or less with the birth of Christianity. For the rabbis, orality seems to have provided a protection against ...the dangers of dissemination. ...the very holiness of the Torah which stood in a category of its own might have inhibited them from producing other books-as if there could be only one single book in their religious tradition. ...Augustine would still be able to call the Jews both librarii nostri (our scribes),9 and custodes librorum nostrorum (keepers of our books).10 Thus, during the pogrom organized in 418 by the Christians on the Jewish community of Minorca, the arsonists took great care to save the sacred books of the Jews. ...this was a culture based almost exclusively upon one book, or one set of books, the Bible, the revealed Scripture, as Douglas Burton-Christie has shown so well.25 From being extensive, reading became intensive, as it were.26 In this sense, one can argue for some similitude between the attitude of the monks and that of the Rabbis.
O ponto de partida do presente artigo consiste na afirmação de que as religiões originárias do Próximo Oriente - Judaísmo, Cristianismo, e Islamismo - contêm em si mesmas inconsistências práticas e ...teóricas. Mais ainda, o autor afirma que estas religiões estão em contradição umas com as outras no que diz respeito a aspectos teológicos essenciais, para além de que entre elas existe um passado de guerra e de conflito. Ora estas são precisamente as razões pelas quais o autor considera que a credibilidade epistemológica e moral destas religiões foi dramaticamente afectada. Daí o principal objectivo do artigo: contribuir para o esclarecimento do modo como Filosofia e Teologia podem cooperar entre si em ordem a uma mitigação destas deficiências. Nesse sentido, segundo o autor, uma e outra devem abraçar a possibilidade de demonstrar epistemologicamente que os conteúdos da revelação do ponto de vista da razão não são nem demonstráveis nem refutáveis, pois esses conteúdos não são proposições científicas acerca de eventos e processos interiores ao mundo, mas apenas a expressão de uma atitude religiosa em relação ao mundo no seu todo (e em relação a Deus). Nessa medida, diz o autor, nada justifica que atitudes religiosas de fé e de amor sejam caracterizadas como 'irracionais', antes a elas se devendo aplicar a designação de 'a-racional' ou simplesmente de 'transracional. Mais ainda, a Filosofia e a Teologia estão em posição de mostrar de que modo atitudes religiosas fundamentais estão construídas umas sobre as outras. Com efeito, básica em todas as formas de religião é uma atitude em relação ao mundo considerado como um todo, tal como se pode encontrar, por exemplo, no Taoismo ou no Zen-Budismo, de modo que aqui não se encontra qualquer forma de crença numa divindade transcendente; ora é precisamente esta atitude que o autor do artigo designa por 'Religiosidade A'. Como 'Religiosidade B', por outro lado, designa o autor toda a atitude religiosa de fundo que transcende o mundo presente e nos remete para a existência de um Deus único e da sua Revelação, tal como é o caso com o Judaísmo, o Cristianismo, e o Islamismo. Aqui, a tarefa consiste sobretudo em clarificar de forma lógica e conceptual a possibilidade de uma auto-revelação divina bem como da sua aceitabilidade nos termos de uma crença humanamente constituída. Finalmente, o artigo refere também aquela que o autor considera ser a 'Religiosidade C', expressão esta que simplesmente denota aquela atitude em que, com base nas premissas presentes nas formas A e B de religiosidade, somos especificamente remetidos para á Revelação cristã, ou seja, para a experiência nos termos da qual se professa a encarnação de Deus em Jesus de Nazaré e se afirma a sua condição de ser expressão do amor incondicional de Deus para com todos os seres humanos. Na verdade, a natureza incondicional deste amor apresenta-se como um escândalo moral diante da auto-compreensão ética da humanidade. Consequentemente, a incompreensibiliâade deste amor não pode ser senão objecto da revelação divina e da pura fé, únicos modos possíveis de ele se transformar numa possível justificação 'moral' dos seres humanos. /// Starting-point of this article is the fact that the religions originated from the Near East - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - do contain in themselves theoretical and practical inconsistencies. Moreover, they contradict each other in essential theological regards, and they made war upon each other in the past. For these reasons, their epistemological and moral credibility has been dramatically diminished. In this context, the article aims at showing how philosophy and theology might be able to work together in alleviating these deficits. First, they may demonstrate epistemologically that the contents of revelation are neither rationally demonstrable nor refutable because they are not scientific statements upon events and processes within the world but the expression of a religious attitude towards the world as a whole (and towards God). Therefore, such attitudes as religious faith and love shouldn't be designated 'irrational', but rather as arational' or, 'transrational'. Furthermore, philosophy and theology are able to show in what manner fundamental religious attitudes are built upon another: Basic for all higher forms of religion is an attitude towards the world as a whole – as one can find for instance in Daoism or Zen-Buddhism – where there is not yet any belief in a transcendent deity; that attitude is called 'Religiosity A'. So called 'Religiosity B' is a fundamental attitude which transcends this world and refers to a sole God and his revelation as can be found among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Here, the possibility of divine self-revelation and of its acceptability by human faith has to be clarified logically and conceptually. Finally, 'Religiosity C denotes that attitude which, on the premises of those Religiosities A and B, refers to the specifically Christian revelation which confesses the incarnation of God in Jesus and presents him as the expression of God's unconditional love to all human beings. The unconditionality of this love seems to be a moral scandal to human moral understanding. Therefore, this unconceivable love has to be object of divine revelation and of pure faith so that it might be the basis of all possible 'moral' justification of humankind.
During the reform movements instigated under British colonialism (1870—1920), Sikh identity and tradition were re-framed according to various foreign hierarchies of ascent, transcendence, and ...separation. Undergirding this colonial discourse lay the distinction between animality and humanity, such that the reformation split the animal body from the rational mind in the creation of Sikh-ism as an Indic mimete of a Christian-type monotheism. This hierarchical "verticality" overlooked the temporal and horizontal tenor of Sikh scripture wherein the body is the site of socio-religious praxis. It is argued that the hermeneutic task now demands a recovery of the suppressed "pantheistic" or horizontal dimension in Sikh scripture. In such a task, an uncanny resemblance arises between how European philosophers describe the animal's difference (from the human) and how the Sikh Gurūs describe the saint's difference (from the human), such that the Sikh's embracing of the world could be more aptly described as an animal sublime. The figure of the animal thus serves as an intriguing node about which the uniqueness of the Sikh mystical body can be re-read, while at the same time revealing an unblinking critique of the modern Western subject. By speaking in a postcolonial, postorientalist, and posthumanist voice, the Sikh mystical body resonates with and probes further the subversive voices internal to modern Western discourse (here depicted primarily by Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch). While the Gurū Granth Sāhib's particular mysticism does not deny the importance of thinking and reason per se, it nevertheless offers a clear critique of the modern, Western, humanist, male subject whose ultimate authority rests in rational logic. The Sikh Gurūs' focus on an experiential knowledge that arises from a "sublime animal" body offers a provocative image for Western sensibility to contemplate—even as it recalls its own subversive voices. The provocation arises primarily because the animal body signals an alternative (and largely forgotten or repressed) epistemology.
In antiquity, south-eastern Canaan was a very important centre for copper smelting. While it is likely that there existed a patron deity of metallurgy, the identity of the Canaanite god of smelting ...remains unknown. Although some biblical writings suggest a south Canaanite origin of Yahweh, no details are provided concerning his worship prior to him becoming the god of Israel. This study explores whether Yahweh was formerly the Canaanite god of metallurgy. The following observations corroborate this hypothesis: (1) Yahweh was worshiped by the Edomites, and especially by the Kenites, a small tribe regarded as the Canaanite smelters; (2) the Israelite cult of Yahweh was associated with copper and with a bronze serpent, a typical symbol of metallurgy; (3) the melting of copper is considered in Exodus 4 as the specific sign of Yahweh; (4) a parallel exists between Yahweh and the god of metallurgy worshiped in Egypt (Ptah), Mesopotamia (Ea/Enki) and Elam (Napir), all of them being a mysterious lonely deity; (5) fighting the (other) gods is common to Yahwism and to ancient metallurgical traditions. These data suggest that, before becoming publicly worshipped in Israel, Yahweh was formerly the god of the Canaanite guild of metallurgists.
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