God, Religion and Society in Ancient Thought PDF Download
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Author: Giovanni Giorgini
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783896659767
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The relationship between religion, social structures and political institutions has always played a fundamental role in human societies. This collection of essays aims to explore possible ways in which philosophical conceptualizations of god, the gods, and the divine in the ancient world interact with traditional religious practices and institutions, as well as with non-philosophical images of the divine. It spans from the 'rationalization' of the divine operated by early Greek philosophers to the notion of toleration one may find in Augustine. It features such authors as Plato (who uses for the first time in history the words 'theology' and 'atheism'), and Aristotle, with his intellectualist view of God. It will be valuable to readers interested in intellectual history, political theory, history of religion and classics.
Author: Giovanni Giorgini
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783896659767
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The relationship between religion, social structures and political institutions has always played a fundamental role in human societies. This collection of essays aims to explore possible ways in which philosophical conceptualizations of god, the gods, and the divine in the ancient world interact with traditional religious practices and institutions, as well as with non-philosophical images of the divine. It spans from the 'rationalization' of the divine operated by early Greek philosophers to the notion of toleration one may find in Augustine. It features such authors as Plato (who uses for the first time in history the words 'theology' and 'atheism'), and Aristotle, with his intellectualist view of God. It will be valuable to readers interested in intellectual history, political theory, history of religion and classics.
Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Author: Patrick Reid
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809128501
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
An anthology of primary readings in ancient western religious thought from the beginnings of civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt (c. 3000 B.C.E.) to the collapse of the Roman Empire (c. 450 C.E.). +
Author: F. B. Jevons
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 113
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Book Description
This fascinating book revolves around the idea of God outside of Judeo-Christian framework. It was written by Frank Byron Jevons, a polymath, academic and administrator of Durham University. Each chapter in the book is dedicated to analyzing the concept of God through the lens of mythology, worship, and prayer.
Author: Henri Frankfort
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226260119
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
This classic study clearly establishes a fundamental difference in viewpoint between the peoples of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. By examining the forms of kingship which evolved in the two countries, Frankfort discovered that beneath resemblances fostered by similar cultural growth and geographical location lay differences based partly upon the natural conditions under which each society developed. The river flood which annually renewed life in the Nile Valley gave Egyptians a cheerful confidence in the permanence of established things and faith in life after death. Their Mesopotamian contemporaries, however, viewed anxiously the harsh, hostile workings of nature. Frank's superb work, first published in 1948 and now supplemented with a preface by Samuel Noah Kramer, demonstrates how the Egyptian and Mesopotamian attitudes toward nature related to their concept of kingship. In both countries the people regarded the king as their mediator with the gods, but in Mesopotamia the king was only the foremost citizen, while in Egypt the ruler was a divine descendant of the gods and the earthly representative of the God Horus.
Author: William Charlton
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
ISBN: 0227906977
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Where should God be in thinking about society, or society in thinking about God? This book shows how philosophy can help non-philosophers with these questions. It shows that intelligence is the product, not the source, of society and language, and the rationality of individuals is inevitably conditioned by the distinctive customs and beliefs of their societies. Addressing the idea that religion can impede the smooth running of society, it argues that the Western concept of religion is taken from Christianity and cannot usefully be extended to non-European cultures. But any society will be threatened by a sub-society with customs conflicting with those of the whole in which it exists, and Jews, Christians and Muslims have sometimes formed such sub-societies. Charlton proceeds to consider how our dependence upon society fits with traditional beliefs about creation, salvation and life after death, and offers a synthesis that is new without being unorthodox. He indicates where Christian customs concerning birth, death, sex and education conflict with those of secular liberalism and considers which culture, Christian or secular liberal, has the better chance of prevailing in a globalised world.
Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Author: J. P. F. Wynne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107070481
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Do the gods love you? Cicero gives deep and surprising answers in two philosophical dialogues on traditional Roman religion.
Author: Britannica Educational Publishing
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
ISBN: 1622751590
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
While the ancient Roman pantheon in many ways resembles that of ancient Greece, there is much that sets apart Roman mythology. Romans also borrowed from the religions of ancient Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Middle East, and legendary figures such as Romulus and Remus, tied closely to the history of Rome, feature prominently in ancient stories. The major and lesser figures of Roman mythology are presented in this vibrant volume with sidebars spotlighting related facts and concepts about Roman mythology and religion.
Author: John M. Rist
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521589529
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
A detailed and accurate account of the character and effects of Augustine's thought.
