Opposition 4     The two spiritualities, Mesopotamian and Biblical, represent the two sides of a binary opposition: tertium non datur.

Appropriation in a Humanistic Way 3     The universally valid perceptions that underlie Mesopotamian and Biblical spirituality invite us to make them our own, to appropriate them in a humanistic way.

Time 5     In Mesopotamia, the codification of time in the calendar had a religious significance in the awareness that the cycle of the seasons is not established by man, and also in the emphasis on beginning: the New Year begins a cycle.

The Temple in Jerusalem 4     The construction of the temple in Jerusalem was seen as rooted in God's decision, and it was seen as a house only for his name. There was only to be one temple in the whole country, in order to avoid suggesting a multiplicity of dwellers.

God whose touching presence in history

There is no documentation of cyclical time in Mesopotamia: historical writings show a narrative progression including development of continuity and unique events. The difference in conceptions of time can better be accessed by looking at the nature of the spiritual center of history, the subject that is transformed in time.

Political structures control the mechanisms of power ideally not through coercion but tensional factors that unite the social group. 2     Religion is an essentially political act.

proverbs

 Evidence for spontaneous prayer in Mesopotamia includes personal names (often phrases expressing personal piety),

In Mesopotamia, gods are asked to determine, but not to change, fate. The nature of intercession, in Mesopotamia, is resolved in the request to the gods to implement an event that is already in the nature of things, according to patterns known to the gods better than to anyone else.

Magic can be seen as the cult of the mythology of fate. The gods do not provide remedies, but only act as the executors of rituals which do so.

Religious rituals serve to institutionalize individual efforts to establish an interactive link with the divine element. There are two dimensions: the confirmation of the relationship with the divine element and the restoration of order when it is broken.

Epiphanic dreams contain symbols than must be interpreted. In Mesopotamia, this was done through divination with a catalog of protases and apodoses

A theophanic dream involves a message communicated explicitly to a sleeper by a figure fro; the divine sphere.

In Mesopotamia, the main example of an experience similar to Biblical prophecy is a group of texts from Mari recording messages by individuals outside the political and religious hierarchy containing juridical verdicts. However, we do not see the development of a prophetic personality or a historical or literary tradition in these figures. The messages were verified through divination and they dealt with pragmatic events rather than matters of spiritual significance or moral authority.

The first of these invasions is creation itself, in which the prophetic message is the articulation of the divine intervention that continuously supports and sustains the world of nature. The ethos of creation therefore involves the perception of this perpetually regenerating intervention, the awareness of a divine capacity for fresh and new initiatives, the intellectual and emotional willingness to respond with equal spontaneity to this unexpected emergence of the divine presence.

 The Šumma izbu record of abnormal births can be seen as providing a degree of order into an unusual and alarming event. They consist of a protasis (a hypothetical condition) and an apodosis (the omen itself). A degree of systemization is present but there also seems to have been a high degree of empirical observation.

 For Mesopotamians, the absolute manifests itself through a progressive and cumulative self-manifestation of the great plan, so to speak, of fate: that is, of the regularity and irregularity within nature.

 Mesopotamian moral texts are casuistic, seeking to correct an imbalance of harmony without reference to a central authoritative source.

inferentially documented because of the cultural testimony of those who are affected by it. We can distinguish three types of perception: inference, epiphany, and incarnation.

affecting presence

affecting presence

"Transitivity" 3     In Mesopotamian religion, the relationship with the absolute exhibits an intransitive character and there is no direct relationship with an object as such. In Biblical tradition, the relationship is transitive and direct, which implies deep structural differences.

The Affecting Presence 1     A broad concept of the absolute is universally applicable and we can study cultural variations in the articulation of perception. To study these articulations, we can look at whether they involve an individual or a group, whether the absolute or the human is the subject and whether this is understood implicitly or explicitly.

 Rather than evemeristic interpretations of myth, wherein gods are allegories for abstract concepts or natural phenomena, I propose that what lies at the beginning is the perception of the absolute, and the reference to natural phenomena is the result of an effort aimed at giving substance to this perception.

All the attributes of the individual gods merge in the God of Israel. He emerges at the same time as personified fate/destiny, the absolute that implements the relative, rather than a relativized absolute. He exists outside spatial and temporal limits.

Considering polytheistic deities aspects of the absolute, we arrive at the concept of a relativized absolute, i.e. a composite absolute that derives its unity from the dynamic interaction of its own constituent parts.

If the plurality of manifestations is the most striking aspect in polytheism, there is nevertheless a strong tendency that presupposes a basic unity of the divine essence, a coherence evident in: 1. the consistency of the divine family tree; 2. a linguistic and categorical awareness of a divine element separate from individual gods 3. the organization of individual deities into groups 4. attributes common to all deities 5. the phenomenon of syncretism, where one god takes the place of another 6. how the names of the gods sometimes appear interchangeable.

Polytheism and monotheism are absolute structural opposites in their relationship with fundamental aspects of reality, not mere quantitative variations.

In biblical monotheism, every encounter of the absolute with becoming is an absolute event, in which the non-time and time, the eternal and the temporal, encounter each other, because events are sparked by an absolute subject.

In monotheism, the initiative rests with God while in polytheism, the divinities are more receptive than active.

 Religion consists of an encounter with the absolute translated into various modalities which assume a specific cultural value.

Control extends to space and time as well, with the invention of calendars and the idealization of physical features of the landscape.

There is no term "religion" in the Mesopotamian languages, but the absence of the term does not indicate the absence of the experience.

An emphasis on spirituality aids in studying the system from a structural point of view.

 In this exploration, we must be aware of our cultural assumptions, and reach for an objectivity that is in tune with the assumptions of the phenomena we study.

Like I have used the term “absolute” to unite in a single concept what different traditions refer to as god, the divine or fate

Behind religion, a “structured and culturally defined codification”, lies what I term “spirituality” and consider to be the origin of religious phenomena.

There is a structural analogy between religious systems, based on the difference in how the absolute is conceived.

A “god” is an active absolute, and is capable of interacting with humans. The alternative is an inert absolute which underlies reality but does not intervene or interact with humans.

The central point of the considerations developed here has to do with the deeper distinction between polytheism and monotheism. These are radical contrasts that go far beyond the quantification suggested by the two terms. Thus the contrast of two mutually exclusive conceptions emerges in full light, conceptions which coherently propose, albeit over a long period of centuries, a real system for defining the absolute and relating to it.

Because one is “conditioned in repeated and coherent ways”, it is possible to speak of a perception of the absolute, even if it is empirically unknown.

 “By religion I mean the codification of the interaction with an absolute that remains empirically unknown, but is nevertheless empirically assumed.” The absolute is the assumed source of an inescapable conditioning of human experience.

Of course, the interrrelationship of argument and record is at the heart of the scholarly method in principle. Whether on paper or in a digital format (such as PDF), any publication will draw conclusions from a deductive reasoning based on other arguments or an inductive reasoning based on cited data. So, where is the difference?

The ultimate achievement of poetry is that it refuses segmentation. Yes, there may be a verse that stands out and that we carry in memory as particularly evocative. But ultimately every "piece," i.e., every word or segment of a poem, whether articulated metrically (as with verses) or not, is in absolute need of all the other pieces.

website as an ideal epistemological instrument, i. e., a channel for conveying knowledge. It is an ideal vehicle to this end first and foremost because it allows us to combine the two systems relating to data and argument in ways that are not possible in the paper format.

within the purview of digital discourse, such fluidity is the hallmark of a deeper value, for it leads to a firm apprehension of the whole.

requires a new level of commitment to the process through which scholarship is constructed and communicated. The full argument which the digital discourse unfolds rests in fact on this extreme multiplicity of layers

analogy with a bus tour of a city, with the option of getting off

"information" can become antithetical to "communication," which implies sharing a value, something that stands by itself regardless of whom it reaches, or how rapidly.

The ultimate achievement of poetry is that it refuses segmentation. Yes, there may be a verse that stands out and that we carry in memory as particularly evocative. But ultimately every "piece," i.e., every word or segment of a poem, whether articulated metrically (as with verses) or not, is in absolute need of all the other pieces.

narrative

structure data

definition of religion.

History of the Discipline

Jonah Lynch

alternatives can be compared through their structures

This is the character of a map, which as it gains precision, it also loses usability. A completely precise map, as has often been pointed out, would cease to be useful because it would simply be a copy of the reality it was meant to model. In a similar way, a completely precise definition of "religion" would serve no general purpose, because it would coincide with one or another historical experience.

UCLA is an engine for real-world innovation that impacts our lives on a daily basis.

the basic underlying concept is the distinction between an open and a closed system, where -etic refers to the first, and -emic to the second.