Showing papers by "Jan Assmann published in 2005"

Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies

Abstract: @fmct:Contents @toc4:Preface iii @toc2:Introduction: What is 'cultural memory'? 0 1 Invisible religion and cultural memory 2 Monotheism, memory and trauma. Reflections on Freud's book on Moses 000 3 Five stages on the road to the canon. Tradition and written culture in Ancient Israel and early Judaism 000 4 Remembering in order to belong. Writing, memory and identity 000 5 Cultural texts suspended between writing and speech 000 6 Text and ritual. The meaning of the media for the history of religion 000 7 Officium memoriae: ritual as the medium of thought 000 8 A life in quotation. Thomas Mann and the phenomenology of cultural memory 000 9 Egypt in Western memory 000 @toc4:Notes 000

Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt

Abstract: Translator's NoteIntroduction: Death and CulturePart One Images of Death Chapter 1 Death as Dismemberment Chapter 2 Death as Social Isolation Chapter 3 Death as Enemy Chapter 4 Death as Dissociation: The Person of the Deceased and Its Constituent Elements Chapter 5 Death as Separation and Reversal Chapter 6 Death as Transition Chapter 7 Death as Return Chapter 8 Death as Mystery Chapter 9 Going Forth by DayPart Two Rituals and Recitations Chapter 10 Mortuary Liturgies and Mortuary Literature Chapter 11 In the Sign of the Enemy: The Protective Wake in the Place of Embalming Chapter 12 The Night of Vindication Chapter 13 Rituals of Transition from Home to Tomb Chapter 14 Provisioning the Dead Chapter 15 Sacramental Explanation Chapter 16 Freedom from the Yoke of Transitoriness: Resultativity and Continuance Chapter 17 Freedom from the Yoke of Transitoriness: ImmortalityAfterword: Egypt and the History of DeathNotes Index

Monotheismus und die Sprache der Gewalt

Abstract: Warum beschreiben die biblischen Texte die G r ü n d u n g und Durchsetzung der monotheis t ischen Religion in so gewaltsamen Bildern? Haf te t der monotheis t ischen Idee, der ausschließlichen Verehrung eines einzigen Got tes anstelle einer Götterwel t oder der Unterscheidung zwischen wahrer und falscher Religion, einem wahren Got t und den falschen Göt te rn etwas Gewal tsames an? Die Aktual i tä t dieser Fragen liegt auf der Hand , denn nicht die Vergangenheit als solche, sondern die Form unserer Er innerung daran treibt uns um und orientiert unser Handeln . Die Wiederkehr der Religion, die wir seit einigen Jahrzehnten erleben, ist in be­ ängstigender Weise mit Gewalt , Bedrohungsbewußtse in , Haß, Angst und der Produkt ion von Feindbi ldern verbunden . D a h e r können wir der Frage nach einem möglichen Z u s a m m e n h a n g zwi­ schen Monothe ismus und Gewal t nicht ausweichen. Ich weiß aber auch nur allzu gut, daß ich mich mit diesem The­ ma in vermintes Gelände begebe. Seit den Zei ten der Aufklä rung , mindestens seit 300 Jahren , wird der Bibel und insbesondere dem Alten Testament die Sprache der Gewalt vorgehal ten. Viele Argu­ mente der philosophischen Religionskritik sind später von den Antisemiten des 19. und 20. Jahrhunder t s beerb t und in antijü­ dische Klischees wie z. B. die unsägliche R e d e vom „al t tes tament­ lichen Rachegot t " umgemünzt worden, so daß man heute die bib­ lischen Stellen nicht mehr zitieren kann, ohne nicht sofort in diesem Sinne mißvers tanden zu werden. Nichts liegt mir jedoch ferner, als diese abges tandene und unf ruch tbare Polemik wieder aufwärmen zu wollen. Andererse i t s ist das Problem, das diese Pas­ sagen darstellen, nicht dadurch zu lösen, daß man sie tabuisiert . Die Sprache der Gewal t in den heiligen Schriften der Juden , Christen, Muslime und vieler anderer auf einen exklusiven Wahr­ heitsbegriff gegründeter Religionen ist ein Phänomen , daß zu­ nächst einmal jenseits aller Kritik und Polemik vers tanden werden will und das umso mehr, als, wie gesagt, die heutige Welt in bislang unbekann tem und von niemandem vorhergesehenen U m f a n g von einer Gewalt heimgesucht wird, die sich auf Got t und die heiligen Schriften beruft . Angesichts der aktuellen Weltlage können wir es uns nicht leisten, unsere Augen vor der Frage zu verschließen, ob

Axial 'Breakthroughs' and semantic 'Relocations' in Ancient Egypt and Israel

Abstract: The theory of the Axial Age was formulated around the time of World War II, between 1935 and 1956. It was developed by three thinkers, the sociologist Alfred Weber, whose Kultursoziologie appeared in 1935, the philosopher Karl Jaspers, whose Vom Ursprung und yjel der Geschichte followed in 1949, and the political philosopher Eric Voegelin, who started publishing his monumental Order and History in 1956. Although they never formed a school of thought, there is little doubt about their intellectual connection. Voegelin spent a year at Heidelberg (1929) and studied with Alfred Weber and Karl Jas­ pers. Further, we can also assume that both Jaspers and Voegelin were significandy influenced by Alfred Weber even though they didn’t do much to acknowledge their debt to him.1 In all three accounts of the transition from a “pre-axial” to an “axial” age, the common element was the opposition between, on the one side, the “pre-axial” civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and, on the other, the “axial” civilizations of Greece and Israel. This does not mean that reference to other civilizations was lacking. Weber and Jaspers extended the scope of their work to the Far East, by including India and China, while Voegelin devoted several chapters to Zoroastrianism and to China. However, as far as the “pre-axial” world was concerned, Egypt and Mesopotamia constituted its only representatives—and rightly so, given that these are the only civilizations where the written evidence

Monotheism and its political consequences

Abstract: Monotheism introduced a new distinction into the realm of religion, bringing about a totally new form of religion whose hallmark was less the exclusive worship of one god, but the distinction as such. This distinction nnplies a whole scale of concretizations between the poles of a more ontological and cognitive meaning with regard to true and falsc, and of a more ethical and deontic mcaning witii regard to ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ or just and unjust, or iieedom and ‘slavery.’ Drawing the distinction entails making a decision, and this decision of necessity lmplies rejecting the discarded option. Tlus new form of rehgion is based on a dccision, which m lts turn is based on a deep conviction, implying strong notions of what is deemed incompatible. All convictions aspiring to any depth and power require those strong conccpts of the excludcd other. The monotheistic, oi ‘Mosaic’ distinction, which in its last consequence means the distinction between ‘God and the world, is hard to draw, and the Bible is very exphcit about thcse many difficulties and drawbacks. Monotheism requircd a firm dccision and correspondingly strong concepts about ‘the other,’ for which a whole new vocabulary was created: the ‘heathens,’ ‘pagans,’ ‘gentiles,’ ‘unbelievers,’ ‘idolaters,’ ‘hcretics’ etc. Thc strength of the decision and the firmness of the conviction imply an element of violence. This element of violence becomes obvious as soon as the distinction betwc en true and false or good and evil is turncd into the distinction between friend and ‘foe.’ I do not hold that this new form of religion brought violence into the world; the world, of course, was already full of violence before the advcnt of monotheism. One could even argue that monotheism, by abolishing ethnic and national distinctions and creating overarching identities and solidarities, tends to make the world more peaceful. But it is impossible to deny that at least potentially this

Moses as Go-Between: John Spencer’s Theory of Religious Translation

Abstract: To present Moses as a go-between in the context of a volume on Renaissance go-betweens may seem an unlikely proposition after all, the Moses of the Bible, if he ever lived at all, cannot have been alive during the Renaissance. My only excuse is that I am dealing with Moses as he was conceived of by Dr. John Spencer, who lived from 1630 until 1693. In his monumental work De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus, Spencer presented Moses as a figure between two worlds, the Hebrew world in which he was born and to which he eventu­ ally returned, and the Egyptian world in which he was educated. This sounds very much like the Biblical Moses; Spencer's Moses, however, did not simply return to his people, but brought and taught them what he had learned in the Egyptian mysteries. His legislation amounts to a translation of Egyptian 'hieroglyphical' wisdom into Hebrew Law. This is what made him a genuine go­between. Spencer's Egyptian genealogy of Biblical religion calls to mind the writ­ ings of Freud, who also held that Moses took his monotheism from Egypt. And in fact, John Spencer was himself a go­between. He stood between the world of the theological tradition of the 17 century, and the world of free­ thought, i.e. deism and freemasonry, of the 18 century, and in an even wider perspective, he stands, as we shall see, between Maimonidcs, the Jewish phi­ losopher of the 12 century, and Sigmund Freud, the Jewish theorist of the 20 century. In his own time, Spencer held an uncontested position as a dean of Ely and prefector of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, and was never, to the best