medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> This may not be what you're looking for, but the life of the Buddha
> eventually made its way into the west and was adapted into a
> hagiography: Saint Josaphat. The story is included in the Golden Legend.
In a similar vein, the story of the Three Living and the Three Dead apparently
originated in the east. Muslim textiles (as well as Byzantine textiles, which used
many of the same motifs) resulted in the importation of many mythological beasts.
Some of these, like griffins, were not exclusively eastern, but others, like senmurvs,
were; it is hard to say, however, that they were "Christianized".
One of the clearest eastern motifs that was actually Christianized, however, was the
weighing of souls in Last Judgement images. Even though one of the four riders in
Revelations holds a pair of scales, the weighing imagery itself can be traced quite
precisely back to New Kingdom Egypt, where books of the dead contained
illustrations of Osiris (or Thoth?) weighing souls. According to Louis Reau, it was
Coptic Christians who first adapted this motif to a Christian context.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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