medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear John
Thanks for the comment! I try to be as specific as possible, and where necessary use a term like 'other religious groups' or 'faith communities'. 'Conversion of pagan temples' is better expressed as 'appropriation of other people's places of worship and ritual'.
I had an interesting discussion last week with a small but mixed bunch of students (two of them in Muslim dress, one of whom wears a full birka) about this very topic, including past uses of words like 'heathen' and 'infidel' and pointing out the semantic and cultural links between 'qafr' and 'kaffir'. Next term we get to think about 'jihad' and 'holy war' together as a way of approaching the Crusades - which of course had no corresponding portmanteau term, unless it was 'wars with the faranj', another generalised expression of the Other.
Happy Christmas!
Graham
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From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dillon [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 21 December 2011 16:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] 'Pagan' (WAS: Re: [M-R] Summer university in Budapest 2012 Polemos/Pulmus: Ways of Confrontation in Judaism, Paganism and Christianity in Late Antiquity)
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 12/21/11, Graham Jones wrote:
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> No absolution needed - since the title of the course raises an issue that extends through the medieval period, and indeed to the present day, in relation to treatment of the Other - namely the use of the P word
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> in our Judeo-Christocentric discourse. Some day (if only in my lifetime but I doubt it) someone with the intellect and persuasion to make a difference will begin to get the academy to use the P word in its proper sense (as referring to Judeo-Christian rejection
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> of the Other) and not as a catch-all term for any religion which is not one of the 'universal' faiths.
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> I refuse to use the P word when I'm teaching, on the basis that lumping together the non-J/C religions has no utility in trying to make sense of past societies - other than to highlight our ignorance and their antipathies.
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Dear Graham,
Classicists now frequently use 'polytheist' as a substitute for 'pagan'. But this ignores the existence in antiquity of non-J/C monotheisms. And, of course, not all those who pragmatically accepted the gods of the Roman state will have had identical or even closely related belief systems. At least for Hellenistic and Roman-empire antiquity, when we have cities and larger territories inhabited by adherents of more than one non-J/C faith, some sort of umbrella term is called for. How do you refer in teaching to non-J/C religions in areas where more than one of these co-existed at the time to which you have reference and when it's not possible to speak solely of a single one of these?
Best,
John Dillon
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