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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Hi, Jim, >> >Thanks, Rochelle. Is _Absent Voices_ out yet? >> Yes, finally. I was told shipment of pre-orders will start Monday. >Dear Rochelle, >If this book is germane to the present discussion (or anything else >medieval!), may we have an abstract, please? My Phd is in Medieval English. So, yes, it is germane and it does indeed delve into things medieval... An abstract is at the listowner's discretion. I think I can say this much without permission: it's divided into two parts. Part one is a concise discussion of the history of writing systems from origins through the early centuries CE. Part two concentrates on the AS writing system in depth. McKitterick wondered if the AS's had a phonetic alphabet: they sure did. <G> [snip] >In the case of the Virgin Mary, the niche also >commonly became synchretically associated with trees early in the >Middle Ages. Wasn't there was a nice recent discussion on this? >> The concept of niche/cave is independent, so is the high place. >>Both of these concepts are found throughout the world and owe >>nothing to diffusion. The third concept, though, was disseminated. >.. >This is a difficult problem. If we do not suppose diffusion, how >does one account for such "universal" motifs? I feel uncomfortable >with ideas about Jungian archetypes, myself, but some kind of >psychoanalytic explanation seems inevitable. I'm not happy with Jungian archetypes, but worship of the sun -- the light giver -- is going to, and does, show up just about everywhere. Caves are a natural, too. Diffusion requires cultural contact. While intercontinental trade dates back to 12,000 BCE, the items of trade limit contact to the Eurasian land mass (including Britain), the Eastern Dodecanese, and the coast of North Africa via the landbridge until ca. 3,600-3,200 BCE when trade by sea picked up. The items of trade do not show contact with, for instance, the American continents, until long after high places/ziggurats and sacred cave/niches appear in those areas. So, diffusion is not involved. (BTW, The Mayans used the corbeled arch in their temple architecture.) >> The shape is the third of the three concepts involved. The high >>arch, straight-side, narrow column is North-West Semitic; it is >>also the shape of _Christian_ statuary niches, Christian grave >>markers, drawn on Christian codices, the shape of church doorways >>and windows, arcades and cloisters, the shape of the tablets held >by Moses in the MSS... It's the shape of "The" Law. >I appears that you have done a great deal of research on this. >Have you published on any aspect of it? I would certainly be >interested in any references you might be able to pass along. Well, I have both on-line and hard copy stuff around on different aspects of writing systems. As for the shape of the law, even though it's easy to show the origin at Sumer of the specific shape in the religious architecture, a really detailed discussion would take a good sized book because of the wide- spread use of the arch/vault architecturally. I'm forced to condense all the time. Luckily, the shape in the West is both distinctive and so heavily used in art, architecture, and illustration, that pictures can do a lot of the talking. A companion piece (much expanded in the book) is "The Size of the Law: Document Dimensions and their significance in the Imperial Administration," in Linda Jones Hall, ed., Confrontation in Late Antiquity: Imperial Presentation and Regional Adaptation. Cambridge, UK: Orchard Academic, 2003. I was nagged into writing up a report on the fake Temple Tablet in 2003 for a peer-reviewed on-line site. There's a condensed discussion on the shape of "The" Law in that. (bibleinterp.com/articles). The main discussion, with illustrations saving words, is in Absent Voices. Most of what I have out there is on the Dead Sea Scrolls or Iron Age ANE. I didn't want to duplicate Medieval material that's in the book. >Cheers, >Jim Bugslag Cheerfully yours, Rochelle ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html