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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