Now remembered primarily as Franz Kafta's friend and literary executor, Max Brod was an accomplishered thinker and writer in his own right. In this volume, he considers the nature and differences between Judaism and Christianity, addressing some of the most perplexing questions at the heart of human existence. “One of the most famous and widely discussed books of the 1920’s, Max Brod’s Paganism—Christianity—Judaism, has at last found its way into English translation to confront a new generation of readers. Max (...) Brod is best remembered today as the literary editor and friend of Franz Kafka. In his day, however, he was the more famous of the two by far. A major novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and composer, he was also, as this book demonstrates, a serious thinker on the perennial questions that are at the heart of human existence. . . .Some of his judgments are open to question. Still, with all its limitations, this is a forthright and passionate proclamation of the uniqueness of Judaism. Paganism—Christianity—Judaism was an intellectual and spiritual event when it was first published and it remains a valuable document even now.” —Rabbi Jack Riemer, Hadassah. (shrink)

Many Enlightenment freethinkers undermined the immortality of the soul by declaring that it could not be demonstrated by philosophy, and that its origins were inseparable from ancient superstition. Historians have argued that the key masterminds behind this particular historical-critical attack were the deists Charles Blount and John Toland. However, overemphasis on deist critiques has fostered the idea that it was rare to write about the history of the soul in the seventeenth century. In reality, historical accounts of the immortal soul (...) were ubiquitous in this period. These histories included all the elements in deist histories that scholars have since deemed dangerous. I argue that writing a history of pagan belief in the soul was therefore not an intrinsically subversive move. Instead, Blount and Toland’s histories reworked narratives already available in mainstream scholarship on ancient paganism. It has now become common to argue that anticlerical arguments were forged in orthodox erudition. But if deists were not saying anything different to their contemporaries, why did their work raise such an outcry? I contend that their radical characters, the broader context of their respective oeuvres, and the circumstances in which their works circulated played a critical role in their reception. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the ethical parameters of paganism when considered as a world religion alongside Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. The issues of evil, value and idolatry from a pagan perspective are analyzed as part of the Western ethical tradition from the Sophists and Platonic schools through the philosophers Spinoza, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche to such contemporary thinkers as Grayling, Mackie, MacIntyre, Habermas, Levinas, Santayana, et cetera From a more practical viewpoint, a delineation (...) of applied pagan ethics is then presented in connection with current moral issues such as same-sex union, recreational drugs, environmental awareness, abortion and terrorism. Finally, overviews of sectarian pagan ethics (Shinto, Santeria, Heathenism, Druidry, Romuva, Slavic, Kemeticism, Classical and Wicca) provide both the general and pagan reader with an understanding of the provocative range and differentiation of pagan ethical thought. The book approaches the Western ethical tradition as an historical development and a continuing dialogue. The novelty of this approach lies in its consideration of paganism as a legitimate voice of religious spirituality rather than a satanic aberration or ridiculous childish behavior. The book is aimed at both the contemporary Western pagan and anyone with an interest in the moral dilemmas of our times and the desire to engage in the global ethical discussion.Among the more important features of the book are its presentation of a re-evaluation of idolatry, the notion of the virtue value, the richness of the pagan tradition, and the expansion of Western ethics beyond its Christian heritage. (shrink)

[1] The rise of modern paganism.--v. 2. The science of freedom.

The subject of “the last pagans” or “the end of paganism” in the Greco-Roman world has interested scholars for over a century but begs the question “What is paganism?” Is the term usable as a tool of analysis? It originates from the Latin paganus, meaning “villager,” “rustic,” and reflects the way that Latin speakers viewed early Christianity as a phenomenon of the countryside, much as the English heathen, or German Heide, derives from a root meaning “heath.” Greek-speaking Christians, (...) by contrast, used a variety of terms, but their favored one was Hellene, which reflected the perception that their main opposition came from Greeks who remained faithful to their traditional culture and beliefs. Hence paganism, when used by a modern author, is implicitly one-sided and also obscures the very real gap in perception between Greek speakers and Latin speakers of antiquity. Accordingly, some recent authors have tried to replace pagan with polytheist, but the latter term has the disadvantage that many pagans tended toward monotheism, or to a modified monotheism that regarded one god as vastly superior to all others (“henotheism”). Heathen is similar in being an insider's term, current when Christianity was the default position of religious discourse, and now largely obsolete. It is best to retain the word pagan but to concede that it is merely a pis aller. (shrink)

Using data generated from questionnaires containing select items from the Baylor Religion Survey, the current study proposes to examine the paranormal interests and beliefs of participants in two specific alternative spiritual movements, contemporary Paganism and the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. The analysis will be framed by a discussion of the larger alternative spiritual milieu in which these movements are rooted, and how belief in the paranormal is correlated more with this milieu than with involvement in these NRMs.

Pagans and Philosophers explores how writers—philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and Ricci—tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great (...) inspired Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. (shrink)

From the above lines one can see that St. Cyril of Alexandria is presented, along with a great theologian, as it is clear from the writings against the heretics of his time, like a true apologist for Christianity with paganism dispute that resurfaced after Emperor Julian, the Apostate. On the other hand, the writing of the Orthodox Patriarch proves to be of great importance in understanding the difficulties experienced by the Christian faith in a territory where paganism flourished (...) from time to time. Moreover, the work of St. Cyril can be put together with Christian apologists ‗works from previous centuries, being of a real interest for our times into a field so necessary but forgot in the theological schools and pastoral work: Apologetics. (shrink)

J. Gordon Melton. Magic, Witchcraft, and Paganism in America:. Bibliography. New York: Garland. 1982. Pp. xi. 231. $44.00. cloth. L.C. 81‐43343. ISBN 0‐8240‐9377‐1.

In the context of the upsurge of interest in all things medieval, this essay examines the promotion in popular culture of ‘medieval’ masculine role models. It begins with an assessment of the 19th century's creation of a version of medieval masculinity which was essentially Christian and chivalric. It traces the transfer of this image from literature to cinema in the 20th century. It argues that the image remained dominant until the 1960s when it was eclipsed by a new version of (...) medieval masculinity, a violent pagan ‘Dark Age’ model. This new image triumphed because of changes in society and in the structure and strategies of the cinema industry and its audience. The essay concludes by examining possible medieval alternatives to the pagan ‘Dark Age’ image: the revived chivalric knight, the eco‐warrior and the transplanted modern rationalist. The evidence suggests that they have not yet dented the dominance of the pagan image. (shrink)

This article asks how ideas about nature in the 18th and 19th century Romantic movement have traveled in and been translated by the various religious groups that constitute contemporary Paganism. Drawing on the work of poets, philosophers, historians, social scientists, and contemporary Pagans themselves, the article argues that contemporary Paganism borrows freely from Romantic notions of inspiration and imagination to craft a vision of nature, that, for them, responds to the emotional and political needs of their own time (...) and place. At the center of this vision is what I describe as the Romantic hero, a figure in search of a more authentic existence in a broadly conceived "natural world.". (shrink)

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient of (...) 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals. (shrink)

A Dover reprint of the 1911 English translation. The eight lectures deal with the interaction among the Oriental mysteries and late Roman paganism, with particular reference to the factors within the mysteries which made them attractive in the Empire.--R. T.

“Problem of paganism” is my name for the set of questions raised for medieval thinkers and writers, and discussed by some of them (Abelard, Dante, and Langland are eminent examples), by the fact that many people—especially philosophers—from antiquity were, they believed, monotheists, wise and virtuous and yet pagans. In this paper, I argue that Boethius, though a Christian, was himself too much part of the world of classical antiquity to pose the problem of paganism, but that his Consolation (...) of Philosophy was an essential element in the way medieval writers saw and resolved this problem. In particular, because it was a text by an author known to be Christian which discusses philosophy without any explicitly Christian references, it opened up the way to treating texts by ancient pagan philosophers as containing hidden Christian doctrine. (shrink)

Nine Worlds of SEID‐MAGIC: Ecstasy and Neo‐Shamanism in North European Paganism. Jenny Blain. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 192 pages $20.95 Paperback.

Historians of religion and adherents of new religious movements in the twentieth century have frequently had intersecting agendas. This article discusses the interactions between scholarship on Germanic myth and culture and the protagonists and belief systems of Germanic neo-Pagan movements. It covers the era from the inception of Germanic neo-Paganism in the nationalist, anti-Semitic völkisch movement in Germany in the early 20th century until today. The article traces the appeal of reconstructionist approaches within the study of Germanic myth and (...) culture, and the desire to access a primordial pre-Christian culture back to European National Romanticism. It uncovers the latent anti-Jewish sentiments that often pervade parts of both Germanic neo-Paganism and Germanic and Indo-European studies. At the same time, it accounts for the significant changes in these ideologically tainted patterns of thought within the last two decades, highlighting Germanic neo-Paganism’s development toward respectability and mainstream thought with the help of references to recent scholarship. (shrink)

The research is devoted to the ethical views of Vladimir Monomakh, reflected in the “Teaching” of the Grand Duke. The author’s reflections concerning such fundamental moral categories as good and evil, virtue and vice, the meaning of life and death, free will, duty, happiness are considered and analyzed. A partial continuity of the Grand Duke’s views concerning the relationship to the categories of good and evil, as well as virtue and vice, with the Byzantine Christian tradition, in particular with regard (...) to the “theory of three small deeds”, which is based on the theory of repentance of John Chrysostom, and the theory of “asceticism in the world”, based on the writings of Basil the Great. It is revealed that the ethical views of the Grand Duke do not fit into the strict paradigm of Christian medieval philosophy and theology. In this regard, the author of the article draws attention to the syncretic nature of the worldview of the author of the “Teaching”, expressed in a kind of worldview combining Christian and pre-Christian beliefs. In this vein, the specific understanding of the problems of the meaning of life, death, happiness by Vladimir Monomakh is analyzed, which is revealed when considering the peculiar attitude of the author of the “Teaching” to the sacred rites of prayer and burial. The author’s views on the category of duty in the universal and state terms, as well as the principles of practical behavior, are studied. According to the results of the research, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that the work of the Grand Duke is an ethical “micro-treatise”, the ideological content of which fully reflects the moral concept of the existence of the ancient Rus-sian man. (shrink)

Based on the urgent need to promote the process of revival of the spirituality of the Ukrainian people, our ancient cultural strata should be analyzed. Particularly interesting here is the consideration of the origin and development of their own philosophical tradition. Undoubtedly, such a tradition stands out for certain issues that were relevant at the time. From a large array of problems of philosophical direction should be distinguished those closely related to human life. Exactly such problems belong to the category (...) of "eternal". (shrink)

The problem of this article in general is the image of Dazhbog. The article is made in the system of researches of modern religious processes in Ukraine, which in recent years is conducted by the Department of Religious Studies of the Institute of Philosophy of NAS of Ukraine. In particular, the work is an organic component of the scientific theme "New religious trends and cults in the period of socio-economic crisis of post-socialist society in Ukraine".

A recent study has argued from theological and classicizing parallels that the first, anti-pagan book of Augustine’s De consensu euangelistarum belongs between 406 and 412 CE. This article defends the traditional dating ca. 400–405 CE, implied by Retractationes. Uncertainty over the dating of parallels in De trinitate 1–4 cautions against reliance on theological peculiarities (a variant of John 5:19 and the phrase unitas personae, both otherwise paralleled in the 410s CE or later), while a close review of the patterns of (...) classical citation proves resemblance to De ciuitate dei to be superficial. Not only does Augustine demonstrably cite the same classical texts on widely separated occasions, De consensu euangelistarum 1 evinces little of Augustine’s later knowledge of Porphyry and Varro. The crowning proof comes, however, in a brief rebuttal to pagan complaints over contemporary misfortunes. Although he focuses on Rome’s religious history, Augustine omits any hint of Alaric’s sack (410 CE), the religious-political instability of 408–409 CE, or Radagaisus’ invasion of Italy (405–406 CE), all of key importance for later works. The book’s method, scope, and tenor place it neatly within the span 400–405 CE, as our first testimony to the interreligious milieu for which De ciuitate dei would later be aimed. (shrink)

The unceasing approximation of the remarkable 2000th anniversary of the coming to the world of Christ highlights the need for further analysis of those processes that took place in the spiritual life of the ancient peoples and laid the foundations of modern civilization with its universal human norms and values.