This book puts the hymns by the Neoplatonist Proclus in the context of his philosophy and offers a detailed commentary together with a new translation of them.

Recent work on Callimachus has tended to concentrate on the technicalities of his poetry. Commentaries on the Hymns have dealt exhaustively with vocabulary, metrics, Homeric allusion, historical background. What remains to be done is to use these detailed pieces of work in readings of the individual poems, showing how the commentator's minutiae can be assimilated into an overall view of each hymn. In Hellenistische Dichtung Wilamowitz attempted such an appreciation; but since his time literary approaches have changed considerably. With (...) the thorough commentary of G. R. McLennan as foundation, it may be worth while to make a re-assessment of the Hymn to Zeus in less technical terms. In the reading which I offer here I hope to escape the tyranny of the individual word; but I hope, too, that what I have to say will not appear too loosely founded on the text. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was not conceived as a single poem but is a combination of two: a Delian hymn, D, performed at Delos and concerned with the god's birth there, and a Pythian hymn, P, concerned with his arrival and establishment at Delphi. What above all compels us to make a dichotomy is not the change of scene in itself, but the way D ends. The poet returns from the past (...) to the present, and takes leave of his audience; farewell, he says, and remember me ever after. He is quite clearly finishing. Whereupon there is an abrupt and unsatisfactory transition to P. (shrink)

Among the many parodic elements in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes is the day-old baby's fart-omen. As is well-known, sneezing was considered prophetic in the ancient world, and the humour of the scene comes from the immediately preceding fart and the fact that Hermes’ bodily emissions are deliberate . Apollo has, in fact, gone in search of his baby brother on the basis of a standard bird-omen and confronted with Hermes’ signs, he recognizes that the crepitation is just as (...) much an omen as the sneeze, witness the plural τoúτoιζ oìωυoîσι a few lines later . We may compare a passage in Aristophanes’ Knights where the Sausage-seller reports that he took courage before speaking to the Council from a good omen: a man farted to the right, ༐κ δπξιâζ ᾤπέπαρδε . Aristophanes’ formulation suggests to me that the composer of the hymn may be intentionally setting up a play on words : the only difference between the verbal form ༐πέπταδε ‘sneezed’ is the reversal of the liquid and the dental stop. (shrink)

Among the departures from the direct tradition in Thucydidesü quotation of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo at 3.104, perhaps the most interesting is line 171. The MSS of the Hymns give ET-iotacism). The majority of Thucydidesü MSS give, but is corrected by a second hand in FJ and by the first hand in H to. Each tradition exists in blissful ignorance of the other. In Aristidesü quotation of lines 169–72, the MSS in general agree with the direct tradition of (...) the Hymns:. But the reading in R is a correction. The original reading, which has been erased, was. Aristides, who as his introductory remark shows is quoting from Thucydides, appears to have read in his text of Thucydides, but this has been replaced at some stage in the tradition by ; the MSS tradition of Aristides has been ’corrected’ from the direct tradition of the Hymns. If Aristides had in his text of Thucydides, the corrected reading of FJH is not the. (shrink)

The final hymn of the Rigveda, 10.191, the last three stanzas of which are dedicated to saṃjñānam ‘unity’, plays in a remarkable way with the preposition/prefix sam(-) ‘with; together’ and the phonetic sequence mā̆n. Some of the words with mā̆n go back to Proto-Indo-European *men ‘think’ (mánas- ‘mind, intellect, thought’, mántra- ‘utterance, spell’, and mantraye ‘I utter an utterance, recite a spell’); others are forms of the adjective samāná- ‘common, the same’. This brief communication shows that the display of (...) phonetic fireworks has analogs in our earliest hymns in Avestan and Greek, in which both reflexes of *men and etymologically unconnected words that have the same pattern of sounds are frequently found in the most “privileged positions”: the beginning and/or end of a section, poem, or entire poetic collection. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine" are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation to politics, his turn (...) toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

A beautiful, profound series of reflections on the body by one of the most prominent and consequential philosophers of continental Europe This landmark collection brings into English Jean-Luc Nancy's last completed work and concludes his remarkable philosophical reflections on the body, a project and journey he began almost thirty years ago. Nancy's essays--which take the body as an intersection of pulsing life and destructive cruelty on a global scale--become more vivid, more physical, than ever, even as they venture into language (...) that is as lyrical as it is profound. This vividness is manifest in blood: as it flows, in all its pulsing and forceful circulation, and as it spills, in the cruelty of existences confronted daily by countless destructions. This can be described as sanguis and cruor, the two Latin words for blood's intermingled but distinct aspects. This distinction allows Nancy to highlight an almost mystical sense of the body (yet one that remains soberly on this side of its manifest insistence), alongside the cruelty that pervades our world. The very existence of the world itself is threatened by its reduction to mere objects. The exceptional writings brought together in Corpus III comprise a masterful work of philosophy that marries rigorous erudition--on Freud, Nietzsche, and others--with rich poetic language and an actual poem. Nancy's thought opens the body onto its own unaccountable origins, its plural singularities, its enmeshed instantiations, and its excessive irreducibles, which are also the elusive excesses of language. Whereas in earlier texts Nancy has referred to this excess as poetry, here he performs it in the form of a poem, in the extraordinary hymn entitled Stoma. While the publication of a poem by Nancy is a notable event, equally noteworthy is a remarkable essay entitled "Scandalous Death," in which Nancy meditated on a subject that was to come to him too soon after. Above all, the book is crucial for bringing into English Cruor, the very last work Nancy completed before his death, an evocative meditation offered by a great thinker on the complex conditions of his own--and our--singular survival. (shrink)

As one of the bare handful of scholars working on Schelling, I should heartily like to accept Professor Harris's argument, for all these black cows hang around one's neck more heavily than did the albatross on the ancient mariner's. I find myself obliged, however, to closely test his argument. I regret that, viewed in the context of the whole of the Phenomenology's Preface, Harris's argument is not fully convincing. I shall argue that, since the Preface's plain intent is to contrast (...) the vitalism of a method of thought that is spirit's coming into its own with all styles of fixated propositional thinking, the “formalism” Hegel attacks is a loose aggregate of the philosophical styles of Fichte, Schelling, Reinhold and Bardili. Hegel is content to leave the label loose and unspecified and not to name names. It is not strictly fair to let the scope of the term resonate upon Schelling's “first scientific grasp of the idea”, at least not for an author who knew Schelling's work so well. But as Harris points out, it is not fair to Hegel for his public to read him with the sole, simplistic question of what positions he supports and what positions he rejects. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine" are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation to politics, his turn (...) toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger’s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

In the wake of Albrecht Dieterich, in this paper I try to show how the overall arrangement of the hymns in the Orphic hymn book follows the progression of a nocturnal ritual. I insist on the frequency with which the hymns talk about the fear of meeting a divinity or a phasma that would be in an unkind and violent state and could drive the initiates into madness. Thus, the hymns construct the mystery experience as an event that is, (...) at least in part, dangerous and frightening. This concern with madness as a possible negative result of the initiatory experience is just one aspect of the role Bacchic initiation played in healing madness sent by evil demons, and it conveys a seriousness to these rites that makes them into something very different from the hobby of some placid burghers. Far from being only the songs that accompanied the tryphé of a Bacchic social event, the hymns point to the emotional complexity and seriousness of Bacchic mystery cults.Dans le sillage d’Albrecht Dieterich, cette étude entend montrer comment l’arrangement global des pièces reprises dans le recueil des hymnes orphiques épouse la progression d’un rituel nocturne. On insiste sur la récurrence, dans les hymnes, du motif de la crainte de rencontrer une divinité ou un phasma qui pourrait être malveillant, violent, et frapperait les initiés de folie. Ainsi, les hymnes construisent l’expérience mystérique comme un événement qui est, au moins pour une part, dangereux et effrayant. Ce souci pour la folie comme résultat négatif potentiel de l’expérience initiatique n’est qu’un des aspects du rôle que l’initiation bachique jouait dans la folie curative envoyée par de mauvais démons, et cela confère du sérieux à ces rituels qui étaient quelque chose de bien différent d’un passe-temps pour petits bourgeois placides. Loin d’être seulement les chants qui accompagnaient la truphê d’un moment de sociabilité bachique, les hymnes renvoient à la complexité émotionnelle et au caractère sérieux des cultes à mystères bachiques. (shrink)

Horace has told us that the author of a literary work, qui uariare cupit rem prodigialiter unam, falls into absurdities. Much more likely to meet this fate is the interpolator who has the same ambition. The above four lines are a case in point; for it is fairly certain that if this Hymn were presented to readers as it came from the hand of its author, the whole passage with its phenomenal bull and its four pacifist dogs which apparently (...) had agreed together not to bark and bite, ‘as is their nature to,’ would not be found in the text. Undoubtedly it is true, though it is by no means a marvel , that the bull which was somewhere else and the dogs which were following in his wake were not taken by the infant cattle-lifter who was satisfied, as he well might be, with a trifle of fifty cows. The veracity of the interpolater in this regard may, therefore, pass without question, and furthermore his knowledge of epic metre does not fail seriously till he reaches the fourth line, although ό δ ταρος is not really epic and λλων not λλων is required in the opening line, for he certainly did not mean, as he unwittingly says ‘other bulls,’ but ‘the others, the cows.’ After ο μνλειθεν it is quite out of the question that οĩ τε κύνες τε ταȗρος, two flagrant examples of the later article, should follow. (shrink)

This article offers a topological account of Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course on the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymn Der Ister. The main goal of the article is to explore the relationship between the poetic disclosure of place and the place of poetic disclosure in Heidegger’s thought in the 1940s. Firstly, the backward streaming of the river is identified as the central theme of the hymn, which leads to Heidegger’s idea of dwelling as poetic homecoming. Secondly, after elucidating (...) the link between the Danube river and Antigone, and assessing the philosophical underpinnings of Heidegger’s withdrawal from politics, Heidegger’s pre-political idea of the polis is examined as tied to his thinking of place-making. Finally, the interplay between journeying and remaining is issued to clarify Heidegger’s notion of dwelling, time, and place and his critique of the metaphysical conception of space and time. (shrink)

Each of the Orphic Hymns is headed in the manuscripts by the name of the deity to which it is addressed, and in most cases a specification of the kind of incense to be used: thus 2 Only the first hymn lacks a heading. It is preceded in the manuscripts by a poem in which Orpheus addresses Musaeus and teaches him a prayer to a multitude of gods.

Singing is central in African life and among the many reasons provided is that traditionally it is believed that people who can sing have a very special connection with the spiritual world. Songs are celebratory and could convey the message of joy and happiness in context of freedom, culture, love, gospel, etc. and could convey joy and happiness that is unique and beautiful. However, the songs can equally be dangerous. Music has the potential and possibility to carry messages of oppression, (...) suppression, exclusion, abuse, rape, crime, xenophobia, among others. In this article, the author uses the hymn in Hosanna Hymn Book titled ‘Jehova Modimo wa Iseraele/Jehovah God of Israel’ to argue that what seems to be innocent and neutral carried the message (by and through education) and acceptance of colonisation. The transmission and reception thereof become dangerous for the unsuspecting colonised. The article deals with the history of colonialism relating to ‘Christian’ literature or hymns that carry with them a systematic theology aimed at oppressing others. The author does a minimum exegesis to express the worldview and language and content of the Hymn.Contribution: This study contributes to an ongoing liberation discourse and Hymn 11 is used as an example of oppressive language and negative transmission (through education). (shrink)

This article offers a translation of the hymn De Crucifixione 4 by Ephrem, the Syrian theologian, which forms part of his cycle of hymns for the celebration of Easter. The symbolic interpretation of particularly the tearing of the temple veil in this hymn – together with the cosmic signs which occurred at the death of Jesus – is investigated. An attempt is made to correlate Ephrem’s fierce anti-Jewish polemics with the intentions of the authors of the Synoptic Gospels (...) and with Ephrem’s circumstances at the probable time of composition of the hymn. (shrink)

There are many shortcomings in Otto Schneider'sapparatus criticusto Callimachus'Hymns. Some of these appear on a perusal of thePraefatio. For it claims a thorough collation for only ten MSS. (ABCdEFGHIM); scantier citations are given from seven others (fKLQRST), from theeditio princeps(called by Schneider D), and from the MSS. used respectively by Politian forHymnV., and by Robortelli and H. Stephanus for all sixHymns. And, besides the unusedcodex Ambrosianus A63sup.. there is on pp. xxxix–xl a list of MSS., with the places where they (...) have been reported to exist, only one of which (F) is represented in Schneider's collation. (shrink)

The remarkable poem in which Aristotle addresses ‘Αρετά and honours the memory of his dead friend Hermias is fortunate in being well preserved. The complete text is given by Athenaeus XV 696a and by Diogenes Laertius V 27, and these authorities are now supplemented by the papyrus of Didymus’ Commentary on Demosthenes, which leaves few of the textual problems in need of a solution. But the poem still raises some questions. It is not clear what kind of poem it was; (...) its literary antecedents and affinities have not been fully studied; its contents still call for some remarks. In spite of Wilamowitz's brilliant treatment and Jaeger's acute comments it is puzzling enough to justify a few words of discussion. (shrink)

Focusing primarily on Therigatha,1 the poems by the first Buddhist women, and correlating them with the compositions of non-Buddhist women mystics like Meerabai, Lal Ded, Muktabai, Janabai and Akka Mahadevi, this article is a study of spirituality, femininity and poetic expressions in a comparative mode. The article aims to address two major issues: First, it attempts to understand how the women mystics asserted their authority as the conveyers of divine message in a society which was essentially patriarchal and suspicious about (...) the credentials of feminine utterances. Second, the article seeks to delineate a certain womanizing of saintliness through the invoking of domesticity and the use of metaphors related to the female body and desire by these select women mystics as the denouement of a radical stance of an ascetic ‘feminine spirituality’, aimed at discovering transcendence even by retaining the conscious deploying of the components, often viewed as mundane. (shrink)

It is simply no longer acceptable to speak of the goddess Athena from the fifth generation of Olympian/Orphic Greece without reference to her mother Metis. Hesiod, among others, tells us Metis appears as a reincarnation of her first-generation self in the Olympian dynasty as wife of Zeus. She was originally the cosmic egg of all creation in the Orphic Theogony, as recounted by Apollodorus, and Taylor, from whose mucosity, the entire genealogy of the Olympian/Orphic heaven, is spawned. However, from the (...) moment Zeus murdered Metis as she was about to give birth to Athena their daughter, she has lapsed into the fissures of forgetfulness in philosophy, theology, mythology and early psychoanalysis. Indeed, in each field of inquiry, Athena is overwhelmingly deemed ‘unmothered’ and produced as Harrison tells us as a desperate ploy ‘from the brain of Zeus’ through his cunning intellect, for Athena to serve as his ‘mouthpiece’. This paper seeks to do more than simply restore Metis as mother to Athena. It explores the tragedy inherited by her violent removal, for mother/daughter relations, grievability and sustained disavowal of maternal divinity in dominant discourse. (shrink)

I. By Ictus we mean in this paper the sounds emphasized in the pattern of an utterance in the given language under discussion. So in languages like Chinese which depend on variation of tone we mean that the high notes in the intonation tune of a sentence or the rhythmic scheme of a verse carry an ictus; while in a language based, like English, on speech stress, we mean that the syllables uttered most loudly and clearly bear the ictus. Again, (...) some languages, such as Italian, emphasize a syllable by a combination of stress and raised pitch, so in these languages we say that the syllables so emphasized receive the ictus. Lastly, in a language like ancient Greek or Vedic Sanskrit where quantity is decisive in utterance, the syllables which receive emphasis are the long ones, and thus it is these which have an ictus. (shrink)

Kai Whiting, Aldo Dinucci, Edward Simpson, and Leonidas Konstantakos ABSTRACT: In Stoic theology, the universe constitutes a living organism. Humankind has often had a detrimental impact on planetary health. We propose that the Stoic call to live according to Nature, where God and Nature are one and the same, provides a philosophical basis for re-addressing ….

The hymns of the French Revolution have not yet attracted much attention from historians, who generally consider them as accessory ornaments of civic festivals. However, their omnipresence during the decade 1790–1799 – reflecting considerable institutional as well as collective emotion investment – contradict this rather summary judgment. This article shows how revolutionary hymns constituted one of the most representative and original artistic-political experiments of the period, whose role was to translate political discourse into collective emotions. Their main architect was Marie-Joseph (...) Chénier, famous playwright, Jacobin and deputy at the Convention, who wrote the words of most of the great Parisian hymns between 1790 and 1795. This little-known aspect of Chénier's oeuvre offers us a new lens through which to analyse the creation of a revolutionary culture that aimed to be permanent but was in fact constantly re-elaborated as the Revolution attempted to present itself as a coherent totality, capable of integrating its successive phases and revisions. Against this façade of unity, largely constructed in retrospect, the study of revolutionary hymns illuminates the clashes and the successive tensions as official doxa underwent a delicate work of redefinition in response to changing historical circumstances. (shrink)

The list of Apollo's virtues in the second hymn of Callimachus describes, in the context of the appearance of the god, a mysterious healing substance which trickles from the hair of the patron of medicine. Hymn 2.38–41:αἱ δὲ κόμαι θυόεντα πέδῳ λείβουσιν ἔλαια⋅οὐ λίπος ᾿Απόλλωνος ἀποστάζουσιν ἔθειραι,ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὴν πανάκειαν⋅ ἐν ἄστεϊ δ᾽ ᾧ κεν ἐκεῖναιπρῶκες ἔραζε πέσωσιν, ἀκήρια πάντ᾽ ἐγένοντο.Apollo's hair distils flagrant drops of unguent to the ground: Apollo's curls shed no oil but panacea itself. In the (...) city where those dewdrops fall to earth, all things are safe. (shrink)

It is universally recognized that the Hymn to Ares stands apart from all the other poems in the Homeric collection, and that it was composed centuries later than any of those that can be assigned to a particular period with any degree of confidence. Many older scholars classed it or even printed it with the Orphic Hymns, which are transmitted together with the Homeric Hymns as well as with the hymns of Callimachus and Proclus. But the similarity with the (...) Orphic Hymns is only superficial. It merely consists in the stylistic feature of accumulated epithets, a common characteristic of late hymns. There are three reasons for not lumping the Hymn to Ares with the very homogeneous Orphic series. First, the Orphic Hymns are courteous invocations of different gods to come to a ceremony described as τєλєτή or τєλєτταί, while the Hymn to Ares is an intensely personal prayer for the poet's own soul. Secondly, the Orphic collection already contains a hymn to Ares , and duplications are avoided. Thirdly, in the Homeric hymn Ares is addressed as a planetary god. In the Orphic hymn to Ares, this aspect is totally absent, and the same is true of the hymns to Hermes, Aphrodite, Zeus, and Kronos. (shrink)

While many scholars have realized that the Enlightenment period was much more religious than previously thought, the deists are still seen as basically secular figures who believed in a distant and inactive deity. This article shows that the hundred and thirteen French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God believed in a caring, loving, and active deity. They maintained that God wanted people to be free, and so God actively helped the French Revolution by leading the French armies (...) to victory and revealing enemy plots. The majority of these prayers and hymns were said at government-sponsored religious festivals. It is a mistake, however, to dismiss this religious language as being about sacralizing the new nation. Instead, there were places in the festivals where individuals could express their own religious views. Furthermore, most of these prayers and hymns were written while Maximilien Robespierre was pushing his deist civil religion and labelling irreligious people as enemies of the French republic. However, the same views about God were expressed after his death by the Theophilanthropists. Thus, these deists were not merely echoing the party line while Robespierre was alive, but were expressing their true religious feelings. (shrink)

The most lively issue in Habakkuk studies is the meaning of Chapter 3 and its relationship to the prophetic corpus as a whole. The vivid and, in its canonical context, unusual imagery of this theophanic hymn has intrigued and puzzled exegetes. The study which follows is an effort to address this issue in a synthetic fashion, employing insights from textual, poetic, linguistic, historical, archaeological, and theological investigations based on the most recent data available in these areas. The intention is (...) to clarify, as far as possible, the source of this poem in Israelite life and the reason for its position in the canon in order to contribute to the developing understanding of this brief but complex prophetic book. - Preface. (shrink)

Ann Griffiths, was until comparatively recently the only female poet of any real prominence in the Welsh literary tradition. Born Ann Thomas, she lived all her life in rural Montgomeryshire. Ann experienced evangelical conversion aged 20 and joined the Calvinistic Methodists. She became noted for the depth of her spirituality and began producing verses encapsulating her insights and experiences. Of the seventy-three stanzas and eight letters attributed to her, only one letter and one verse survive in her own hand, most (...) of the extant verses having been transmitted orally to her maidservant, Ruth Evans. About two-thirds were published in early 1806, a few months after Anns death following childbirth, and were immediately acknowledged as religious verse of the highest order. They are characterized by a fervent subjectivism blended with an objective wondering and a plethora of biblical allusions and typology. The transmission of her hymns and letters has taken various forms - oral, manuscript and print - and most recently electronically, on the ‘Ann Griffiths Website’ in particular. (shrink)

Because of an incomplete description of its contents, it has escaped notice that the fifteenth-century vellum MS Parisinus graecus 2833 contains Orphic Hymns 76 and 77 on folio 91 verso. The Hymns are copied, without indication of title or authorship, after Musaeus' Hero and Leander , and before the collected Prolegomena to Hesiod A a, b, c, BEF a, b Pertusi, which are followed by Hesiod's Works and Days, Shield and Theogony. These are all in the same hand.

In his final words to his son, Pallas, Evander interposes a prayer: ‘At uos, o superi, et diuum tu maxime rector Iuppiter, Arcadii, quaeso, miserescite regis…’ Of recent commentators, C. J. Fordyce alone is bothered by the reference to Evander's Arcadian origin; he reckons that it alludes to his exiled condition and so establishes a claim on Jupiter's mercy. That may be so, but it is worth suggesting that this is rather a piece of Virgil's Callimachean learning. For at the (...) opening of his first Hymn Callimachus had rejected the story that Zeus was born on Crete in favour of Arcadia . The Arcadian birth-place was known to Cicero . Yet Cicero is less likely to be in Virgil's mind than Callimachus, from whom he derived so much learned detail. Evander then is appealing to Jupiter as a fellow Arcadian, docte. (shrink)

The feminist critical deconstruction of Western culture and theology written by Luce Irigaray could be said to represent a certain branch of ecofeminist perspectives on religion. The article analyses the symbolic structures of suppression of women, body and nature and the exaltation of spirit, culture and the androcentric God, inherent in four hymns included in the new supplement to the book of hymns in the Lutheran Church of Sweden. The analysis shows that these symbolic structures are visible also in these (...) more recent hymns, even though they can be said to also consider and bring out women's experiences. Despite their `feminist' approach, they have not, on any deeper level, affected the subordination of women and the nature-given. (shrink)

Apollo travels from Pytho to Olympus, and the other gods greet his arrival (186–93):ἔνθεν δὲ πρὸϲ Ὄλυμπον ἀπὸ χθονὸϲ ὥϲ τε νόημαεἶϲι Διὸϲ πρὸϲ δῶμα θεῶν μεθ’ ὁμήγυριν ἄλλων⋅αὐτίκα δ’ ἀθανάτοιϲι μέλει κίθαριϲ καὶ ἀοιδή.Μοῦϲαι μέν θ’ ἅμα πᾶϲαι ἀμειβόμεναι ὀπὶ καλῇὑμνεῦϲίν ῥα θεῶν δῶρ’ ἄμβροτα ἠδ’ ἀνθρώπωντλημοϲύναϲ, ὅϲ’ ἔχοντεϲ ὑπ’ ἀθανάτοιϲι θεοῖϲιζώουϲ’ ἀφραδέεϲ καὶ ἀμήχανοι, οὐδὲ δύνανταιεὑρέμεναι θανάτοιό τ’ ἄκοϲ καὶ γήραοϲ ἄλκαρ.From there he goes quick as a thought from the earth to Olympus, to the house of Zeus, (...) in order to join the gathering of the other gods. Immediately the immortals concern themselves with lyre music and song. All the Muses together, responding with their beautiful voice, hymn the divine gifts of the gods and the endurance of men, all that they have from the immortal gods and yet live ignorant and helpless, unable to find a remedy for death and a defence against old age. (shrink)

The Onchestos passage in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (229-38) has been discussed extensively, most usefully by A. Schachter (BICS 23 (1976)102-14) and G. Roux (REG 77 (1964) 1-22). Further consideration of the disputed verbal forms in lines 235 and 236 and the plurals of 233-6 suggests that the plurals do indeed indicate a two-horse chariot team but that the presence of a team is not incompatible with the test of a single colt, and that if a chariot is (...) wrecked by the unguided horses, it is righted and left in situ (with the horses removed) while prayers of supplication are made to Poseidon. The events referred to are interpreted as elements of a religious ritual with explicit military implications, dating from the Mycenaean period. It is, however, noted that a Babylonian ritual parallel might suggest a Near Eastern (and possibly non-military) origin. (shrink)

The mystical experiences of the ṛṣis , the spiritual giants of the early Vedic times, led to the creation of the Vedic hymns and eventually to the formation of the whole elaborate structure of the Vedic religion, as upheld by the Indian priesthood. But there were obviously others who pursued mystical experiences without themselves engaging, like the ancient ṛṣis , in attempts to transmit their experiences through mythological poetry and religious leadership. They adopted mystical ecstasy as their way of life. (...) Mysticism as a conscious way of life is, in India, called Yoga. Being outside the trend of Vedic mythological creativity and the Brāhmanic religious orthodoxy, the Yogis of Vedic times left little evidence of their existence, practices and achievements. And such evidence as has survived in the Vedas is scanty and indirect. (shrink)

Recently evangelicals have been discovering the benefits of a formative reading of Scripture. However, eighteenth-century evangelicals consciously practiced both an informational and formational way of reading the Bible. This article raises the question how early evangelicals read Scripture and what was the role of the Holy Spirit in that reading. The hymns of William Cowper from the Olney Hymns serve as the primary text for this exploration. Cowper's experimental piety that was common among evangelicals assured that the Word would be (...) read both with the head for knowledge as well as the heart for experience and transformation. This paper analyzes Cowper's varied use of Scripture in his hymns, as well as the formative nature of Scripture within those hymns. One prominent feature of Cowper's writing is the dynamic intersection between the Word and Spirit. This article concludes by asking the practical question of retrieval of how the contemporary church can learn to read Scripture more formatively through the themes of Cowper's hymns. (shrink)

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite has traditionally been understood to pay honour to a family of Aineiadai who once held power in the Troad, but in more recent years some scholars have rejected this view. This article first revisits this controversial issue, suggesting that concentrated attention paid in the hymn to the birth of Aineias and his lineage supports the position that the poem was composed for a group that identified itself with Aineias. It then goes on to (...) consider the view that the Hymn to Aphrodite narrates the end of Aphrodite's mixing gods and mortals in love. It is argued that this reading is not required by the text of the poem. (shrink)

This paper presents a literary reading of the Homeric Hymn to Pan, tracing the effects of phonetic, verbal, and thematic repetitions throughout the hymn and especially surrounding the appearance of Echo in line 21. A close reading of the structures generated by these repetitions reveals a complex superimposition of structural schemata, and a psychoanalytic reader-response analysis relates our deferred expectation for closure to Pan's disappointed desire for Echo in the erotic myth. The nightingale simile, in its allusion to (...) the Odyssey, enacts another kind of echo and illustrates the self-conscious intertextuality of the archaic Greek poetics of variation. (shrink)

Songs and hymns shape faith and play a part in shaping political landscapes. They can be used to build or maintain power as well as to critique and challenge it. This has been true for South Africa, and some brief examples will be given. But this article focuses on hymns and patriotic songs from the time of the British Empire and explores how they portray power, entrench superiority or build a common, global Christian identity.

L’hymne aux Philippiens est souvent mis en perspective de textes du premier Testament, que ce soit des pages où il est question de la préexistence de la sagesse ou avec celles qui évoquent la destinée du juste souffrant. Sur la base d’une étude de la structure et du mouvement du poème, le présent article étaye une hypothèse parfois avancée, mais peu développée jusqu’ici: l’hymne peut être lu sur l’arrière-plan de la présentation de l’homme comme «image de Dieu» et de l’histoire (...) malheureuse de l’Éden articulée avec la figure du Serviteur d’Isaïe . Ce qui est dit de Jésus alors, c’est qu’il refuse d’entrer dans la logique dans laquelle le serpent entraîne Ève et Adam, pour imiter le Dieu qui donne, dans un geste de dépouillement de lui-même qui sera aussi celui du Serviteur. Aussi, Jésus réussit à accomplir en lui à l’image de Dieu, là où Adam a échoué; aussi reçoit-il de Dieu ce qu’Adam avait voulu arracher de force: l’élévation. En effet, par son choix, le Christ Jésus offre à Dieu de se reconnaître comme père en donnant son propre nom à celui qui a réalisé en lui la ressemblance de son image. (shrink)

The hymns of Callimachus are generally divided into two groups: the ‘mimetic’ hymns (2, 5 and 6), which seem to be enactments of ritual scenes, and the ‘nonmimetic’ hymns (1,3 and 4), which seem to follow the pattern of the Homeric hymns. Occasionally this distinction has been challenged, for instance by pointing to an' element of mimesis inH. 1, but on the whole the division into two groups has been 1 adhered to rather rigidly. A drawback of this distinction is (...) that it seems to prevent further insight into an important aspect of Callimachus' poetic technique. I think that there is in fact a subtle play with various aspects of diegesis and mimesis which pervades the whole collection of hymns and gives it a certain unity, because it draws attention to the way in which narratives or descriptions are presented in the hymns. Although the emphasis on mimesis or diegesis may vary, none of the hymns can be regarded as diegetic in all its aspects and there is a great deal of fluctuation between, the two modes of presentation both within the collection and within the individual hymns. (shrink)

Graham Greene's novels are often read with no reference to his Roman Catholic Faith. Particularly, in India there is little knowledge among both students and scholars about the primacy and the nature of the Roman Catholic Faith. They miss the point that the Roman Faith is a deeply Mysterious Faith. The term "Mystery" is used here in the Catholic sense of that Faith's 'Mysteries'. The essay and the long endnotes try to rectify the errors which creep in when Greene is (...) decontextualized from his Faith by logical positivists. In the name of the 'death of the author' religious relativists contaminated with the heresies of modernism misinterpret Greene. 'Heresies of Modernism' will be alien to those whose academic limits do not go beyond staid woke-seminars. -/- The essay is discursive in nature, but on purpose. It sees Greene's works through the lens of the Suffering Servant and Paul's Hymn to Love. It has to be kept in mind that Greene is a Roman Catholic writer who knew his Church's teachings well. Christianity is not a homogenous term. "Religious" in the essay often means those who are lead consecrated lives within the Catholic Church as distinct from diocesan clergy. (shrink)

Grace a son interrogation incomparablement tenace et incisive sur le sens de l'etre, la pensee heideggerienne accede a une comprehension du sacre qui semble irreductible a tout autre, et qui, par son originalite et sa profondeur, compte parmi les plus significatives elaborees a notre epoque. Le present ouvrage etudie le rapport complexe entre cette notion du sacre et les eclaircissements heideggeriens sur le divin et la mediation poetique. Il s'articule en quatre parties, dont la premiere expose la genese de l'interpretation (...) heideggerienne du sacre. La deuxieme partie propose une etude thematique du nouveau lexique que Heidegger, au contact notamment de la poesie de Holderlin, introduit dans sa meditation du sacre. La troisieme partie entreprend une serie de discernements critiques, en se laissant instruire par les principaux travaux qui ont examine explicitement la comprehension heideggerienne du sacre, du divin, et du poete. Dans une perspective synthetique, la quatrieme partie, enfin, s'efforce de ressaisir l'approche de Heidegger par le biais de ce qui la deborde, en la faisant dialoguer avec d'autres pensees philosophiques et theologiques marquantes; ce qui conduit a considerer, entre autres, la difference du sacre et du Saint. Degage a partir des developpements diachroniques de la premiere partie, le triptyque du sacre, du divin, et du poete structure aussi bien les synchronisations thematiques de la deuxieme partie que les discernements critiques fournis par la troisieme, et il est assume, tout en etant "depasse", par les chapitres systematiques de la derniere partie. (shrink)