The ancient correspondence allegedly between the Toparch Abgar v of Edessa and Jesus of Nazareth ... more The ancient correspondence allegedly between the Toparch Abgar v of Edessa and Jesus of Nazareth is usually treated in modern scholarship as legendary, though possession of it was important for the legitimation of Armenia as the first Christian kingdom in ca. 314 a.d. (prior to Constantine's 'Christian' rule of a united Roman Empire from 324, and well before Theodosius i's Edict of Thessalonica in 380). This paper attempts to create a demythologized space in which to reconsider the historical probability that Jesus, widely reputed as a healer in the chief (Near Eastern) Jewish centre of influence, was asked for help by an ailing eminent and replied to his request. Along the way, questions will be raised for further research (italicized) and so in this sense the article takes the form of an Agenda.
There are no primal (or so-called “primitive”) societies which fail to celebrate their material b... more There are no primal (or so-called “primitive”) societies which fail to celebrate their material blessings. When the animals are plentiful; when the tubers grow fat in the ground, or the maize tall and strong in the field; when the women are pregnant, and the men vital in war or negotiation, a small people has the elbow-room to be confident. It is a guarantee of self-respect if one has beasts and harvests good enough to meet one’s round of obligations, or answer the needs of a feast, and it is the fruit of a group’s identity that its members delight, shame, or frighten, out-bargain, or satisfy, its natural competitors. Wealth in primal society is group wealth. There are undeniably individuals, families, or castes more noticeably well-off, and “primitive capitalism ” can indeed exist, so that, among the Tolai of New Britain, for example, it is harder for a native rope to pass through the eye of a bone needle than for a poor man – a man who has failed to accumulate shell-money – to ent...
Current Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2021
So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of O... more So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of Oceania, especially Melanesia. Their focus of attention is the mystery surrounding the new goods brought by light-skinned strangers in awe-striking ocean-going vessels and (later) in great flying ‘bird-like’ containers. Various socio-religious movements arose in response to these European-style wares (later internationally-marketed commodities), or “the Cargo” (pidgin: Kago), often in agitated collective expectation of an extraordinary arrival of new riches. The Melanesian outbursts have been typically inspired by prophet-type leaders, with their messages reflecting a transition between indigenous traditions and more settled islander Christianities. This paper moves on from describing and explaining southwest Pacific cargo-type movements to the issue of the ethos out of which they arose, and addresses the sociology of hope for Cargo (or modern commodities in plenty) as a global issue, bes...
An Element on the role of violence in the traditional religions of the Pacific Ilands (Melanesia,... more An Element on the role of violence in the traditional religions of the Pacific Ilands (Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia) and on violent activity in islander religious life after the opening of Oceania to the modern world. This work covers such issues as tribal warfare, sorcery and witchcraft, traditional punishment and gender imbalance. and moves on to consider reprisals against foreign intruders in the Pacific and the continuation of old types of violence in spite of massive socio-religious change.
Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures
Having critiqued Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion as the nearest thing to an Anglophone manifest... more Having critiqued Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion as the nearest thing to an Anglophone manifesto for atheists, I now turn to Michel Onfray's French equivalent, the highly popular Traité d'athéologie (2005), to critique it in a comparable manner. Whereas Dawkins, in the tradition of Darwinian evolutionism, extols a virtually hypostatized Natural Selection as a surrogate for God, Onfray wants to take the French Enlightenment and the French revolutionary impetus to their logical conclusions and makes a supreme virtue out of good sense, rationality and intelligence. Onfray is an advocate not only of atheism, but his own form of hedonism, anarchism and aesthetic cynicism. As usual, I will maintain that any atheistic position must fall back on the 'ultimacy' of its protagonists' own arguments, and once again it can be established that in Onfray's case his platform statement is full of inaccuracies and misunderstandings, logical slides and internal inconsistencies, and injections of angry irony and personal emotion that weaken his case. As usual, I simply concentrate as a scholar of religious questions on the argumentative backing and relative weight of Onfray's case against religion (especially the three major monotheisms), and as an historian of ideas I will attempt to explain Onfray's manifesto against the background of the Frenchman's whole philosophical opus, especially his ongoing work Contre-histoire de la philosophie (2004-). Keywords Michel Onfray • History of ideas • Argument • Criticism • Atheism Michel Onfray (1959-), a contemporary philosopher at the University of Caen with over 50 books to his credit, ranks among the better known academic 'New Atheists' (such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Anthony Grayling) but is less familiar to English readers because most of his writings are not translated from the French. In his ongoing master-work, on a very alternative or counterhistory of philosophy (2006-2009), Onfray skilfully reconstructs lines of Western
The ancient correspondence allegedly between the Toparch Abgar v of Edessa and Jesus of Nazareth ... more The ancient correspondence allegedly between the Toparch Abgar v of Edessa and Jesus of Nazareth is usually treated in modern scholarship as legendary, though possession of it was important for the legitimation of Armenia as the first Christian kingdom in ca. 314 a.d. (prior to Constantine's 'Christian' rule of a united Roman Empire from 324, and well before Theodosius i's Edict of Thessalonica in 380). This paper attempts to create a demythologized space in which to reconsider the historical probability that Jesus, widely reputed as a healer in the chief (Near Eastern) Jewish centre of influence, was asked for help by an ailing eminent and replied to his request. Along the way, questions will be raised for further research (italicized) and so in this sense the article takes the form of an Agenda.
There are no primal (or so-called “primitive”) societies which fail to celebrate their material b... more There are no primal (or so-called “primitive”) societies which fail to celebrate their material blessings. When the animals are plentiful; when the tubers grow fat in the ground, or the maize tall and strong in the field; when the women are pregnant, and the men vital in war or negotiation, a small people has the elbow-room to be confident. It is a guarantee of self-respect if one has beasts and harvests good enough to meet one’s round of obligations, or answer the needs of a feast, and it is the fruit of a group’s identity that its members delight, shame, or frighten, out-bargain, or satisfy, its natural competitors. Wealth in primal society is group wealth. There are undeniably individuals, families, or castes more noticeably well-off, and “primitive capitalism ” can indeed exist, so that, among the Tolai of New Britain, for example, it is harder for a native rope to pass through the eye of a bone needle than for a poor man – a man who has failed to accumulate shell-money – to ent...
Current Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2021
So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of O... more So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of Oceania, especially Melanesia. Their focus of attention is the mystery surrounding the new goods brought by light-skinned strangers in awe-striking ocean-going vessels and (later) in great flying ‘bird-like’ containers. Various socio-religious movements arose in response to these European-style wares (later internationally-marketed commodities), or “the Cargo” (pidgin: Kago), often in agitated collective expectation of an extraordinary arrival of new riches. The Melanesian outbursts have been typically inspired by prophet-type leaders, with their messages reflecting a transition between indigenous traditions and more settled islander Christianities. This paper moves on from describing and explaining southwest Pacific cargo-type movements to the issue of the ethos out of which they arose, and addresses the sociology of hope for Cargo (or modern commodities in plenty) as a global issue, bes...
An Element on the role of violence in the traditional religions of the Pacific Ilands (Melanesia,... more An Element on the role of violence in the traditional religions of the Pacific Ilands (Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia) and on violent activity in islander religious life after the opening of Oceania to the modern world. This work covers such issues as tribal warfare, sorcery and witchcraft, traditional punishment and gender imbalance. and moves on to consider reprisals against foreign intruders in the Pacific and the continuation of old types of violence in spite of massive socio-religious change.
Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures
Having critiqued Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion as the nearest thing to an Anglophone manifest... more Having critiqued Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion as the nearest thing to an Anglophone manifesto for atheists, I now turn to Michel Onfray's French equivalent, the highly popular Traité d'athéologie (2005), to critique it in a comparable manner. Whereas Dawkins, in the tradition of Darwinian evolutionism, extols a virtually hypostatized Natural Selection as a surrogate for God, Onfray wants to take the French Enlightenment and the French revolutionary impetus to their logical conclusions and makes a supreme virtue out of good sense, rationality and intelligence. Onfray is an advocate not only of atheism, but his own form of hedonism, anarchism and aesthetic cynicism. As usual, I will maintain that any atheistic position must fall back on the 'ultimacy' of its protagonists' own arguments, and once again it can be established that in Onfray's case his platform statement is full of inaccuracies and misunderstandings, logical slides and internal inconsistencies, and injections of angry irony and personal emotion that weaken his case. As usual, I simply concentrate as a scholar of religious questions on the argumentative backing and relative weight of Onfray's case against religion (especially the three major monotheisms), and as an historian of ideas I will attempt to explain Onfray's manifesto against the background of the Frenchman's whole philosophical opus, especially his ongoing work Contre-histoire de la philosophie (2004-). Keywords Michel Onfray • History of ideas • Argument • Criticism • Atheism Michel Onfray (1959-), a contemporary philosopher at the University of Caen with over 50 books to his credit, ranks among the better known academic 'New Atheists' (such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Anthony Grayling) but is less familiar to English readers because most of his writings are not translated from the French. In his ongoing master-work, on a very alternative or counterhistory of philosophy (2006-2009), Onfray skilfully reconstructs lines of Western
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