Culianu, Journal for the Study of Judaism "The enormous value of this new volume lies in the fact that these texts will now be available to a much wider audience of readers, including historians or religion, anthropologists, and psychologists."âJohn G. "One of the major achievements of classical and related scholarship over the last decade."âIoan P. The Greek Magical Papyri in Transition is an invaluable resource for scholars in a wide variety of fields, from the history of religions to the classical languages and literatures, and it will fascinate those with a general interest in the occult and the history of magic. Containing a fresh translation of the Greek papyri, as well as Coptic and Demotic texts, this new translation has been brought up to date and is now the most comprehensive collection of this literature, and the first ever in English. "The Greek magical papyri" is a collection of magical spells and formulas, hymns, and rituals from Greco-Roman Egypt, dating from the second century B.C. In doing so, I am going to take up a theme which has become widely popular in the anthropological field under the heading ‘the consequences of literacy’.
Following the many passing remarks made by these authors in respect to the use of writing within the Aladura churches, I will read their accounts in terms of how people perceived and experienced the written word in the specific context of the Christian–colonial order and consider whether and how this experience has influenced people's actions and religious behaviour. In this article I propose to introduce another aspect of interpretation.
To date, there have been three main lines of interpretation which received general recognition: first, in form of a theological analysis (Turner, 1967) second, in a discussion of social protest (Mitchell, 1970) and finally, through the sociology of religion (Peel, 1968). The Yoruba word aladura, meaning ‘one who prays’, generally refers to a set of churches that formed a powerful religious movement among the Yoruba in western Nigeria during the first decades of this century.
0 kommentar(er)
