In fact, after she shared, others began to open up and confess struggles of their own. Despite feeling ashamed, nobody in the group judged her. There seems to be a migration of religious thought to help accommodate events that do not fit the paradigm of the religion.“I’m bitter at my daughter.” That’s what a lady shared towards the end of one of our small group meetings. However, I do think that no religion grows in a vacuum, and all neighboring faith communities have influenced each other to some degree. That is influence! It does seem to me that attempting to show a backwards influence of Christianity and Islam on the Jewish scriptures is somewhat misplaced. When the Jewish royalty returned from exile they brought with them the concepts of monotheism, life after death, the resurrection, heaven and hell, final judgment, the devil, and the cataclysmic end of the world. There is no doubt that the influence on Christianity and eventually Islam was tremendous. One should note that the reading of the first 5 books of the Jewish scriptures was presented to mostly ignorant non-literate and non-practicing members of the community in Israel. Most of the Jewish scriptures were not written down until after the return from exile. It was the contact with the Persians over a 70-year period that changed many things in the way the Jewish scriptures would be written, understood, and applied. This certainly suggests a relation with concepts of metamorphoses of physical bodies but I would suggest that the linkage is more with characterising the acceptance of God, whether via conversion or merely an awakening of the spirituality of one who is already Christian, as a sort of physical metamorphoses especially given the physical suffering that accompanied St Hildegard's gifts. Genesis 16.13 which uses the peacock in the same way as the Classical world used it's imagery strengthens this correlation. in this case the Lord sees all or is it that even if you were covered in eyes you could not fail to see proof of the Lord all around you. The imagery of the Queen of Heaven having a many eyed watchdog might well fit in with twelfth century Catholic imagery. I have often wondered if the ultimate source for this imagery isn't Ovid's Metamorphoses with his description of Argos as Hera's watchdog. The packing of images with eyes in illustrations of St Hildegard's works may be quite common and rather than represent transmigration it may be more in keeping with 'fear of the lord', a figure identified as this appears on a facsimile of a probable twelfth century copy of Scivias used by Keith Sidwell as the cover illustration for his student text Reading Medieval Latin. It is therefore normative for all new converts. Peter, in 2:38-39, made this individual reception of/possession by the Spirit a part of Christian initiation not just for the Pentecost crowd, but for all for all time. Finally, everyone had been immersed and had received/been possessed by the Spirit. ![]() As each approached the water, he or she could see the people ahead being immersed and then receiving the Spirit, with glossolalic Spirit possession just like the Apostles. For a short period of time, the new members of the queue had believe, but had not been baptised nor had they received the Spirit, for that was contingent upon repentance and baptism. ![]() There was a liminal ritual initiation proces. ![]() This took a fair amount of organising and time. That means that 3000 individuals got into a queue (a line) and were immersed in water one by one. ![]() Luke then tells us that 3000 were baptised. Regarding Pentecost, you may remember that Peter promised the crowd the same thing that the 120 got if the crowd would repent and be baptised.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |