tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post5377289179305290650..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: 9,000-Year-Old Ritual Site Found in JordanJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-37211520478872685392022-03-03T11:43:34.340-05:002022-03-03T11:43:34.340-05:00Incidentally, it occurs to me that Salafism (=Wahh...Incidentally, it occurs to me that Salafism (=Wahhabism, Deobandism, al-Qaeda, Sayyid Qutb, etc.) is a similarly austere form of religion to Calvinism, making as few concessions to ordinary life as possible. Back during War on Terror times, some pundits said the problem with Islam was that it never had a Reformation--but it did, and Wahhabism and all that followed from that was it.<br /><br />Before that, Sufism provided plenty of blessing of threshing floors, praying for rain, and so on. Gellner's _Saints of the Atlas_ is good on what he calls, in a nice phrase, "the hum-drum holy man."<br />Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-68611664165444641302022-03-03T08:33:13.064-05:002022-03-03T08:33:13.064-05:00I think it would be hard to find a pre-modern reli...I think it would be hard to find a pre-modern religion that doesn't have a time-to-bless-the-threshing-floor aspect. Even Buddhism does. Basic agricultural practices are certainly integrated into Judaism. Sukkot is literally a harvest festival, and the every-some-odd-years festivals like Jubilees, with their debt-forgiveness rules, have a clear subsistence-agriculture aspect. At Sinai itself, two chapters after issuing the Decalogue, God is giving out rules for things like liability for damage done by animals. There's an extraordinary encounter that plunges right into the ordinary.<br /><br />Christianity arguably starts with an attack on the very concept of earning a living: the Sermon on the Mount. But of course, the gospels are also full of homely agricultural metaphors and parables (some of which violate peasant common sense, and some of which don't), and Paul wastes little time before bringing the work ethic back in ("the workman earns his keep," etc.).<br /><br />I wonder in what ways, if any, the Amish and similar austere-Protestant farming groups integrate religion into their agricultural year?<br /><br />Part of the problem with any modern religion is most of us not-Amish no longer have a common working year in the same way. But American Protestantism has embraced a lot of ordinary activity: consider contemporary southern high school football. Also, getting-ahead self-help books in the Norman Vincent Peale tradition.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-24085098019940469762022-03-03T07:58:25.074-05:002022-03-03T07:58:25.074-05:00Sure, there are other parts to paganism, but I am ...Sure, there are other parts to paganism, but I am thinking of things like harvest festivals, or festivals for the start of the fishing season, or for the first day of plowing. It seems to me that a lot of religion (and this also applies to medieval Christianity) was integrated into the working year in a way that modern Protestantism is not.<br /><br />It would be interesting to know at what point desert hunting ceased to be a mainly economic activity and became a mainly social, religious, and prestige activity.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-55662848211862513692022-03-02T19:58:06.476-05:002022-03-02T19:58:06.476-05:00"A lot of paganism can be described as the sp..."A lot of paganism can be described as the spiritual side of whatever it was people did for a living: farming, hunting, fishing."<br /><br />I'm not sure this is quite the right way to put. It seems to me, rather, that religion can have a humdrum, homely side that has to do with ordinary activities, but it also can have a side that's supposed to be extraordinary, about extraordinary contacts with extraordinary beings, etc.--and that these two sides are sometimes in tension with one another.<br /><br />Ritual hunts were an important part Arabian paganism before Islam and continued thereafter (sometimes "Islamized," sometimes frowned upon by the jurists, etc., etc.). The thing is, this was not how anyone made a living--these were prestige activities, restricted to elites and conducted at ritual times and especially with ritual songs.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.com