International Review for the History of Religions
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INTERNATIONAL REVIEW FOR THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS EDITED ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS by H. G. KIPPENBERG and E.T. LAWSON VOLUME XLI L D /68'83 LEIDEN E.J. BRILL 1994 CONTENTS Articles Pieter W. VAN DER HORST, Silent Prayer in Antiquity ...... 1 Muhammad Qasim ZAMAN,A Venture in Critical Islamic Historiography and the Significance of its Failure ........ 26 Luther H. MARTIN, The Anti-Individualistic Ideology of Hellenistic Culture ............................................... 117 Wouter W. BELIER,Arnold Van Gennep and the Rise of French Sociology of Religion .................................. 141 Karl-Ludwig AY, Geography and Mentality. Some Aspects of Max Weber's Protestantism Thesis ....................... 163 Saphinaz-Amal NAGUIB, The Martyr as Witness. Coptic and Copto-Arabic Hagiographies as Mediators of Religious Memory ........................................ ...... 223 Lynn THOMAS, The Identity of the Destroyer in the Mahabharata ........................................ ...... 255 Dan MARTIN,Pearls from Bones: Relics, Chortens, Tertons and the Signs of Saintly Death in Tibet ..................... 273 Inaugural Lecture Michael PYE, Religion: Shape and Shadow ................... 51 Surveyarticle Chen LINSHU, Studies on Religions in Modern China ..... 76 Review article Hans G. KIPPENBERG,Mirrors, not Windows: Semiotic Ap- proaches to the Gospels .......................................... 88 Book reviews Ivan Strenski, Religion in Relation: Method, Application and Moral Location (Donald WIEBE) ................................. 98 H.S. Versnel, Inconsistenciesin Greekand Roman Religion. 2 Vol. (Christoph AUFFARTH)........................................... 101 VI CONTENTS Peter Bruns, Das ChristusbildAphrahats des Persischen Weisen (H an J.W . DRIJVERS) ............................................ 102 The Journal of Oriental ResearchMadras, Vols. L VI-LXII: Drs. S.S. Janaki Felicitation Volume (David SHULMAN)............ 105 Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Robert M. Gimello (Eds.), Paths to Liberation: The Mdrga and its Transformationsin Buddhist Thought (Allan A. ANDREWS) .................................... 106 Emile Benveniste, IndoeuropdischeInstitutionen. Wortschatz, Geschichte, Funktionen (Christoph AUFFARTH) ................. 195 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelleGeddchtnis. Schrift, Erinnerungund politische Identitdt in frihen Hochkulturen(Gerdien JONKER). 196 Tamara M. Green, The City of the Moon God. Religious Tradi- tions of Harran (Klaas DIJKSTRA) ................................ 197 Fabio Mora, ProsopografiaIsiaca. 1: Corpus prosopographicum religionisIsiacae. 2: Prosopografiastoria e statisticadel culto Isiaco (J6rg R UPKE) ....................................................... 198 Mary Boyce and Frantz Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism. Vol. 3: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule (Manfred HUTTER) ............................................... 202 Manfred Hutter, Manis kosmogonischeSdbuhragdn-Texte. Edi- tion, Kommentar und literaturgeschichtlicheEinordnung der manichdisch-mittelpersischenHandschriften M 98/99 I und M 7980-7984 (Wassilios KLEIN) ................................... 204 Olivier Abel and Frangoise Smyth (Eds.), Le livre de traverse: de l'exegese biblique a l'anthropologie(Bernhard LANG) ....... 205 Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niew6hner (Eds.), Religion- sgesprdche im Mittelalter (P.S. van KONINGSVELD) ............ 206 Damien Keown, The Nature of Buddhist Ethics (Robert D. BAIRD) ............................................................... 207 Jan Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time. Studies in a Buddhist Pro- phecy of Decline (Ria KLOPPENBORG) ........................... 208 Francis X. Clooney S.J., Thinking Ritually. Rediscoveringthe Puirva MTmdmsd of Jaimini (L.P. VAN DEN BOSCH) .......... 209 Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy (Peter ANTES) .. 212 Esther Jacobson, The Deer Goddessof Ancient Siberia. A Study in the Ecology of Belief (Ake HULTKRANTZ) ........................ 213 Henry Pernet, Ritual Masks: Deceptionsand Revelations (Hans WITTE) ............................................... 214 CONTENTS VII Barbara von Reibnitz, Ein Kommentarzu FriedrichNietzsche "Die Geburtder Tragidieaus dem Geisteder Musik" (Kapitel 1-12) (Hubert TREIBER) .......................................... 215 William M. Brashear, A MithraicCatechism from Egypt <P. Berol. 21196> (Luther H. MARTIN) .......................... 325 Ron G. Williams and James W. Boyd, Ritual Art and Knowledge.Aesthetic Theory and ZoroastrianRitual (Manfred HUTTER) ................................................ 326 Publicationsreceived ......................................... 107, 217, 328 International Association for the History of Religions. Con- gress and Elections ................................................ 332 ISSN 0029-5973 ? Copyright 1994 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,translated, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recordingor otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy itemsfor internal or personal use is granted by E. J. Brill provided that the appropriatefees are paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center, 27 Congress Street, Salem MA 01970, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS NUMEN, Vol. 41 (1994), ? E. J. Brill, Leiden SILENT PRAYER IN ANTIQUITY PIETER W. VAN DER HORST Summary In antiquity prayers were said out loud and silent prayer was regarded as an anomalous practice that was looked upon with great suspicion. It was brought into connection with a variety of base motives which it was feared would be strongly objected to by others, foremost among which are wishes to practice magic, to have illicit sex, or to conceal crimes or criminal plans. It was also feared that one's prayer might be counteracted or undone by more powerful prayers of the opponents. It is only in circles of later (esp. Neo-)Platonism, in the framework of the increasing transcendentalisationin its concept of deity and the corresponding downgrading of anything material or corporeal, that complete silence as the purest form of worship was gradually accepted. This new trend had its influence on the Jewish philosopher Philo and especially on Churchfathers from Clement of Alex- andria onwards (and also on some Hermetic and Gnostic circles). But in Jewish and Christian documents there was also another motive that facilitated a gradual acceptance of silent prayer as a respectable form of worship, namely, the biblical story (in 1 Samuel 1) about Hanna's inaudible prayer that was heard by God. It is the combination of these Platonic and biblical influences that brings about a change of attitude towards speechless prayer in both Judaism and Christianity, but the evidence clearly demonstrates that this was a very slow process, because the old suspicions surrounding this phenomenon did not easily disappear. The ancients said their prayers out loud. There can be little doubt that throughout the ancient world the common practice was to say prayers in a way audible to other persons. The reason simply was that the anthropomorphic conception of the deities one prayed to implied that the gods had ears that worked in much the same way that human ears did. No sound implied no hearing. The represen- tations of the large ears of gods in a number of reliefs,' the many prayers we know were directed specifically to the ears of a deity,2 and the frequent references to 0eol i.nlxoot (the gods who listen) in ancient literature and on monuments,3 are eloquent witnesses to this idea. The way prayers are usually mentioned in Greek and Latin literature is such that other people could hear what the pray-er was saying to the god.4 Nonetheless, from Homer onwards inaudi- ble prayers are mentioned in ancient literature, and, however much 2 Pieter W. van der Horst these may have been regarded as a deviation from normal practice, they do make clear that beside the more 'primitive' notion that gods could only hear prayers that were spoken out loud, there also existed the opinion that gods, or at least some gods, were able to hear inaudible prayers. When silent prayer is mentioned, in most cases it is undeniably regarded as an anomaly, at least in Greek and Latin sources before the Christian period. As we shall see, in sources from the early Imperial period onwards things begin to change, and in Jewish and Christian sources we also find an increasingly different picture. We will survey the evidence, though not exhaustively, beginning with the pagan material, thereafter dealing with the Jewish and Chris- tian sources from late antiquity. Graeco-Romanevidence In our sources we find several motives mentioned for the offering of silent prayer to a deity. In order to facilitate the presentation of the material, we will subdivide the evidence according to these dif- ferent motives.5 Of course, apart from motives, there could be cir- cumstances which made it physically impossible to say one's prayer aloud. A clear instance of this is Homer, OdysseyV 444, where a tremendous wave has swept Odysseus far out to sea; struggling to the surface and trying to reach a river's mouth, "he prayed in his heart (eiuiao ov xarxa Oupov)to the god of the stream", obviously "because he could not speak it in the rough sea".6 This is clearly something different than a motive to pray in silence. The motive to pray without words or in an