Igor I. EVLAMPIEVSaint Petersburg State University
7-9, Universitetskaya embankment, Saint Petersburg, 199034 Russian Federation
Professor of Department of Russian Philosophy and Culture
Doctor of Science (in Philosophy)
e-mail: yevlampiev@mail.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-7209-2616
Evlampiev, I. (2024) On the significance of the ancient Greek, ancient Roman and Jewish worldview for the religious development of European civilization. International Journal of Cultural Research, 3 (56). 14–30. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2024_3_14Abstract: The article shows that ancient Greek and Roman religions played a much greater role in the development of the religious worldview of Europe than is commonly believed. The two components of ancient religion turned out to be opposite in their tendencies: the ancient Roman pantheistic and anthropocentric religion became an ideal environment for the spread of pristine Christianity, which the historical church later declared the “Gnostic heresy”, and the ancient Greek cosmocentric religion was well consistent with orthodox Christianity, which used the Greek idea of unchanging world pattern (fate) to prove man’s complete submission to the will of God. In the Age of Enlightenment, the second tendency was finally embodied in the idea of science, of rational knowledge, as the only way to “save” a weak and unfree person; in this capacity, European scientific consciousness acted as the legitimate heir of the orthodox church and ancient Greek religion, which reduced man to an insignificant part of the universe. Gnostic Christianity, which is centered on the opposite idea – the idea of man as a revealed God, not subject to world laws and possessing absolute mystical power over the world, became the ideological basis of the Renaissance, and then clearly manifested itself in German romanticism. The third basis of the religious development of Europe – Jewish religiosity, was the immediate environment for both forms of Christianity, since the original, Gnostic Christianity arose from ancient Nazariteism (1st century BC) as a radical Jewish “heresy”, and Orthodox Judaism became the basis of Orthodox Christianity in the 2nd century. In the 16th–17th centuries, Judaism underwent a sharp turn from the dominance of orthodox ideas to Gnostic ones; their vehicle was Kabbalah and its most radical continuation in the Sabbatian movement, which destroyed the foundations of separate Jewish life and made religiously significant the rejection of traditional religion in favor of the cultural assimilation of Jews. The active cultural activity of assimilated Jews, which had a religious basis, became an important factor that ensured the dominance of the Gnostic religious worldview in European culture of the 19th century. The confrontation between Gnostic and Orthodox Christianity continues to this day in the form of a struggle between the “romantic” and “enlightenment” models of civilization; the Jewish element continues to operate within each of them, and the victory of one of the parties largely depends on its activity.
Key words: ancient Greek and Roman religions, Judaism, Kabbalah, Gnostic Christianity, Renaissance, Enlightenment, romanticism, assimilation of Jews.
References:
- Avgustin bl. (1998) O poriadke [About order]. Avgustin bl. Vol. 1. St.Petersburg: Aleteiia. P. 114–182. (In Russian)
- Bibikhin, V.V. (1998) Novyi renessans [New Renaissance]. Moscow: Nauka. 496 p. (In Russian)
- Evlampiev, I.I. (2022) Filosofiia L.P. Karsavina i misticheskoe uchenie kabbaly [L.P. Karsavin’s Philosophy and the mystical teachings of Kabbalah]. Filosofskoe antikovedenie i klassicheskaia traditsiia. Vol. 16. No. 2. P. 634–643; DOI:10.25205/1995-4328-2022-16-2-634-643. (In Russian)
- Evlampiev, I.I. (2024) Neiskazhennoe khristianstvo i ego sud’ba v evropeiskoi kul’ture [Undistorted Christianity and its fate in European culture]. Petersburg: TsSO, 2024. 808 p. (In Russian)
- Nietzsche, F. (2012) Rozhdenie tragedii [Birth of tragedy]. Nietzsche, F. Polnoye sobraniey sochineniy v 13 tomakh [Complete Works in 13 vols.]. Vol. 1. Part 1. Moscow: Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia. P. 7– (In Russian)
- Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. New York: Viking. 576 р.
- Sholem, G. (1961) Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books. 484 p.
- Scholem, G. (1971) Redemption through Sin. In Scholem G. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. New York: Schocken Books. P. 78–
- Svas’ian, K. (2002) Stanovlenie evropeiskoi nauki [The formation of European science]. Moscow: Evidentis. 438 p. (In Russian)
- Tantlevskii, I.R., Evlampiev, I.I. (2021) Zhivaia lichnost’ protiv zakonov Kosmosa: drevneevreiskoe i drevnegrecheskoe slagaemye evropeiskogo mirovozzreniia [A living personality against the laws of the Cosmos: the Hebrew and Ancient Greek components of the European worldview]. Filosofskoe antikovedenie i klassicheskaia traditsiia. Vol. 15. No 1. P. 86–107; DOI:10.25205/1995-4328-2021-15-1-86-107. (In Russian)
- Zelinskii, F. F. (1995) Rim i ego religiia [Rome and its religion]. In Zelinskii F. F. Iz zhizni idei. V 4 tomakh [From the life of ideas. In 4 vols.] 3. Moscow, 1995. P. 3–52. (In Russian)
For Citation: Evlampiev, I. (2024) On the significance of the ancient Greek, ancient Roman and Jewish worldview for the religious development of European civilization. International Journal of Cultural Research, 3 (56). 14–30. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2024_3_14
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2024_3_14
