RELIGION AS CONSTITUTION
THE
ETERNALLY BURNING
THORN BUSH
THE STRUCTURE OF THEOCRACY
AND THE EURO-WESTERN SCHOLASTIC TRAUMA
Towards an Egypto-Judaeo-Christian Anthropology of Religion and Theology
Those who speak about religion today are generally not conscious
to what extent the term and its content are prejudiced by spatial conditions.
The present essay is based on O. F. Bollnow's phenomenological 'anthropology
of space' (1963). Bollnow reconstructs the development of human perception
and conception of space. Having its origins in narrow environmental conditions
of early settlement, it expands successively along cultural developments,
gains control over increasingly wider territories and finally discovers
- in Europe in the 14th century - the endless dimensions of the universe.
This easily leads to the historico-methodological question: do we project
evolved space concepts on ancient texts? Evidently an important question
which is intimately connected with the modern Western self-interpretation
and world-view. The positively critical answer of the following essay is
focussed on Egypto-Judaeo-Roman-Christian lines of development. Territorio-political
and constitutional aspects appear in the foreground. Maybe the text manages
to convince the reader of the need for a 'copernic' turn: away from the
Euro-scholastically based orders to exploit the globe, towards the globally
human, towards the cross culturally comparative without apriori-values,
in short, towards a new anthropology. Beyond modern historistic projections
man has to be discovered anew, particularly to understand his factual responsibility
in this world.
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