God: An ItineraryVerso, 17.4.2004 - 307 sivua God, who has changed the lives – and deaths – of men and women, has in turn changed His face and His meaning several times over since His birth three thousand years ago. He may have kept the same name throughout, but God has been addressed in many different ways and cannot be said to have the same characteristics in the year 500 BC as in AD 400 or in the twenty-first century, nor is He the same entity in Jerusalem or Constantinople as in Rome or New York. The omnipotent and punitive God of the Hebrews is not the consoling and intimate God of the Christians, and is certainly not identical with the impersonal cosmic Energy of the New Agers. Regis Debray’s purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the genesis of God, His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray shifts the spotlight away from the theological foreground and moves it backstage to the machinery of divine production by going back, from the Law, to the Tablets themselves and by scrutinizing Heaven at its most down-to-earth. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, he is able to focus his attention not just on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose and in what physical environment. Debray contends that, in order to discover how God’s fire was transferred from the desert to the prairie, we ought first to bracket the philosophical questions and focus on empirical information. However, he claims that this does not lessen its significance, but rather gives new life to spiritual issues. God: An Itinerary uses the histories of the Eternal and of the West to illuminate one another and to throw light on contemporary civilization itself. |
Sisältö
A Readers Guide | 1 |
An Endpoint Called Origin | 15 |
High Atop the Dune | 37 |
Alphabetical Liftoff | 59 |
Portable Yet Homebound | 83 |
One For All | 109 |
The Mediating Body | 131 |
Salve Regina | 157 |
The Last Flame | 183 |
Effacement | 207 |
Every Man For Himself | 233 |
The Eternity of the Eternal | 263 |
Complementary Notes | 289 |
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Abraham allows alphabet already angels apostles Aramaic authority Babylon become believe better Bible bishop body Book called Catholic centre century Christ Christian Church civil collective cult culture cuneiform death desert divine doctrine Egypt Egyptian emergence Eternal eyes fact faith Father forget function God's Gospels Greek hand heaven Hebrew Holy human invention Israel Jerusalem Jesus Jewish Jews Judaism land language Latin less living longer Lord matter means mediasphere memory Messiah monotheism monotheistic Moses mother myth obliged one's oneself origin papyrus Paris Paul political prophet Qumran Régis Debray religion religious remains revealed ritual Roman Rome sacred Saint Saint Paul salvation scholasticism Scripture scroll social society space specific Spirit symbolic tablets Temple Tertullian Testament theology things Torah tradition transcendence truth Ugaritic Victor Hugo West word writing written Yahweh Yeshayahu Leibowitz