Papers by Luther H. Martin-Jr
Deep History, Secular Theory, 2014
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In their article, “The Third Symbol of the Miles Grade on the Floor Mosaic of the Felicissimus Mi... more In their article, “The Third Symbol of the Miles Grade on the Floor Mosaic of the Felicissimus Mithraeum in Ostia: A New Interpretation”, Aleš Chalupa and Tomáš Glomb argue that one of the three symbols associated with the Mithraic initiatory grade of Miles on the floor mosaic in the Felicissimus Mithraeum has been misinterpreted.1 In addition to an image of a helmet and a spear in this mosaic, clear references to accessories appropriate to a soldier, there is a third, no less distinct but nevertheless equivocal, image that has most often been interpreted as a sarcina or soldier’s sling bag or, less often, as a Phrygian cap. This understanding groups the sling bag with the helmet and spear as images appropriate for an initiatory grade that is named by and associated with military service. Chalupa and Glomb correctly question the identification of the ambivalent image of the third Mithraic initiatory grade as a Phrygian cap since this image appears in another grade from the same mosa...
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Vigiliae Christianae, 1973
The contents of any writing must be understood as integral with the media through which these con... more The contents of any writing must be understood as integral with the media through which these contents are manifest. Whereas attention is usually directed towards an understanding of literary form, stylistic analysis is often neglected - or assumed. However, stylistic analysis can add ...
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Vigiliae Christianae, 1973
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The proposal for a scientific study of religions was born of the scientific impulse that swept Eu... more The proposal for a scientific study of religions was born of the scientific impulse that swept Europe from the mid-nineteenth century and that gave birth to the study of history itself as a scientific and autonomous discipline.2 This new Religionswissenschaft was understood to be distinct from its previous philosophical and literary contexts, and, most significantly, from its previous theological commitments. The scientific impulse in the study of history is perhaps best exemplified by the works of Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). This German historian emphasized the importance of critically examining primary sources and of establishing historical facts empirically, in order to narrate, thereby, simple historical truth “wie”, in his famous formulation, “es eigentlich ge wesen”, that is, to relate what actually happened.3 Although von Ranke has acquired a reputation as a “souless [sic] positivist”, concerned only with facts,4 the distinguished intellectual historian Georg Iggers has c...
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Folklorist and anthropologist Andrew Lang has identified a tendency for the homonymy of gods to b... more Folklorist and anthropologist Andrew Lang has identified a tendency for the homonymy of gods to be characteristic of “the mythological period of all nations”.1 In contrast to the phenomenology of religion, which posits an essentialized “sacrality” underlying the various theographies, a perennial history of religions’ question is that of the specific relationship(s) between deities sharing a common name. While this problem of the relationship of homonymous deities is, perhaps, most generally familiar from Greek polytheism,2 that between the various incarnations of the IndoEuropean Mithra has recently been reintroduced to modern scholarship.3 Already from the second millennium BC (c. 1500-1200 BC), a solar deity with the name of Mitra is prominent in the Hindu pantheon of the Indian Rig Veda as guarantor of friendship and contract, and, contemporaneously (c. 1400 BC), as witness to an inscribed peace treaty between the Hittites and their neighbors. A Mithra is later attested in the Pe...
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e-Rhizome
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Copyright €i t988 by The University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the Uni... more Copyright €i t988 by The University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America LC 87-t0756 fSBN 0-870t3-593-i tpaper) Designed by Barbara Werden Set in Linotron Janson at Rainsford Type Printed ...
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Vigiliae Christianae, 1973
The contents of any writing must be understood as integral with the media through which these con... more The contents of any writing must be understood as integral with the media through which these contents are manifest. Whereas attention is usually directed towards an understanding of literary form, stylistic analysis is often neglected - or assumed. However, stylistic analysis can add ...
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Contemporary Sociology, 1989
Copyright €i t988 by The University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the Uni... more Copyright €i t988 by The University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America LC 87-t0756 fSBN 0-870t3-593-i tpaper) Designed by Barbara Werden Set in Linotron Janson at Rainsford Type Printed ...
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Papers by Luther H. Martin-Jr