古希腊宗教与经济思想

古代希腊是一个充满宗教色彩的社会,古希腊宗教不仅具有许多不同于其他宗教的特点,而且在古希腊社会中起到非常独特的作用。宗教活动是古希腊人社会生活的一个重要组成部分,尤其对他们的经济生活产生直接而深刻的影响。因此,宗教是我们了解古希腊社会及其思想意识的重要渠道。     

Hagiography and Monotheism in History: Doctrinal encounters between Zoroastrianism,Judaism and Christianity 1

Issues of hagiography and monotheism were central to the historical development of Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity (and subsequently Islam). Overlapping geo graphical locales and cultural heritages, especially during the rule of ancient Iranian dynasties and within Iranian territory, seem to have facilitated and reinforced common solutions that linked devotees across confessional lines through shared communal notions and doctrinal tenets. The hagiographical lives and preachings of Zarathushtra, or Zoroaster, and biblical figures from Moses to Jesus consciously came to parallel each other ex post facto and were regarded as representing different aspects of monotheism. The Zoroastrian dualistic worldview did not exclude monotheism, although it did postulate a separate source of evil. Variations notwith standing, for members of each faith, the spiritual entity venerated by their founder was believed to be God--a condition acknowledged by the other confessional groups as well. Uniting a community of believers around themselves in the veneration of a singular deity eventually transformed Zarathushtra, Moses and Jesus (and later Muhammad) into prophets. Religious founders, the historically created and cross-culturally shaped images of such founders and an intercommunally emergent notion that their words represented communion with the divinity forged and strengthened the shared links between hagiography and monotheism among Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians and, in time, Muslims.     

Cultural Meanings of Money in Medieval Ashkenaz: On Gift,Profit, and Value in Medieval Judaism and Christianity

This article explores the cultural history of money in medieval Judaism and Christianity. In doing so, it reassesses a historical narrative describing the emergence of a “new money economy” in the High Middle Ages. In the prevailing narrative, money is positioned as a causal agent: it is said to effect and symbolize the “profit motive,” becoming a locus for anxiety about the new money economy. But a close reading of moral literature suggests that money per se was not a locus of anxiety. Moralists had a sophisticated understanding of economic value and its relation to moral economy. Anxiety among Jewish and Christian moralists focused on the possible disjuncture between moral and economic values, not on economic value per se. Through close readings of medieval exempla, this article demonstrates that moralists regarded the economic act of acquisition as creating a moral value. When “bad” moral value adhered to coins, they sought to devise means for redeeming that value through penitential acts. This ideology, which was shared by Jewish and Christian authors, suggests that cultural assumptions about money were more sophisticated than a straightforward fear of the profit economy and profit motive and that the narrative of European economic development as a shift from gift economy to profit economy ought to be problematized. Binary oppositions between gift and profit and between an altruistic Christianity (linked to a gift economy) and a modernizing Judaism (linked to a profit economy) ought to be broken down.     

深化中国学术视野中的古代希腊与罗马哲学研究

本文回眸了古希腊罗马哲学在中国的历程,指出了改革开放以来逐步进向以中国学术视野做有学术创新的研究,但需要加强某些薄弱环节;本文论述了古希腊罗马哲学的现代意义,为加强中西哲学与文化传统的整体性交往,需要深化中国学术视野中的古希腊罗马哲学研究;本文还就跨文化研究古希腊罗马哲学的视野与方法,提出一些供参考的见解.     

Judaism, justice, and access to health care

This paper develops the traditional Jewish understanding of justice (tzedakah) and support for the needy, especially as related to the provision of medical care. After an examination of justice in the Hebrew Bible, the values and institutions of tzedakah in Rabbinic Judaism are explored, with a focus on legal codes and enforceable obligations. A standard of societal responsibility to provide for the basic needs of all, with a special obligation to save lives, emerges. A Jewish view of justice in access to health care is developed on the basis of this general standard, as well as explicit discussion in legal sources. Society is responsible for the securing of access to all health care needed by any individual. Elucidation of this standard of need and corresponding societal obligations, and the significance of the Jewish model for the contemporary United States, are considered.     

The Roles of Religion in National Legitimation: Judaism and Zionism's Elusive Quest for Legitimacy

Why and how do nations turn to religion to justify claims for statehood? This article addresses this question in both theory and practice, showing that religion plays multiple legitimating roles that shift dynamically according to the success they yield for national movements. I posit four legitimating models: (1) nationalism instead of religion (“secular nationalism”), (2) nationalism as a religion (“civil religion”), (3) religion as a resource for nationalism (“auxiliary religion”), and (4) religion as a source of nationalism (“chosen people”). Empirically, I analyze the roles of religion in Zionist efforts to legitimate a Jewish state in Palestine. I argue that Zionism has responded to persistent delegitimation by expanding the role of religion in its political legitimation. The right of self‐determination, which stands at the core of the “secular Zionism” legitimation, has given way to leveraging Judaism, which in turn has been eclipsed by constructing a Zionist civil religion and a “chosen people” justification.     

The Union of Religion and Health in Ancient Asklepieia

This study of the cult of Asklepios reveals that happiness, well-being, and health were inseparable from and unified with devotion and religion in the healing arts practiced in the Asklepieia of antiquity. Religion, the tie that binds together a community, was the ultimate means to attain health for the suppliants of the Asklepieia scattered across the ancient Mediterranean world. A brief review of the cult of Asklepios and its health centers and practices, with some insights from the work of Kerényi, Meier, the Edelsteins, and others, will illuminate the mental-health aspects of the cult and foreshadow some additional insights into this intriguing union of religion and health.     

Ancient Israel, Judaism and Christianity in Contemporary Perspective. Essays in Memory of Karl-Johan Illman – Edited by Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck, Antti Laato, Risto Nurmela and Karl Gustav Sandelin (eds)

Book reviewed:
Ancient Israel, Judaism and Christianity in Contemporary Perspective. Essays in Memory of Karl-Johan Illman , Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck, Antti Laato, Risto Nurmela and Karl Gustav Sandelin (eds), Lanham University Press of America 2006 (0-7618-3362-5), ix + 448 pp., pb $41.00