History of Religions

Görümler (Vizyon, görü, müşahede) insanların bilinçleri açıkken diğer bir ifadeyle rüyada değilken kutsalı tecrübe anlarıdır ve vahiy çeşitlerinden birini oluşturur. İnsanlar ve peygamberler görümleri oldukça sık bir şekilde müşahede etmiş ve uluslarına bu görümler vasıtasıyla müjdeler yahut uyarılar getirmişlerdir. Görümler genellikle tabiatları itibariyle olağanüstü semboller ve mecazlarla vuku bulmuştur. Bu semboller ateşten gök gürültülerine;yanan bir çalıdan Yakup'un göksel merdivenine; Tanrı'nın duman yahut tahtlarda görünmesinden Hezekiel'in kurukafa vadisisine kadar çeşitlilik arz etmektedir. Bu görümleri defalarca tecrübe eden peygamberler bile görümlerin anlamlarını her zaman açık seçik anlamlandıramamışlardır. Biz de bu çalışmamızda söz konusu görümlerin dinler tarihindeki yerini tespit etmeye, vahiy fenomeninin içerisindeki yerini izaha, tarihsel süreç içerisindeki gelişme aşamalarına  ve görümlerin insanların hayatlarında hangi anlamlara geldiğini bulmaya çalıştık.

In 1961 Mircea Eliade published his one of his most important articles about the methodology of the History of Religions: “History of Religions and a New Humanism” which opened the first issue of the journal History of Religions. Eliade describes there task of the discipline. Beyond being a scientific discipline the science of religions will fulfill its true cultural function by making the meanings of religious documents intelligible to the mind of modern man and this cultural role is of the first importance. The main factor which incited Eliade to define such a task was  on the one hand, the recent reappearance of the peoples of Asia on the stage of history and, on the other; the so-called primitive peoples were preparing to make their appearance on the horizon of greater history. Eliade expected these confrontations between Westerners and non-Westerners would create new cultural values. Eliade believed that by attempting to understand the existential situations expressed by the documents he is studying, the historian of religions would inevitably attain to a deeper knowledge of man. It is on the basis of such a knowledge that a new humanism, on a world-wide scale, could develop. The specificity of this task to this discipline is due to its research area.  This article was reissued in The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (1969) with some addenda.  There Eliade emphasizes the privileged position of the History of Religions among the other humanistic disciplines. For him, more than any other humanistic discipline (i.e., psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc.), history of religions can open the way to a philosophical anthropology. For the sacred is a universal dimension and the beginnings of culture are rooted in religious experiences and beliefs. Furthermore, even after they are radically secularized, such cultural creations as social institutions, technology, moral ideas, arts, etc., cannot be correctly understood if one does not know their original religious matrix, which they tacitly criticized, modified, or rejected in becoming what they are now: secular cultural values. Thus, the historian of religions is in a position to grasp the permanence of what has been called man's specific existential situation of "being in the world," for the experience of the sacred is its correlate. In fact, man's becoming aware of his own mode of being and assuming his presence in the world together constitute a "religious" experience.
Four years later published Eliade’s article “Crisis and Renewal in the History of Religions”. In the first article mentioned above Eliade’s main concern was about the task of the History of Religions: a new humanism. Now he tackles with the problem of methodology. How this aim can be reached? This is the major subject of this article. 
Eliade reiterates his conception of the History Religions as a privileged discipline. He claims that the history of religions is not merely a historical discipline as for example, archeology or numismatics. It is as well a total hermeneutics, being called to decipher and explicate every kind of encounter of man with the sacred, from prehistory to our day.  This kind of hermeneutics is different from textual interpretation or philosophical hermeneutics of Dilthey, Heidegger or Gadamer.  It seems that Eliade’s hermeneutics was rather influenced by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, his colleague at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago from 1970 and at the same time a family friend.
Eliade’s creative hermeneutic is more than an instruction; it is also “a spiritual technique susceptible of modifying the quality of existence itself”. What is at stake in not a discovery about a natural phenomenon or about a new element for example but an existential situation, a being in the world. The historian of religions is studying the sacred worlds of people. The sacred is the key element shaping their every day life and their self representation of their world and themselves. Eliade emphasizes the fact that the discovery of a spiritual world is in terms of quality different from other kinds of discoveries. Creative hermeneutics unveils significations that one did not grasp before, or puts them in relief with such vigor that after having assimilated this new interpretation the consciousness is no longer the same.
In conclusion the hope of Eliade was the inner transformation of the researcher and, of the sympathetic reader through the hermeneutical effort of deciphering the meaning of myths, symbols, and other traditional religious structures. That’s why he considered the phenomenology and history of religions among the very few humanistic disciplines that are at the same time propaedeutic and spiritual techniques.
While in the creative hermeneutics Eliade emphasizes primarily the role of the of specialist in the field of religion, Ricœur, develops more precisely the inner changes occurring in the individual mind by putting emphasis upon self-understanding as the outcome of the hermeneutical process.  For Ricoeur, the purpose of all interpretation is to conquer a remoteness, a distance between the past cultural epoch to which the text belongs and the interpreter himself. By overcoming this distance, by making himself contemporary with the text, the exegete can appropriate its meaning to himself: foreign, he makes it familiar, that is, he makes it his own. It is thus the growth of his own understanding of himself that he pursues through his understanding of others. Every hermeneutics is thus, explicitly or implicitly, self-understanding by means of understanding others. 
The purpose of this paper is to unclose the hermeneutical process, this “royal road” of the History of Religions as labeled by Eliade. The inspiration came from the reading of Camus’  Le Mythe de Sisyphe, The  case of Camus, provides us a very rich and interesting illustration of the manner in which hermeneutics is deployed and of the function of mythology even for those who deny the reality of such narratives.   
Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Essai sur l’absurde, one of the first books of Albert Camus, one of the most important French authors of the 20th century was published in 1942. The source of inspiration for the title of the book is its last chapter, five pages in total. The principal problematic of this work is to find an answer to the problem of whether a meaningless existence is worthy of being lived or not. Stimulated by an atheist and materialist paradigm, Camus argues that despite all its meaninglessness, one must choose life and reject suicide. But why? How can an existence deprived of an ultimate aim going to be destroyed by death be assumed? Camus thinks that it is necessary to resist death, which is the biggest obstacle in front of existence, and to embrace life albeit its meaninglessness. He finds, the archetype of this thought, represented by the concept of absurd, found in the myth of Sisifos, an ancient Greek myth. According to Camus, it is necessary to imagine Sisifos who defied death happy. However, the original myth depicts a rebellious man who because he rebelled against the divine realm and tried to escape from death was condemned to eternal torment in Hell. His punishment was to roll a stone to the top of a mountain.  When he ascended the top of the mountain in Tartarus, every time the rock rolled back to the bottom, It is noteworthy that Camus used its own paradigm to reject the paradox of an element borrowed from a system of beliefs diametrically opposed to his one that deny both the postmortem phase and the divine order. Through the hermeneutical process Camus is confronted with a wisdom which Socrates described as defeating the fear of death. The myth has become a kind of mirror by reflecting his own reality to Camus reflects immortality.
The total hermeneutics of Eliade involves an existential aspect of understanding  because of the existential and ontological character of the documents studies by the historian of religions. The religious nature of data like, myths, symbols or religious texts enable the existential dimension of understanding.  In his second article Eliade speaks of the “encounter of man with the sacred” i.e. with the wholly other. The other provides something we do not have and thus fills a gap or establishes the missing link. Camus’ hermeneutic endeavor represents such a task: finding a meaning to the existence even though it appears there is no meaning to be found.  The main concern of Camus’ problematic and the source of his existential anxiety is the phenomenon of death, his worst enemy. The myth of Sisyphus by narrating the immortality of the soul provides the missing link in the thinking of Camus. The wisdom or the message that Camus perceives from this myth is to not be afraid of death. Because death is an inseparable element of the human condition and that life is not restricted to this world. There is an afterlife shaped by man’s earthly life. But Camus restricts himself with the first part of the message. The myth of Sisyphus sat Camus up with wisdom. 
In conclusion Camus’ case illustrates beautifully what Eliade means by creative hermeneutics. But it demonstrates at the same time that sometimes the power of the message carried by myths are so strong that it does not necessary needs a specialists to be deciphered. It can reveal itself to  everybody searching for it.

Richard Simon, one of the pioneers of Biblical criticism did not write a monographic work on Islam. Simon's main area of interest was the critical study of biblical texts. These texts, which constitute the holy books of Christianity, have been submitted to changes over time due to multiple reasons. Starting from the fact that it was impossible to understand the Bible correctly without knowing the situations in which these texts were at different times and in different places and without shedding light on the changes that they have undergone in order to approach the original text Simon decide to tackle these problems with a historical and philological approach. These texts could not be understood without knowing the language of the most voluminous part of the Bible, that’s to say the Old Testament or Tanakh. After grasping the importance of philology in textual criticism, Simon learned not only Hebrew, but also Syriac and Arabic. As if he had heard the famous maxim of the Max Müller urging for comparison in the stud of religion two centuries earlier –“He who knows one, knows none”-, Simon realized that not only the historical approach but also the comparative approach was essential for understanding religions. His curiosity for languages and religions led him to study Islam.
He addressed the issue of Islam in the appendix of the translation to the book of the Italian Jesuit Jerôme Dandini who was sent by Pope Clement VIII as nuncio to Maronites in Lebanon. The translation’s French title is Voyage du Mont Liban. Simon added the appendix in order to correct the deficiencies in Dandini’s book. Besides Simon mentioned Islam in the fourth chapter of his work titled Additions aux recherches curieuses sur la diversité des langues et religions d’Edward Brerewood. Some circumstances prevented Simon from publishing this work. But he used the information he gathered about Islam in the fifteenth chapter of his Histoire critique de la créance et des coûtumes des nations du Levant, published in 1684. Especially in this last work, a very objective and neutral stance about Islam has been exhibited.
Simon's approach to Islam appears to be objective and impartial. But the example of Simon also shows that doing such a thing in 17th century Europe was not an easy task. In an environment in which Islam was accepted by the majority as an enemy or at least one other, and even the rationalist thinkers such as Voltaire or Pascal adopted the rhetoric of the ’false Prophet’, Simon could draw a phenomenological picture of Islam on the basis of ethnological data.
In order to better understand what this approach -which is accepted as a simple scientific principle today- meant in the 17th century in France we have described the main lines of views and approaches related to Islam and to its Prophet at this time. The merit of Simon appears more clearly when considered through the difficulties encountered by Simon when discussing about “the religion of the enemies”. Simon has successfully preserved his unbiased approach in an environment where a very negative image of Islam dominated and where the majority of the thinker speaking and writing about this religion were profoundly attached to the rhetoric of the so called “false Prophet”. 

At a time when the freedom of thought and expression was limited and a strict censorship mechanism was under way, it is noteworthy that Simon approached Islam with the principle of objectivity and impartiality. Although Islam was regarded by the majority of Europeans thinkers as an enemy, or at least as another, and in an epoch when it was seen as nearly a necessity to adopt this rhetoric, Simon managed to draw a phenomenological picture of Islam on the basis of historical and ethnological data.
On the other hand, Simon used the comparative methode like Bartolomé de las Casas, who about a century ago by comparing the religion of America with Greek and Roman paganism argued that the religion of the indigenous people of America was superior because they worshiped the true God. Reminding that Europeans praise the moral principles of the writers of Greek and Roman paganism, Simon emphasized that the morality of Muslims who believe in one God was superior. On the basis of the fact that these religions constitute a family because Judaism, Christianity and Islam come from the same root, Simon has made it clear that the image of Islam that has been formed for centuries has made this religion unrecognizable in Europe. As a result, confronting the historical and ethnological reality of İslam with its deformed and virtual image Simon tried to explain that when the layers of lies and prejudices lying under this image would be removed Christians will find a figure that is absolutely no stranger to them. The will eventually discover their real image.

19. yüzyılda Batı'da kurumsallaşmaya başlayan din bilimlerinin temel kavramlarından biri olan din (religion) hakkında son elli yıldır ciddi tartışmalar yürütülmektedir. Din kavramının muğlaklığın dolayı objektif, evrensel ve bilimsel kriterlere dayalı bir araştırma alanı oluşturmada zorluklar yaşandığını düşünen bazı araştırmacılar bu kavramın uygun bir tanımını yapmaya çalışırken diğerleri bu kavramın yerine "kültür" gibi daha nötr ve daha geniş yelpazeli kavramlar kullanmayı teklif etmişlerdir. Din kavramının din incelemeleri alanından tamamen atılması gerektiğini ilk savunanlardan biri de Fransız dinler tarihçisi Daniel Dubuisson'dur. Dubuisson'a göre "din" (religion) kavramının Batı medeniyetine özgü Hıristiyanlık merkezli bir kavram olduğu için evrensel ve objektif bir nitelik taşımamaktadır. Bu kavram üzerine inşa edilen Dinler Tarihi disiplinin de Batılılar tarafından bilimsel bir kaygıdan ziyade ideolojik bir ajanda doğrultusunda oluşturularak Batı'nın sömürgecilik ve kültürel tahakküm faaliyetinde bir araç olarak kullanılmıştır. Evrensel ve bilimsel bir antropolojik bakış açışı elde etmenin yolunun "din" kavramını terk etmekten geçtiğini savunan Dubuisson'un önerdiği yeni kavram, "kozmografik oluşumlar" kavramıdır. Dubuisson'un eleştirilerinde doğruluk payı olsa bu araştırma sonucunda önerdiği kavramın da Avrupamerkezcilikten kurtulamadığı görülür. Daha da önemlisi "kozmografik oluşumlar" kavramının Dubuisson kendi ateist ideolojisini bilimsellik kisvesi altında Dinler Tarihi alanına enjekte etme teşebbüsü olduğu anlaşılır.

17. yüzyıl, Avrupa tarihinde "kuşkuculuk" çağı olarak da adlandırılır. 16. asırdan itibaren gerçekleşen coğrafi, tarihi ve bilimsel keşifler yepyeni ufuklar açmıştır. Rönesans döneminden itibaren bir taraftan felsefi düşüncenin gelişmesi diğer taraftan da Hıristiyan mezhepler arasındaki din savaşlarının düşünen zihinleri dini paradigmanın dışına itmesiyle birlikte rasyonel bakış açısı ağırlık kazanmıştır. Asırlar boyunca tarihsel, doğal veya beşeri hakikatler olarak Hıristiyanlığın kutsal kitap külliyatı ekseninde anlamlandırılan olgulara da kuşkuyla bakılmaya başlanmıştır. Fransız araştırmacı Isaac La Peyrère'in ön-Âdemiler hipotezi, o dönemdeki kuşkucu zihniyeti yansıtan önemli örneklerden biridir. La Peyrère'in Âdem'den önce insanların var olup olmadığını sorgulaması profan/beşeri bilginin Kitab-ı Mukaddes ile bağdaştırma gayretinin bir ürünüdür. La Peyrère'in Kitab-ı Mukaddes'in en başındaki kıssayı, insanın yeryüzündeki varlığına dair en temel kıssayı tartışma konusu yapmasıyla başlayan süreç, Eski Ahit kitaplarının otantikliği ve vahiy değeri meselesiyle devam etmiş, tarihsel İsa ve Yeni Ahit'in Tanrı kelamı olup olmadığı tartışmalarına kadar uzanmıştır. Sonuç itibariyle La Peyrère'in ön-Âdemiler hipotezi kabul görmemiş olsa da Kitab-ı Mukaddes'in güvenirliliği hakkında ciddi tereddütler uyandırarak Kitab-ı Mukaddes eleştirine öncülük etmiştir.

Birilerini cadı ilan ederek onları suçlu göstermek ve sonunda yakarak cezalandırmak Avrupa tarihinin karanlık sayfalarından birini oluşturmaktadır. Cadı avları ve Engizisyon mahkemeleri gibi uygulamalar bugün yok olsa da bu zihniyetin yok olduğunu düşünmek yanlış olur. Bugün Batı'da her ne kadar bazı insanlar fiziken yok edilmeseler de kendilerine birer ideolojik suç isnat edilerek onların itibarları yıkılmaya çalışılmaktadır. Bu ideolojik savaşlarda kendilerini savcı ve hâkim ilan edenler hedef seçtikleri karşı görüştekinin yalnızca görüşlerini değil, şahsiyetini ve ortaya koymuş olduğu eserin tamamını yıkmaya çalışmaktadırlar. Eskiden din adına yapılan "cadı avları" günümüzde bilim adına yapılmakta ve böylece bilim, ideolojinin aracı haline getirilmektedir. Bu çalışmadaki amaç, somut bir örnekten hareketle bu sürecin ne şekilde işlediğini ortaya koymaktır ve Batı dillerinden Türkçeye git gide çok sayıda çevrilen kitapları değerlendirirken bunların bilim kisvesi altında ideolojik okumalardan ibaret olabileceği konusunda yeni bir duyarlılığın oluşmasına katkıda bulunmaktır.

Avec les progrès vertigineux de la technologie le monde devient comme un petit village où les individus appartenant à différents horizons ethniques, culturelles, et religieux sont appelés à vivre ensemble malgré les différences qui les séparent. Or l'histoire nous montre qu'une telle cohabitation n'est pas chose nouvelle. Par exemple jusqu'à la fin du XIX e siècle à Kayseri (Turquie) une population formée par différents groupes ethnico religieux vivait en harmonie. Ce siècle qui aboutira avec la première guerre mondiale à l'effondrement des empires et à la fondation des états nations constitue de ce fait un tournant décisif dans ce processus de cohabitation. Comment des éléments apparemment disparates ont-ils pu être unifiés ? Quels sont les facteurs religieux, sociopolitiques et culturels qui ont produit une telle cohésion ? Ne peut-on pas transmettre un tel modèle à nos jours où les différences religieuses et ethniques tendent à devenir des facteurs de conflits ? C'est à ces interrogations que cet article se propose de trouver des réponses.

The Debate between Wilhelm Schmidt and Raffaele Pettazzoni about Monotheism and the Supreme Being

In the West throughout centuries the discourse about religion was under the monopoly of the Church. According to the Bible, God sent direct testimony to the first man and, therefore belief in a single God, namely monotheism constituted the religion of the primordial men.  In the 18th century the Enlightenment philosophers who aimed to re-evaluate the validity of the traditional assumptions considered as invariable, submitted them to the rational criteria. They formulated religious questions and in this context the problem of monotheism in terms of philosophical speculation. Contrary to Hume and Rousseau who assumed that because of their low level of intellectual development first men could not be monotheist, Voltaire argued that at the beginning men believed in a single God. Basing their arguments on the principle that such as the natural process, the process of mental evolution also develops from simple to complex or to “perfect situation”, these philosophers pronounced a philosophical judgment. But as there was no agreement regarded the simple or perfect situation, controversies concerning the primordial religion persisted. In the second half of the 19th century, The Science of Religions gaining its autonomy from Philosophy and Theology emerged as an independent discipline. It is hard to say that The Science of Religions which, like other scientific disciplines tried to elaborate a specific methodology has even today managed to find its own definitive method. After being evaluated from theological and philosophical perspectives the question of monotheism was reconsidered in the context of religious studies and because of the lack of a common methodology led to different results. Wilhelm Schmidt, an ethnologist and at the same time a Catholic clergy and, the Italian historian of religions Raffaele Pettazzoni who complained the pressure of the Vatican assumed to deal with the issue of monotheism and High God scientifically. But even though both emphasized the historical approach, the fact that they get very different results raises some questions.  For the basic nature of the scientific approach is that everyone processing the same data with the same method will obtain the same results. Therefore, if there is a conflicting situation, it is originated from either the nature of the issue, or from the researcher himself, or from the method employed.
The purpose of this study is to shed a light on just the methodological problem in The Study of Religions in the context of Schmidt’s and Pettazzoni’s views concerning monotheism and the Supreme Being and the criticism they addressed to each other.  On the other hand, this essay will provide some important clues about the ideological struggle conducted in the West under the name of science and which has scarcely been voiced.

During centuries different ethnic and religious groups have coexisted at peace within the borderlines of the Ottoman Empire. As a consequence of the missionary activities which was one of the most important political infiltration means used by European powers against the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian community becoming the main target of these activities was divided into three distinct communities. By means of nationalism which is their invention Europeans inoculated a new identity to individuals belonging to these communities organized according to the principle of religious affiliation and aimed to assemble them under the new principle. The aim of this essay is to clarify the genesis process of the idea of national consciousness effectuated to reassemble people divided in the consequence of the religious and educational activities of the Christian missionaries within the Armenian community. The study of the Armenians of Kayseri who for the most part spoke Turkish as their mother tongue will show more clearly how in the last period of the Ottoman Empire the equation: religion=nationality became: ethnic group=nationality.

Evaluation of Raffaele Pettazzoni, Angelo Brelich and Ugo Bianchi’s Views on Methodology in the Context of the Italian School of History of Religions

History of Religions which was elaborated at the end of the 19th century as a scientific discipline despite a long time has passed has not gained a methodology agreed on by every student. Therefore methodological discussions concerning this discipline go on. One must question the source of these methodological problems, why it wasn’t possible to find a common method and why there are differences as important as being opposite between various methodological approaches. The aim of this essay is to consider from a concrete example the methodological debate in the frame of the Italian School of History of Religions which succeeded in forming a tradition. The idea of this essay is that the main cause of the difference between various methodological orien-tations is due to the difference in paradigm between the students who elaborates and uses them.  One sees that this difference arises in great measure from the real/unreal criterion attributed by the researcher to the metaphysical dimension which forms the basic quality of religious phenom-ena. In other words the main source of the methodological discussions in the History of Reli-gions arises from the difference of the answers given to “what is the ontological value of reli-gion?” question. And these answers are related to whether the researcher belongs to the category of homo religious or to that of profane man.

Episteme ile praxis ya da bilmek/bildirmek ile yapmak/olmak ya da klasik tabirle ilim ile amel arasındaki ilişkinin nasıl olması gerektiği meselesi asırlar boyu tartı-şıla gelmiştir. Bir çok bilim adamı bu konuda görüş beyan etmiştir. Birkaç ay ön-ce vefat eden asrımızın en önemli entelektüellerinden biri olan Edward Said de bunlardan biridir. Bu yazıda hem Said'in bilimsel ve kişisel hayatı ana çizgileriyle tanıtılacak hem de onun söz konusu mesele hakkındaki görüşleri ortaya konula-caktır. Diğer taraftan Said'in yazdıkları ve söyledikleri ile kendi hayatı arasındaki münasebet tespit edilerek bu meseleye açıklık getirilmeye çalışılacaktır. Bir ente-lektüel olarak Said, entelektüelin nasıl olması gerektiği hususunda birçok yazı yazmıştır. Said'in çizdiği entelektüel portresi ile kendi şahsiyeti arasında bir karşı-laştırma yapmak suretiyle hem episteme-pragma arasında nasıl bir ilişkinin bu-lunması gerektiği hususuna yeni bir açılım getirileceğini hem de bilim adamı ö-zellikle de entelektüel sıfatı taşıyan insanların bu konuda daha duyarlı hâle gel-mesini ümit ediyoruz.

Mircea Eliade’s Making Sense of Exile

Throughout history, many communities have been driven from the lands in which they had been living and have spread out all over the world. Alongside these collective exiles History has witnessed many cases of individual exiles. In each case one sees a community or a person being chased away from his homeland as a consequence of a penalty. A lot of surveys have examined the historical, political, sociological and ideological aspects of these kinds of exiles. This essay tries to analyze the exile experience of Mircea Eliade, one of the 20 century's most important historians of religions by grounding on his own historical-religious analyses. Although investigation of exile experience from a historical, sociological, political, etc... view explains this fact from a different angle theses approaches do not give any idea with regard to what it means to be an exiled. Therefore the analysis device used here is the phenomenological approach. This approach enables us to understand the person experiencing exile from his own perspective and not only as an observer from the outside.