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Lecture notes, cheat sheets
History of world religions. Lecture notes: briefly, the most important
Directory / Lecture notes, cheat sheets Table of contents
LECTURE No. 1. Religion as a phenomenon of culture 1. Classification of religions Religion is a phenomenon, element or function in human culture. In such an understanding, culture itself is presented as a cumulative view of people on the world in which they are born, brought up, live. Culture, in other words, is the result of people's knowledge of the reality that surrounds them in the physical world. In contrast, religion can be perceived as a set of experiences, impressions, conclusions and activities of one person or group of people regarding what they see as matter of a higher order. In most cases, a person is aware of this reality, sacralized by him, as something that appears to him from outside. Certain forms in which religion reveals itself are subject to certain times and places, but, as a rule, a person perceives revelation as an encounter with creatures that have a bodily embodiment. In many religions, the diversity of reality is accepted as a manifestation of a number of deities, however, along with polytheistic religions, as you know, there are strictly monotheistic religions that worship only one single god. The main characteristic of monotheism is that the deity is wholly transcendent, that is, it resides outside the boundaries of perceived reality, while the gods of polytheism are immanent, that is, they are thought to express themselves within its boundaries. Different religions described their gods in different ways: anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, combining the features of both; in the form of picturesque or sculptural images; as XNUMXD or XNUMXD reproductions. Sometimes the gods were honored in a particular body, as if they had passed into it: the pharaoh in ancient Egypt, the Japanese emperor today, Jesus of Nazareth before his death - on the one hand, and the ancient Egyptian bull Apis and the Indian cobra - on the other. However, not all religions and not throughout their existence created bodily images of their deities. Hinduism and Buddhism, for example, did not know this at all. Often they do not exist in the religions of the Bedouins, which can be explained by the peculiarity of their nomadic life, which inevitably limits the range of material things. However, this cannot be compared with the prohibitions on images that we see in some monotheistic religions. Consider the classification of religions. 1. Tribal primitive ancient beliefs. They originated in the distant past, but did not leave human consciousness, but were imprinted and exist among people to this day. From these follow numerous superstitions (in the Old Russian language "future" - "in vain, useless, in vain") - primitive beliefs that are very similar to religion in the nature of their origin, but are not actually religions, since they do not imply the existence of a god or gods, they do not constitute a holistic man's worldview. 2. National-state religions, which are the foundations of the religious life of some peoples and nations (for example, Hinduism in India or Judaism among the Jewish people). 3. world religions - spread beyond the borders of nations and states and numbering a large number of adherents around the world. It is generally accepted that there are three world religions: Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. Also, all religions are still divided into two groups: monotheisticwho believe that there is one God, and polytheistic, honoring many gods. The term "polytheism" has a Russian analogue - polytheism. 2. The problem of the emergence of religion The deep philosophical question of how and when religion appeared can be resolved by two mutually exclusive answers. 1. Religion arose with man. Then man, as described in the Bible, had to be created by God as a result of the act of creation. Religion was born because there is a God and a person who can perceive God. Adherents of this point of view believe that if God did not exist, then there would be no such concept in the human mind. In this case, we conclude that religion exists primordially. 2. Religion is a product of the formation of human consciousness, that is, a person himself created (invented) God or gods, thereby trying to understand and explain the world around him. At first, ancient people did not have gods, that is, they were atheists, but along with the birth of art, the rudiments of science, and language, religious views began to form in them. Over time, they became more complex and systematized. The starting point for such a judgment is the theory of the origin of man and his consciousness in the process of biological evolution. Due to the presence of different points of view about the origin of religion, this question is still open and causes a lot of controversy. There are many religions on earth, including very few in terms of the number of supporters. Accurately counting all the religions of the world, as well as the number of their followers, is very difficult. Then the question arises: why are there so many religions? The answer is quite clear: people are not the same, they exist in different conditions in different parts of the Earth, they perceive the surrounding reality in their own way. Just as different are their opinions about God or gods, about what a cult should be like, how to erect temples (and whether to build them at all). But, mastering the course "Religions of the World", you will also understand that many dogmas of different faiths, the content of myths and scriptures, moral standards and rules of worship among different peoples living in remote parts of the world can be very similar in some ways. 3. The structure of religion Precisely and specifically to formulate the concept of "religion" is impossible. There are many such definitions in science. They are largely determined by the worldview of those scientists who build them. If you ask any person what faith is, in many cases he will answer: "Faith in God." The literal meaning of the term "religion" is binding, harnessing, secondary appeal (to something). It is possible that at first this expression meant a person's attachment to something sacred, permanent, unchanging. Let's try to highlight the main elements of religion. 1. The original basis of any religion is Vera. A believer can be either an enlightened person who knows a lot, or one who does not have any education. In relation to faith, both will be equal. Faith that comes from the heart is much more valuable for religion than that that comes from common sense and logic! Relying primarily on religious feelings, moods, emotions, faith is saturated with meaning, nourished by sacred texts, images (for example, icons), and divine services. Communication between people plays a big role in this sense, because knowledge about God and “higher powers” can arise, but cannot result in clear images and a system if a person exists at a distance from the community of his own kind. But true faith is always simple, pure and necessarily naive. It can arise unconsciously, intuitively, from the perception of the world. Faith always abides with a person, but as a result of communication between believers, it is often (but not necessarily) concretized. An image of God or gods is created, which have specific names, titles and attributes (properties), and the possibility of communication with Him or them appears, the truth of Divine texts is established and dogmas (eternal absolute truths taken on faith), the authority of the prophets, the founders of the church and the priesthood. Faith has always been and remains the most important quality of human consciousness, the most important method and criterion of the spiritual life of people. 2. Along with a simple sensual faith, there can also be a more ordered collection of principles, ideas, concepts, deliberately developed for a given religion, i.e. its teaching. The teaching can be about gods or God, about the relationship between God and the world, God and man, about the norms of life and behavior in society (ethics and morality), about church art, etc. The founders of religious teaching are specially educated and trained people, many of which they have unique (from the point of view of this religion) abilities to communicate with God, to receive some higher information that is inaccessible to other people. Religious doctrine is built by philosophers (religious philosophy) and theologians. AT Russian can use a full synonym for the word "theology" - theology. If religious philosophers are interested in the most general questions of the formation and functioning of God's world, then theologians describe and justify specific opinions of a given creed, study and explain sacred texts. Theology, like any science, has sections (for example, moral theology). 3. Religion cannot be realized without some religious activities. Missionaries preach and pass on their faith, theologians write scientific works, teachers teach the basics of their religion, etc. But the root of religious activity is cult (from Latin cultus - "cultivation, care, reverence"). Under the cult is meant the whole set of actions that believers implement with the aim of worshiping God, gods or any supernatural forces. These are rituals, divine services, prayers, sermons, religious holidays. Rites and other cult activities can be magical (from Latin mageia - "witchcraft, sorcery, magic"), i.e. those that help special people or clergy in a mysterious, unknowable way to influence the world around them, other people, change the nature and characteristics of certain objects. In some cases, they mention "white" and "black" magic, that is, witchcraft with the attraction of light, divine forces and the dark forces of the devil. Nevertheless, magical acts of witchcraft have always been criticized and condemned by most religions and churches, being considered "intrigues of evil spirits." A slightly different kind of cult action - symbolic rituals (from the Greek. simbolon - "conditional, material identification mark"), which only copies or imitates the actions of a deity in order to remind him of him. One can also name certain types of rites and other religious activities, which are undoubtedly not related to witchcraft or magic, but, from the point of view of pious people, contain a supernatural, mysterious and incomprehensible element. They are carried out in order to "reveal God in oneself", to unite with him through "dissolution in God" of one's own consciousness. Such actions are usually referred to as mystical (from the gr. mustika - “mysterious”). Mystical rituals cannot influence everyone, but only those initiated into the inner meaning of a given religious teaching. Elements of mysticism find a place in many religions, including the great world ones. There are religions (both ancient and modern) in whose theories the mystical element dominates. Religious scholars call them mystical. In order to carry out worship, you need a church building, a temple (or house of worship), church art, objects of worship (utensils, priestly vestments, etc.) and much more. Many religions require specially trained clergy to perform religious activities. Each religion develops its own rules of worship. In general, the role of cult in religion is incredibly great: while performing cult, people communicate with each other, exchange impressions and information, admire brilliant works of architecture and painting, listen to prayer music and sacred texts. All this increases the religious feelings of people by an order of magnitude, unites them and leads to the achievement of higher spirituality. 4. In the procedure of worship and all their religious activities, people unite in communities called communities, churches (it is necessary to distinguish the concept of "church" as an organization from the same concept, but in the meaning of "church building"). In some cases, instead of the words "church" or "religion" (not a religion in general, but a specific religion), the term is used denomination (from lat. confessio - "church, religious"). In Russian, this term is closest in meaning to the word "religion" (they say, for example, "a person of the Orthodox faith"). The meaning and essence of the grouping of believers is understood and explained differently in different religions. For example, in Orthodox theology, the church is the union of all Orthodox: those who are living today, as well as those who have already died, that is, those who are in "eternal life" (the doctrine of the visible and invisible church). In this case, the church is understood as some kind of timeless and extraspatial beginning. In other religions, the church is simply understood as a rallying of fellow believers who recognize certain dogmas, rules and norms of behavior. Some of the churches emphasize a special "dedication" and isolation of their members from everyone around them, while others, on the contrary, are open and accessible to everyone. As a rule, religious societies have an organizational structure: governing bodies, a unifying center (for example, the pope, patriarchy, etc.), monasticism with its own individual organization; hierarchy (subordination) of the clergy. There are religious educational institutions that train priests, academies, scientific centers, economic organizations, etc. True, all of the above is absolutely not necessary for all religions. The term "church" usually means an extensive religious association with deep spiritual foundations, time-tested. Relations in churches have been built up for centuries, often they have a division into clergy and ordinary laity. It is customary to distinguish from churches sects. This word carries a negative connotation, although literally translated from Greek it only means teaching, direction, school. A sect can be an opposing movement within a church, which can become dominant over time, or can disappear without a trace. In reality, sects are viewed more specifically: as associations formed around a leader. They are distinguished by their isolation, isolation, and strict control over their members, extending not only to their religious life, but also to their entire private life. It happens that sects take away the property rights of their adherents, making the latter permanent professional missionaries and recruiters of new sect members. 4. The role of religion in the life of man and society Perhaps no one will object that religion is one of the main factors in human history. It is allowed, depending on your views, to say that a person without religion would not become a person, but it is possible (and this is also an existing point of view) to adamantly prove that without it a person would be better and more perfect. Religion is a reality of human life, in fact, this is how it should be perceived. The meaning of religion in the life of certain people, societies and states is different. One has only to compare two people: one who adheres to the canons of some strict and closed sect, and the other who leads a secular lifestyle and is completely indifferent to religion. The same can be applied to various societies and states: some live according to the strict laws of religion (say, Islam), others provide their citizens with complete freedom in matters of faith and do not interfere in the religious sphere at all, and still others keep religion under a ban. In the course of history, the issue of religion in the same country may change. A striking example of this is Russia. Yes, and confessions are not at all similar in the requirements that they put forward in relation to a person in their laws of conduct and codes of morality. Religions can unite people or divide them, inspire them to creative work, to feats, call for inaction, real estate and observation, help the spread of books and the development of art, and at the same time limit any spheres of culture, impose bans on certain types of activities, sciences. etc. The meaning of religion must always be considered specifically in a particular society and in a given period. Its role for the whole public, for a separate group of people or for a specific person may be different. In addition, it can be said that it is usually typical for religions to perform certain functions in relation to society and individuals. 1. Religion, being a worldview, i.e. the concept of principles, views, ideals and beliefs, shows a person the structure of the world, specifies his place in this world, indicates to him what the meaning of life is. 2. Religion is a consolation, hope, spiritual satisfaction, support for people. It is no coincidence that people tend to turn to religion at difficult times in their lives. 3. A person, possessing some kind of religious ideal, is internally reborn and becomes able to carry the ideas of his religion, establish goodness and justice (as dictated by this teaching), resigning himself to hardships, not paying attention to those who ridicule or insult him . (Of course, a good beginning can be affirmed only if the religious authorities leading a person along this path are themselves pure in soul, moral and striving for the ideal.) 4. Religion controls human actions through its system of values, spiritual attitudes and prohibitions. It can have a very strong effect on large communities and entire states that live by the rules of a given religion. Naturally, there is no need to idealize the situation: belonging to the strictest religious and moral system does not always stop a person from committing reprehensible acts, and society from immorality and lawlessness. This sad circumstance is a consequence of the impotence and imperfection of the human soul (or, as the followers of many religions would say, these are "intrigues of Satan" in the human world). 5. Religions contribute to the unification of people, assist in the formation of nations, the formation and strengthening of states (for example, when Russia was going through a period of feudal fragmentation, burdened by a foreign yoke, our distant ancestors were united not so much by a national as by a religious idea: "we are all Christians") . However, the same religious reason can lead to division, splitting of states and societies, when a large number of people begin to oppose each other on a religious basis. Tension and confrontation also appear when a new direction separates from some church (this was the case, for example, in the era of the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, outbursts of this struggle are felt in Europe to this day). Among the followers of various religions, extreme currents sometimes appear, the participants of which recognize only their own divine laws and the correctness of the confession of faith. Often, these people prove the case with cruel methods, not stopping at terrorist acts. Religious extremism (from Latin extremus - "extreme"), unfortunately, remains a fairly common and dangerous phenomenon in the XNUMXth century. - a source of social tension. 6. Religion is the inspiring and preserving cause of the spiritual life of society. It takes the public cultural heritage under protection, sometimes literally blocking the way for all sorts of vandals. True, the church is extremely wrong to perceive as a museum, exhibition or concert hall; When you find yourself in any city or in a foreign country, you will most likely first visit the temple, proudly shown to you by the locals. Note that the very word "culture" originates from the concept of "cult". We will not engage in a long-standing dispute about whether culture is part of religion or, conversely, religion is part of culture (among philosophers, both points of view exist), but it is quite clear that religious positions since ancient times have been at the heart of many aspects creative activities of people, inspired artists. Naturally, the world has secular (non-church, secular) art. From time to time, art historians try to contrast secular and ecclesiastical principles in artistic creation and declare that ecclesiastical canons (rules) did not give room for self-expression. Officially, this is so, but, having penetrated deeper into such a difficult issue, we will understand that the canon, sweeping aside everything unnecessary and secondary, on the contrary, "liberated" the artist and gave scope to his creativity. Philosophers clearly distinguish between two concepts: culture и civilization. To the latter they include all the achievements of science and technology that increase the capabilities of a person, provide him with life comfort and determine the modern way of life. Civilization is like a powerful weapon that can be used for good or turned into a means of murder: it depends on whose hands it is in. Culture, like a slow but mighty river that springs from an ancient source, is quite conservative and often conflicts with civilization. Religion, being the basis and core of culture, is one of the decisive factors that protects man and mankind from splitting, degradation, and even, possibly, from moral and physical death, that is, all the troubles that civilization can bring with it. Consequently, religion performs a creative cultural function in history. This can be shown by the example of Russia after the adoption of Christianity at the end of the XNUMXth century. Christian culture with ancient traditions strengthened and flourished then in our Fatherland, literally transforming it. And yet, there is no need to idealize the picture: after all, all people are different, and completely opposite examples can be drawn from human history. You may remember that after the formation of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, in Byzantium and its environs, Christians demolished many of the greatest cultural monuments of the ancient era. 7. Religion helps to strengthen and consolidate specific social orders, traditions and laws of life. Since religion is more conservative than any other social institution, it basically always strives to preserve the foundations, to stability and peace. (Although, it is likely that this rule is not without exceptions.) Recall from modern history, when the political current of conservatism began in Europe, representatives of the church stood at its beginning. Religious parties are, for the most part, on the conservative right of the political spectrum. Their position as a counterbalance to various kinds of radical and sometimes unreasonable transformations, upheavals and revolutions is very important. Peace and stability are needed now for our Fatherland. LECTURE No. 2. Early forms of religious consciousness The first stage of human history proper is, as is well known, the primitive communal era. During this period, the formation of man as a special biological species ends. On the border of the early and late Paleolithic, the zoological, herd organization smoothly flows into the tribal structure, is already the original human team. Subsequent development leads to the emergence of a communal-tribal way of life and the development of all kinds of methods of social life. According to the ideas available in historical science, chronologically, this period begins in the late Paleolithic and captures a period of time up to the beginning of the Neolithic. In the "social space" it corresponds to the movement of mankind from the early forms of social organization (clan) to the primitive neighborhood community. For primitiveness, a high degree of connection of human existence with everything that takes place in the surrounding nature is especially inherent. Relationships to earth and sky, climatic changes, water and fire, flora and fauna under the conditions of an appropriating (collective-hunting) economy were not only objectively necessary factors of human existence, but also constituted the direct essence of the life process. The unity of the existence of man and nature, obviously, should have been expressed in the identification of both already at the level of "living contemplation". The representations arising on the basis of the sensations received connected and stored the impression of sensory perception, and thought and feeling appeared as something unified, inseparable from each other. It can be assumed that the result could be endowing the mental image with the properties of a natural phenomenon perceived through the senses. Such a "fusion" of nature and its sensory-figurative reflection expresses the qualitative originality of primitive consciousness. Primitiveness becomes characterized by such features of the archaic worldview as the identification of human existence with natural and the overwhelming predominance of collective ideas in individual thinking. In unity, they form a specific state of the psyche, which is denoted by the concept primitive syncretism. The content of this type of mental activity lies in the undifferentiated perception of nature, human life (in its communal-tribal quality) and the sensory-figurative picture of the world. Ancient people were so included in their environment that they thought of themselves as participating in absolutely everything, without standing out from the world, much less opposing themselves to it. The primitive integrity of being corresponds to a primitive holistic consciousness that is not divided into special forms, for which, to put it simply, “everything is everything.” 1. Forms of behavior and orientation of archaic consciousness - animism, fetishism, totemism, magic Such an interpretation of the archaic stage of consciousness can serve as a methodological key to understanding the origins, content and role of early beliefs and rituals in primitive society. It can be assumed that the most common version of primitive beliefs was the transfer of human, intra-clan relations, ideas and experiences to the processes and elements of nature. At the same time, and along with this, there was a "reverse" process of transfer: of natural properties into the area of life of the human community. Thus, the world appeared in the primitive consciousness not only as a whole, when any phenomenon and the people themselves are "woven" into the fabric of a generalized existence, but also as having vital qualities, humanized. Since the human in this case is communal and tribal, to the extent that everything covered by the perception of an ancient person is identified with the familiar and familiar tribal way of life. In a number of archaic beliefs, the main value is the attitude to nature as a living creature that has the same properties as a person. In religious studies, there is such a point of view, according to which the early stage of such beliefs, animatism (from Lat. animatus - "animate"), assumed the permeation of the surrounding world with a universal, ubiquitous, but impersonal, life-giving force. Subsequently, with the expansion of subject-practical activity, the image of the life-giving principle was differentiated. It began to correlate already with certain phenomena of nature and human life, with those aspects of them, the real development of which was beyond the reach. Each being or sensually perceived object, if necessary, was dualized, endowed with a kind of double. They could be represented in a bodily or some other material form (breath, blood, shadow, reflection in water, etc.). At the same time, they were essentially devoid of materiality and were conceived as flawless entities. The disharmony of ideality and objectivity was overcome thanks to the syncretism of the original thinking: any object of the objective world could at the same time appear both in real and in incorporeal, a kind of spiritualistic form. As a result, the twin could also lead an independent life, leaving a person, for example, during sleep or in the event of his death. The general concept that entered the scientific circulation to denote such a belief was the term animism. Its content is very extensive. First of all, it is associated with the belief in the existence of souls, that is, supersensible formations inherent in objects and natural phenomena, as well as in humans. Souls could be taken out of the closed objective state. These are the so-called perfumes. In this case, the capabilities of ideal entities increased sharply: they could easily move in the objective world, be placed in any object and gain the ability to act on various objects, plants, animals, climate and even people themselves. The multiplicity of spirits also implies the diversity of their habitats. Almost the entire world around us is filled with them. Therefore, most of the acts of daily life of the clan community were carried out, probably, taking into account the existing views on relations with spirits, and the consequences associated with the influence of spirits are not always favorable. Difficulty and failure, individual and collective, are understood as manifestations of the cunning of evil spirits. The way out of this situation is to search for reliable mechanisms to counteract malicious machinations. The use of amulets, i.e., objects whose presence was considered as protection from the harmful influence of evil spirits, was widespread. As a rule, these are pieces of wood, stones, bones, teeth, animal skins, etc. Similar types of objects could also be used for the purpose of positive interaction as intermediaries. In all cases, the intermediary object served as a conductor of human needs; with its help, people actually replenished the meager arsenal of means for exploring the natural world. The ability to store, protect from harm or bring good luck was explained by the presence of magical, miraculous power in the object or the presence of some spirit in it. Such beliefs are called the concept of “fetishism” (a fetish is an enchanted thing; the term was proposed by the Dutch traveler W. Bosman in the 18th century). It is known that fetishes were often the embodiment of a person’s personal patrons. However, those who carried a social burden were considered more important and revered - defenders of the entire clan collective, ensuring the survival and continuation of the clan. Sometimes fetishism was associated with the cult of ancestors, in a unique way reinforcing the idea of continuity of generations. A natural consequence of the fetishistic attitude of consciousness was to be the transfer of magical and miraculous properties not only to natural or specially produced objects, but also to the people themselves. Proximity to a fetish enhanced the real meaning of a person (sorcerer, elder or leader), who through his experience ensured the unity and well-being of the clan. Over time, the sacralization of the tribal elite took place, especially the leaders, who became living fetishes when they were endowed with miraculous abilities. Perceiving nature in the images of the tribal community understandable to him, primitive man treated any natural phenomenon as more or less "kindred". The inclusion of tribal ties in the process of interaction with the spheres of the animal and plant world creates the prerequisites for the development of faith in the common origin of human beings with any animals or, which was much less common, plants. These beliefs, called totemism, are rooted in the consanguineous relationships that developed at the primitive stage and the living conditions of early human groups. The lack of reliability and the fairly frequent change of fetishes gave rise to a desire for a more stable foundation that would stabilize the vital activity of generic structures. The common origin and blood relationship with the totem were understood in the most direct way. People sought to become similar in their behavior to the habits of “totemic relatives”, to acquire their properties and appearance. At the same time, the life of animals chosen by totems and the attitude towards them were considered from the position of human communal tribal existence. In addition to its kinship status, the totem had the function of a patron and protector. Common to totemic beliefs is the fetishization of the totem. Numerous studies of primitive culture testify that all the named forms of behavior and orientation of the archaic consciousness (animism, fetishism, totemism) are of a stage-global nature. To build them in a certain sequence according to the degree of "development" would be unlawful. As necessary moments of mastering the world, they arise, unfold in the context of a single, holistic worldview, which distinguishes primitive syncretism. The general cultural significance of these phenomena lies in their focus on meeting the vital needs of human existence; they reflect the real, practical interests of the community-clan organization. At the primitive stage of culture, combined forms of rituals and beliefs arose, called the general concept magic (from the Greek and Latin words mageia and magia, translated as "witchcraft, magic, sorcery"). The magical perception of the world is based on the idea of universal similarity and interconnection, which makes it possible for a person who feels "participation in everything" to influence any objects and phenomena. Magical actions are common among all peoples of the world and are extremely diverse. In ethnography and research on the history of religion, there are many classifications and typological schemes of magical beliefs and techniques. The most common is the division of magic into well-intentioned, saving, done openly and for the benefit - "white", and harmful, causing damage and misfortune - "black". The typology that distinguishes offensive-aggressive and defensive-protective magic has a similar character. In the latter case, taboos play an important role - prohibitions on actions, objects and words, which are endowed with the ability to automatically cause all sorts of troubles for a person. The elimination of taboos expresses the instinctive desire of the entire community-tribal collective to protect itself from contact with factors that threaten survival. Often types of magic are classified according to spheres of human activity where they are one way or another necessary (agricultural, fishing, hunting, healing, meteorological, love, military types of magic). They are aimed at very real everyday aspects of life. The scale of magical actions varies, which can be individual, group, or mass. Magic becomes the main professional occupation of sorcerers, shamans, priests, etc. (institutionalization of magic). 2. The emergence of myth and mythological consciousness So, a feature of the being and consciousness of people of the primitive era is a kind of integrity, uniting in a complex the natural and human, sensual and speculative, material and figurative, objective and subjective. Direct dependence on the immediate conditions of existence stimulated such a warehouse of the psyche, in which adaptation to the world should probably consist in maximum self-identification with the environment. The collective organization of life extended the identity of man and nature to the entire tribal community. As a result, the dominant position of supra-individual attitudes of consciousness is established, which have a mandatory and undeniable significance for everyone. The best way to fix them in such a status would be, first of all, to refer to unquestioned absolute authority. They become symbols of the clan - totems or other fetishized objects, up to the sacralization of the tribal top. There are many reasons to believe that it was practical needs that were decisive for the content of primitive beliefs. In ancient beliefs, the moments of life activity necessary for the organization and preservation of the communal-clan way of life (in work and life, marriage, hunting, and the fight against hostile collectives) were recorded. The syncretism of consciousness determines the combination of these real relations with irrationalistic views, bringing them to interpenetration and complete fusion. The word becomes identical to the deed, the sign - to the subject, ideas receive a personified appearance. The emerging ideas and images were experienced and “lived through” by a person, first of all, as reality itself. It can be assumed that the public consciousness of the primitive tribal formation did not know the opposition of the earthly to the unearthly. There were no characters or phenomena in it that stood outside this world, in the realm of transcendental beings. This consciousness did not allow the doubling of the world. The environment was perceived in its involvement with a person, without breaking up into amenable to development and beyond control. In addition, the needs of life did not allow a passive-contemplative attitude to the world to be established, directing it into an active channel and strengthening it by means of magic. Thus, in the primitive era, a special type of consciousness is formed. There is no clear distinction between the real and the ideal in it, fantasy is inseparable from genuine events, the generalization of reality is expressed in sensually concrete images and implies their direct interaction with a person, the collective prevails over the individual and almost completely replaces it. The reproduction of this type of mental activity should have led to the emergence of "constructions" that made it possible to transfer the collective experience of ancient people in a form adequate to the primitive worldview. This form, which combines sensuality and emotionality with didacticity, and intelligibility and accessibility of assimilation - with inducement-volitional motivation for action, becomes myth (from the Greek. mythos - "tradition, legend"). In our time, this word and its derivatives ("mythical", "myth-making", "mythologeme", etc.) designate, sometimes unjustifiably, a wide class of phenomena: from individual fiction in some everyday situation to ideological concepts and political doctrines. But in some areas the concepts of "myth", "mythology" are necessary. For example, in science, the concept of "mythology" denotes the forms of social consciousness of the primitive era and the field of scientific knowledge related to myths and methods of studying them. For the first time the phenomenon of myth appears at the archaic stage of history. For a community-clan collective, a myth is not only a story about some kind of natural-human relationship, but also an undeniable reality. In this sense, myth and the world are identical. It is quite appropriate, therefore, to define the awareness of the world in the primitive communal era as mythological awareness. Through myth, certain aspects of the interaction of people within the clan and their relationship to the environment were learned. However, the absence of the main condition for the process of cognition - the distinction between the subject and the object of cognitive activity - calls into question the epistemological function of the archaic myth. Neither material production nor nature are perceived by mythological consciousness in this period as opposing man, and therefore are not an object of knowledge. In an archaic myth, to explain means to describe in some images that evoke absolute confidence (the etiological meaning of the myth). This description does not require rational activity. A sensually concrete idea of reality is sufficient, which by the mere fact of its existence is elevated to the status of reality itself. For mythological consciousness, ideas about the environment are identical to what they reflect. Myth is capable of explaining the origin, structure, properties of things or phenomena, but it does this outside the logic of cause-and-effect relationships, replacing them either with a story about the emergence of an object of interest at some “original” time through a “first action,” or simply by referring to a precedent. The unconditional truth of a myth for the “owner” of mythological consciousness eliminates the problem of separating knowledge and faith. In archaic myth, the generalizing image is always endowed with sensory properties and for this reason is an integral part, obvious and reliable, of the reality perceived by man. In their original state, animism, fetishism, totemism, magic and their various combinations reflect this general property of archaic mythological consciousness and are, in essence, its specific embodiments. 3. Formation of religion With the expansion of the spectrum of human activity, more and more diverse natural and social material is involved in its orbit, and it is society that enters the category of the main sphere of application of efforts. The institution of private property is emerging. Structurally complex formations arise (crafts, military affairs, systems of land use and cattle breeding), which can no longer be identified with any single basis (spirit, fetish, totem) within the limits of earthly existence. At the level of mythological representations, these processes also cause a series of evolutions. The ubiquitous animation of objects and phenomena is transformed into multifaceted generalizing images of certain areas of life. Being an extremely general expression of reality, these images are identical to it, that is, they themselves are reality, but they enter into the perception of people individualized, with specific features of appearance, character, proper names. Personified characters are increasingly acquiring an anthropomorphic appearance, endowed with quite understandable human qualities. In developed mythologies, they turn into various deities that displace and replace spirits, totemic ancestors, and various fetishes. This state is referred to as polytheism ("polytheism"). Usually, the transition to polytheistic beliefs accompanied the disintegration of tribal structures and the formation of early statehood. Each deity was assigned a certain sphere of control in nature and society, a pantheon (a collection of gods) and a hierarchy of gods were formed. Myths arise that explain the origin of the gods, their genealogy and relationships within the pantheon (theogony). Polytheism involves a rather complex system of cult actions addressed to specific gods and the pantheon as a whole. This significantly increases the importance of the priesthood, professionally wielding knowledge of the ritual. With the development of states, the gods are increasingly assigned the role of the highest sanction of the socio-political orders established by people. The organization of earthly power is reflected in the pantheon. Stands out, in particular, the cult of the main, supreme god. The rest lose their former position up to the transformation of their functions and properties into the quality of the only god. Arises monotheism (monotheism). It should be emphasized that the former orientations of consciousness towards magical and miraculous ways of solving human problems both with polytheism and monotheism are preserved. Most beliefs and rituals still enter people's lives through the "mechanisms" of mythological consciousness. However, in general, the role of myths, their share in the public consciousness are undergoing significant changes. Social relations in society are changing, and the person himself is changing. Mastering nature, he develops such ways of satisfying his needs that do not need to be supplemented by a magical operation. But the most fundamental change is that people begin to perceive the world around them in a different way. Little by little, it loses its mystery and inaccessibility. Mastering the world, a person treats it as an external force. To some extent, this was a confirmation of the growing opportunities, power and relative freedom of the human community from the natural elements. However, having stood out from nature and made it the object of their activity, people have lost their former integrity of being. In place of the feeling of unity with the entire universe comes the realization of oneself as something different from nature and opposed to it. The gap arises not only with nature. With a new type of social organization (neighborhood community, early class relations), the way of life that was cultivated from generation to generation and determined the content of primitive consciousness becomes a thing of the past. The connection with the clan is broken. Life is individualized, there is a distinction of one's own "I" in the environment of other human beings. What archaic mythological consciousness understood directly and "humanized" turns out to be something external to people. It is becoming increasingly difficult to take myth literally as the true content of the life process. It is no coincidence that the allegorical tradition is born and strengthened - the interpretation of the ancient myth as a shell convenient for transferring knowledge about nature, ethical, philosophical and other ideas. Mythology itself is moving into a new quality. It loses its universality and ceases to be the dominant form of social consciousness. There is a gradual differentiation of the "spiritual" sphere. There is an accumulation and processing of natural scientific knowledge, a philosophical and artistic understanding of the world is developing, political and legal institutions are being formed. At the same time, the formation of such an orientation in beliefs and worship is observed, which delimits the areas of the mundane (natural and human) and the sacred. Thus, the idea of a special, mystical connection between the earthly and the unearthly is established, which was perceived as supernatural, that is, religion. LECTURE No. 3. Judaism 1. Judaism as a world religion Judaism, along with Christianity and Islam, belongs to the Abrahamic religions, tracing their origins to the biblical patriarch Abraham. However, unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism in the literature of religious studies, as a rule, is classified not as a world religion, but as the religion of the Jewish people. This is not entirely accurate. If we proceed not from the quantitative, but from the qualitative characteristics of religion, from its metaphysical essence, then, as some well-known experts in the field of Judaism rightly emphasize, “... it is a world religion. Judaism is focused on faith - the faith of the people of Israel in God. And this God, the Jews believe, is not an absent or indifferent God, but a God who communicates his will to humanity. This will is to be revealed in the Torah - the manual that God gave people to live by. The faith of the Jews is in love and the power of God to convey his goals to all mankind. For these purposes, Jews believe, the people of Israel play a special role. The Torah was given to them for the benefit of the whole world. They, the Jewish people, are an instrument for communicating God's will to people. Judaism, therefore, is it is a world religion not only in geographical distribution, but also in its horizons. It is a religion for the whole world, not because everyone should become Jews, for the goal of Judaism is absolutely not that, but based on their conviction that the world belongs to God, and people should behave in accordance with His will." (Pilkington S.M. “Judaism”. Series “Religions of the World”. M.: “Grand”, 1999. P. 25.). 2. "Torah" - the main document of Judaism "Torah" includes the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) and the "Pentateuch of Moses": the first five books of the Old Testament - the Tanakh (a compound abbreviated word made up of the first sounds of the names of the main parts of the Old Testament). "Torah" in Judaism - the most authoritative part of the Tanakh (Old Testament). This is the main document of Judaism and the basis of all later Jewish law. "Torah" ("Pentateuch of Moses") in the Jewish tradition has another name - written law - because, according to legend, God, through Moses, gave the people the "Torah" (613 commandments of the Law) in scrolls, and the Ten Most Important Commandments ("The Decalogue") were inscribed by God's finger on stone slabs - tablets. However, the Jews believed that God gave Moses not only written law, but also told him Oral Law - a legal commentary explaining how laws should be implemented in various, including unforeseen, circumstances. Oral Law interpreted many of the instructions of the "Torah" not literally, but in one or another figurative sense (for example, the requirement to take "an eye for an eye"). However, apparently, the law never had such physical retribution (blinding) in mind. It was more about monetary compensation and forced labor. Several centuries oral law was transmitted orally, however, in the first centuries of the new era, which were catastrophic for the Jews, they began to write it down, and to III a. oral law has been codified. His oldest and most authoritative records were the Mishnah (literally "the second law, or memorization"), which became the basis of the Talmud (other Hebrew - "study", "explanation" - a set of all kinds of prescriptions, interpretations and additions to the Tanakh ). The Mishnah contains 63 treatises, in which the instructions of the Torah are presented systematically (by branches of law and subjects). After the codification, generations of Jewish sages carefully studied and discussed the precepts of the Mishnah. The records of these disputes and additions are called "Gemara". 3. "Talmud" - the Holy Tradition of Judaism The Mishnah and the Gemara make up the Talmud, the most comprehensive compilation of Jewish law. The Talmud took shape over 9 centuries - from the XNUMXth c. BC e. according to the XNUMXth century n. e. It is an encyclopedic complete set of all kinds of prescriptions based on the Tanakh, as well as additions and interpretations to the Tanakh - legal, theological-dogmatic, ethical, family-domestic, economic, folklore, historical, philological-exegetical. This thematic breadth distinguished the Talmud from the Tradition of Christians (patristics) and Muslim tradition (Sunnahs and hadiths). As V. S. Solovyov wrote, "What the Talmud is for the Jews, is the Scriptures of the Church Fathers, the Lives of the Saints, the Pilot" for the Orthodox. The Talmud has two main parts: 1) more important and responsible - the legislative code "Halacha", mandatory for study in Jewish schools; 2) "Aggada" (in another transcription of Gaggadah) - a collection of folk wisdom of semi-folklore origin. "Aggadah" was studied to a lesser extent, but was popular as a moral and religious edifying reading and a source of information about the world and nature. The intricacy and cumbersomeness of the Talmud has almost become proverbial. Indeed, only "Halakha", its legal part, resembles a giant crystal of a bizarre shape. Its germinal basis is the "Mishnah" (in Hebrew it means "the second law" or "memorization") - a legal commentary on the "Torah", ascending, according to orthodox ideas, to the rules that God orally communicated to Moses simultaneously with the written Law - "Torah ". Around and on the basis of this "germ" crystal, the most detailed comments on each legal establishment of the "Torah" gradually increased, including stories about especially difficult cases of applying a particular law. A new generation of commentators created their own commentary on the Mishnah, discussing the disputes and decisions of their predecessors along the way, so that over time several competing sets of interpretations became in circulation, of which the most important are the Jerusalem Talmud (GU century AD) and the Babylonian Talmud" (XNUMXth century). At the same time, the earliest commentary - "Tosefta" - was necessary for understanding subsequent sets of interpretations and served as a kind of introduction to them. The edition of the Talmud in Russian, translated by N. A. Pereferkovich, contains six large volumes, which were planned to be supplemented by the 7th book of indexes. As for the Jerusalem and Babylonian sets of commentaries, each of them is several times larger in volume than the Tosefta, and all together is only the legislative part of the Talmud. V. S. Solovyov compared the Talmud with a labyrinth consisting of “a whole series of exegetically casuistic and legendary buildings - seemingly bizarre, incoherent, like life itself. These buildings, growing over the course of six or seven centuries, were finally through the labors of later collectors, they were brought together into one huge labyrinth of the Talmud. The "builders" of the Talmud were fully aware of its immensity and the difficulties associated with it in its practical use. The Talmud was codified more than once, systematized extracts were made from it, and abridged expositions were created. The legal sections of the Talmud became the foundation of Jewish law. Most sections of the Talmud have a similar structure: first, a law from the Mishnah is quoted, followed by a discussion of interpreters about its content from the Gemara. The passages from the Mishnah, because of their greater antiquity, are more authoritative than the interpretations from the Gemara. The most diverse areas of life were subject to legal regulation of the "Talmud": in the first volume of the "Tosefta" - the oldest set of the "Talmud" - ("Crops") - it was said about property relations associated with agriculture; in II ("Holidays") - about rituals; in III ("Wives") - contained provisions relating to women; in IV ("Salvation") - the laws of criminal and civil law were examined (to speak in today's language); in the fifth volume the rules on sacrifice were summarized; in VI - about ritual impurity. There are two striking features in the law-making of the Talmud authors: firstly, the desire for the most accurate reading of the "letter of the law" (given in the "Torah") - by identifying all the implicit and secondary, peripheral components of the semantics of the word, i.e. such components that serve as a background for the meanings of explicit and primary ; secondly, the desire for maximum detail of the general legal norm established by the "Torah" - on the basis of foresight and analysis of all conceivable controversial and difficult particular cases that should be regulated by this norm. Here is an example of legal detail, dictated by the desire to understand the "Torah" as accurately and completely as possible and to indicate all cases to which the law applies. In the "Third Book of Moses. Leviticus", among other provisions, the law of Yahweh is formulated on the abandonment field edges for the poor: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the edge of your field, and do not gather what is left of your harvest <...>, leave it to the poor and the stranger.” The Talmud devotes a special treatise “Pea” to commenting on this law (ancient Hebrew pea means edge of the field or duty in favor of the poor). The treatise sequentially examines each word or phrase of the law, while the interpreters strive to foresee, on the one hand, all possible misunderstandings or ambiguous interpretations of the text of the law, and on the other, to anticipate all the difficulties of applying the law in life. The commentary is constructed partly in question-and-answer form: “How can it be seen that not only cereals, but also legumes are subject to duties in favor of the poor? From the words: your fields. AT In this case, one might think that all the works your fields, like all greens, cucumbers, pumpkins, watermelons and melons? All these plants are excluded by the word harvest, as not having the characteristics of those plants that require reaping: just as reaping presupposes a plant that is used for food, is protected as property, grows from the ground, is harvested immediately and stored for preservation, so all plants that meet these requirements are subject to tariffs for the benefit of the poor. The following are not subject to (duties): vegetables, because they are not stored for storage, although they are harvested immediately; figs, for they are not removed immediately, although they are folded for preservation; This rule applies to cereals and legumes, as well as to the following tree species: sumac, carob, nut, almond, grape, pomegranate, oilseed and date." The following is a lengthy interpretation of the words edge of the field. There are four reasons why the rule of leaving the pea at the end of the field has been strengthened: 1) to prevent the robbery of the poor; 2) the loss of time by the poor; 3) for external propriety; 4) because the Torah used the word peah, meaning "edge", "end". The size and location of the edge of the field are also analyzed in detail: it is determined in which cases the farmer is not obliged to leave the edge of the field and two co-owners leave the edge; who exactly is considered poor and whether the edge of the field is left for the poor non-Jews, etc. The Mishnah was a systematic code of laws. In the Talmud, the thematic structure of the Mishnah was generally preserved, but volumes of new commentaries and additions made the legal content of the Talmud vast and made it difficult to quickly find the required norm. A new codification of Jewish law was required. In the 12th century. carried it out Maimonides, the most famous Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, physician and rationalist. Based on the Talmud, he compiled a complete systematized code of Jewish law in 14 volumes - the Mishneh Torah. The Code of Maimonides became the basic guide for Jewish legal practice. IN XVI in. on its basis a new code was drawn up, still authoritative in Orthodox Judaism. Tanakh (Old Testament) is considered in Judaism as a symbolic, deepest Revelation of God about the Universe, the key to which is Kabbalah. About the "Mishnah", the oldest part of the "Talmud", the Jews said: if the "Torah" is the Law of Israel, then the "Mishnah" is the "soul of the Law." In Kabbalah, the secret mystical teaching of Judaism, the "rank" is even higher: it is "the soul of the soul of the Law." Since mystical studies were considered dangerous for people who were immature and not firm enough in faith, in the Jewish tradition, works on Kabbalah were allowed to be read only by married men over forty years old, who were well acquainted with the Torah and the Talmud. In near-Talmudic folklore, partly jokingly, partly seriously, the question was asked about the possibility of expressing the essence of Judaism in one phrase. A certain pagan came to the wisest of the rabbis and asked: “Teach me the whole Torah, but only for the time while I stand on one leg.” . In response, he heard: “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you - this is the sum of the entire Law, the rest is just details. Now go and study.” This "highest rule of Judeo-Christian morality" (V. S. Solovyov) goes back to God's moral commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself." After the canonization of the Talmud (fifth century AD), the circle of Judaic authorities was closed, with the works of which tradition linked Jewish Tradition. In subsequent authors, the creators of the Talmud are consistently called men of the great congregation (although historians doubt the reality of a meeting or other form of organization of work on the Talmud), as opposed to simply scribes - connoisseurs and interpreters of the Talmud. Christian parallel to the men of the great congregation are the creators of patristics - church fathers, in Islam - compilers of the early hadiths of the prophet. In later Talmudic texts, the following commandment to the scribes is attributed to the “men of the great assembly”: “Be slow in judgment, make more disciples and build a fence for the Torah.” 4. Apophatic tendencies in the Talmud In Judaism, theology (or theology) as a theoretical doctrine of God began to develop after the addition of the religious canon. This is the natural logic of the deployment of religious content: faith is strengthened by knowledge. The theological component introduces into religion ideas about the internal hierarchy of religious teaching, intellectual depth and that element of reflection, which indicates, if not maturity, then the beginning of the "growing up" of the intellectual system. By creating a kind of logical "strings" of the doctrine, theology responds to certain internal - communicative and psychological - needs of the group of believers in the systematization and strengthening of religious knowledge. After the tragic defeat of the Jews in two anti-Roman uprisings (66-73 years. и 132-135 n. BC) the task of the book “strengthening the faith” was recognized in Judaism as a kind of spiritual overcoming of the catastrophe, giving hope for the revival of the Jewish people. The rabbis of the “great assembly” (the Jewish analogue of the church fathers in Christianity) bequeathed to subsequent generations of scribes to “erect a fence around the law,” and this defense of the doctrine was seen precisely in its theological development. In the Talmud, the theological component proper was relatively small and not entirely separated from the endlessly detailed legal and explanatory commentary on the Torah. Nevertheless, in the Talmud, eschatological ideas become much more distinct: the end of the world, the Last Judgment, the resurrection from the dead, the afterlife retribution for man for his deeds. Theologically, the strengthening of monotheism is also significant. This line, a forerunner of the future apophatic theology in Christianity, manifested itself, among other things, in the elimination of various names and many characterizing definitions of God. Apophatic theology (Greek apophatikos - negative) comes from the complete transcendence of God (that is, his transcendence in relation to the world and inaccessibility to human knowledge). Therefore, in apophatic theology, only negative judgments about God are recognized as true ("God is not a man", "God is not nature", "God is not reason", etc.). As for positive judgments about God, they are impossible: for example, even such an extremely general statement as "God exists" is meaningless, God is outside of being and above being. Cataphatic theology (kataphatikos - positive) allows the possibility of characterizing God with the help of positive (positive) definitions and designations, which, however, should not be understood literally and directly. In Christian theology, both principles of knowledge of God exist, but negative theology is considered higher and more perfect. N. A. Berdyaev, for example, saw in apophatic theology a counterbalance to sociomorphism (the interpretation of God in terms of social interactions between people). The name of the God of the Jews, Yahweh, is not strictly speaking in the Bible. The name Yahweh (Jehovah) arose in the 7th-2th centuries. among Christian theologians who studied the Old Testament in the original (i.e., in the Hebrew language), as a result of voicing (voicing) of that conditional four-letter combination that previously existed only in writing, which is used in the Bible to designate God. These four consonants convey the first sounds of the Hebrew expression, which is interpreted as "I am who I am (God)." According to legend, God revealed his true name only to Moses, however, in the Torah entry, Moses uses not the real name of God, but an abbreviation of the paraphrase "I am who I am (God)". This four-letter sign is used in the Bible about XNUMX thousand times. As for the true sounding of the name of God, it was pronounced only once a year (on the Day of Atonement) by the high priest, and the secret of its sounding was transmitted orally through the senior line of the high priestly family. After the Babylonian captivity, around the XNUMXth century. BC e., the Jews, "reverent for the Name of God" (S. N. Bulgakov), stopped pronouncing this name in Divine services and when reading Scripture, replacing it with the word Elohim (Elohim). This designation for God, used about XNUMX times in the Bible, is the plural form of the Hebrew word for "God." However, adjectives and verbs referring to this word are always singular in the Bible, i.e., Elohim acts as a designation of some one and one God. In the Septuagint and the Talmud, Elohim was interpreted as a common noun meaning "lord, lord" (in the Septuagint it is translated by the word kirios). In the Talmud, there are no longer those numerous characterizing names - the epithets of God that the Tanakh abounds: Eternal, Omniscient, Great in advice, Knower of the secrets of the heart, Testing hearts and wombs, Benevolent, Patient, Zealot, Avenger, Father, Meek, etc. The absolute beginning, therefore, in the Talmud is conceived as so all-encompassing, over-human and over-natural, that any of its characteristics become negligibly small and unnecessary. After the Talmud, Jewish theology develops in the works of many generations of scholars, including the outstanding thinker of the XNUMXth century. Martin Buber (1878-1965), humanistic mystic and existentialist. The most famous Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), rabbi, physician, mathematician, astronomer and codifier of law, on the contrary, was a brilliant rationalist in theology. His Arabic "Teacher of the Lost" (a variant of the translation "Guide of the Wavering") contains the logical (according to Aristotle) and philosophical justification for monotheism. "Teacher of the lost" caused rejection of both Jewish orthodoxies and the Inquisition. Conservatives more than once forbade this innovative work to be read to Jews, however, sometimes only to minors. Defending and developing the rationalistic principles of Scripture, Maimonides systematized and supplemented the methods of interpretation of the Torah developed in the Talmud. For example, such turns of Scripture as the finger of God, etc., Maimonides taught to understand not literally, but figuratively, since God, of course, does not have physical flesh. 5. Commentary culture of Judaism In the religions of Scripture, preaching early began to fulfill another communicative task - to interpret the "difficult places" of the sacred text. Along with "instruction and exhortation" to "follow the Law" and "imitate beautiful things," the sermon became a genre in which techniques were developed to explain the incomprehensible that sounded in the liturgy. During the ritual reading of Scripture passages, incidental commentary on the incomprehensible was not allowed - such is the fundamental principle in relation to the sacred word in the religions of Scripture. Another thing is preaching - as a text of the "second order", the words of the mentor about the word of God. A sermon in the temple always contains, to one degree or another, an interpretation of the Scriptures, since this is the general goal of a sermon - to bring the meaning of the word of God to the minds of people. However, very soon the interpretations go beyond the boundaries of what the oral word of the priest can accommodate. Interpretations, all kinds of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures become the predominant type of knowledge in general, and a culture, in the center or in the foundation of which is the religion of Scripture, develops as commentary culture as a reflection on the main text of culture - the Scriptures. At the same time, the genetic connection with preaching, with instruction in the temple, is reflected in the flavor of didactics and edification that is characteristic of such knowledge. This is the knowledge that should be known, which is taught by the confessional school. In Judaism, various commentaries on the "Torah" begin to be compiled even before the canonization of the "Tanakh" ("Old Testament") - texts that will later become sections and books of the Talmud. By their content or nature, the bulk of interpretations belongs to three areas of knowledge (if we talk about it in modern terms): theology, law and philology. The Talmud comprehensively develops the very technique of philological and logical-philological commenting on the text, methodically defining and demonstrating 32 methods of interpreting the text with examples. Some of the techniques were associated with the need to eliminate contradictions in the interpretation of the various provisions of the Torah, including by allowing an indirect, figurative, expansive, narrowing, allegorical and various other understanding of a word or phrase. Thus, the Talmud and the Jewish school brought up readiness for a non-literal understanding of the word and taught to understand different layers of meaning in one word. It is clear that the introduction of such principles and methods of understanding into the school, into the culture intensifies thinking, expands the information horizons of society. In the Talmud there are passages reminiscent of a philological analysis of writing skills, with a kind of thought experiment that allows you to "weigh" the semantic significance of individual elements of the text. Here is an example of such observations. The rabbis believed that every word of the "Torah" is from God, not a single word is in vain. So when they found a word or expression that seemed unimportant, they sought to find out what new idea or nuance the Bible was trying to convey with it. The discussion about the phrase from "Genesis" concerning Noah is characteristic: "Here is the life of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation." What words do not seem essential? - In my generation. - Why, ask the wise men, "Torah" includes them? Several opinions are expressed. One rabbi says: "In his especially vicious generation, Noah was a righteous and blameless man, but not in other generations." Another rabbi objects: "Even if in his own generation, then even more so in other generations." It is remarkable that the Talmud not only shows how differently people understand the same text, but also explains these differences: the matter is in different individual experiences of people. It turns out that the second rabbi became religious only in adulthood, and before that he was a thief, a gladiator and a circus attendant. He knew well how difficult it is to be good when one comes from a poor and immoral background. In his eyes, Noah, who came from such an immoral background, but became a righteous man, was much greater than if he had grown up among the righteous. The most famous and still highly respected commentator on the Jewish holy books is Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhach or abbreviated Rashi (1040-1105), is recognized in Judaism as the greatest Jewish teacher of the Middle Ages. He opened a free Jewish school in Troyes (France) and became the founder of a powerful commentary tradition. His concise and clear style still influences Hebrew-speaking writers today. Rashi's commentary on the Torah was the first book printed in Hebrew in 1475 BC - even before the Torah itself. Knowledge of the "Torah" with Rashi's commentary became the norm of traditional Jewish education and became part of the mandatory weekly reading. The Talmud itself needs much more commentary than the Torah - primarily because of the complex language, which includes Aramaic, Jewish, Greek terms, and spontaneously intricate architectonics. Rashi did more than anyone else to make the Talmud accessible to the reader. For 900 years, everyone who studies and publishes the Torah and Talmud has used his commentaries. “And if Rashi had not written his commentary, explaining difficult Aramaic words and leading the reader along whimsical and sometimes confusing logical paths, the Talmud might have been long forgotten” (Telushkin). The descendants of Rashi (two sons-in-law and three grandsons) offered their own commentary, called "Tosafot" (XII century). The commentary received recognition, and since then the Mishnah has been published with two commentaries, which are printed in italics in the margins, with Rashi's commentary having inner margins, and the outer margins for Tosafot. However, Rashi's earlier commentary is considered more authoritative. The third of the classic sets of commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud is the Midrash (Hebrew, "interpretation, study"). It was compiled by rabbis in the 1th-XNUMXth centuries. and was codified in the thirteenth century. Depending on the topic of the commentary, there are "Midrash Halakha" - an interpretation of the legal provisions of the "Torah" and "Mishnah", and "Midrash Haggadah" - an interpretation of ethical and theological passages, including parables, aphorisms, folklore wisdom of the "Torah" and "Talmud" ". In the codified version of the Midrash, the individual commentaries are arranged to match the order of the verses in the Torah. Thus, a continuous, verse by verse, interpretation of the entire "Pentateuch of Moses" was created. 6. Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages Jewish philosophy also develops in parallel with Christian and Islamic, and here, too, the starting points are Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism. Its development was influenced by the mystical elements of the Jewish teachings, which were contained in very obscure, incomprehensible, full of allusions texts. The greatest thinker of this trend was Ibn Gebirol (mid-XNUMXth century), whom the scholastics considered an Arab and called Avicebronn. His teaching - the theory of emanation - was one of the most consistent in the Middle Ages. Among the Jewish Aristotelians, the most prominent was Moses Maimonides (Heb. Moses ben Maimun), who was born in 1135 near Spanish Cordoba and died in 1204 in Egypt. His teaching, like that of other Jewish philosophers, was partly influenced by Kabbalism, which he tried to combine with the rationalistic philosophy of Aristotle. Maimonides' main work, The Guide of the Lost, was originally written in Arabic, then translated into Hebrew and Latin. Maimonides, like his Islamic contemporary Averroes, was an enthusiastic admirer of Aristotle. He said that, apart from the prophets, no one came as close to the truth as Aristotle. In his adoration of Aristotle, however, he does not go as far as Averroes (he considered Aristotle an unlimited authority only in the field of the sublunar world), but, despite this, he still comes into conflict with orthodox teachings. As regards the relation of faith and science, in his opinion the results of both must agree. However, where there is a contradiction between reason and the word of Scripture, reason has the advantage, which seeks to unite Scripture and reason by allegorical interpretation. In the spirit of the ancient Eleatics and Neoplatonists, he argues that truth is not multiple, but one, creates itself, moves and preserves itself. LECTURE No. 4. Jainism and Buddhism 1. Conditions for the Emergence of New Religions in India In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. great changes begin to take place in the Old Indian society. Agrarian and handicraft production, trade are developing significantly, property differences between members of individual varnas and castes are deepening, the position of direct producers is changing. The power of the monarchy is gradually increasing, the institution of tribal power is falling into decay and losing its influence. The first large state formations arise. In the III century. BC e. under the rule of Ashoka, almost all of India is united within the framework of a single monarchical state. The community remains an important component of the social and economic system, but some changes are taking place. The property differentiation between members of the communities deepens, and the upper stratum stands out more and more noticeably, concentrating economic and political power in its hands; the number of dependent citizens and employees is growing. This is also the time of searches in the religious and philosophical sphere. Traditional Vedic ritualism and old, often primitive mythology do not correspond to the new conditions. A number of new doctrines are emerging, fundamentally independent of the ideology of Vedic Brahminism, rejecting the privileged position of the Brahmins in the cult and approaching the question of a person's place in society in a new way. Around the heralds of the new teachings, separate directions and schools are gradually formed, naturally, with a different theoretical approach to pressing issues. Of the many new schools, the teachings of Jainism and Buddhism are acquiring pan-Indian significance above all. 2. Jainism The founder of the Jain doctrine is considered Mahavir Vardhamana (lived in 6th century BC uh., no more precise date), came from a wealthy Kshatriya family in Videha (present-day Bihar). At the age of 28, he leaves his home in order to, after 12 years of asceticism and philosophical reasoning, come to the principles of a new teaching. Then Vardhamana was engaged in preaching activities. At first he found students and numerous followers in Bihar, but soon his teachings spread throughout India. Vardhamana is also called Jina (Winner - meaning the winner over the cycle of rebirth and karma). According to the Jain tradition, he was only the last of 24 teachers - tirthakars (creators of the path), whose teachings arose in the distant past. The Jain teaching existed for a long time only in the form of an oral tradition, and a canon was compiled relatively late (in the XNUMXth century AD). Therefore, it is not always easy to distinguish the original core of Jain doctrine from later interpretations and additions. The Jain doctrine, which (as in other Indian systems) mixes religious speculation with philosophical reasoning, proclaims dualism. The essence of a person's personality is twofold - material (ajiva) and spiritual (jiva). The link between them is karma. The connection of inanimate matter with the soul by the bonds of karma leads to the emergence of an individual, and karma constantly accompanies the soul in an endless chain of rebirths. Jains have developed the concept of karma in detail and distinguish between eight types of different karmas, which are based on two fundamental qualities. Evil karmas negatively affect the main properties of the soul, which, according to the Jains, it acquired when it was perfect in its natural form. Good karmas keep the soul in the cycle of rebirths. And only when a person gradually gets rid of evil and good karmas, will his liberation from the fetters of samsara occur. Jains believe that a person, with the help of his spiritual essence, can control and manage the material essence. Only he himself decides what is good and evil and to what to attribute everything that he encounters in life. God is just a soul that once lived in a material body and was freed from the fetters of karma and the chain of rebirth. In the Jain concept, god is not seen as a creator god or a god who interferes in human affairs. The liberation of the soul from the influence of karma and samsara is possible only with the help of austerity and the performance of good deeds. Therefore, Jainism places great emphasis on the development of an ethic traditionally referred to as the three jewels (triratna). It speaks of right understanding based on right faith, right knowledge and right knowledge that follows from this, and finally right living. The first two principles relate primarily to faith and knowledge of the Jain teachings. The right life, in the understanding of the Jains, is essentially a greater or lesser degree of austerity. Principles, various stages and forms of asceticism are devoted to a lot of space in the texts. The path of liberation of the soul from samsara is complex and multi-phased. The goal is personal salvation, for a person can be freed only by himself, and no one can help him. This explains the egocentric character of Jain ethics. Designed primarily for members of Jain communities, the Ethical Guidelines detail the various oaths taken by monks and nuns. They absolutize, in particular, the principles of not causing harm to living beings, the principles relating to sexual abstinence, estrangement from worldly wealth; norms of activity, behavior, etc. are determined. An integral part of the Jain canon are also various speculative constructions, for example, about the ordering of the world. The cosmos, according to the Jains, is eternal, it was never created and cannot be destroyed. Ideas about the ordering of the world come from the science of the soul, which is constantly limited by the matter of karma. The souls that are most burdened with it are placed the lowest and, as they get rid of karma, gradually rise higher and higher until they reach the highest limit. In addition, the canon also contains discussions about both basic entities (jiva-ajiva), about the individual components that make up the cosmos, about the so-called environment of rest and movement, about space and time. It contains, among other things, mythological legends that relate to the life and accomplishments of individual tirth-khankars, and legends associated with the personality of Vardhamana, and descriptions of the underworld and the middle world (our Earth). Over the course of time, two directions were formed in Jainism, which differed, in particular, in their understanding of asceticism. The Digambaras (literally: dressed in air, that is, those who reject clothes) defended orthodox views, the Shvetambaras (literally: dressed in white) proclaimed a more moderate approach. The influence of Jainism gradually declined, although it has survived in India to this day. 3. Buddhism Buddhism, the oldest of the world's religions, "was created by a people that differs almost from all others in inexhaustible creativity in the field of religion" (Barthold). In the VI century. BC. e. Buddhism rises in North India - the doctrine founded by Siddhartha Gautama (about 583-483 years. to n. BC), the son of the ruler of the Shakya clan from Kapilavast (region of Southern Nepal). At the age of 29 (shortly after his son was born), dissatisfied with life, he leaves his family and goes into "homelessness". After many years of useless austerity, he achieves awakening (bodhi), that is, he comprehends the right path of life, which rejects extremes. This is the discovery of the main knowledge (dharmas) it was like a sudden insight, enlightenment, hence the new name of the prince: Buddha means "enlightened", literally - "awakened". (The Sanskrit word dharma is extraordinarily ambiguous: law, order, duty, justice; quality, character, nature, the primary elements of nature; religion, truth, virtue. In early Buddhism, dharma is the very teaching of the Buddha about the world and about the ways of human salvation). Buddha comprehended, proclaimed and began to preach the worldview and behavior that can save a person from suffering. Salvation, the Buddha taught, consists in achieving nirvana (in Sanskrit, it literally means "extinguishing, fading") - complete peace and tranquility that comes after all human desires, passions and fears are overcome. During his life he had many followers. Soon there is a large community of monks and nuns; his teaching was accepted by a large number of people leading a secular lifestyle, who began to adhere to certain principles of the doctrine of the Buddha. The Buddhist doctrine for a long time existed only in the oral tradition, and the canonical texts were written down several centuries after the appearance of the doctrine. Over time, the Buddhist tradition surrounded the life of the Buddha with many legends, miracles were attributed to him, and his figure gradually acquired a divine character. The Buddha's sermons were originally not so much a new religious system as an ethical and psychotherapeutic teaching. However, communities of monks who preached the teachings of the Buddha formed early, and competition with traditional Hindu cults led to ideas about the holiness of the Buddha and his teachings, and then a fairly early desire to canonize sacred books (already at the first Buddhist cathedrals after the death of the Buddha in 483 city, then to 383 и 250 gg. BC e.). It is not easy to reconstruct the most ancient form of Buddhist teaching, yet scholars have now largely agreed on the basis of the doctrine that the Awakened One himself proclaimed. The center of learning is four noble truths, which Buddha proclaims at the very beginning of his preaching activity. According to them, human existence is inextricably linked with suffering. Birth, illness, old age, death, meeting the unpleasant and parting with the pleasant, the inability to achieve what you want - all this leads to suffering. The cause of suffering is thirst (trishna), leading through joys and passions to rebirth, birth again. The elimination of the causes of suffering lies in the elimination of this thirst. The path leading to the elimination of suffering - the wholesome eightfold path - is: right judgment, right decision, right speech, right living, right aspiration, right attention and right concentration. Both a life devoted to sensual pleasures and the path of asceticism and self-torture are rejected. According to Buddhist tradition, these ideas formed the content of the Buddha's first sermon in Varanasi. This sermon is not clear in concept, more like a solemn proclamation of the foundations of the doctrine, and the terms used are very vague. The Buddhist canon of the Four Noble Truths is commented on in detail, developed and expounded in various aspects. For these purposes, a complex conceptual apparatus is created. In particular, it refers to the factors that form the personality of the individual. There are five groups of these factors in total. In addition to physical bodies (rupa), there are mental ones, such as feelings, consciousness, etc. The influences that act on these factors during the life of an individual are also considered. Particular attention is paid to further refinement of the concept of "thirst" (Trishna). Its origin and influence are analyzed, three main types are distinguished: the thirst for sensual pleasures (kama), the thirst for incarnation (bhava) and the thirst for self-destruction (vibhava). Gradually, the concept of "thirst" is replaced by the concept of raga (desire, aspiration), and this whole side of the teaching acquires a slightly different content. In addition, another concept arises that indicates ignorance (avidya) as the cause of suffering - here ignorance of the true path leading to liberation from suffering - and, based on this, a complex, twelve-fold chain of causes of suffering is constructed. On this basis, the content of the individual sections of the eightfold path is developed. Correct judgment is identified with a correct understanding of life as a vale of sorrow and suffering, a correct decision is understood as the determination to show sympathy for all living beings. Correct speech is characterized as unsophisticated, truthful, friendly and precise. The right life consists in observing the precepts of morality - the famous Buddhist five commandments (pancha-shila), which both monks and secular Buddhists must adhere to. These are the following principles: do not harm living beings, do not take someone else's, refrain from forbidden sexual intercourse, do not make idle and false speeches, and do not use intoxicating drinks. The rest of the steps of the eightfold path are also analyzed, in particular, the last step is the peak of this path, to which all the other steps lead, considered only as a preparation for it. Right concentration, characterized by four degrees of absorption (jhana), refers to meditation and meditation practice. A lot of space is given to it in the texts, separate aspects of all mental states that accompany meditation and meditation practice are considered. The path to liberation from samsara is open only to monks, however, according to the teachings of the Buddha, the observance of ethical principles and the support of the community (sangha) can prepare the prerequisites for entering the path of salvation in one of the future existences and numerous groups of secular Buddhists. A monk who has gone through all the stages of the eightfold path and, with the help of meditation, has come to liberating knowledge, becomes an arhat, a saint who stands on the threshold of the ultimate goal - nirvana (literally: extinction). This does not mean death, but the way out of the cycle of rebirths. This person will not be reborn again, but will enter the state of nirvana and - as the texts say - will disappear, "like the flame of a lamp into which no oil is poured." Relatively quickly, various directions and schools of Buddhism begin to form, which develop the original teaching and seek to answer unanswered questions. At the same time, some directions assimilate numerous elements of other religions, in particular Hinduism, and proclaim concepts that are very different from Buddhist ones. The direction most consistent with the original teaching of the Buddha was Hinayana ("small chariot"), in which the path to nirvana is completely open only to monks who have rejected worldly life. Other schools of Buddhism point to this direction only as an individual doctrine, not suitable for spreading the teachings of the Buddha. In teaching Mahayana ("great chariot") cult plays an important role bodhisattvas - individuals who are already able to enter nirvana, but who postpone the achievement of the final goal in order to help others achieve it. The Bodhisattva voluntarily accepts suffering and feels his predestination and calling to care for the good of the world for so long until everyone is freed from suffering. Followers of the Mahayana consider the Buddha not as a historical figure, the founder of the doctrine, but as the highest absolute being. The essence of the Buddha appears in three bodies, of which only one manifestation of the Buddha - in the form of a man - fills all living things. Rites and ritual actions are of particular importance in the Mahayana. Buddha and bodhisattvas become objects of worship. A number of concepts of the old teaching (for example, some steps of the eightfold path) are filled with new content. In addition to the Hinayana and Mahayana - these main directions - there were a number of other schools. Buddhism soon after its origin spread to Ceylon, later through China penetrated to the Far East. In China, Buddhism took the form of Ch'an Buddhism, in Japan, the form of Zen Buddhism. LECTURE No. 5. Confucianism 1. Confucius Confucianism is not a complete doctrine. Its individual elements are closely connected with the development of ancient and medieval Chinese society, which it itself helped to form and conserve, creating a despotic centralized state. As a specific theory of the organization of society, Confucianism focuses on ethical rules, social norms and regulation of government, in the formation of which it was very conservative. Confucius said about himself: "I state the old and do not create the new." It was also characteristic of this doctrine that questions of an ontological nature were secondary in it. Confucius (551-479 BC). BC), his name is a Latinized version of the name Kung Fu-tzu (Master Kun). This thinker (proper name Kong Qiu) is considered the first Chinese philosopher. Naturally, his biography was enriched by later legends. It is known that at first he was a low official in the state of Lu, and later for a number of years he wandered around the states of Eastern China. The end of his life was dedicated to his students, their training and the organization of some classical books (jing). Confucius was one of many philosophers whose teachings were banned during the Qin Dynasty. He acquired great authority and almost deification during the Han Dynasty, and until modern times he was revered as a sage and the first teacher. Confucius's thoughts are preserved in the form of his conversations with his disciples. The records of the sayings of Confucius and his disciples in the book "Conversations and Judgments" (Lun Yu) are the most reliable source for the study of his views. Confucius, concerned about the decay of society, focuses on educating a person in the spirit of respect and reverence towards others, towards society. In his social ethics, a person is a person not "for himself", but for society. The ethics of Confucius understands a person in connection with his social function, and education is leading a person to the proper performance of this function. This approach was of great importance for the socio-economic ordering of life in agrarian China; however, it led to the reduction of individual life, to a certain social position and activity. The individual was a function in the social organism of society. The original meaning of the concept of order (li), as the norm of specific relations, actions, rights and obligations in the era of the Western Zhou Dynasty, Confucius raises to the level of an exemplary idea. Order in him is established thanks to the ideal universality, the relationship of man to nature and, in particular, the relationship between people. The order acts as an ethical category, which also includes the rules of external behavior - etiquette. True observance of order leads to the proper performance of duties. "If a noble man (jun zi) is accurate and does not waste time, if he is polite to others and does not disturb the order, then the people between the four seas are his brothers." The order is filled with virtue (de): "The teacher said about Zi-chan that he has four of the virtues that belong to a noble husband. In private behavior he is polite, in the service he is accurate, humane and fair to people." Such performance of functions based on order necessarily leads to the manifestation of humanity (jen). Humanity is the main of all the requirements for a person. Human existence is so social that it cannot do without the following regulators: 1) help others achieve what you yourself would like to achieve; 2) What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others. People differ depending on their family and then social status. From family patriarchal relations, Confucius derived the principle of filial and fraternal virtue (xiao ti). Social relationships are parallel to family relationships. The relationship between subject and ruler, subordinate and superior is the same as the relationship between a son and a father and a younger brother to an older brother. To comply with subordination and order, Confucius develops the principle of justice and serviceability (i). Justice and serviceability are not connected with the ontological understanding of truth, which Confucius did not specifically deal with. A person must act as the order and his position dictate. Correct behavior is behavior with respect for order and humanity, for "a noble man understands what is serviceable, just as small people understand what is profitable." This is the way (dao) of the educated, who have moral strength (de) and who should be entrusted with the administration of society. 2. Mencius Mencius (Meng Ke - 371-289 BC) was the successor of Confucius, defended Confucianism from attacks from other schools of that time. As part of the development of Confucianism, Mencius developed the concept of human nature; he developed the thoughts of Confucius about the moral good and the attitude of the educated to this good. Good is an abstract ethical category, which means order (li) when following the path (dao). According to Mencius, human nature is endowed with goodness, although this nature does not always manifest itself. So, a person can deviate from the order of things, from the path, and this happens under the influence of the circumstances in which he lives, because there are also low biological instincts in a person. The good in every person can be realized by four virtues, the basis of which is knowledge, because knowledge of the order of things, the world and man leads to realization in society: 1) humanity (jen); 2) serviceability (and); 3) politeness (whether); 4) knowledge (zhi). In the concept of Mencius, the principle of filial and fraternal virtue (xiao ti) put forward by Confucius is consistently carried out. To the hierarchy of five links in this principle, Mencius also includes the ruler, who must be knowledgeable, wise and have moral strength (de). Its power is characterized by the principle of humanity (ren zheng). If the ruler ignores this principle, and replaces the personal power emanating from knowledge with tyranny (ba), the people have the right to overthrow him. This, in fact, political program is also closely connected with the person's belonging to the world, facing the sky (tian). Sky Mencius understands as an ideal force that endows a person with existence and social function (and hence power). Man exists thanks to the sky and therefore is a part of it, just like nature. The difference between tian, which tells man the nature of his existence, and man can be overcome by cultivating, perfecting this nature to a pure form. 3. Xun Tzu Xun Tzu, real name - Xun Qin (3rd century BC), polemicizing with Mencius, put forward opposing views on the essence of heaven, and opposed the concept of human nature. Xunzi was the most prominent Confucianist of the Hundred Schools period. He understood heaven as constant, having its own path (tian dao) and endowed with the power that imparts essence and existence to man. Together with the earth, the sky connects the world into a single whole. From this it follows that man is a part of nature. Moreover, in contrast to Mencius, he puts forward the thesis that man’s nature is bad, and all his abilities and good qualities are the result of upbringing. People organize and unite into society to overcome nature. They do this, however, with a strict distinction between functions and relationships. "If we define the boundaries of moral consciousness, then we have harmony. Harmony means unity. Unity multiplies strength... If a person is strong, he can conquer things." Noteworthy is the articulation of nature by Xun Tzu. 1. Inanimate phenomena, consisting of qi-material substance. 2. Living phenomena, consisting of a material substance and possessing sheng - life. 3. Phenomena, consisting of a material substance, living and possessing zhi - consciousness. 4. Man, consisting of a material substance, living, possessing consciousness, having, in addition, moral consciousness - and. A person forms names in order to name things, relationships and concepts, to distinguish and clearly define the phenomena of reality. Here you can see the echo of the "Book of Changes". Xun Tzu also deals with questions of the ontology of language. Conceptual assimilation of reality occurs with the help of the mind. Sensual contact with reality is the first stage of cognition, the next stage is rational cognition (xin - literally: heart). The mind must satisfy three main conditions, of which the main thing is the "purity" of the mind from all psychologizing interference. Xun Tzu, although he is considered a Confucian, transcends the classical understanding of order in Confucian social ethics. A person's abilities are not fatally, or hereditarily, predetermined, they must correspond to the upbringing received. This approach, as well as emphasizing the absolute authority of the ruler, brings him closer to the legalist school. 4. Confucianism and Religion Since the bulk of Confucius's teachings concern purely secular matters, many Western scholars argue that Confucianism is not a religion, but only a moral teaching. Indeed, Confucius at first glance spoke little and reluctantly on religious topics. So, for example, once his disciple Zi-lu asked about how to serve the spirits. The teacher answered the question with a question: "Without learning to serve people, is it possible to serve the spirits?" Tzu-lu added: "I dare to know what death is?" The teacher replied: "Not knowing what life is, how can one know death?" There are many more examples of how Confucius shied away from talking about the other world. But this does not mean that he was indifferent to the problems of religion. On the contrary, he clearly regarded these problems as a magnificent mystery, incomprehensible to mortals and therefore not subject to discussion. Without delving into the subtleties of religious theory, Confucius at the same time attached great importance to religious practice. Since in Ancient China there was no priestly caste as such, and the administration of a religious cult was the responsibility of each official, naturally, jun zi, an ideal official, should have perfectly known religious practice. It was religion, according to Confucius, that link that connected all the norms of behavior in society into a single coherent system, and the will of Heaven was the highest sanction of these norms of behavior, dictated, supposedly, by the wise rulers of antiquity, who were able to understand the will of Heaven. Confucius himself also considered himself a conductor of the will of Heaven, who reveals to his contemporaries the "eternal truths" they have forgotten. Thus, the system of ordered society created by Confucius was ultimately sanctified by the will of Heaven. In the set of rules (li), Heaven postulated the norms of behavior in the ideal society of Confucius. But these norms were only the starting point of political practice, specific decisions that the ruler had to make and which also had to correspond to the will of Heaven. According to Confucius, the interpreters of the will of Heaven in this case should have been jun tzu - wise advisers to the ruler, whose task was not only to instruct the people, but also to instruct the king. In practice, Confucian advisers, having come to power, interpreted the will of Heaven on the basis of "heavenly signs." If they did not like the activity of the king, they declared any astronomical or natural phenomenon "sinister". If the ruler acted at the behest of the advisers, they "did not notice" even the solar eclipses that occurred during their reign. Under the "virtuous" emperor Wen-di in 163 BC. e. "not seen" even the bright Halley's comet. The recognition of Confucian writings as sacred, as well as the addition of the cult of Confucius (the deification of a person, a temple on the site of his dwelling, rituals and prayers addressed to Confucius), occurred five centuries after the death of Confucius - on the threshold of a new era. LECTURE No. 6. History of Taoism One of the most important directions in the development of worldview thought in China, along with Confucianism, was Taoism. Taoism focuses on nature, the cosmos and man, however, these principles are comprehended not in a rational way, by constructing logically consistent formulas (as is done in Confucianism), but with the help of direct conceptual penetration into the nature of existence. The world is in constant motion and change, develops, lives and acts spontaneously, without any reason. In the ontological teaching, it is the concept of the path - Tao - that is central. The purpose of thinking, according to Taoism, is the "fusion" of man with nature, since he is part of it. No distinction is made here between subject and object. 1. Lao Tzu. "Tao Te Chin" Lao Tzu (old teacher) is considered an older contemporary of Confucius. According to the Han historian Sima Qian, his real name was Lao Dan. He is credited with the authorship of the book "Tao-te-ching" - the Book of Tao (path) and de (virtue), which became the basis for the further development of Taoism (the book received this name in the era of the Han Dynasty). The book consists of two parts (the first deals with the way of Tao, the second deals with the power of De) and represents the initial principles of Taoist ontology. Tao - this is a concept with the help of which it is possible to give a universal, comprehensive answer to the question of the origin and mode of existence of all things. It is, in principle, nameless, manifests itself everywhere, for it is the “source” of things, but is not an independent substance or essence. Tao itself has no sources, no beginning, it is the root of everything without its own energetic activity. "The Tao that can be expressed in words is not a permanent Tao; the name that can be named is not a permanent name... Sameness is the depth of mystery." In it, however, everything happens (is given); it is the all-presuming path. “There is something - incorporeal, formless, and yet ready and complete. How soundless it is! Formless! Stands by itself and does not change. Penetrates everywhere, and nothing threatens it. It can be considered the mother of all things. I don't know his name. Referred to as "Dao". Forced to give him a name, I call him perfect. Perfect - that is, elusive. Elusive - that is, receding. Receding, that is, returning" (Lao Tzu). Tao, however, does not determine the teleological meaning in things. The ontology of the Tao Te Ching is atheistic because, according to Tao, the world is in spontaneous, unpredetermined motion. Tao is identity, sameness, which presupposes everything else, namely: Tao does not depend on time, like a period of the emergence, development and death of the Universe, but there is a fundamental and universal unity of the world. As a concept that expresses the existent, Tao exists constantly, everywhere and in everything, and, above all, it is characterized by inaction. Nor is it the means or cause of some constant, orderly emanation of things. Everything in the world is on the move, in motion and change, everything is impermanent and finite. This is possible thanks to the already known principles of yin and yang, which are in dialectical unity in every phenomenon and process and are the cause of their changes and movement. Under their influence, the development of things takes place, for "everything carries yin and embraces yang." The provisions on yin and yang contained in the Tao Te Ching seem to be based on earlier teachings (see The Book of Changes) and developed by other schools (see Zou Yan). Tao (path) has its own creative power de, through which Tao manifests itself in things under the influence of yin and yang. The understanding of de as an individual concretization of things for which a person is looking for names is radically different from the anthropologically directed Confucian understanding of de as a moral force of a person. The ontological principle of sameness, when a person, as a part of nature from which he emerged, must maintain this unity with nature, is also postulated epistemologically. Here we are talking about harmony with the world, on which the peace of mind of a person is based. Lao Tzu rejects any effort, not only of the individual, but also of society. The efforts of society, generated by civilization, lead to a contradiction between man and the world, to disharmony, because "if someone wants to master the world and manipulates it, he will fail. For the world is a sacred vessel that cannot be manipulated. If someone wants to manipulate them, will destroy it. If anyone wants to appropriate it, he will lose it." 2. The main life task of a person Compliance with the "measure of things" is the main life task for a person. Non-action, or rather activity without violating this measure (wu wei), is not an encouragement to destructive passivity, but an explanation of the community of man and the world on a single basis, which is Tao. Sensory cognition relies only on particulars and "leads a person off-road." Stepping aside, detachment characterize the behavior of a sage. Comprehension of the world is accompanied by silence, in which the understanding husband takes possession of the world. This is radically opposed to the Confucian concept of a "noble man" (an educated man) who should be trained in teaching and managing others. 3. Chuang Tzu Chuang Tzu (369-286 BC). BC), real name Zhuang Zhou, is the most prominent follower and propagandist of Taoism. In the field of ontology, he proceeded from the same principles as Lao Tzu. However, Zhuang Tzu does not agree with his thoughts about the possibility of a “natural” ordering of society based on the knowledge of Tao. It individualizes the knowledge of Tao, that is, the process and final result of comprehending the nature of the existence of the world, up to the subjective subordination of the surrounding reality. Fatalism, which was alien to Lao Tzu, is inherent in Zhuang Tzu. He views subjective indifference, first of all, as getting rid of emotions and interest. The value of all things is the same, because all things are inherent in Tao and cannot be compared. Any comparison is an emphasis on individuality, particularity, and is therefore one-sided. Knowledge of truth, truthfulness is not given to a cognizing person: “Does it happen that someone is right and the other is wrong, or that both are right or both are wrong? It is impossible for you, nor for me, nor for other people who seek the truth to know darkness." “We say about something that it is true. If what is true were necessarily so, then there would be no need to talk about how it differs from untruth.” Chuang Tzu, with all his skepticism, developed a method of comprehending the truth, as a result of which man and the world form a unity. We are talking about the necessary process of forgetting (van), which starts from forgetting the differences between truth and untruth, up to the absolute forgetting of the entire process of comprehending the truth. The pinnacle is "knowledge that is no longer knowledge" (Zhuangzi). The later absolutization of these thoughts brought one of the branches of Taoism closer to Buddhism, which established itself on Chinese soil in the XNUMXth century BC. and especially in the XNUMXth century. n. e. 4. "Le Tzu" "Le Tzu" is the following from the Taoist texts and is attributed to the legendary philosopher Le Yukou (VII-VI centuries BC), was recorded around 300 BC. e. Wen Tzu (XNUMXth century BC) was allegedly a student of Lao Tzu and a follower of Confucius. From the point of view of later development, three types of Taoism are generally distinguished: philosophical (tao jia), religious (dao jiao) and immortal Taoism (xian). Consistently rejecting all the institutions of their contemporary civilization, the Taoists rejected religion in the conventional sense of the term. Rejecting the divine Sky, the Taoists considered Tao to be the source of everything, which in their view was the original qualityless substance and gave rise to all things. Things, on the other hand, consisted of the smallest "seeds" that can be identified with atoms. The Taoists saw death as the regrouping of these "seeds" so that the person, or part of him, becomes, or part of, a plant or an animal. Taoists developed the theory of the origin of man from lower animals. If Confucianism is Chinese exotericism, then Taoism is Chinese esotericism. Taoism has much in common with Buddhism, which, in the form of Ch'an Buddhism, became widespread in China. LECTURE No. 7. Christianity 1. Structure of Revelation in Christian Scripture The revelation of God, begun in the Old Testament, is completed in the New Testament. It has a stepped or multi-level character, in its communicative structure resembling a "story within a story", including "one more story" and included "into another story". At the same time, the words "message", "word", "speech", "message", "conversation", "parable", "sermon" in Scripture are obviously polysemantic, and the boundaries between the "story" and "the story framing it" are emphatically removed. The communicative triad of "participants in communication" (God - the Messenger of God - People), to whom the Revelation of God is addressed, becomes more complicated in the New Testament. Each "participant of communication" appears in several images. On the one hand, God is not only Jehovah, God the Father, but also God the Son, he is also the incarnate Word of God, and, in addition, God the Holy Spirit (which can act in various bodily forms, for example, in the form of a dove at the baptism of Jesus or the fiery tongues that descended on the apostles on the day of Pentecost). On the other hand, the functions of messenger, mediation between God and people in the New Testament are also carried out in several planes. First, the Messenger is God himself, that is, the Son of God and the incarnate Word of God. However, and this is typical of the humanistic pathos of the New Testament, Jesus calls his listeners to become sons of our Heavenly Father. Secondly, the mediators between Christ and people are those of his 12 disciples whom Jesus chose and called apostles, including the evangelists Matthew and John, and then other disciples, including those who themselves had not seen Christ (in including the evangelists Mark and Luke). It is natural that the third “participant” in the transmission and reception of Revelation - people - is no longer as uniquely monolithic as God’s chosen people of the Old Testament. In the gospels, these are the inhabitants of Galilee, Cana, Jerusalem, men and women, they have names, they have different ages, occupations... They are to varying degrees firm in the faith and faithful to the Teacher: they are “just” people, not prophets.. But among them Jesus finds beloved disciples who are able to continue the good news of the Teacher. To present the structure of Revelation in Christianity, let's try to answer three questions. What is the direct speech of God the Father in Christian Scripture? First, this is Revelation, inherited by Christianity from the Old Testament: God's Covenant with Noah, the Covenant with Abraham, the appeal to Jacob, the Ten Commandments and the laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Secondly, according to the New Testament, the Word of God sent to people is the Son of God Jesus Christ: He is the Word made flesh. This is the last mystery of the Word of God and the mystery of Jesus Christ, revealed by the Evangelist John: “His name is the Word of God” (Rev 19:13). Being the Word, Jesus existed eternally in God and he himself was God, through whom everything came into being: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things came into being through him, and without Him nothing was possible.” began to be, that began to be." According to Christian theology, “the love of the Father, witnessed to people by the message of His Son, is the main Revelation brought by Jesus.” What is the direct speech of Jesus Christ? First, the instructions and parables of the Sermon on the Mount, which supplements the Old Testament Ten Commandments (i.e., obedience to the faith and fidelity to the Law) with the commandments of love, meekness, and humility, which constitute the ethical ideal of Christianity. Secondly, other gospel parables (besides those included in the "Sermon on the Mount"), speeches and sayings of Jesus, among which his "Farewell speeches and prayers" are sometimes singled out as a definite whole. What does the word gospel mean in the New Testament? (Greek euangelion - good, joyful news; gospel)? Firstly, this word is included in the title of the four canonical Gospels (the first four books of the New Testament): "The Gospel of Matthew", "The Gospel of Mark", "The Gospel of Luke" and "The Gospel of John". Therefore, in these contexts, the Gospel is the narration of the adherents of Christ about the earthly life and death of the Master. Secondly, in the New Testament "Epistle to the Romans of the Apostle Paul" "the gospel of Christ" is called the appeal to the people of Christ himself and the Christian doctrine as a whole. "In him the truth of God is revealed from faith to faith." Third, since the subject matter of all four Gospels is the Word of God (Jesus Christ), the Gospels represent a particular form of God's Revelation. Thus, the "separate" Revelations, embodied in the Gospels, are included in the Revelation, as it were, of a higher order (in terms of composition) - in the "Gospel of Christ" - and are reflected in it, as in a mirror. But then they all become part of an even wider or more general Christian Revelation, uniting the Revelations of the Old and New Testaments. 2. Canonization of Christian texts In Christianity, work on determining the canonical text of the books of the New Testament began in the XNUMXnd century BC. Famous Christian theologian and philosopher Origen (185-254), the son of a Greek who lived in Alexandria and Palestine, made a systematic, grand comparison of six different texts of the Bible. (Hence the generally accepted name for the resulting set of six parts: “Hexapla” - Greek hexaplasion - sixfold, folded six times). On wide parchment sheets in six parallel columns (columns) were written texts in Hebrew, its Greek transliteration and four different Greek translations of the Bible, including the legendary Septuagint. (This is the name given to the first complete translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, completed in the third and second centuries BC by Hellenized Jews in Alexandria. The text of the Septuagint formed the basis of the Christian canon of the Old Testament. Latin septuaginta means “seventy.” According to legend, there were so many translators (interpreters) who created the Septuagint. Each of them independently translated the text of the Old Testament and then it was discovered that all 70 translations coincided letter for letter. Origen consistently marked with special signs all omissions, discrepancies and distortions of the text. several versions of one text subsequently made it possible to reconstruct the text of the Bible as close as possible to its original form. V. S. Solovyov wrote about Origen’s “Hexaple” that for Christian theologians it served for four centuries as “the main source of biblical erudition.” It is known that Origen’s work relied on the translator of the Old Testament into Latin Blessed Jerome (creator of the famous Vulgate in 390-405). Origen's Hexapla burned down in 633 in Caesarea, when the city was taken by the Arabs. However, the philological ideas of Origen, the very technique of his analysis were widely and brilliantly developed in European humanism, during the Renaissance and Reformation, especially in the publishing and philological practice of Erasmus of Rotterdam. In fact, Origen became the founder of that branch of philological research, which is now called criticism of the text, or textual criticism. Textual analysis of a work, based on the study of its history, sources, and circumstances of creation, seeks to clear the text of the mistakes of copyists and publishers that have accumulated over the centuries, to understand the original meanings of words and to get closer to its original meaning. If a work has been preserved in several copies or versions (edition), then a textologist, preparing a monument for scientific publication, examines the relationship between copies and editions in order to understand as accurately as possible the composition of the text, the original meaning of what was written and the subsequent history of its changes. 3. Holy Fathers of the Church and Patristics. Scripture or Tradition According to Christian biblical studies, the New Testament (actually the Christian part of the Holy Scriptures) was written by four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke и John) and apostles James, John, Jude и Paul, i.e. eight people (the Apostle John the Theologian, the author of two “Epistle” and “Revelation”, and the author of the “Gospel of John” - one and the same person). In the hierarchy of Christian authorities, the authors of the New Testament occupy the top place, and when it comes to the apostles and evangelists, the apostles are called first - they were revered above the evangelists, since the apostles were direct disciples and messengers of Jesus Christ and knew him personally. They could more accurately convey what Christ taught. Their interpretation and development of teaching was accepted primarily according to the principle of “ipse dixit” - “he said it himself”: everything that came from the apostles and evangelists was indisputable and accepted as Truth. But now the time of "apostolic men" is over. Christianity expanded in cities and countries, gradually turning from a persecuted sect into a state religion, the Christian church was built and strengthened, the doctrine developed intensively and in different directions. On the one hand, there was a codification of the doctrine: the composition of the works of the Christian canon was determined, a system of fundamental, ideally unchanged, principles of doctrine (dogmas) was developed, the logical-theoretical and philological foundations for the interpretation of Scripture and the acceptance of new knowledge by the church were laid; the principles of church building and the relationship between the clergy and the world were developed. On the other hand, a comprehensive Christian picture of the world was created: the doctrine of space, nature, man, the Christian concept of history, state, politics, and law. This huge semantic, informational, meaningful increment to the original Christianity took place over the course of six centuries - from the XNUMXnd to the XNUMXth centuries. the work of many generations of scribes. The developed powerful layer of new information, in order to be accepted by society, needed a general recognition of the authority of the creators of information. The reference "ipse dixit" - "said himself" - should have been extended from the apostles to new authors. They began to be called the fathers of the church or the holy fathers of the church, and their works - patristic creations, or patristics (lat. Pater - father). (Compare the Jewish parallel - the men of the great assembly in relation to the famous codifiers of the Talmud). Already in the early Middle Ages, the fame and prestige of the Church Fathers in the Christian world was significant and continued to grow over time. This is how the second (after the apostles and evangelists) circle of Christian authorities, the Church Fathers, was formed, and the patristic writings became the second most important (after the Holy Scriptures) corpus of Christian doctrinal texts - Sacred Tradition. The patristic exposition and explanation of the Christian faith is accepted by the church for guidance. It should be noted that the combination church fathers - this is a terminological, that is, a special and somewhat conditional expression. Although the church did not adopt a special canonical decree on who should be considered the fathers of the church, there were still certain criteria. Not Every Famous Christian Author II-VSH Centuries. recognized as the father of the church. In particular, the fathers of the church must necessarily be canonized. Therefore, such outstanding theologians as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Tertullian are not considered church fathers, but only church writers. For the same reason, the list of Western (who wrote in Latin) and Eastern fathers (who wrote in Greek) does not coincide. The pinnacle of Eastern (Byzantine) patristics are the works of the so-called Cappadocian circle - IV century. (Cappadocia - a Byzantine province in Asia Minor) - theologians and poets - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian и Gregory of Nyssa, “the three lights of the Cappadocian church,” as contemporaries spoke of them. However, not only contemporaries and compatriots: six or seven centuries later, the apocrypha was popular among the Orthodox Slavs: “The Conversation of the Three Hierarchs,” of which two saints were the Cappadocian fathers Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian, and the third was a famous preacher and also the father of the church, Constantinople Archbishop John Chrysostom. The most prominent representative of Latin patristics was the Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) St. Augustine Aurelius (354-430), recognized by subsequent tradition as the “teacher of the West.” The Byzantine theologian, encyclopedist St. John of Damascus (650-754) and dad Gregory the Great (540-604), initiator of the Christianization of England, compiler of the ecclesiastical legal code for the clergy "Pastoral Rule" and author of "Interpretations on Job or XXXV books on morality." The corpus of patristic writings is almost boundless. The most complete, but unfinished, edition was undertaken in Paris in the middle XIX in. Abbot J.P. Minem (Migne). It contains almost 400 volumes: Paztologiae cursus completes, series Graesa (166 volumes) and Partologia cursus completes, series Latina (221 volumes). The new edition of the Latin Fathers of the Church "Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum" lasts more than a century: begun in 1867 BC it continues to this day, with 80 volumes. В 1843-1893 The Moscow Theological Academy published 58 volumes of "The Works of the Holy Fathers, in Russian Translation". Some of the works in this series were published in 1917 BC - at the same time, not as monuments to the history of religion, but as quite relevant reading for believers. Now the publications of patristic writings are being resumed. Christian Holy Tradition, like the Tradition of Judaism ("Talmud"), is characterized by an encyclopedic breadth of content. The Talmud and patristic writings were created in those centuries when it was assumed that Holy Tradition would “complete” Holy Scripture to a complete corpus of everything that could and should be known to a believing people. The most significant thematic differences between patristics and the Talmud are connected, firstly, with the significantly less development of legal problems in patristics and, secondly, with the fact that patristics is distinguished by greater attention to the logical-theoretical and doctrinal aspects of theology. The second feature was especially characteristic of the Christian West. Two main lines are clearly visible in the development of patristics. First, there was a structural codification of Christian teaching: the main thing in the teaching was separated from the secondary, the generally accepted and obligatory - from the individual and optional, the logical system of teaching - from descriptions and narratives. At the ecumenical and local councils, generally binding provisions of the doctrine were formulated, which were fixed in special consolidated texts (the Symbols of Faith, later also in catechisms); official church definitions, rules of church service, rules for pastors and laity, as well as conciliar rules for understanding (i.e., interpreting) the most important and difficult verses in Holy Scripture were developed. Secondly, there was a kind of extensive development of the doctrine; Christian essays were written on the main branches of medieval humanitarian knowledge - such as philosophy and ethics, logic, grammar, the doctrine of the soul, the world, civil history, church history, etc. The rules, dogmas and canonical definitions developed by patristics played an exceptionally important role both in the church and in the life of medieval society as a whole. In many cases, the significance of Holy Tradition seemed to be higher than the significance of Holy Scripture: the Creed or catechism, the decrees of a council or changes in the Missal invaded life, worried people more than Holy Scripture. As a result, there was a contradiction between the status and role of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition: the Bible was the primary source of teaching, but actually found itself in the shadows; dogmas and church statutes were secondary and dependent on the Bible, however, determining the actual content of the teaching and the life of the church, they actually overshadowed the Bible. In the history of Christianity this contradiction has been and is being resolved in different ways. In official Orthodoxy and in the Catholic Church, especially with the strengthening of conservative-protective tendencies, the actual significance of Tradition increases. Meanwhile, freethinkers and heretics, religious reformers and religious philosophers, mystics and God-seekers have always turned to Scripture - the primary source of teaching and, to one degree or another, argued with Tradition. In Catholicism, the significance of the Holy Tradition is significantly higher than in Orthodoxy. This is due to the more centralized and legally more rigid organization of the Roman Catholic Church. The papal bulls proclaimed the monopoly of the Church in the interpretation of Scripture. The Bible was inaccessible to the bulk of believers. At various levels of the Catholic hierarchy, bans have been issued more than once for the laity to have the Bible in the house and read it on their own (these bans intensified as the texts of Scripture spread, especially with the beginning of printing). Thus, instead of the Bible, the true source of faith, tendentious abbreviations were offered to believers. Over time, not even the teachings of the Church Fathers and not the Ecumenical Councils began to determine the life of the Church, but the orders of the papal office, preoccupied with relations with secular sovereigns, the struggle for property and power. The decline of morality was clearly reflected in such a disgusting phenomenon as the sale of indulgences and church posts (simony). The critics of the papacy had every reason to say that Rome had forgotten the Bible and therefore lost the purity of the Christianity of apostolic times. It is no coincidence that the most important principles of Protestantism were the priority of Scripture over Tradition, the availability of Scripture to the laity, including women, the translation of Scripture into the vernacular, the right of everyone to interpret and understand Scripture in their own way. To return to the Bible and return the authority of the first book of Christianity to the Bible - this was called for by the ideological predecessor of Anglicanism, the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (1320-1384) and mastermind of the Czech Reformation Jan Hus (1371-1415). Leader of the German Reformation Martin Luther, entering into a fight with the Vatican, saw the goal of Protestantism as restoring the purity of apostolic times in Christianity. To do this, he taught, one must return to the words of Jesus himself and not listen to self-serving Roman interpreters. “I decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” “I counted everything as loss, as rubbish, in order to gain Christ,” wrote Luther. In the Catechism he compiled (1520) says: "We can learn from the Holy Scriptures alone what to believe and how we should live." Thus, Protestants saw in the writings of the Church Fathers or conciliar decisions not Sacred Tradition, but only documents of human history. The preference for Scripture or Tradition (in its various later and dissected forms) in Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church could be a kind of indicator, a diagnostic indicator of the general theological and even political orientation of this or that hierarch, religious thinker, organizer of education. Historian of Russian theology G. P. Florovsky, naming the archimandrite Afanasia Drozdova (XIX century) “a convinced and consistent obscurantist,” and this was pessimistic obscurantism, bases such a characterization on evidence speaking about Athanasius’ attitude to Scripture and Tradition. “At the Academy, Athanasius was entrusted with the leadership of all teachers... The entire emphasis was now focused on the curriculum... And the first topic around which a dispute began, written and oral, was about Holy Scripture...” Athanasius was not content with that he considered two sources of doctrine - Scripture and Tradition - as equivalent and seemingly independent. He had a clear tendency to denigrate Scripture. And some kind of personal pain is felt in the passion and irresponsibility with which Athanasius proves the insufficiency and outright unreliability of Scripture... Athanasius preaches: "For me, the confession of the Grave and the Pilot is everything and nothing more." He believed in church books more than in the word of God: "With the word of God you will not be saved yet, but with church books you will be saved" (Florovsky). 4. Christian theological thought and dogmatic theology In Christianity, theological theory was developed to a much greater extent than in other theistic religions (Judaism and Islam). Due to geographical conditions, Christianity spread in those lands and countries where there were processes of active assimilation and development of the logical-philosophical and legal traditions of European antiquity. The achievements of ancient thought had a decisive influence on Christian theology - on its themes, methods, style. Of course, Christianity itself was a powerful generator of theological knowledge. The mysterious and paradoxical world of Christian ideas, its living connections and disputes with Judaism and Greco-Roman polytheism - all this gave rise to many questions, and even more conflicting answers. The speculative and verbal (verbal) nature of theological disputes, the impossibility of their empirical resolution led to an avalanche-like growth of theological doctrines and discussions, as well as corresponding writings. An additional factor in the development of theology in early Christianity was the fight against heresies - passionate polemics, stubborn and at the same time, in the first Christian centuries, still relatively peaceful. In addition, the development of theology in Christianity, as in the history of other religions, was stimulated by the mystical search for religiously gifted individuals. Mysticism, this fermenting and living principle, as a rule, irrational, often led to the development of precisely theoretical ideas about God. Mystics need theology, although they are usually ill aware of it. As wrote R. Bastide, “it is the doctrine, as it improves, that gives precision to very vague sensations, creates new shades of them, gives rise to various schemes, and gives meaning to disordered forces.” Theology, being a speculation about God, is in principle one of the secondary formations in relation to faith and Holy Scripture. However, in Christianity, the beginning of theology is already presented in Scripture - in the fourth of the canonical Gospels in a number of apostolic letters. It is in the Gospel of John, which is perceptibly dependent on the ideas of Gnosticism and the Neoplatonic doctrine of the logos, that Jesus Christ is first called the Living God. Thus, one of the main themes of Christian theology arose - the doctrine of the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ. The problems and thematic boundaries of Christian theology were defined by the Church Fathers. The first theologian after the apostles, the Christian Church calls St. Irenaeus, contemporary of the Apostle John and Bishop of Lyons, martyred in 202 d. His main work, entitled "The Refutation and Refutation of a Doctrine Falsely Calling Itself Gnosis" (however, it became widely known under the title "Against Heresies"), contained an extensive polemic with Gnosticism and demonstrated the methods of scientific defense of faith: philosophy, dialectics, abundant quoting. Tertullian (160-220), presbyter of Carthage, was the first to formulate the principle of the trinity of God and introduced the concept of persons ("hypostases") of the Trinity. Among other problems of theology, his paradoxical mind was especially occupied with the question of the relationship between faith and reason. “Faith is higher than reason,” Tertullian argued, “Reason is not able to comprehend the truth that is revealed to faith.” His formula “Probable because it is absurd” (“Credibile est guia ipertum”) became a proverb in a distorted form: “I believe because it is absurd” (“Credo, guia absurdum”). Tertullian was the first to define what seven deadly sins. This list (pride, greed, fornication, envy, anger, gluttony, laziness) was approved by church councils and was included in the initial Christian teaching of the law of God, in catechisms and primers. Origen (185-253 or 254) headed a Christian school in Alexandria, and after church condemnation - in Palestine (in the city of Caesarea), however, in the XNUMXth century. was declared a heretic. His contribution to speculative teaching is associated with the development of Christology (the doctrine of the nature of Christ) and the doctrine of salvation. His concept of salvation is characterized by a kind of “eschatological optimism” (S.S. Averintsev): Origen argued the inevitability of complete salvation, the merging of all souls with God and the temporary torment of hell. In his essay on the nature of Christ the term appears for the first time God-man. St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), developed an ontological proof of the existence of God; the concept of faith as a prerequisite for all knowledge; the doctrine of sin and grace; for the first time raised the so-called anthropological questions of Christianity (the relationship of man to God; the relationship of church and state). Augustine formulated that addition to the Creed that distinguishes the Catholic version of the Creed from the Orthodox (the so-called filioque). The beginning of religious intolerance in Christianity is associated with the name of Augustine. Dad Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) went down in history as an outstanding church organizer and politician. In the field of theology, the doctrine of purgatory is associated with his name - something that would later become one of the points of dogmatic differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. St. John of Damascus (c. 615-753), completer of patristics, Byzantine philosopher and poet, for the first time compiled a systematic and complete theology under the title “The Source of Knowledge.” This encyclopedic work at the turn of IX and X Centuries. was translated into Old Church Slavonic by the Bulgarian scribe John Exarch of Bulgaria. However, already in early Christianity, the rapid development of theology met with intra-confessional restrictions and prohibitions. Theological searches and disagreements were allowed, but only as long as they did not contradict Scripture and the authorities of the Church Fathers. A deep conflict arose between the progressive development of theological thought and such powerful "preservatives" of religious communication as the principle "ipse dixit" - "he said himself", and the religious canon, i.e. the corpus of standard texts (Scripture and Tradition), "surpass" which not allowed. The resolution of the conflict was found in ranking theological knowledge according to the degree of general obligatory nature of one or another of its components (doctrines, categories, provisions, etc.). Those doctrinal positions, judgments or opinions that were recognized by the Ecumenical Councils as universally binding Christian truths of the "first rank" received the status of dogmas, and their systematic exposition and justification constituted the subject of a special theological discipline - dogmatic theology. "All other Christian truths - moral, liturgical, canonical - are important for a Christian, depending on the dogmas of paramount importance. The Church tolerates in her bowels sinners against the commandments, but excommunicates all dogmas that oppose or exclude her." A brief set of basic dogmas is the Creed - the main text, repeating which believers testify to their Christian faith. Beyond dogmatic theology are the so-called theological opinions. These are private, personal judgments expressed by church fathers or later theologians. “The theological opinion must contain a truth that, at a minimum, does not contradict Revelation. <...> The category of theological opinions can include, for example, statements about the two or three components of human nature; about how the incorporeality of angels and human souls should be understood; about image of the origin of souls." From the point of view of dogmatics, theological opinions are “not essential for our salvation,” and, as Gregory the Theologian noted, in such subjects “it is safe to make mistakes.” The Christian Church has always been cautious about the free discussion of dogmas. Modern Orthodoxy follows the authorities here John of the Ladder (VI century) и Barsanuphius the Great (VI century): “The depth of dogma is unsearchable... It is not safe for anyone who has any passion to touch theology”; “You shouldn’t talk about dogmas, because it’s above you” (Dogmatic Theology). However, liberal Russian theologians emphasized the need for a lively and creative attitude to dogmas. At the beginning of the XX century. professor at the Moscow Theological Academy A. I. Vvedensky wrote that behind every dogma, first of all, you need to hear the question to which it answers. “Then dogma will come to life and will be revealed in all its speculative depth. It will be revealed as a Divine answer to a human request... Dogmatics, moving towards modern demands, must therefore, as it were, re-create dogmas, transforming the dark coal of traditional formulas into transparent and self-luminous stones of true faith.” (Florovsky). The communicative meaning of the category of dogmas was to create and introduce into the tradition one more information "preservative" (along with such regulators as the "ipse dixit" principle and the religious canon), designed to ensure the stability and continuity of religious communication. From a functional point of view, the Christian institution of dogmas, interpreted as absolute and indisputable truths of doctrine, was no less a strong "string" and a connecting thread of tradition than the Islamic isnad. 5. What Every Christian Should Know As the doctrine spreads in breadth and as it develops, a certain hierarchy of meanings develops - the distinction between the main and the secondary and tertiary. On the other hand, new questions, new topics, new and often controversial decisions arise, which gives rise to discussions, polemics, a struggle of opinions and new questions... In other words, the usual process of increasing knowledge, in this case theological, is underway. The Christian Church quite early felt the need to define a body of the main, generally accepted and generally binding truths of the doctrine - dogmas. They were adopted at the Ecumenical Councils in IV-VIII Centuries. Their systematic presentation, justification and explanation constituted the subject of a special church discipline - dogmatic theology. However, books on theology were difficult and inaccessible to the masses of believers. Ordinary people needed a kind of alphabet of doctrine - a brief, understandable and accurate presentation of the fundamentals of faith. At the same time, the source of this knowledge must be an indisputable authority in the eyes of the people. There are two main genres of such texts in Christianity: 1) creed (listing in the established sequence of 12 articles of faith); 2) catechism (statement of the foundations of faith in questions and answers). In the Creed and the catechism the church sees extremely responsible, policy documents. (Catechism - from the Greek katecheo - to announce, orally instruct, teach). In early Christianity catechism is an oral instruction to those who were preparing to be baptized. Preparing for Baptism (catechesis) in Russian church tradition was called announcement, and those who underwent such training were called announced. There was also the word catechumen - a book of teachings for those who are preparing to accept Christianity and the expression announced words - "Teachings for the catechumens." Their peculiarity is that this is not a simplification or adaptation of some more important or more responsible texts. These texts are just a concentrated expression of the most important knowledge, and universally important - that which the church considers the necessary foundation of the faith of each person. The creed, still canonical for Orthodoxy, was compiled by the fathers of the I and II Ecumenical Councils, in the city of Nicaea (in 325 d.) and in Constantinople (381 g.), which is why it is called Nikeo-Constantinople (or Nikeo-Constantinople). Subsequent changes (in particular the filioque) were accepted only by Western Christianity. As for the catechism, in early and patristic Christianity its genre form, as well as its content, was quite free - not necessarily question-and-answer, as it is strictly understood now. Catechism in the modern terminological meaning of the term (as a dogmatically accurate statement of the foundations of faith in questions and answers) appears in the Reformation, when the Protestants needed a new, not according to the fathers of the church, presentation of the foundations of Christianity. The first Protestant catechism - "Summary of the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer" - compiled Martin Luther in 1520 Then came Luther's Small and Large Catechisms, as well as the catechisms of Calvin, Melanchthon, followers of Zwingli and other Protestant leaders. As a Catholic reaction, elaborate and rigorously dogmatized Jesuit catechisms emerged. There are not many Catholic versions of the catechism known, however, in terms of the number of editions and circulations, the catechism was the most massive of the doctrinal books. For example, the catechism Petra Canisia founder of the Jesuit order in the German-speaking countries, in 1529-1863 withstood more than 400 editions, that is, for 234 years almost every year two editions of the Catholic catechism were published. In the East Slavic tradition, the first catechism, and not in Church Slavonic, but in the folk language (simple move), was published by the famous Belarusian Protestant Simon Budny (Nesvizh, 1562). His “Catechism, that is, the ancient xpictian science, collected from the light of writing for ordinary people of the Russian language in torture and refusal” was written in great dependence on Luther’s publications. The first Orthodox catechism among the Eastern Slavs was developed by a "didaskal" (teacher) of the Lviv fraternal school Lavrenty Zizaniy. This catechism Lavrentiy and his son brought to 1627 BC to Moscow, to the Sovereign's Printing Yard for printing. After a debate for three February days and a translation into Church Slavonic, the Catechism of Zizanias was printed in Moscow, however, the circulation was immediately confiscated and almost completely destroyed (several defective copies remained). With the name of Lavrenty Zizaniy and his brother Stefan, researchers associate several more printed (not preserved) and handwritten catechisms of the end XVI - first third of the 17th century., known in the Ukrainian-Belarusian lands of that time. After Zizania among the Eastern Slavs until the XNUMXth century. There were two Orthodox catechisms: 1) "Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East" by the Metropolitan of Kyiv, the famous rector of the Kyiv Academy Petra Mogila (Kyiv, 1640; short version in 1645 BC, Moscow editions translated into Russian in 1645 BC и 1696); 2) "Various Christian Catechism" of the Moscow Metropolitan Filareta (Drozdova) 1823 BC (2nd edition 1827 BC reprinted several times). As you can see, catechisms are compiled (or sanctioned) by church leaders-reformers and higher hierarchs. Such is the "requirement" of the genre, the condition for the general confessional acceptance of the catechism as a set of indisputable doctrinal truths. The so-called symbolic books, or confessions of faith, are functionally close to the Creed and the catechism. They contain a strictly dogmatic interpretation of the Creed, the main prayers and lists of the main concepts of Christianity: the Ten Commandments of God, the Two Commandments of Love, the Main Truths of Faith, the Seven Holy Sacraments, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Major Sins, the Three Virtues, the Three Final Moments of Man (1 2. God's judgment 3. Heaven or hell). In Russia in XVII century. This kind of enumeration of the main categories of Christianity, together with the creed and catechism, was often published in primers of the Church Slavonic language, and later in prayer books, explanatory prayer books, manuals on the Law of God and in other similar books introducing the confession of faith. The Creed includes a list of the dogmas of Christianity, which briefly, without justification or commentary, as if only in a “symbolic” form, outline the fundamentals of faith. Each of the 12 dogmas included in the Creed is called a member of the Creed. In all languages, the Christian Creed begins with a verb meaning “to believe, to believe” in the 1st person singular: Lat. credo, church - glory. I believe in one God the Father Almighty <...>, that is, the believer, on his own behalf, personally, as it were, declares or declares what he believes. When an infant is baptized, the Creed is read “for him” by his recipient (godfather). The adult receiving baptism is required to recite the Creed out loud in church. In addition, the Creed is read as a prayer in church and at home; in the Orthodox Church it is sung by a choir, echoed by all those praying. Below is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, canonical for Orthodoxy. 1 I believe in one God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, of everything visible and invisible. 2. And into one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father before all ages: as Light from Light, true God from true God, and not created, having one essence with the Father, and by whom all things were created. 3. For us people and for our salvation, who descended from heaven and took on human nature from the Virgin Mary through the influx of the Holy Spirit upon Her, who became a man. 4. Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffering and buried. 5. And Risen on the third day according to the Scriptures. 6. And ascended into heaven and is at the right hand of the Father. 7. And again He who has to come with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end. 8. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who gives life to all, who proceeds from the Father, who is honored and glorified equally with the Father and with the Son, who spoke through the prophets. 9. And into one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. 10. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. 11. I look forward to the resurrection of the dead. 12. And the life of the next century. Truly, yes. The Western change in the Creed - the filioque (“and from the Son”) was added - reflects a different, according to S. S. Averintsev, more subordinate, understanding of the structure of the trinity in the Holy Trinity. According to St. Augustine, the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son. Local Cathedral in Toledo (589 d.) included this combination - and from the Son - in the 8th article of the Creed: 8. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who gives life to all, from the Father and from the Son, proceeding, honored and glorified on a par with the Father and the Son, who spoke through the prophets. It is this dogmatic divergence, expressed in the Western addition of the words and from the Son, it became later (in 1054) partial cause and reason for the division of Christianity into the Western (Roman Catholic) Church and the Eastern (Greek Orthodox) Church. 6. The cycle of readings in the Christian church. Missal, Typicon, Menaion, Trebnik All Christian joint services, including the main of them - the liturgy - include common prayers, singing and reading passages from sacred books (Old and New Testament writings of the church fathers). Liturgy (Greek letourgia - common or public service, service) - worship, during which the sacrament of the Eucharist (thanksgiving), or the communion of believers to God, is performed. Liturgy established by Jesus Christ in last supper (church. - glory. dinner - "supper"): "This do My remembrance" and retains the features of a joint sacred meal, which connects those gathered with God. Hence the folk-Christian names of the liturgy: Russian. dinner, lat. missa - "mass", literally "cooked; dish, meal", to which Eng. mass, germ. die Messe, Polish msza, Belarusian. (Catholic) gmsha). The composition and sequence of prayers, chants and readings depends on three time coordinates that determine the place of a particular service in three cycles: 1. In daily worship (in relation to Vespers, Matins, Liturgy). 2. In the church year (in relation to the so-called twelve, or immovable holidays, as well as holidays in honor of saints, icons and days of remembrance). 3. In the Easter cycle, i.e. in relation to Great Lent, Holy Week mobile, or transitional holidays (Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Spiritual day). The composition of the texts of the daily cycle, as well as the rites, that is, the order of the prayers, chants and readings, was determined by the church fathers. At the same time, the rite of the liturgy was distinguished by particular complexity. In the Orthodox Church, a special genre of liturgical books for the priest and deacon was developed - the Missal, which contains the rites of Vespers, Matins and Liturgy (as well as some other materials: priestly prayers, including priestly secret prayers (i.e., spoken in a whisper), hymns, the church calendar, the order of some sacraments, etc.). In the V-VI centuries. in Palestine, rules were developed for conducting services by months and days of the week for the whole year, as well as rules for services to saints and in honor of holidays. The book of such rules is called Typicon (Greek typikon - image, type), or Charter. It also contains rules about fasting, rules of monastic community life, a church calendar with rules for calculating Easter and other similar information. On church holidays and on the days of memory of certain saints, special chants, prayers and readings dedicated to the corresponding holiday or saint are included in the service. There are special liturgical books that contain the texts of such additions, arranged in calendar order, by months - this Menaion (Greek menaios - monthly). The circle of those texts that are read and sung in Christian worship includes almost all the texts of the New Testament (excluding the "Revelation of John the Theologian" - Apocalypse), a number of texts of the "Old Testament" (especially widely "Psalter"), further prayers and hymns of apostolic times , Creed, patristic hymns and prayers, excerpts from lives. We can say that these are selected texts from Scripture and Tradition, ordered in relation to the rite of worship, in accordance with ideas about the mystical communication of people with God, with a certain consideration for the peculiarities of oral perception. The canonicity of the text was not a prerequisite for its inclusion in the circle of church readings. So, in particular, the canonical "Apocalypse" was never read in the temple - because of the frightening gloominess of its prophecies and the metaphorical complexity ("multiple meaning") of its artistic language. On the other hand, the Orthodox service includes a number of borrowings from the non-canonical "Book of Wisdom of Solomon". Every service has a fixed component that is required by all services, and a variable component that is required by some or even just one service. This variable component depends on what day of the week and year the service is performed. Each service changes 7 times a week and 355 times a year. Therefore, the books used in Christian worship are numerous and form a complex and rather strict system. According to the composition of texts and composition, those books of Holy Scripture that are read in divine services differ significantly from the extra-liturgical books of the Christian canon. In the Orthodox Church, the Gospels and the Epistles of the Holy Apostles are divided into fragments of different lengths (10-50 verses) - the so-called conceptions. A separate conception is a certain semantic unity (for example, an episode of sacred history or a parable of Christ). It is precisely such semantic passages from Scripture that are read during the service. In addition to the fact that all the books of the New Testament read in the temple are divided into conceptions, liturgical books spread from Byzantium, in which fragments from the Holy Scriptures are arranged in the order in which they should be read at certain services, in accordance with the Missal and the church calendar ( weekly and daily). The most important of these "repackaged" books are Aprakas Gospels, or gospel-aprakos (from the Greek apraktos - non-working, festive), i.e. "festive Gospel". All types of Aprakos Gospels (Sunday, short and full) are opened with readings relying on Holy Week - the first verses from the first chapter of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Full Aprakos contains daily readings for the whole year, excluding non-holiday days of Great Lent (until Passion Week). In addition to the Aprakos gospels, the Church Slavonic book also contains the Aprakos "Apostles". The "Gospels" and "Apostle", which together make up almost the entire "New Testament" (excluding the "Revelation of John the Theologian" - Apocalypse), are completely read in the church in one year. Another genre of liturgical books, compiled from selected fragments of Scripture, is Paremiynik (from the Greek. paroimia - "saying, proverb; parable"). It is a collection of proverbs, i.e., stories, parables, maxims from the Old or New Testaments, which are read at the evening service, mainly on the eve of the holidays. Paroemias contain prophecies about the celebrated event, an explanation of its meaning, praise of the celebrated saint, etc. Of the books of the "Old Testament" in Christian worship, the "Psalter" is most widely used. Most of the most ancient Christian liturgical hymns, evening and morning prayers go back to it. In Orthodox worship, the Psalter is read in full every week. For liturgical needs, the Psalter itself is often combined with the Book of Hours (a collection of prayers and hymns dedicated to the hours of doliturgical worship). Such an expanded version of the "Psalter" in the Church Slavonic tradition is called the "Followed Psar". In pre-Petrine Russia, according to the Psalter and the Book of Hours, they often taught elementary Church Slavonic literacy. Among the important liturgical books should also be named trebnik. This is a manual for priests, containing the rites and prescribed prayers in the rites of the so-called private worship - such as baptism, wedding, funeral service, confession, blessing of oil, tonsure, various prayer services (blessing of a house, well, etc.). 7. "Sermon on the Mount" and early Christian homily. The fate of church eloquence The famous "Sermon on the Mount", which sets forth the essence of Christian ethics, is both a parallel, an addition, and an antithesis to the Old Testament "Decalogue" - the Ten Chief Commandments of Judaism. The new ethics of the Sermon on the Mount continues the Old Testament and argues with it. "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill," says Jesus. However, a number of passages are precisely the denial of the commandments of the Old Testament: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: “You shall not kill; whoever kills will be subject to judgment." But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be subject to judgment. <...> You have heard that it was said: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say you: do not resist evil. But whoever hits you on your right cheek, turn the other to him; and whoever wants to sue you and take your shirt, give him your outer garment too <...>", etc. If the Ten Commandments of the "Old Testament" in their genre-communicative nature is a "quote", "fragment" from the Revelation given by God, then the New Testament "Sermon on the Mount" of Jesus Christ is both the Revelation of God and the Sermon of the Teacher (just as Jesus Christ is both God and Man. In terms of semantic importance, the Sermon on the Mount is Revelation, the main commandments of God, but in terms of genre, in terms of the nature of communication (which this text recreates), in terms of the activity of the speaker in an effort to convince listeners, this is a sermon. The Sermon on the Mount allows us to present the features of early Christian preaching: the universal and eschatological scale of the sermon, its preoccupation with the "last questions" of being; its simplicity, naturalness, sincerity; its emphatically non-bookish, "street" and purely oral, unlearned character ("the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees" is what the followers of Jesus must transcend, preaching teaches); natural expressiveness of excited, arguing and persuasive speech; its communicative-rhetorical power and skill, most likely not prudent, but spontaneous and therefore all the more effective (with an appeal to expressive images, special means of activating the attention of listeners and inducing them to certain decisions and actions). Historical sources testify that in the first centuries of Christianity, a sermon was a common accompaniment to the actual service to God (liturgy) and collective prayers. St. Justin, one of the early church fathers (XNUMXnd century), describes the Sunday meeting of Christians and its components as follows - they read Scripture, then a sermon, prayers, the liturgy itself (rituals of thanksgiving and communion): "On the so-called day of the Sun - Sunday - we have a meeting in one place of all those living in cities and villages, and read, as much as time allows, the sayings of the apostles or the writings of the prophets.Then, when the reader stops, the primate, by means of a word, gives instruction and exhortation to imitate those beautiful things. Then we all get up and send prayers. When we finish the prayer, as I said above, bread, and wine, and water are brought; and the primate also sends up prayers and thanksgivings as much as he can. The people express their consent with the word amen, and there is a distribution to everyone and communion of the Gifts, over which Thanksgiving was performed, and those who have not been sent through deacons. community, conversation, teaching).Later, the term homiletics arose - "the rules for compiling sermons; the science of ecclesiastical eloquence." Information has been preserved that the practical guides to homiletics were, among other things, Origen (185-254), famous theologian and biblical scholar. Sunday preaching in medieval Western Christianity, especially in large churches, was quite common. At the same time, normative guidelines for preaching were absent for a long time. It was believed that the pastoral word about God did not need rhetorical embellishments and that sincere faith would prompt the right word. In part, such views were supported by the apparent simplicity, compositional "disorder" of the "Sermon on the Mount" or the epistles of the Apostle Paul. Therefore, no special attention was paid to the technique of preaching. One of the fathers of the Western Church is Pope Gregory the Great in The Pastoral Care (c. 591 g.) wrote: “Whoever the Lord has filled, he immediately makes eloquent” (cited from the work: Gasi 1986, 99). However, with the development of European rhetoric, with the growing popularity of guides on how to compose letters and business papers, XIII-XIV centuries textbooks also appear on church eloquence (lat. arspraedicandi - the art of preaching). In the universities, in the faculties of theology, they taught the so-called "thematic" sermon, distinguishing it from the homily as a sermon "free", unsophisticated. In a "thematic" sermon, it was required, according to certain logical and rhetorical rules, to develop the "theme" stated in the title of the sermon. The “topic” could be a line from Scripture, praise for a holiday or a saint (on whose memorial day a service is being held), an interpretation of the saint’s name or any name in general, a discussion of an event whose anniversary falls on the day of the service, etc. Such sermons were read in temples, that is, they were a type of oral public solemn speech, however, they were prepared in advance, that is, they also existed in written form, and were often subsequently printed as works of independent theological, journalistic and aesthetic value. "Thematic" sermon (it was also called "university") for several centuries was felt as the pinnacle of church-rhetorical learning. Among the famous manuals on learned ecclesiastical eloquence and Ukrainian homiletics is "Science, Albo the Way of Evil of Kazan" (1659) by Ioanniky Galyatovsky, rector of the Kyiv Collegium, erudite and polemicist. He published this treatise in the book "The Key of Understanding" - a collection of exemplary tales (sermons) intended as a practical guide for preachers. The author talks in detail and simply about two genres of sermon - for the resurrection and for the funeral. Homiletics is written as advice from an experienced preacher to beginners - about how to choose and develop a topic, how to make a sermon coherent, how to get the attention of listeners, how, when speaking about unrighteous wealth, not to embarrass and frighten the rich too much, how not to drive people into despair with a tombstone, etc. This is the first printed rhetoric among the Eastern Slavs. In the XNUMXth century it was reprinted twice more in Kyiv and Lvov, translated into Church Slavonic for Muscovite Russia, and was a reference book for many generations of priests. Sermon, in a certain sense, is opposed to worship proper (liturgy). If the order of services is strictly prescribed by the Missal and the Typicon, then preaching is a free genre, "less responsible, less obligatory, and therefore giving the preacher the opportunity of a certain choice of content and method of pastoral teaching communication with the faithful (the choice, of course, within certain limits). New trends in It is enough to say that the entry of folk languages into the temple began with a sermon, then the reading of passages from Scripture in the folk language was allowed, later - new prayers, chants, and only lastly the folk language was allowed into the liturgy. There is unpredictability in preaching and therefore the risk of being unorthodox. Therefore, the Orthodox and Catholic churches, especially in the past, in one way or another, limited the possibilities of preaching. For example, in Orthodoxy the right to preach liturgical sermons is given only to bishops and presbyters (priests), but not to deacons. Protestants, on the contrary, actively developed preaching, seeing in free preaching a return to the purity and religious creativity of early Christian times. Having renounced all the sacraments except baptism and communion, it was precisely in the sermon that the Protestants strove to see a kind of new sacramentum sacra-mentum audibile, that is, an audible sacrament. Indirectly, this contributed to the development of preaching among Catholics and Orthodox. The flourishing of Catholic preaching, especially Jesuit preaching in the era of the counter-reformation, was partly a reaction to the successes of Protestant preaching, the search for "its own" counterbalance to what attracted Christians to Protestantism. Among the Orthodox Eastern Slavs, a learned liturgical sermon was part of church life starting from XVII century., while overcoming significant resistance from conservative clerical circles. Meletius Smotrytsky in 1629 wrote that until recently the Orthodox exclaimed: "Oh, damned sermon!". The defense or encouragement of preaching has always been fraught with reproach in Protestantism. Similar motifs are still heard today: for example, the Moscow priest Father Georgy Kochetkov is accused of Protestantism primarily for regular and lengthy sermons. 8. Christian exegesis and hermeneutics. Explanatory gospels and psalms The terms exegesis and hermeneutics go back to Greek words with a similar meaning (albeit distant roots) and therefore are translated almost the same way: exegesis (from the Greek exegetikos - explaining) is an explanation, interpretation; hermeneutics (from the Greek. hermeneutikos - explaining, interpreting) - the art, the technique of interpreting classical texts. Sometimes these terms are understood in the same way (for example, in the Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary). Sometimes they see a difference between them, and there are two main interpretations of these differences. 1. Exegesis interprets the text with maximum regard for the specific historical conditions of its creation, while hermeneutics is concerned with interpreting a historical source from today's perspective. 2. Hermetics seeks to understand the text "from itself" - through an exhaustive analysis of its vocabulary, grammar and expressive-stylistic qualities, while exegesis actively draws on "external" data (historical news, testimony from independent sources, etc.). Sometimes, hermeneutics is understood as the fundamental principles of interpretation, and exegesis as an explanation of a particular text. However, of course, no one pair of terms, however, like two or three, will be enough to designate all those aspects and levels of understanding of the text that modern psychology and philosophy distinguish in this process. Therefore, the ambiguous and indistinct use of these terms is still unavoidable and, in general, tolerable. In the Christian tradition, commenting on Holy Scripture begins already in the "New Testament", in particular, in cases where the speech of the narrator or character contains a "deaf" reference to the "Old Testament", and then the evangelist gives its detailed interpretation, while in the margins of the text over time, they began to abbreviate the place in the Bible to which this verse refers. Here is Jesus in Jerusalem driving out the merchants and money changers from the temple. “And he said to those who sold doves, “Take this from here, and do not make My Father’s house a house of trade.” Jesus' words are an allusion to Psalm 68: "For zeal for Your house consumes me, and the reproaches of those who slander You come upon me." But the reader may not notice the hint, so the evangelist reveals it and at the same time speaks about the reaction of the disciples to what is happening: “At the same time, His disciples remembered that it was written: “Zeal for Your house consumes Me.” At the same time, they began to place references to the desired verse in the margins 68 psalm, and also indicate parallel passages in other biblical books. Further, interpretations of certain verses of Scripture were common in sermons - both in the artless homily of early Christians, and in later learned sermons, which were often built precisely as a detailed interpretation of the biblical maxim. Later, they began to create consistent (verse by verse) interpretations of individual books of Holy Scripture. The first such interpretations were made by the Byzantine church fathers in the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. Interpretations were required for preaching and catechesis, for the training of priests, as well as for the more general and broad tasks of developing theology and comprehensively comprehending Scripture. Gradually, in Eastern Christianity, interpretations were created (in Greek) and translated into Church Slavonic on all the main books of the New Testament, as well as on some books of the Old Testament - primarily on those that were read during worship. As a result, a special type (or genre) of canonical texts has developed - the Explanatory Gospel, the Explanatory Psalter, the Explanatory Apostle. Books of this type included the biblical text and commentaries on it. The Orthodox Slavs, even in pre-print books for the "Psalter" and "Song of Songs", had several sensible versions (in Church Slavonic), however, there were no interpretations for some books (including for the "Pentateuch of Moses" there was an interpretation only for the first chapters " Genesis, which spoke of the creation of the world. In modern times, Christianity has developed interpretations of all the books of the Old and New Testaments. In the Russian tradition, such works may have varying genre designations: "The Revelation of the Lord about the Seven Asian Churches (An Experience of Explanation of the First Three Chapters of the Apocalypse)" by A. Zhdanov, "The Apocalypse and the False Prophecy denounced by it" by N. Nikolsky, "Collection of Articles on Interpretive and Edifying Reading Apocalypse" by M. Barsov, etc. The style and character of the modern interpretation of Scripture can be judged from the following passage from the commentary on the Apocalypse (the commentary refers to the words about the Book in the right hand of Him who sits on the throne, written within and without, sealed with seven seals (Rev. 5,1:24): "Books in ancient times consisted of pieces of parchment rolled into a tube or wound on a round stick. A cord was threaded inside such a scroll, which was tied on the outside and attached with a seal. Sometimes a book consisted of parchment, which was folded in the form of a fan and was pulled together at the top, imprinted with seals on each fold or fold of the book. In this case, opening one seal made it possible to open and read only one part of the book. Writing was usually done on one, inner, side of the parchment, but in rare cases they wrote on both sides. According to the explanation of St. Andrew of Caesarea and others. , the book seen by St. John should be understood as the “wise memory of God,” in which everything is inscribed, as well as the depth of Divine destinies. Consequently, all the mysterious definitions of God’s wise providence regarding the salvation of people were inscribed in the book. The seven seals mean the complete and unknown affirmation of the book, or the economy of the probing depths of the Divine Spirit, which none of the created beings can resolve. The book also refers to prophecies, about which Christ Himself said that they were partially fulfilled in the Gospel (Luke 44:1991), but that the rest will be fulfilled in the last days. One of the powerful Angels cried out in a loud voice for someone to open this book, opening its seven seals, but no one was found worthy “neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth” who would dare to do this. This means that none of the created beings has access to knowledge of the secrets of God. This inaccessibility is further strengthened by the expression “below to see,” that is, “even to look at it.” The seer grieved a lot about this...", etc. (Archbishop Averky. "Apocalypse, or Revelation of St. John the Theologian: History of writing, rules for interpretation and analysis of the text." M.: Original, 31. P. XNUMX). В 1904-1912 in Russia, as an appendix to the journal "Strannik", a 12-volume "Explanatory Bible or commentary on all the books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament" was published in Russian. AT 1987 BC a reprint of this edition in 3 volumes was published by the Institute for Bible Translations in Stockholm. Commentaries on the books of Holy Scripture are a universal, multipurpose genre of theological literature. They rely on a huge preparatory theological and philological work and in many ways complete it. Stylistically, the interpretations gravitate toward that simplicity, certainty, and "transpersonality" of exposition, which are inherent in manuals on dogmatic theology. Interpretations are democratic and are therefore used in oral preaching and in catechesis. At the same time, interpretations are studied by theologians, philosophers, and historians of spiritual culture. On the whole, interpretation is a responsible, representative and, in its own way, final genre of biblical philology. The total volume of studies on the interpretation of biblical texts is enormous, their directions are diverse, and the results largely determined the very profile of humanitarian knowledge in the Christian world. Studies in biblical exegesis have led to concomitant outstanding methodological discoveries (for example, of such rank as the teaching of Philo of Alexandria on four levels of interpretation of the text); to the emergence of entire branches of humanitarian knowledge, unknown to antiquity (for example, lexicography and, in particular, explanatory lexicography; translation theory; textual criticism). In the circle of historical and philological studies related to certain regions and eras (such as European classical philology, exploring European antiquity; like Germanic philology; Slavic; Old Indian; Romance; Finno-Ugric, etc.), biblical studies (biblical philology) is oldest and most developed discipline. Due to the outstanding religious and cultural value of the monuments that it studies, biblical philology surpasses all other philologies in the quantity and quality of the research work "invested" in the study of each source. The successes of world biblical studies have made it possible to carry out critical (scientific) editions of the Christian Holy Scriptures, which represent the highest achievements of the publishing culture of modern mankind. 9. The fate of canon law in Christianity Unlike Judaism and Islam, in Christianity the most important principles of law are contained not in confessional, but in secular texts dating back to pre-Christian sources. Christian peoples, once subject to Rome, as civilization developed, gradually began to accept the greatest achievement of ancient culture - Roman law, carefully codified and developed in detail in the most vital areas - in civil and criminal law. Legal topics in the confessional literacy of Christians are associated with a special area of law - with church, or canon law. Issues of internal church organization, some family and marriage and property relations were subject to the jurisdiction of canon law. If in Judaism and Islam the basic principles of confessional law (as well as civil law) are contained in Holy Scripture - in the Tanakh and the Koran, then the sources of canon law among Christians are associated not with Scripture, but with Tradition. These are the rules of the Church Fathers, decisions of ecumenical and local councils, papal decrees. Church laws are connected in one way or another with secular legislation and secular power and are generally more dependent on local conditions (than, say, Christological disagreements). Therefore, in the field of church law, long before the official (in 1054) The division of the Christian Church into Catholic and Orthodox began to take shape, which deepened the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. In Byzantium, the first codification of church rules was carried out by an outstanding lawyer, before being tonsured - by an Antiochian lawyer, and then by the Patriarch of Constantinople John Scholasticus (565-571). The collection of church rules and imperial decrees concerning the church prepared by him was called "Nomocanon" (from the Greek nomos - "law" and kapop - "norm, rule"). "Nomocanon" in the edition of Patriarch Photius (IX century) was translated Old Church Slavonic of St. Methodius (brother of St. Cyril-Constantine). This edition formed the basis of the Russian Pilot's Book. (XII c.) - collections of church rules and state regulations relating to it (from "Russian Truth", princely charters, "Measure of the Righteous" and other legal sources). "The Pilot Book" in Russia is known in several editions, most of its lists refer to XIV-XVI centuries; latest printed editions 1804 и 1816 In the West, the first collection of church laws was compiled in the VI century. and confirmed Charlemagne в 802 BC The first codification of various codes was carried out in the KhP century. The most complete collection of church laws was the collection "Corpus juris canonisi" 1582 BC In the Catholic world in the Middle Ages, including in European universities, canon law existed and competed with civil law (Jus canonise against jus civile, canonists against civilists, or legalists). With secularization, the scope of canon law in all Christian countries gradually narrowed down to church life. 10. The dogma of the Holy Trinity and the "Arian heresy" The Christian doctrine of the Trinity of God developed in the XNUMXth century, in heated disputes with religious differences. The dogma of the Holy Trinity is recognized as the basis of Christian doctrine and the main theological problem of Christianity. At the same time, the dogma of the Holy Trinity "is a dogma that is mysterious and incomprehensible at the level of reason" (Dogmatic theology). According to Christian teaching, the Holy Trinity is the three persons (three hypostases) of God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are "uncreated" and "unborn", "consubstantial", i.e. they have one Divine Essence, and "equilibrium". Arius (256-336), a priest from Alexandria, taught that the Son of God was created by God the Father, that is, he is the creation of God, and, therefore, not God. But the Son is “honored by the Divinity,” endowed with Divine power, and therefore can be called the “second God,” but not the first. According to Arius, the Spirit is the highest creation of the Son, just as He Himself is the highest creation of the Father. Arius called the Holy Spirit “grandson” (Dogmatic Theology). Theology recognizes that the teaching of Arius arose as a result of the fact that the texts of Scripture, which speak of the subordination of the Son to the Father, were attributed inappropriately high importance. (This refers to the New Testament contexts, which say that the Son of God after the Incarnation is not only God, but also the Son of Man; that the Son comes from the Father, that is, that the Father is the Hypostatic Beginning of the Son: "My Father is greater than Me"; "[Son] Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world"; "[Christ] humbled Himself, being obedient even unto death." In other words, the "Arian heresy" that shook the Eastern Church is a misreading, an inadequate interpretation of the sacred text. Arius was condemned by the First Ecumenical (Nicene) Council in 325 and died in exile. New anti-Arian decisions were made at the Second Ecumenical (Constantinople) Council in 381. The "Arian heresy" was a bogey back in the XNUMXth century. for Russian Old Believers. Arianism as a current of Christian thought to the VI century. has lost its meaning. However, disagreements in understanding the Trinity in the Holy Trinity continued to excite theologians. Differences between Western and Eastern Christianity in the interpretation of the Trinity led to the emergence of two different editions of the Christian Creed. The Western change in the Creed - the filioque (and from the Son) was added - reflects a different, not "equilibrium", more subordinate understanding of the Trinity: the Son is younger than the Father, the Father and the Son are the sources of the Spirit. This opinion was advocated by St. Augustine, separating the Father from the Son as sources of the Spirit. To the former formula: The Spirit proceeds from the Holy Father. Augustine added: And from the Son. The Local Council of Toledo (589) included this combination - and from the Son - in the 8th article of the Creed: 8. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who gives life to all, who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, who is honored and glorified equally with the Father and with the Son, who spoke through the prophets. It was this dogmatic divergence, expressed in the Western addition of the words and from the Son, that later (in 1054) became a partial reason and reason for the division of Christianity into the Western (Roman Catholic) Church and the Eastern (Greek Orthodox) Church. It is difficult to say that for St. Augustine and his followers were symbolized by the filioque. But the more striking are the dialectical consequences that the Russian philosopher of the 1991th century connects with the filioque. "Religion in the West, which includes in its doctrine the dogma ofilioque, i.e. the doctrine of the appearance of the Holy Spirit both from the Father and from the Son, contains a distortion of the main foundation of Christianity. Indeed, such a doctrine assumes that the Holy Spirit appears "from that in which the Father and the Son are one": in this case there is a special unity not in substance or person, but in the supra-personal. It follows that the Holy Spirit is lower than the Father and the Son, but this means "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" But, apart from the Holy Spirit, the creature cannot be deified, and therefore the humiliation of the Holy Spirit leads to the humiliation of Christ in his humanity and to the idea that empirical existence cannot be fully deified or become an absolute. between the absolute and the relative, knowledge is recognized as limited If a person admits the weakness of his mind and will, he needs undoubted truth on earth and an invincible earthly church, hence the earthly organization arises in the form of a hierarchical monarchy with the pope at the head, who has secular power. Further, this leads to the denial of heavenly life, to a focus on worldly well-being, to the flourishing of technology, capitalism, imperialism, and, finally, to relativism and destruction" (Lossky, XNUMX). Confessional approved truths of Revelation (dogmas) reflect a strictly defined understanding of the main religious categories. It is assumed that believers assimilate such an understanding of Revelation, and not so much with the mind, as with the "heart" of a person, his believing soul. However, historically changing interpretations of Revelation, as well as changes in the form of its presentation, lead to the idea of the relativity of historical, human differences in the understanding of Revelation. It is natural, for example, that such an apologist for freedom and creativity as N. A. Berdyaev said about himself that "he could never accept Revelations from the outside, from history, from tradition" (Hereinafter in this paragraph, "Self-knowledge (Experience of philosophical autobiography)" Berdyaev (1949) according to the Moscow edition of 1991; pages are indicated in brackets.). Berdyaev saw the human limitations of the existing historical forms of Revelation; "Historical Revelation is only a symbolization of the mysteries of the spirit, and it is always limited by the state of consciousness of people and the social environment" (p. 169). "In the language of the Gospels themselves there is human limitation, there is a refraction of divine light in human darkness, in the rigidity of man" (p. 300). Berdyaev saw the same human, historical limitations in dogmatic institutions. Considering that "super-confessionalism" is characteristic of Revelation, he rejected narrow-confessional orthodoxy, the dogmatically accepted truths of Revelation: "I have a real aversion to theological-dogmatic strife. I feel pain reading the history of Ecumenical Councils" (p. 314). For Berdyaev, God's word is an opportunity for new readings: "Historical Revelation was secondary to me in comparison with spiritual Revelation" (p. 183). "Revelation presupposes the activity of not only the Revealer, but also the perceiver of Revelation. It is two-part" (p. 178). LECTURE No. 8. History of Islam and Islamic culture 1. The Qur'an: the uncreated Book sent down from Heaven Islam, the youngest of the world religions, developed under the strong influence of the religions of neighboring peoples - Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism. Like these traditions, Islam belongs to the religions of Scripture. At the same time, the features inherent in the religions of Scripture, and, above all, the non-conventional interpretation of the linguistic sign (literalism in the interpretation or translation of the sign; conservative and protective attitude towards the sacred text; fundamental indistinguishability of some signs and what they denote), are expressed in Islam with the greatest fullness and strength. This originality of Islam is manifested in various events in its history, as well as in a number of dogmas and special regulations regarding the practice of using the Koran in worship, its translation, interpretation, study at school, etc. The Koran is from the Arabic kuran - literally - "reading what is read, pronounced." The Qur'an is also called the words mushaf, kitab (in Arabic "book", remember that the word Bible is also translated from Greek as "book"); in the Qur'an itself, the Qur'an also uses the word dhikr, i.e. "warning, reminder." In the sacred books of different religions, the actual word of God, his direct appeal to the prophet or the people, is presented in different ways. For example, in the "Tanakh" (the Jewish "Old Testament") Yahweh's direct speech (his appeals "from the 1st person" to Noah, Abraham, Jacob, as well as the Ten Commandments and the laws given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai) is only relatively small fragments in the general body of the Old Testament (Gen 9, 1-17; Gen 15, 1-21; Gen 32, 29; Ex 19-25, Lev 17-26). The bulk of the "Avesta" consists of Zoroaster's hymns, glorifying Mazla and minor gods, as well as sermons, prayers, incantations and reflections of Zoroaster. The direct speech of God Mazda sounds in the "Avesta" in his relatively rare dialogues with the prophet. The picture in the Qur'an is different: its entire text is the direct speech of Allah (from the 1st person), addressed to the prophet Muhammad or (more often) through the prophet to people. I. Yu. Krachkovsky characterized the ratio of the voices and roles of God and the prophet in the Qur'an: "Allah speaks himself, a person completely retreats or acts on orders: say!". In this communicative originality of the Koran lies, according to Krachkovsky, its "unheard of innovation compared to the Torah and the Gospel" (where God's speeches are only quotations, interspersed in the speech of a prophet or chronicler). "Deity in the first person" is the "main effect" of the style of the Qur'an and the secret of its inspiring power. It is clear that the degree of sacredness of the direct word of God is higher than the holiness of the "indirect" (i.e., "from the 3rd person", and in this sense "foreign") narrative about God or the holiness of the retelling of the words of God by the prophet, even if inspired God ("inspired"). This is one of the communicative circumstances that led to the fact that of all the religions of the Scriptures, it is in Islam that the cult of the Holy Scriptures has received the maximum development. If the Revelation of Yahweh to Moses takes place in conditions close to geological cataclysms, then Muhammad, the prophet of Allah and the founder of Islam, "a nervous and rebellious nature, a soul always seized with mysterious confusion" (Masse), at the moments of Revelation he himself experiences an ecstatic shock, similar in symptoms with mystical trance or epilepsy. In written В. S. Solovyov (1896) biographies of Muhammad his fortune on that night of the month of Ramadan 610 when the angel Jibril (for Christians it is the archangel Gabriel) on behalf of Allah began to send down the Koran to him, recreated as follows. Mohammed is in a cave, weary of long and fruitless reflections during his annual retreat. “Suddenly I felt in a dream that someone approached me and said: Read, I answered: no! Then he squeezed me so that I thought I was dying, and repeated: read! I heard the words: Read in the name of your Lord, who creates a man from a blood clot Read: Your Lord - He is merciful - makes known through a writing stick, makes known what he did not know (Sura, 96, 1-6). I read, the phenomenon receded from me, and I woke up. And I felt that these words were written in my heart. Everything he heard ("written in the heart") that night and in many subsequent days and nights for almost 20 years, Muhammad repeated word for word to his fellow tribesmen, preserving the "direct speech" of the Revelation of Allah (i.e., the forms of the 1st person in all when God speaks about himself). The "broadcasting" of Allah from Heaven and the "broadcasting" of his words by the prophet to the people continued from 610 by 632 first in Mecca, then in Medina. Faith in the Revelation of Allah, Muhammad, "thanks to his sincere piety, marvelous gift of eloquence and perseverance, inspired, in the end, everyone who surrounded him." 2. Koran - "completed prophecy" Islamic teaching regards the Qur'an as a "complete prophecy" and sees in this its superiority over the holy books of the Jews and Christians. According to the Koran, Jews and Christians believe in the same God as Muslims, this is the ancient faith of the forefather of Arabs and Jews, Abraham (Arabic Ibrahim), and God has already sent people his prophets and Revelation: Jews - Moses (Arabic Musa) and the Torah , Christians - Jesus (Arabic Isu) and the Sermon on the Mount. However, both Jews and Christians broke the Covenant, distorted and forgot God's word, and thus became unfaithful. (All the same, Jews and Christians, according to Islam, occupy a special place in the non-Muslim world (i.e., among the infidels): these are the people of the Book (ahl al-kitab). They, unlike pagans, can live in an Islamic state and under it patronage, without the obligatory conversion to Islam). Then God, in his last attempt to guide people on the righteous path, sent them his best prophet - the "seal of the prophets" Muhammad - and through him passed on his Testament in the most complete and complete form - the Koran. Thus, according to Islamic doctrine, the Koran is the final word of God addressed to people, Muslims are a special people chosen by God for the last Testament, and Islam, which goes back to the ancient faith of the forefathers and at the same time contains a "completed prophecy", occupies an exceptional position. within the religions of the world. The heightened cult of Scripture in Islam was clearly manifested in the dogmatic dispute about the creation or non-creation of the Koran. According to the original and orthodox concept, the Quran was not created: it, as well as the Arabic letters with which it was written, every word of Allah, the book of the Quran itself as a physical body (the prototype of earthly books, the mother of the book, as it is said in the 13th sura ) - always existed, from eternity and were kept in the seventh heaven in anticipation of the arrival of the one who would be most worthy to receive the word of God. This man was Muhammad, the prophet of Allah. Rationally minded opponents of the dogma of the uncreated Koran, who first declared themselves at the turn of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. denied the thesis of uncreation under the banner of defending monotheism. The assumption of eternity and uncreatedness of the Koran, they taught, is tantamount to endowing this book with the properties of God, that is, in other words, recognizing, along with Allah, the second God - the book; At the same time, they ironically called the defenders of the dogma of the uncreated Koran "bitheists". The debate about the nature of the Koran was not a narrowly theological discussion among learned scholastics. In the 846th-XNUMXth centuries. it worried wide circles of Muslims and often became so acute that it caused imprisonment, corporal punishment and even an armed rebellion (in XNUMX). In Persia, one could meet porters on the street arguing among themselves whether the Koran was created or not. In the end, orthodoxy won: the dogma of the uncreated Koran. The reproach of “ditheism” was neutralized by the thesis according to which the Koran “before the Creator is not a created thing.” Those who disagreed with the uncreated Koran were brutally persecuted. 3. "Collector of the Koran" Osman (856) The first records of individual speeches of the prophet were made during his lifetime. Their complete set was compiled in 655, that is, less than a quarter of a century after the death of the founder of the religion. However, several different and contradictory lists circulated, "so that they referred not to the Koran in general, but to the Koran of such and such" (Barthold), which in the conditions of a young Muslim society threatened with religious and political instability. The final consolidated text of the Koran was established in 856 after studying and selecting a number of lists on the orders of Osman, the son-in-law of Muhammad, chronologically the third caliph of the prophet (Arabic caliph - successor, deputy), who entered the history of Islam as the "collector of the Koran." Osman's edition was sent in several lists to the main cities, and all previous lists were ordered to be burned. The "Osman Koran" has become the official text adopted in Islam even today. There are no non-canonical lists of the Qur'an, and information about their features is extremely scarce. Nevertheless, Muslims also had problems for several centuries related to the canonicity of Scripture, or rather, its sound embodiment. The Ottoman edition codified the composition and sequence of suras and their lexical-semantic plan. However, serious discrepancies in the reading of the Qur'an persisted (due to the inaccuracy of the Arabic script, in which short vowels did not have a letter expression). These discrepancies caused more and more anxiety among believers. Finally, in the X century. seven most authoritative theologians, each of whom was assigned two experienced readers of the Koran, recognized seven ways of reading the Koran as canonical. Of these seven options, only two are currently in practical use. Note that difficulties with the canonical reading of the Qur'an stimulated the early and successful development of phonetic knowledge among the Arabs. 4. "Sunnah" of the Prophet Muhammad and Hadith For Muslims, in the role of Holy Tradition, designed to supplement and explain the Koran, is the "Sunnah" - the biography of the creator of religion. The doctrinal primary source of the Qur'an, being a record of Allah's monologue, as if broadcast through Muhammad, contains almost no objective ("epic", transmitted by an external observer), information about the prophet-creator of religion (unlike the Tanakh, Avesta or the New Testament). Echoes of events from the life of Muhammad in the Qur'an, however, are only fragmentary hints, the real background of which can only be understood on the basis of a vast body of historical data that is not included in the text of the Qur'an. In some cases, these "hints" are closest to an agitated subjective-lyrical "stream of consciousness" or to inner speech - convoluted, indifferent to coherence and logical sequence, associative and impetuous. In the later, calmer suras, an excited commentary on events ("facts") gives way to legal or ethical traditions dictated by Allah in connection with certain events, but the events themselves ("facts") still remain behind the text of the Qur'an. Here is an example of a historically reliable “fact” and its echoes in the Koran. It is known that upon returning from one campaign, Muhammad’s beloved wife, Aisha, “left behind the column and was then brought by a young Muslim, gave food to slander. After hesitation, which lasted several days, Muhammad, through revelation, proved the innocence of his young wife” (Masse) . In the 24th sura of the Koran, this episode from the life of the prophet was reflected in the revelation of Allah about how adultery should be punished and how guilt or innocence in adultery is established: “The adulterer and the adulteress - beat each of them with a hundred blows. Do not let pity for you overwhelm you.” him in the religion of Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Hereafter. And let a group of believers be present during their punishment... And those who throw accusations at chaste people, and then do not bring four witnesses, beat them with eight to ten blows and Never accept evidence from them; they are libertines, except those who later turned and reformed. For, verily, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful! " Thus, in the Quran there is no story about Mohammed comparable in biographical content to the information in the Torah about Moses or the Gospels about Christ. Meanwhile, it is the life of Muhammad that could constitute a kind of Islamic sacred history and at the same time serve as an example of a righteous life and the struggle for Islam. This text became the "Sunnah of the Prophet". In functional terms, the "Sunnah" is a doctrinal source of the "second order" (like the Talmud in Judaism or patristic writings in Christianity), moreover, in terms of content, it is a biography of the prophet. Biographism brings the "Sunnah" closer not only to doctrinal sources of the "first order" (with historical narratives in the Tanakh, with stories about Zoroaster in the Avesta, or with biographical episodes in the Gospels), but also with later religious writings (primarily with Christian lives of saints). ). The Arabic word sunna, which has become the designation of the biography of Muhammad and the Islamic Holy Tradition, literally means "path, example, model." The Sunnah contains stories about the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. The religious and ethical norms approved by the "Sunnah" reflect the customs and rules of the Arab urban community, supplemented by the norms of Muslim orthodoxy. This is the second (after the Koran) basis of Islamic law. The expression to observe the Sunnah means to imitate Muhammad, to lead a correct Muslim life. There was also a stable formula In the name of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of his prophet - a kind of initiatory prayer among Muslims. In Islam, there are almost no known conflicts related to differences in understanding the opposition "Holy Scripture (Koran) - Holy Tradition (Sunnah of the Prophet)". In the IX-X centuries. "Sunnah" is beginning to be read almost on a par with the Koran. The "Sunnah of the Prophet" very early was called upon to supplement the word of Allah, and regardless of whether it was consistent with the Koran or introduced new provisions. It was recognized and declared that if the "Sunnah" can do without the Qur'an, then the Qur'an cannot do without the "Sunnah" (Masse). As a sign of reverence for the "Sunnah," legitimate Muslims began to call themselves Ahl Assunnah, that is, "people of the Sunnah, or Sunnis." However, the Shiite currents and sects opposing the Sunnis also revere the "Sunnah of the Prophet" along with the Koran. Initially, the "Sunnah", like the stories about the prophets among the Jews, or about Jesus among the Christians, was transmitted orally and served as an addition to the written law - the Koran. The first distributors of the "Sunnah" were the companions of Muhammad, who, in various conflicting or difficult cases of life, as an argument in a dispute, began to recall the actions of the prophet, his words, and even silence, which could serve as an example. Such legends began to be called hadiths (Arabic for "message, story"). Early oral hadiths date back to the second half of the XNUMXth and the beginning of the XNUMXth centuries. In the Vni-IX centuries. Hadith began to be written down. The "Sunnah" as a whole took shape by the XNUMXth century. From the middle of the XNUMXth century thematic collections of hadiths and collections that combined together hadiths from one transmitter were compiled. Thousands of hadiths are known, but not all traditions are equally authoritative. In Islam, it is customary to single out six main collections of hadiths, many secondary and several insufficiently reliable (the latter are a kind of Muslim apocrypha). The first and main difference between the "main" collections of hadiths and the "non-main" ones is the degree of authority of the narrator. The hadiths of the main collections seem unconditionally and completely reliable, since they go back to the testimony of the closest companions of Muhammad, eyewitnesses of the events described in the hadith. It is easy to see that this is still the same principle "ipse dixit" ("he said himself"), which served as the main criterion in the formation of the book canon of Christianity: the writings of the apostles or the closest disciples of the apostles were recognized as canonical, and the books of less authoritative persons or books of dubious attribution were recognized as apocrypha, albeit inscribed with an authoritative name. However, in Islam the principle of "ipse dixit" manifested itself more strongly than in Judaism and Christianity. In this regard, the Islamic category of isnad is especially characteristic and indicative - continuity in the receipt and transmission of information (knowledge, messages, establishments). The term isnad also denotes one of the most significant manifestations of the principle of continuity: isnad is a chain of references to storytellers in collections of legends about the Prophet Muhammad and in other Muslim treatises (historical, legal). A chain of links introduces messages and phrases attributed to some authority figure. For example: “A told me from the words of B that C said that D heard the prophet Muhammad say...”. Isnad precedes all hadiths as evidence of the authenticity of the message. In Muslim science, a special research discipline has developed - identifying the degree of reliability of hadiths by criticizing the reliability of isnads. Specific criteria and terms were developed, mainly related to the biography of the transmitter and the history of the creation and transmission of his story. As a result, a rather complex classification of hadiths was developed according to the degree of their reliability, taking into account the reliability of the transmitters from whose words they were recorded. Thus, the principle of isnad not only determined the composition of hadiths and differences in authority, but also formed a whole direction of textual research in Islamic literature. In the history of Islam, disputes arose more than once about the extent to which this or that narrator is trustworthy and, therefore, the religious, legal or ethical establishment that the hadith associated with the name of this transmitter prescribes. The older the testimony (i.e., the closer in time to the life of the prophet), the more authority such a narrator and his hadith had. How important the principle of antiquity and the chronology of isnad is is evidenced by the fact that the two main trends in Islam - Sunnism and Shiism - differ from each other in the antiquity of the hadiths they recognize as sacred and, therefore, canonical sources of law. Shiites (from Arabic shia - "group, party, supporters") recognize only those hadiths that go back to the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad Caliph Ali and his two sons. According to these hadiths, only the direct descendants of Muhammad can continue the work of the prophet, protect religion and manage worldly affairs. For Sunnis the circle of sacred collections of hadiths is much wider, and they recognize not only Ali, but also some other caliphs as the legitimate successors of Muhammad. The principle of isnad is an important feature of the Muslim system of education. Isnad involves the consistent transmission of religious knowledge personally from teacher to student over the centuries. M. B. Piotrovsky emphasized the special role of isnad in Muslim mysticism (namely, in Sufism), where the authority of a mystic largely depends on the presence of a reliable isnad - a chain along which mystical knowledge (which cannot be transmitted "merely in words"), passes from the first teacher to today's adept. Isnad in Islamic literature, even more than the Pythagorean-Christian "ipse dixit" ("he said") in European culture, brought up the Muslim theologian or lawyer in a constant eye on authorities. A Muslim who took up a pen became an author only if he reproduced the tradition in his work and joined it as a junior and obedient student. From the pages of hadith filled with lists of the keepers of the tradition, the pathos of isnad spread to all Islamic literature. Hence the endless references to authorities, designed to convince of the truthfulness of the legend and the correctness of the judgment; constant concern about whether those hadiths and their isnads referred to by the writer are authoritative enough; finally, the absolute necessity of every new thought to be in agreement with the judgments of the authorities of Islam. In general, the isnad testifies that the features characteristic of the religions of Scripture are inherent in Islam to a greater extent than in Judaism and Christianity. The manifestations and consequences of isnad is one of the powerful factors of traditionalism in Islamic culture. 5. "Spiritual armor" of Islamic theology Islam is often written about as a simple religion, inheriting the mentality of a clan or a neighboring community and accessible to the masses of ordinary people. Indeed, in Islam there are no such supernatural paradoxes as the Virgin Mother of God and the Immaculate Conception, the God-man or God the Son as the sent down Word of God the Father. Therefore, it is natural that many of the problems that worried Christian theologians for centuries and the essence of which boiled down to the need to rationally comprehend the super-rationality of Scripture simply did not arise in Islam. However, Islamic theology had its own problems, complex in their own way, often in aspects and collisions that were unexpected for Christianity. The fact is that Islam is not only faith and religion. Islam is a way of life, the Qur'an is an "Arabic law book", and it is this "interlacing" of Islam in everyday and responsible life situations that creates the fundamental originality of Islam and explains the main collisions of Islamic theology. In comparison with Islam, Christian theology appears as an extremely speculative and abstract, intellectual "art for art's sake" far from life. In turn, Islamic theology, in comparison with Christian, seems to be much more concerned with jurisprudence and daily rituals in everyday life than disputes about the attributes of Allah, the uncreated Koran or the Divine predestination of human destiny. In addition, the extreme and radical monotheism inherent in Islam immediately ruled out the very possibility of Muslim analogues in relation to such a central and heresy-laden topic of Christian theology as the Holy Trinity. The main theoretical problems of Muslim theology are close to the disputes that agitated Christian theology: about the nature of Allah; about the relationship between faith and reason; about the free will of man and God's predestination of his fate; about the posthumous judgment of the deceased and his afterlife; about the relationship between the Koran and the "Sunnah" (i.e., Scripture and Tradition); on the principles of interpretation of sacred texts; on the relationship between religion and society (in development of the principle of fusion of religious and political communities, proclaimed by Muhammad). Specifically, Muslim dogmatic problems are connected with the question of the creation or non-creation of the Koran. After a century and a half of discussions, the fundamentalist opinion about uncreatedness won: the Qur'an "before the creator is not created." The originality of Muslim theology is sometimes seen in a certain semantic disintegration of the picture of the world, in the predominance of an occasionalist worldview and atomic thinking in Islam. For example, popular Muslim doctrine considers time to be a discrete (discontinuous) sequence of time atoms. "God recreates the world in each of the atoms of time, but only for the moment of the duration of this atom. Such occasionalism was intended to affirm the absolute power of God in the sense of his complete independence from laws and obligations, including from his own institutions" (Gruenebaum). Occasionalism (from Latin occasio - occasion, occasion) - a philosophical view according to which any events and phenomena of the world are not interconnected accidents (and not even a “chain of accidents”, but a “random accumulation of accidents”). Occasionalism and discrete worldview find a variety of expressions in Islam. For example, faith is defined as the sum of good works. A person is considered to consist of atoms and accidents (stable, but independent of substance characteristics)... In the discreteness and occasionality of the Muslim picture of the world, culturologists and Islamic scholars see a factor that creates the originality of Islamic art literature. The tendency to view the world as discontinuous, on the one hand, and to concentrate on details and individual episodes, rather than on the coherence and completeness of the composition, on the other, is generated by the very essence of Islam. There is a mutual affinity between literature and the philosophical and theological doctrine of Islam. These features of literature can be interpreted as a “specifically Islamic phenomenon.” Theology has always occupied an exceptionally prestigious place in Islamic civilization. Muslims saw in it not only high wisdom, but also practically important knowledge, the key to the Revelation of Allah and the "Sunnah" of the Prophet, to Islamic Sharia law. At the same time, the high prestige of knowledge or occupation, as a rule, does not get along with its mass character and accessibility. This circumstance, as well as the conservative-protective tendencies essential for Islam as a religion of the Scriptures and for the early Muslim society as a whole, all this strengthened the features of the closed and authoritarian system of "Islam's spiritual armor" in Islamic theology. The desire to narrow the circle of theologians and hinder access to theological information already in 892 caused a special decree of the caliph in Baghdad banning booksellers from selling books on dogmatics, dialectics and philosophy. The dogma of Islam is concentrated in one verse of the Qur'an "O you who believed! Believe in Allah and His messenger, the scripture that He sent down to His messenger, and the scripture that He sent down before. Whoever does not believe in Allah and His angels, and His scriptures, and His messengers, and on the last day, he went astray in a far way" The words “...the scripture which He sent down before” indicate the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. According to Islamic dogma, God, even since Muhammad, sent Revelation to people through the prophets, but people did not heed the prophet and retreated from the covenants of God. And only Muhammad, the “seal of the prophets,” that is, the last and main prophet of the true faith, was able to lead the believers out of error. Thus, in Islam, the regulation of theology was achieved, firstly, by restricting access to information and, secondly, by early and rigid dogmatization of the main doctrinal truths. The nature of control over theological knowledge finds a correspondence in the main trends in the management of all religious information in Islam. The rapid codification of the Scriptures, the radical elimination of non-canonical (apocryphal) versions of the Koran (by order of the caliph: burn), the informational power of tradition, constantly reproduced in the isnad, all combined with radical regulation and dogmatization of theology characterizes Islam as the most rigidly organized religion of Scripture. 6. How Islam is accepted The Islamic full creed is called akida (Arabic "faith, dogma"). The Sunnis have several sets of dogmas: the most popular is attributed to Abu Hanifa (USh c.), then the set of the XNUMXth c. and the end of the XNUMXth century. There is also an abbreviated Creed - "Shahada" (from Arabic shahida - testify). According to V.V. Bartold, "Shahada" arose as a prayerful and distinctive exclamation, which among the first Muslims served as a sign of distinction from non-Muslims, primarily pagans. "Shahada", like the Christian Symbol, begins with a verb in the 1st person singular, translated as "I testify." Such a beginning is close enough to the first word of the Christian Symbol - church. - glory. I believe or lat. Credo. The Islamic Symbol contains a concise summary of the two main tenets of Islam. 1. There is one, only, eternal and almighty God - Allah. 2. Allah chose an Arab from Mecca, Mohammed, as his messenger. Every Muslim knows the Arabic sound and meaning of the Symbol of the religion of Islam: La ilaha illallah wa Muhammadun rasulullah - "I testify that there is no deity but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." The threefold pronunciation of this formula in the presence of an official, and not necessarily in the temple, constitutes the ritual of accepting Islam. There is no catechesis: the convert to Islam is not required to undergo prior training in the basics of faith. (Muslims do not have a clergy as an estate with special grace; there is no church that serves as an intermediary between a person and Allah. In the activities of "people of religion" (imams "leaders of prayer", ministers of mosques, preachers, experts in Islamic law and hadith, teachers of theology) functions of spiritual and secular power are practically inseparable). In addition to the "Shahada", various verbal formulas are used in everyday Muslim life, which are regarded as symbolic signs of loyalty to Allah. For example, the exclamation "Allahu Akbar" - "Allah is the greatest" - is the battle cry of Muslim warriors, and everyday exclamation, and a common inscription on buildings. A cliché is also widely used, which can be translated as "I rely on Allah for everything." All Muslim texts and official speeches begin with the phrase "In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful" - because this is how each new sura begins in the Qur'an. The briefest summary of the main dogma of Islam is contained in the 112th sura of the Koran, which is called “Purification (of Faith)”: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the merciful! Say: “He - Allah - is one, Allah is eternal; neither begat nor was begotten, nor was any one equal to Him!” The main tenets of Islam are also stated in the first sura of the Qur'an "Fatih" (literally "opening"). It consists of only 7 verses and is included in the obligatory prayer of a Muslim, which is read at least 10 times a day. 7. Prayer canon of Islam In comparison with Christianity and especially Orthodoxy, Muslim worship may seem almost ascetically simple and monotonous. It is strictly regulated, there are no sacraments, chants, music in it. One of the five most important ritual duties of every Muslim is the canonical prayer-worship - salat (Arabic), or in Persian - prayer. Salat is performed five times a day, at certain hours (according to the sun). At the appointed time, a special minister of the mosque - muezzin (literally - "inviting, announcing") from the tower of the minaret or just a hillock calls the faithful to obligatory prayer. The call consists of several formulas, repeated without change. A Muslim can pray not only in a mosque, but also in a house, in a field, in general, in any ritually clean place and on a special rug (or mat). Prayer must necessarily be preceded by ritual ablution, for which special small pools are arranged near the mosque. Prayer is led by an imam - the primate at prayer, the spiritual leader, the head of the Muslim community. He reads prayers, the mullah says a sermon. However, strictly speaking, neither the muezzin, nor the mullah, nor the imam are clerics: in Islamic dogmatics there are no analogues of the Christian category of priesthood as a special grace, God's gift. In the ritual prayer of a Muslim, there are no requests, even such general ones as "Lord, have mercy! or Lord, save!" Salat (prayer) expresses and confirms loyalty and obedience to Allah. When they talk about salat (prayer), it is more appropriate to perform verbs, create, rather than pronounce or whisper. A Muslim cannot pray lying in bed, walking or galloping - in Islam it is impossible to pray by the way. Salat is a separate, independent act of the soul and will, completely dedicated to God. Ritual body movements are very important here, therefore, not only the body movements and gestures themselves are strictly defined, as if canonized, but also what verbal formula they should coincide with. First, standing and raising his hands to shoulder level, a Muslim pronounces the formula of praise "Allahu Akbar!" ("Allah is almighty!"). Then, continuing to stand and putting his left hand into his right, the worshiper reads the Fatiha, the first sura of the Koran, in 7 verses of which the main tenets of Islam are contained. Then the worshiper bends down so that the palms touch the knees. Then he straightens up and raises his hands, saying: "Allah listens to the one who gives him praise." Then he kneels down and puts his palms on the ground. Then comes the climax of the ritual: the worshiper is prone on the floor (on the rug), and so that the nose touches the ground. Then the worshiper sits down without getting up from his knees, after which he again prostrates himself on the floor. This is one cycle (rakat), while each of the 5 daily obligatory salats (prayers) consists of several such cycles. Salats performed at different times of the day differ in the number of such cycles, but not in their structure and content. Only the Koran is read in mosques; Friday is the day of obligatory joint prayer, on the same day a sermon is heard in mosques. The Qur'an is recited somewhat in a singsong voice and usually from memory (professionals must know the Qur'an by heart). Orthodox Muslims are prescribed to pray five times a day, and not necessarily in the mosque (you can also at home, in the field, on the road). However, once a week, on Fridays, Muslims must pray in the mosque, and then the main weekly sermon (preceding the prayer) is delivered - the khutba. Friday, as well as the holiday sermon, is delivered by a special clergyman - khatib; often he is also the imam of the mosque. The sermon is largely ritualized: it is delivered in special clothes, a state of ritual purity is required at the khatib, and the performance is close to recitation. Unlike Christianity, Islamic preaching does not interpret or discuss Scripture. The commentary on the Qur'an is not so much an area of ethics and didactics as of law and politics. Therefore, commenting on the Koran (tafsir) is addressed to a greater extent to professional connoisseurs of the Koran - theologians and lawyers, than to all believers. Nowadays, in a number of Islamic states, the content of the Friday sermon is controlled by secular authorities; sometimes it is made up directly by government officials. 8. "Arabic law book" Koran and hadiths In the 13th sura of the Qur'an (ayat 37) Allah says about the Qur'an: "And so We sent it down as an Arabic legal code." Indeed, suras 2, 4 and 5 (these are more than 500 verses, about a tenth of the Koran) contain prescriptions for religious, civil and criminal cases. The second primary source of Islamic law is hadiths, i.e. stories preceded by isnad about the actions and statements of the prophet Muhammad and his companions. At the same time, just as the "Torah" had to be supplemented by the Oral Law, the legal commentary of the "Mishnah" once again commented on in the Talmud, in order to become a "Jewish lawman", so the Koran and hadiths needed legal interpretation. The holy books of Islam do not contain a consistent set of laws, and Muslims have never conducted legal proceedings according to the Qur'an of Allah or the Sunnah of his prophet. Those legal norms that are expressed in the Qur'an and hadith "should be seen more as a symbol of Muslim identity and a force that binds all Muslims than as a practical tool in everyday legal practice: it is not difficult to see here an analogy of one of the functions of classical Jewish law" (Gruenebaum). The main difficulties in the legal use of Islamic Scripture (Quran) and Tradition (Sunnah of the Prophet, i.e. Hadith) were as follows. At first, the suras of the Koran, heard by the prophet at different times (and Muhammad, as is known, heard the Revelation of Allah and “broadcast” it to people for more than 20 years), often contradict each other, not only in metaphysics, but also in specific legal or ritual questions. The contradiction was resolved taking into account the time of the “sending down” of the suras, and this principle was consecrated in the Koran: “Allah erases what He wills and confirms; with Him is the mother of the book” (13, 39). Muhammad himself began to take into account the chronology of the “sent down” when he justified the contradictions between different suras with references to the changed will of Allah. “It is believed that a verse revealed later cancels the previous one. In Muslim theology, a special discipline arose - naskha - the science of the canceling and the abolished, exploring the relationship of conflicting verses” (Piotrovsky). Secondly, turning to hadiths as a source of law (for example, as a collection of legal precedents and authoritative recommendations) was complicated by the fact that the degree of reliability of different hadiths was different and, most importantly, not generally accepted. There was a need for textual examination of hadiths, for an authoritative assessment of the antiquity and reliability of their isnads. Thirdly, the direct use of the Koran as an “Arab law book” was hampered by the fact that legal norms in it were often formulated too abstractly and concisely, as if in a collapsed form, and over time the difficulties of understanding such texts increased. Their detailed interpretations, a kind of translations into a generally understandable language, were required. For example, the verses about divorce: “For those who swear about their wives, waiting for four months. And if they return, then, verily, Allah is forgiving, merciful! And if they decide to divorce, then, verily, Allah is Hearing, Knowing! And the divorced wait with themselves three periods, and it is not allowed for them to hide what Allah has created in their wombs, if they believe in Allah and the last day. And it is more worthy for their husbands to return them at the same time, if they want appeasement. And for them - the same as for them, according to the accepted. Husbands over them - a degree. Indeed, Allah is great, wise! Divorce is twofold: after it, either keep, according to custom, or let go with good deed. And you are not allowed to take anything from what you have given them. Unless they are both afraid of not fulfilling the restrictions of Allah. And if you are afraid that they will not fulfill the restrictions of Allah, then there will be no sin on them in what she redeems herself. These are the boundaries of Allah, do not transgress them, and whoever transgresses the boundaries of Allah, they are unrighteous. And when you divorce your wives and they have reached their limit, then keep them according to what is accepted or release them according to what is accepted, but do not keep them by force, transgressing: if anyone does this, he is unjust to himself. And do not turn the signs of Allah into mockery <...>". Comprehensive commentary and development of the legislative guidelines of the Koran and Hadith became the main content of Islamic theology. There are two main types of legal interpretation of sacred books: tafsir and fiqh. Tafsir, which was already widespread in VIII-IX centuries., is a special scientific interpretation that uses, on the one hand, methods of purely religious reasoning, and on the other, all kinds of data on the chronology and history of sacred texts. Tafsir stimulated the historical and textual study of the sources of Islamic law. It was here, when studying the chronology of the Koran, that a special genre of scholarly treatises on the “reasons of revelation” emerged, devoted to the circumstances and time of the appearance of different parts of the Koran. Here, methods were developed to verify the authenticity of hadiths, and biographical information about their transmitters was collected. Fiqh (Arabic faqiha - understand, know) is more practical. This is Muslim canon law, including the theory of Islamic law. Fiqh deals with the direct legal interpretation of the Koran and hadiths, their interpretation in relation to the practical life of the Muslim society. Since the Law is understood as the main content of the Koran and the Sunnah, the term fiqh is sometimes broadly used to refer to the entire set of religious disciplines, sometimes to refer to Muslim theology in general. "Fiqh is also a theoretical justification and understanding of Sharia - the correct way of life for a Muslim; therefore, the terms Sharia and fiqh often replace each other." Sharia (from Arabic Sharia - the right way, the road - a set of legal norms, principles and rules of conduct, religious life and actions of a Muslim; in reality, Sharia is embodied in works on fiqh and in the practice of Muslim (Sharia) courts). The main task of Sharia was to evaluate the various circumstances of life from the point of view of religion. Fiqh complemented Sharia in purely legal aspects. According to M. B. Piotrovsky, works on fiqh constitute the most numerous group of medieval Arabic manuscripts. "Fiqh has always been an obligatory subject of teaching in the family and school, the subject of learned and semi-learned conversations and disputes, so characteristic of the life of the inhabitants of Muslim urban areas" (Islam, 1983, 18). Fiqh is known to ordinary Muslims much more than the Koran and dogmatics. In the modern world of Islam, only collections of fiqh have the force of law, while the Koran and hadiths are books primarily for edifying reading, hard-to-understand primary sources of law and morality. So, by the will of fate, the main books of the two religions of Scripture "Torah" and "Talmud" in Judaism and the Koran and Hadith in Islam turned out to be those books in which the fundamental legal principles of the Jewish and Muslim civilizations, respectively, were recorded. At the same time, both in Judaism and Islam, the "law-summing" nature of the sacred books was recognized as the main content of life. At the same time, the connection of sacred books with life practice became possible due to the fact that in both theocratic civilizations, commentary traditions developed and were strengthened over the centuries, while the main object of commentary was precisely the legal content of sacred books. A comprehensive interpretation - theological, moral, historical-textological, logical-semantic - made it possible to fully reveal, supplement, develop those basic legal principles that were laid down in the sacred books. 9. Arab religious philosophy Arab religious philosophy developed in parallel with the development of early scholasticism. However, its development was different. At first, the Arabs adopted from the Greeks mainly the ideas of Plato and the Neoplatonists, but gradually they began to pay more and more attention to the ideas of Aristotle, whose works (in particular, metaphysical, logical and physical treatises) were carefully studied and commented on. At the same time, special emphasis was placed on metaphysics and formal logic. Aristotelianism was not cultivated here in its pure form, it was intertwined with elements of Neoplatonism, since Platonism, more than the ideas of Aristotle, was in the interests of theology. The main meaning of Arab philosophy was to protect Islam and its church dogmas, therefore, in its main features and starting points, it coincides with scholastic philosophy. At the beginning of Islamic philosophy there are two great thinkers. The first of these is the Arab adherent of the ideas of Aristotle al-Kindi (800 - c. 870), a contemporary of Eriugena, translator and commentator of Aristotle. Subsequently, however, he departs from pure Aristotelianism and moves on to Neoplatonism. A steadfast follower of Aristotle in the 870th century was al-Farabi (950-900), who lived and worked in Baghdad, Aleppo and Damascus in 950-XNUMX. However, he also begins to interpret Aristotle's system in the spirit of the Neoplatonists, taking from Aristotle a clear and logical division of reality into separate areas of scientific interest. The picture of the spiritual world of this period is given by the so-called "Treatises of Pure Brothers" - about fifty essays on religion, philosophy and natural sciences, written by representatives of the "Brothers of Purity and Sincerity" sect, which arose in the XNUMXth century and, among other things, strove to unite Islam with Hellenistic philosophy. Here, too, the Neoplatonic idea dominated: the world comes from God and returns to him. In relation to Christian scholasticism, the work of the great Aristotelians of Arab philosophy is of great importance: in the East it was Avicenna, in the West - Averroes. Avicenna (Arab. Ibn Sina, 980-1037) came from Turkestan Bukhara. He had an encyclopedic education. The main philosophical work of Avicenna was the encyclopedic treatise "The Book of Healing", containing the foundations of logic, physics, mathematics and metaphysics; in addition, he wrote commentaries on Aristotle and many other books, of which the treatise "Canon of Medicine" gained great recognition. Avicenna's philosophy was theocentric, however, in a different sense than Christian. He understood the world as a product of the divine mind, but in no case of God's will. The world was created from matter, not from nothing; matter is eternal. The material world has the character of a concrete possibility and exists in time. Like Aristotle, Avicenna's god is an immovable mover, a form of all forms, an eternal creative condition. The world in its real multiplicity was not created once and directly by God, but arose gradually. The understanding of universals also testifies to the parallel development of Arabic and Christian philosophy. Avicenna comes to similar results as Abelard, but earlier in time. In agreement with other Arab philosophers, he teaches that universals can be spoken of in three ways: - they exist before singular things in the divine mind (ante res); - they exist in real things as their embodied essence (in rebus); - they exist after things in the minds of people as concepts formed by them (post res). Avicenna's philosophy was characterized by rationalism with materialistic tendencies that stem from his natural science orientation. He is the founder of Arab peripatetism, his teaching combines elements of the philosophy of Aristotle with the religion of Islam. If Avicenna was the king of Arabic philosophy in the East, then the king of the Arab West, who significantly influenced European philosophy, was Averroes (Arab. Ibn Rushd, 1126-1196). He came from Spanish Cordoba. Known as a theologian, lawyer, doctor, mathematician and, above all, a philosopher. He is the author of famous commentaries on Aristotle, whom he considered the greatest of men, a true philosopher. He held high positions, performed important state functions, but during the reign of Caliph al-Mansur he was sent into exile. His treatises, which were rejected by Islamic theologians, survived only thanks to the Spanish Jews. According to Averroes, the material world is eternal, infinite, but limited in space. God is also eternal, like nature, but he did not create the world out of nothing, as religion proclaims. The Aristotelian interpretation of the origin of nature, according to which matter as such is not a reality, but a possibility, that a form must act on it in order for nature to arise, Averroes interpreted in such a way that forms do not come to matter from the outside, but in eternal matter all forms are potentially contained and gradually crystallize during development. He adopted the concept of universal gradation and hierarchy of beings between God and man from Avicenna. Such a concept, of course, was much more removed from the belief in the divine creation of nature from nothing, which was preached by Christianity and Judaism. However, this is not the only issue on which Averroes argued with Islamic dogma. He also denied the immortality of the individual soul; At the same time, he proceeded from the idea of Aristotle, according to which the soul is connected with the body, as a form with matter, in each specific being. The individual soul dies with the body, because with the death of the body, the specific sensory representations and memory inherent in each individual person disintegrate. Averroes distinguishes between passive and active mind. The passive mind is associated with the individual sensory representations of a person, the active mind has the character of a universal, individual intellect, which is eternal. Only the common mind of the entire human race in its historical development is immortal. Individual souls (the mind of the individual) participate in it, contain it, but it itself is transpersonal and in its essence is similar to the divine mind. This is the universal active intellect of the earthly sphere. Thus, Averroes ontologized the highest theoretical ability of the human spirit. The religious idea of the immortality of the individual soul is meaningless. Averroes sees the highest moral value in the doctrine that educates a person so that he himself does good, and not in that which conditions human behavior with the expectation of reward and punishment in the next world. His ethics contrast sharply with the teachings of Muhammad, which, on the one hand, describes hellish torments in vivid colors, and on the other hand, promises heavenly joys and bliss in the form of a soft bed, wine and black-haired girls with big eyes waiting for believers. Averroes understood the relationship between religion and philosophy as follows: the highest and pure truth, which the philosopher knows, in religion is manifested in sensual images, which can be useful for the intellect of simple, uneducated people. Religious ideas in the interpretation of philosophers, ordinary people understand differently, which is the content of the starting point of the doctrine of the so-called dual truth, one of the creators of which was Averroes. However, there is only one complete truth - this is philosophical truth. The meaning of the theory of "dual truth" consisted in the desire to make science and philosophy independent, to save them from church guardianship. It is not surprising that the philosophy of Averroes (as well as the philosophy of Avicenna) was sharply condemned by Islamic orthodoxy, and his treatises were ordered to be burned, which, however, in no way weakened their influence and did not prevent their further influence, as happened in other similar cases. . Skeptical mysticism. The development of Arab philosophy is comparable to the development of Christian scholasticism in that, as a reaction to the intellectualization of religion under the influence of Aristotelianism, a mystical direction is also formed here. Its representative was an intellectual skeptic, a follower of Sufi mysticism and asceticism al-Gazage (lat. Algazel, 1059-1111), a contemporary of Anselm, a generation older than Bernard of Clairvaux, who had similar views to al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali's main interest was focused on faith, which he sharply contrasted with science and philosophy. He demonstrated his skeptical approach in the treatise “Refutation of the Philosophers,” which Averroes energetically opposed. In this treatise, al-Ghazali shows the influence of Aristotelian views on science and philosophy that is harmful to faith. He also rejected the principle of causality, which manifests itself in the world naturally. Fire cannot be the cause of fire, for it is a dead body which cannot do anything; God caused the fire, and the fire was only a temporary remedy, not a cause. Philosophy should contribute to religion. Orientation to mysticism runs through all his works. In cognition, according to his ideas, mystical merging with God and revelation is positive. He considered the denial of the creation of the world by God, his omnipotence and justice, divine providence, to be the worst delusions of philosophers. LECTURE No. 9. Modern religious movements. Fundamentalism and modernism 1. Dominance of official atheism in Soviet Russia Even in recent times, religious, mystical, esoteric, occult and similar literature was practically unavailable in Russia. Readers were abundantly treated to only one “truth”: “scientific-atheistic” - an ideological surrogate that did not withstand any criticism, even from the point of view of rationalistic science. Nevertheless, every “citizen of the country of the Soviets” was obliged to assimilate this worldview and be guided by it in understanding the world and their place in it. However, under the guise of a “scientific” approach, an actually religious approach was introduced into the mass consciousness: Soviet society remained deeply religious - in style and way of thinking, in the nature of the values underlying the behavior of citizens. The texts of the “classics of Marxism-Leninism” were the ultimate body of truth, a source of wisdom for any occasion. As in the Middle Ages, when the answer to any question was sought in the Bible, in the works of the “Fathers and Teachers of the Church”, in the texts of Aristotle, who became the indisputable authority on ideological issues, so in Russia, to question Marxist dogmas meant “falling into heresy ". The Marxist-Leninist “scientific-atheistic worldview”, in fact, was one of the varieties of “left-hand religions” - the “religion of man-theism” - with its sacred texts, a staff of god-fighting priests, a bloody court of the Inquisition, an essentially satanic cult, inextricably linked with a system of mass bloody human sacrifices unprecedented in history, which were mainly of a ritual nature, that is, they were determined primarily by religious and mystical considerations, and were only superficially, at the political level, connected with the notorious “class struggle.” (On this, see, for example, the book by the greatest esotericist and visionary of our time, Daniil Andreev, “Rose of the World.”). 2. Inner and outer spiritual freedom Now there is more external freedom. But has there been an increase in inner freedom, freedom in the spiritual world of each of us?! After all, the gap between external and internal freedom is even more dangerous than the relatively high, but more or less coinciding internal and external lack of freedom: if the second situation hinders the development of society, but at the same time there is hope that everything can change for the better, as soon as external restrictions are removed, the first situation is generally capable of blowing up social ties and destroying society itself. True inner freedom is acquired only by constant intense spiritual work. At the present time, they write a lot that Orthodoxy is being revived, because a stream of new converts has poured into it - people who are now supposedly imbued with religious ideas, spiritually enlightened and come to the realization of God. Based on this external, purely quantitative indicator, it is argued that there are clear signs of the revival of Orthodoxy, and hence the spiritual revival of Russia in general. In fact, it is hardly possible to speak of a genuine revival of Orthodoxy yet. Moreover, at present, in fact, an even deeper crisis is developing than in Soviet times, when Orthodoxy was, as it were, in a "preserved" form. Newly converted, in fact, for the most part do not truly profess Orthodoxy. And it's not even that many of them do not know the basics of Orthodox dogma. To become a truly religious person, it is not enough to declare one's faith in God, it is not even enough to regularly go to church and stand with a candle in front of icons on religious holidays, as many of the current "powers that be" do, paying tribute to "spiritual fashion" . After all, religious faith is the most complex and richest cultural phenomenon, it is shaped by the whole way of life, the whole way of life, the transmission of traditions at the level of patterns of behavior, their reproduction directly in life, in all its spheres, but at the same time by a huge internal work - the work of feelings, mind, the soul of a person, which cannot be replaced by a simple visit to church and even diligent and conscientious performance of all church rites. To gain faith, a person who grew up in an atheistic environment must completely rethink himself and the world around him, and very few are capable of this, even if many strive for this. In the "Buddhist Catechism" to the question "Are there any dogmas in Buddhism that should be accepted on faith?" The answer is given as follows: “No. We are seriously required not to take anything for granted, whether it is written in books, handed down to us from our ancestors, or taught by sages. Our Lord Buddha said that we should not believe what is said just because that it is said so; nor to traditions, because they have come down to us from antiquity; nor to rumors, as such; nor to the writings of sages, because sages wrote them; nor to fantasies, about which we may think that they were sent to us by the Virgin (i.e. that is, by supposed spiritual inspiration); nor the conclusions drawn from hasty conclusions which we may have drawn; nor what may seem to be a similar necessity; nor the mere naked authority of our masters and teachers. But we must believe when Scripture, doctrine, or what is said is confirmed by our own mind and consciousness. “Therefore,” says the Buddha in conclusion, “I taught you not to believe just because you have heard, but when you believe, based on your consciousness, then act in accordance with it” (Blavatsky E. "The Secret Doctrine"). These words can be fully applied not only to Buddhism, but also to any religion in general: religious faith can only be truly deep among those who have their own spiritual, or, to put it scientifically, “parapsychological” experience, and therefore quite definitely knows that the heavenly world really exists. If, in his spiritual quest, a person has never penetrated beyond the boundaries of the earthly world and does not have his own spiritual experience, then at least he must have a developed religious feeling, the presence of which is the result of a subconscious perception of the heavenly world and the resulting internal conviction of reality his existence. However, for a person who grew up in an atheistic environment and has never previously tried to seriously think about spiritual topics, all channels of spiritual perception are, as it were, “clogged” tightly and he does not and cannot have any not only conscious spiritual experience, but even a subconscious perception of the heavenly world. principle, and, consequently, there cannot be any internal spiritual basis for genuine religiosity. “Uncorking” the channels of spiritual perception for a person who grew up in an atheistic environment is a very painful process, necessarily associated with very intense daily spiritual work. Many “new converts,” however, do not bother with any spiritual quest and bring with them to church the culture of imitation that they have internalized in society. As a result, the church is undermined from within by a huge number of people who have externally joined it, but have not acquired genuine religious faith, and do not particularly strive to acquire it. And this is very dangerous for our Fatherland: under the guise of “revival” the collapse of the Orthodox religion can occur - Orthodoxy can be vulgarized in the same way as “classical Marxism” was vulgarized in Russia at one time. This, undoubtedly, lurks a huge danger for the fate of Russia. One can treat religion in general and Orthodoxy in particular differently, but one should not forget that in all modern civilizations it is religions that form the conceptual basis of spiritual life, shape and mediate the basic system of values. Our civilization is no exception, the basic values of which are formulated in the language of Orthodoxy. 3. Modern civilizational crisis Meanwhile, in the conditions of the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, ideological concepts of various kinds, primarily religious ones, poured into the resulting "empty" spiritual space. Their range is extremely wide - from Catholicism and Protestantism to Scientology and Dianetics. A person inexperienced in worldview is sometimes lost in this abundance of "spiritual food", is unable not only to recognize the "recipes for cooking" various "spiritual dishes", but also to clearly recognize the deep social and cultural differences that exist even between individual Christian denominations, not to mention about the realization of the fact that, despite seemingly insignificant theological differences, the differences between them in the way a person’s spiritual life is arranged are enormous. When new generations grow up in the bosom of one church or another, the question of worldview choice is resolved, as it were, by itself. Those for whom religiosity becomes the norm of moral life perceive the canons and cults of the religion traditional for a given society, simply under the influence of upbringing and education. Those who are inherent in non-religious morality, not accepting the relevant canons and cults, nevertheless, by the system of education and upbringing, are usually attached to those moral feelings, concepts and values that are inherent in the culture of a given society and are expressed in a specific religious form for it. When there are several religions in a society, as, for example, in China (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism), or in Russia (Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism), and then the interaction of the respective religions also creates a certain moral atmosphere, which is perceived by the non-religious part of the population included in thus into the integral cultural context of a given country, group of countries, civilization. The peculiarity of the current historical conditions is such that everyone faces a fairly wide range of different possibilities, and any choice is his and only his right. Everyone is free to make his own spiritual choice, but everyone must fully realize the significance and responsibility of this choice. And, realizing his choice, a person cannot help but think about himself - "Who am I?! On what land did I grow up?! What does this oblige me for ?!" However, the choice facing today not an individual, but the whole of humanity, is essentially different - after all, the crisis experienced by our country is only a concentrated expression of a global, general civilizational crisis. And this crisis, in turn, is the result of the crisis of the leading Western civilization in the modern world. Perhaps the most striking example of the awareness of this crisis was the materials and decisions of the UN World Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. This summit was an unprecedented event, it brought together more heads of government than any other meeting in history. In the most important document adopted by this Conference - "Agenda for the 30st Century", it was stated that world social development cannot continue in the same direction, since in this case, irreversible catastrophic changes on the scale of the entire planet will occur in a maximum of 50-XNUMX years and the complete and final destruction of all mankind will only be a matter of time. Meanwhile, the values that led to this result are the values of Western civilization based on the notorious "Protestant ethic" that is now being so aggressively imposed on the Russian people. 4. Search for ways to overcome the crisis of modern civilization Anxiety for the future has forced Western humanists to put forward a number of concepts that quickly replace each other - from the idea of "zero growth", "catch-up development" and further, up to the current benchmark - "sustainable development". However, the fundamental principle of the concept of "sustainable development" - limiting consumption in the name of stability in society - is hardly realizable. To limit consumption "seriously and for a long time", it is necessary either to change the needs, or to use force. Conscious self-restraint in the name of the common good, as historical experience shows, cannot be widespread - the same Christianity has been preaching it for two millennia, and has not achieved any serious success, even under fear of eternal punishment from the other world. At the same time, development, indeed, cannot stop, if traditionalism over the past centuries has not withstood the pressure of the West and humanity has shifted from the point of equilibrium existence. Attempts to extend the past into the future are untenable, neither in the form of religious fundamentalism, which opposes the West, nor in the form of Western fundamentalism, which is now acting as the idea of a "golden billion." If, for example, the United States succeeded in destroying the Indians for the sake of prosperity, then destroying four-fifths of humanity in the name of the prosperity of the Western "golden billion" of the so-called "civilized peoples" is already a reactionary utopia, the path to the death of all mankind. XNUMXth century truly became a time of global crisis of traditional religions, especially Western Christianity. There are many reasons for this. Here both the archaism of cults and the archaism of dogma. But the main thing, perhaps, is the increasingly obvious inability of religion to resolve the accumulated civilizational problems, to help Western society take the path of renewal. Awareness of the dead-end nature of Western civilization began in the 20th century. the leitmotif of European social thought - from Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of Europe" to the works of the Club of Rome and a number of other areas related to the analysis of global problems. Major philosophers such as Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Roszak, many existentialists, not to mention famous esotericists such as traditionalist thinkers Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, Alexander Dugin convincingly revealed the internal inconsistency and deep depravity of Western civilization. The newest stage of its development - “post-industrial society” - brought developed countries a higher level of material consumption, but only aggravated spiritual problems. A growing sense of loneliness, alienation, uncertainty about the future... But the Western way of life is based on values formulated in the language of religion - Catholicism and, above all, Protestantism. Disappointment in traditional religious values gave rise to a search for non-traditional forms of religiosity, largely built on borrowing the ideas and motives of Eastern religions, as well as on the transformation of Christianity itself. And, finally, the role of spiritual and practical forms, which can be called para-religious, is growing. They do not have a church, in the usual sense of the word, they do not have cults, again - in the usual sense, although there are numerous adherents, they have their own forms of organization. This includes all kinds of occult teachings, both Western and Eastern, as well as the occult societies based on them, both open - exoteric, and closed - esoteric. However, all these religious-spiritual and organizational-practical forms did not help to achieve prosperity for all those societies that were guided by them and based on them. First of all, it concerns the now leading Western civilization. Moreover, its internal contradictions, as well as contradictions with other civilizational currents, have led to the fact that, despite its relative success in material, purely material prosperity, a number of spiritual and so-called global problems have arisen that threaten the very existence of mankind. These problems in their totality cannot be solved on the basis of the old systems of values and the types of worldview expressing these values. Consequently, the creation of a new type of worldview and its dissemination in the minds of millions of people become a necessary prerequisite and means for the survival of mankind itself. It is impossible to continue living in the old way: either a global catastrophe, or a new quality of the development of society, and in order to achieve this new quality, a new quality of consciousness is also needed. What previously acted as a search for an ideal, due to the intolerance of the present, now acts as an imperative, due to the impossibility of the future. To follow this imperative it is necessary to realize it. And then, even more difficult spiritual work: to find, acquire, suffer through a new system of values, fully understand it and, finally, formulate it in a form acceptable enough for contemporaries, taking into account two main points - renewal and continuity. Since, on the one hand, we are talking about a new quality of social life and a corresponding qualitatively new type of worldview, and on the other hand, the transition to this "new" is simply impossible without an organic connection between the new and the old: the future is possible only when it is natural- historically grows out of the past and the present. In this regard, attention should be paid to the fact of erasing the boundaries between the mystical and natural scientific understanding of the Universe, noted by many natural scientists. This is especially evident in modern physics, which has influenced almost all aspects of social life. Physics is the basis for all natural sciences, and the union of natural and technical sciences has fundamentally changed the conditions of our life on the planet, which has led to both positive and negative consequences. Today, one can hardly find an industry that does not use the achievements of atomic physics, and there is no need to talk about the enormous influence of the latter on politics. However, the influence of modern physics affects not only the field of production. It also affects the entire culture in general and the way of thinking in particular, and is expressed in the revision of our views on the Universe and our relationship to it. The study of the atom and the subatomic world unexpectedly limited the scope of the ideas of classical mechanics and necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts. The concept of matter, for example, in subatomic physics is absolutely unlike the traditional ideas about material substance in classical physics. The same can be said about the concepts of space, time, cause and effect. However, these concepts underlie our worldview, and in the event of their radical revision, the whole picture of the world changes. These changes brought about by modern physics have been widely discussed by physicists and philosophers over the past decades, with increasing attention paid to the fact that these changes bring us closer to the perception of the world, similar to the picture of the world of the mystics of the East. It has been noted that the two cornerstones of modern physics - quantum theory and the theory of relativity - underlie a worldview very similar to that of Hinduism, Buddhism, or Taoism, especially if we look at recent attempts to combine these two theories in order to describe the phenomena of the microscopic world: properties and interactions of elementary particles that make up all matter in the Universe. Here, the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism almost reach the point of complete coincidence, and very often there are such statements, regarding which it is almost impossible to say who they were made by - a physicist, or an Eastern mystic. One of the greatest physicists of our time, the “father” of nuclear weapons, Robert Oppenheimer, wrote about this: “The general laws of human knowledge, manifested in the discoveries of atomic physics, are not something unprecedented and absolutely new. They also existed in our culture, while occupying a much more significant and important place in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. What is happening now is the confirmation, continuation and renewal of ancient wisdom." (Capra F. "Tao of Physics", St. Petersburg "ORIS", 1994. C. 13). Thus, modern physics, which is at the forefront of the natural sciences and determines the entire scientific worldview as a whole, more and more in the understanding of the Universe merges with the mysticism of the East - the scientific and mystical pictures of the world become more and more indistinguishable with each new scientific discovery. However, this is quite natural: the East is the metaphysical center of mankind - it is here that the centuries-old worldview wisdom is accumulated and what modern science began to approach only in the XNUMXth century was the sacred truth in the East millennia ago. 5. Features of Russian spirituality A special role in the development of the worldview of the new era belongs to Russia - due to its special metaphysical status. The point of view has already been expressed more than once that Russia, they say, is a kind of bridge between East and West and has features of both East and West. However, in our opinion, those authors who claim that Russia has its own deepest essence, which distinguishes it both from the East and, in particular, from the West, are much closer to the truth. In this regard, we should especially note the greatest modern esotericist and writer-metaphysician Yuri Mamleev, who convincingly showed in his works that Russia forms its own metaphysical reality, so to speak, a "third reality" that does not depend on either the East or the West. At the same time, undoubtedly, Russia has both some Western and Eastern features, the latter, of course, to a greater extent. There is no need to talk about the closeness of Orthodoxy, with its principles of mystical contemplation, to Eastern doctrines. This closeness has already been investigated more than once, and it is all the more significant as it concerns mainly spiritual practice, and not just dogmas, although in the theory of deification and in the theory of dogmatic restraint Orthodoxy obviously approaches Eastern teachings. If we talk about Russian spirituality in general, then quite deep areas of intersection with the Eastern approach are clearly visible here. This is, first of all, the problem of the inner "I" of a person - Russian tradition, as you know, is inherent in the search for "I" - the abyss and secrets of the human soul. The fact that the problem of the true "I" is at the center of the Eastern tradition is also well known. Of course, the tendencies of this search in Russia differ in many respects from those that take place in India, especially since the Russian search is still completely unfinished, while in India everything that is within its metaphysical limits is already almost completed. However, this search for the true inner "I" of a person has a number of common features with the Eastern approach, which can easily be identified by examples from the history of Russian culture. In the subtext of classical Russian literature lies the deepest metaphysics and philosophy, which are encrypted in the form of the thinnest stream of images - an artistic image is deeper than an abstract idea, and it is the image that can best express all the mysterious subtext of metaphysics. Russian literature is rightfully considered the most philosophical literature in the world. It is no coincidence that Friedrich Nietzsche considered F. M. Dostoevsky the greatest connoisseur of the human soul and considered acquaintance with his works one of the greatest successes of his life. Russia, while remaining an Orthodox country, has absorbed and can still absorb, both on the esoteric and exoteric levels, the deepest features of the thinking of the East, especially India. These features, these features of thinking and spirit, which go deep into the spiritual relationship between Russia and India, can become and are becoming part of modern Russian culture. Without a doubt, this "Easternness" is refracted and processed in a peculiar way in accordance with Russian spiritual experience. But its depth, given the spiritual kinship of Russian and Indian cultures, can give a completely new and unexpected color to the future Russian thinking and culture and help their original development. However, despite its deep inner closeness to the East, Russia is not spiritually separated by the "Chinese wall" from the West - if only because it has been a Christian country for a thousand years and the "collective unconscious", that is, the "soul" of the Russian people, was formed under the decisive influence of the Christian religion in its most authentic - Orthodox form. Thus, the Russian people spiritually reworked and, as it were, fused within themselves into a single organic whole, both East and West, while retaining all their spiritual identity and not belonging to either one or the other. It is natural, therefore, that the most significant attempts at a global worldview synthesis of East and West, as well as religion, philosophy, science and creation on this basis, meeting the needs of the time of the worldview of the new era, were made, first of all, by thinkers who were formed in the bosom of Russian culture. . 6. Russian spiritual renaissance of the late XNUMXth - early XNUMXth centuries and its significance for overcoming the modern spiritual crisis A wide range of ideas subject to spiritual synthesis was intensively discussed by the majority of representatives of the Russian spiritual renaissance of the late XNUMXth and early XNUMXth centuries, in one or another combination, with various shades. - an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of world philosophy, when in a matter of years an immense amount of religious and philosophical works, numbering in hundreds of volumes, was created, in many respects anticipating the further development of world philosophical thought. Many years later, the largest Russian philosopher, Nobel laureate Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) wrote about this: “Now it is difficult to imagine the atmosphere of that time. Much of the creative upsurge of that time was included in the further development of Russian culture and is now the property of all Russian cultural people. But then there was intoxication with creative upsurge, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. In those years, many gifts were sent to Russia. It was the era of the awakening of independent philosophical thought in Russia, the flowering of poetry and the sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult... they saw new dawns, combined the feeling of decline and death with the feeling sunrise and with hope for the transformation of life." (Berdyaev N.A. “Self-knowledge (the experience of philosophical autobiography)”. M.: “Kniga”, 1991. P. 139-140). Vladimir Solovyov. At the origins of the Russian spiritual renaissance stood Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) - the largest Russian religious philosopher and mystic, who undertook the most grandiose attempt in the history of world religious philosophy to combine Christian Platonism, German classical idealism (mainly Schelling) and scientific empiricism in the "great synthesis". It is symptomatic that the first significant work of V. Solovyov is a master's thesis, successfully defended by him in 1874 BC - called "The Crisis of Western Philosophy (against the Positivists)." The main work of Vladimir Solovyov is “The Justification of Good.” According to the fair remark of E. L. Radlov, “the reader is best acquainted with the characteristic features of Vl. Solovyov’s thinking, with his subtle analysis, in “The Justification of Good,” in which all the various threads are woven into one artistic whole.” (Radlov E.L. “Vladimir Solovyov. Life and Learning.” St. Petersburg, 1913. P. 129). From an esoteric point of view, of particular interest is the last one, written shortly before his death, marked with the stamp of mysticism, in a certain sense - the final work of V. Solovyov “Three Conversations about War, Progress and the End of World History” and the author appended to this work “A Brief Tale of Antichrist." (We note in this regard that the best esoteric narrative about the Antichrist was given by one of the greatest mystics and visionary poets in human history, Daniil Andreev, in his famous book “Rose of the World”. This is the chapter “The Dark Shepherd” - a mystical biography of Stalin, whose reincarnation, according to according to Daniil Andreev, should become the Antichrist in the XXIII or XXIV century, and the chapter “Prince of Darkness” is a mystical biography of the Antichrist himself). The best work about V. Solovyov and his worldview is the last work of the greatest Russian philosopher A.F. Losev, “Vladimir Solovyov and His Time.” Pavel Florensky. But the most ambitious figure among all thinkers of the 20th century. is Pavel Florensky (1882-1937). Only with him all three elements of the triangle “esotericism - religion - philosophy” are in organic synthesis. His works, at least the main ones, must be known to everyone who wants to deeply understand the essence of esotericism, religion and philosophy, their internal unity and external differences. The main work of P. Florensky is “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” It should, however, be emphasized that this book by no means exhausts even the most important topics that interested Florensky and were deeply developed by him. Florensky divided the tasks of religious thought into two stages: the first - the substantiation of faith and churchliness, mastery of their foundations, the acquisition of the Pillar and the affirmation of the Truth. (This is what the Apostle Paul calls the Church in his First Epistle to Timothy: “I write these things to you, hoping to come to you soon, so that if I delay, you will know how you ought to act in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And unquestioningly - the great mystery of piety: God appeared in the flesh, justified Himself in the Spirit, showed Himself to the angels, preached to the nations, was accepted by faith in the world, ascended in glory." - I Tim., 3, 14-16); the second stage is based on what was acquired at the first stage - the development of the doctrine of the World (Macrocosm) and Man (Microcosm). P. Florensky called the first stage theodicy (resolution of the contradiction between the unlimited power of the all-good God and the existence of evil in the world), the second - anthropodicy (resolution of the contradiction between man’s godlikeness and his sinfulness). “The Pillar and Establishment of Truth,” as can already be seen from the subtitle of this work - “The Experience of Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters of the Priest Pavel Florensky” - is entirely limited to the first stage. The study of anthropodicy is the next stage of Florensky’s work. His results formed a coherent philosophical doctrine, which he called “concrete metaphysics.” The main works of this stage are “Macrocosm and Microcosm”, “Watersheds of Soap”, “Iconostasis”, “Analysis of spatiality in artistic and visual works”, “Names”, “Essay on the philosophy of cult”. However, despite the undoubted achievements of Russian religious philosophy in the implementation of worldview synthesis, the most significant success in developing the worldview of the new era was achieved not by religious philosophers, but by Russian esotericists. Here, first of all, we should recall the names of the founder of theosophy, Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) and the founders of Agni Yoga, Nicholas (1874-1947) and Helena Roerich (1869-1955). Helena Blavatsky. The main work of H. P. Blavatsky "The Secret Doctrine" has a subtitle - "Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy" and really is a grandiose synthesis, which is designed to cover not only all religious and mystical traditions, both East and West, but also to assimilate in this system of views also science and philosophy. E. Blavatsky became the founder of the worldview tradition, which received in the XNUMXth century. a huge flowering, let's name for brevity only one name - Teilhard de Chardin, who also made one of the most famous attempts at such a synthesis, albeit from other than theosophists, actually religious positions. However, despite numerous attempts at a global worldview synthesis, theosophy still remains the most grandiose syncretic worldview system, increasingly gaining recognition as the philosophical and methodological basis of various para-religious forms. Tatyana Platonova. Of the major new works on theosophy published by Russian authors, from our point of view, the book by Tatyana Platonova "The Secret Doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus" is of the greatest interest. This work, like the "Secret Doctrine" of E. Blavatsky, is also given, as stated in the preface, "on behalf of the White Brotherhood and the Lodge of Great Teachers." Its connection with the work of H. Blavatsky is defined as follows: "To the question of whether this work is a continuation of the Secret Doctrine, I will answer the following: the secret Knowledge promulgated by H. P. Blavatsky was the first and initial attempt to enlighten humanity. We did not pursue the goal to give Knowledge as such, but only tried to show you that there is a different and different idea of the world from your understanding.We had to argue, convince and prove, therefore the Secret Doctrine is replete with a huge number of citations and references to sources familiar to you, as well as unfamiliar to show the various aspects, points of view, narrowness and breadth of thinking of our opponents who claim to Truth.We believe that in general we have succeeded in convincing humanity of its limited view of the world, and it has realized that there is something that does not fit into the categories of your world This something lies beyond consciousness and is now designated by you as unknown, invisible, but, nevertheless, existing. We are not on the majority, but on some critical mass of advanced consciousness, and now it has become absolutely obvious the predominance of new thinking over dogmatic, the desire to break the crystallized and compressed forms and allow the mind to soar freely in a space hitherto unknown to it. So, we give the New. This is the third part of the old, but the first part of the New Teaching of true Knowledge. The snake always bites its tail, and whether this is a symbol of a circle, or perpetual motion, or a spiral, or eternal ascent, is probably not so important, although there are those who will break their spears for a long time about a form that is not the one that was even a minute ago "(Platonova T. Yu. "The Secret Doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus". M .: "White Ashram", 2000. S. 5-6). But theosophy has an "elitist" character, since it is mainly accessible to people who already have a relatively high level of spiritual development, who are well acquainted with the religious-mystical and occult teachings of the East and West and who have a fairly high general educational level. The same can be said about anthroposophy, which was formed within the framework of theosophy and then separated into an independent doctrine. The famous Russian poet Andrei Bely, who was at the origins of the popularization of this doctrine in Russia, was personally well acquainted with the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner. At present, anthroposophy has received a certain distribution in Russia, especially among the creative intelligentsia. Elena и Nicholas Roerich. The Roerichs' teaching - "Agni Yoga" or "Living Ethics" - continues the theosophical tradition (Helena Roerich even translated the first two volumes of H. Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine" into Russian) and, on the one hand, develops and deepens H. Blavatsky's system of views , on the other hand, sets out the deepest ideological problems not in the form of a grandiose syncretic system, but in a bright, living, aphoristic form of “applied ethics”. Using the example of the Roerichs’ Teachings, the principle of the “spiral” construction of esoteric concepts is especially clearly visible, when the initial turn of the spiral of knowledge is designed for people starting their spiritual ascent almost from the zero level, and gradually, as they grow spiritually, mastering more and more turns of the spiral of knowledge , and so on - almost ad infinitum. That is why Agni Yoga can be of keen interest to people with very different levels of education and spiritual development. Currently, this is one of the most theoretically developed and most practically effective universal esoteric systems. Alexander Klizovsky. The first experience of large-scale understanding of the cosmic evolution of humanity and the unified laws of life based on the teachings of Agni Yoga and Theosophy is given in a thorough work Alexander Klizovsky (1874-1942) "Fundamentals of the New Epoch World View", personally edited by Helena Roerich. This work is of undoubted interest as a popular, public introduction to the worldview of the new era. Tatyana Basova. One of the most striking examples of the creative development and effective practical application of Agni Yoga is the activity of the Saratov esoteric society "Lyceum of Enlightenment", working under the leadership of T. A. Basova with 1990 BC Here they are successfully engaged in spiritual realization, creatively combining the achievements of Eastern and Russian (primarily Orthodox) esoteric thought. The experience of successful spiritual realization without leaving the "worldly life", accumulated in the "Lyceum of Enlightenment", is summarized in the book by T. A. Basova and V. V. Basov "The Yoga of Enlightenment (meditation practice based on the synthesis of science, philosophy and esoteric thought) ". This book is one of the best manuals in modern esoteric literature on the practical application of the Teaching of Living Ethics. Sergey Lazarev. A clear example of the very effective use of Agni Yoga in everyday life is the medical and educational activities of Sergei Lazarev. His work “Diagnostics of Karma”, which has already been published in several editions, is widely known in Russia and, in fact, is a visual guide to the study and practical application of the Teaching of Living Ethics, compiled on the basis of vivid, living examples. The Teaching of the Roerichs in Russia has already acquired a very significant influence in the mass consciousness and, undoubtedly, its influence will continue to increase: there are quite deep reasons for this, among which the high degree of compliance of this Teaching with the basic values of Russian civilization should be especially noted. Vladimir Shmakov. Among the works of Russian esotericists, which are syncretic in nature and have become world classics, we note the one created at the beginning of the 20th century. a huge three-volume encyclopedic work by Vladimir Shmakov - “The Great Arcana of the Tarot”, “Fundamentals of Pneumatology”, “The Law of Synarchy”. However, this work, due to its purely “professional” nature, is not accessible to a wide range of readers. Grigory Mebes. AT in the same row is the fundamental "Course of the encyclopedia of the occult", compiled at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. based on lectures given in St. Petersburg by one of the most prominent Rosicrucians of pre-revolutionary Russia, Grigory Mebes. This work, among other things, is the initiatory alphabet of the Rosicrucians, which makes it possible, with a sufficient level of spiritual development, independently, in the order of self-initiation, to go through the steps of the initial - physical cycle of the Rosicrucian Initiation, followed by establishing constant contact with the Rosicrucian egregor; "astral baptism" - the implementation of a conscious projection of the astral body and further ascent along the steps of the astral cycle of Initiation, up to the "mental baptism" - the implementation of a conscious mental projection and the famous Rosicrucian Reintegration and passage through the steps of the higher - the mental cycle of Initiation. Valentin Tomberg. A world-famous fundamental work is also dedicated to the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus Valentina Tomberga (1900-1973) "Meditations on the Tarot", which differs from well-known works on the occult sciences, first of all, by the novelty of execution: the author made an attempt to rethink in the context of modernity the very foundations of Hermeticism - the Great Arcana of the Tarot. The peculiarity of these "letters to an unknown friend", that is, to a like-minded reader, which shows the deep connection of esoteric knowledge embodied in the Bible, Upanishads, Kabbalah, is that the author used "esoteric Christianity" as the basis of his "Meditations", which underlined by the subtitle of the book: "Journey to the Origins of Christian Hermeticism". In his interpretation, "Christian Hermeticism" is the esoteric teaching of the Christian (Catholic) Church, which is the key to understanding the whole path of mankind and solving the problems facing it. George Gurdjieff и Peter Uspensky. Of undoubted interest is also the widely known Teaching George Gurdjieff (1873-1949), which found its theoretical generalization in works well known in Russia Peter Uspensky (1878-1947). Boris Muravyov (1890-1966). The three-volume work of Boris Muravyov, “Gnosis. An Experience of a Commentary on the Esoteric Teaching of the Eastern Church,” one of the closest friends and associates of G. Gurdjieff and P. Uspensky, is dedicated to the esoteric teaching of the Eastern Church. Thanks to the amazing depth and exhaustive clarity of the presentation of the metaphysical, psychological and practical foundations of the “Secret Tradition” - “esoteric Christianity” - this three-volume study has no equal in modern church literature, as a truly esoteric universal key to the knowledge of “God, Man, the Universe”. The first volume - "The Exoteric Cycle" - outlines in detail the general picture of the Universe in the strictest interdependence of its laws, the unity of its constituent and penetrating aspects, plans, stages of manifestation - from the Absolute to the atomic, from the mineral to the historical, from the cellular to the spiritual. The second volume - "Mesoteric Cycle" - is devoted to the middle stage of mastering the Tradition of Esoteric Christianity. The fundamental ideas and practical observations that made up the content of the first volume are further developed here. The third volume - "Esoteric Cycle", is devoted to the presentation of the final truths underlying the grandiose world order and Providence itself, the comprehension of which constitutes the final, proper esoteric stage in the assimilation of the Tradition. Mitrofan Lodyzhensky. In Russia, even high-ranking government officials were no strangers to the worldview search. Let us note in this regard, although of a compilative nature, but in its own way interesting, thorough three-volume work of the Tsar’s vice-governor Mitrofan Lodyzhensky (1852-1917) "Mystical Trilogy". Intensive ideological search in Russia was not interrupted even in the darkest period - in the era of Stalinism: at this time, the three largest mystics of our time created their systems - Porfiry Ivanov (1898-1983), Daniil Andreev (1906- 1959) и Bidiya Dandaron (1914-1974). The mystical teaching of Porfiry Ivanov has a pronounced applied orientation, representing a kind of "Russian yoga", however - absolutely original, both in form and in content. This Teaching arose not as a result of mystical insight, but in the process of accumulation of spiritual experience by its founder. At first it was a special workout for the body - walking barefoot in any weather, swimming in icy water, jogging in the steppe in just shorts in the bitter cold. However, behind this hardening, already in the early years, a deep philosophical idea was traced that a person should not “conquer” Nature as something hostile to him, but live in complete harmony with it, since he himself is an integral part of it. This can be achieved through complete "immersion" in the essence of the basic elements: earth, water, air, fire. Porfiry Ivanov was sure that such an "immersion" would give an ordinary person superhuman physical and spiritual strength, which he could then use for the benefit of all mankind. And the fact that this is true - he clearly demonstrated by his own example. During his life, he healed and taught a harmonious life in Nature many seriously ill people: paralyzed, bedridden for years, blind and deaf from birth, cancer, tuberculosis, lepers, suffering from other severe ailments - rejected by official medicine and doomed to a painful death. He searched for them himself. He appeared in the village, found out if there were such patients, came to them (but only if they asked for it - "may everyone be rewarded according to his faith"!), Laid on his hands, poured cold water over him, and people recovered completely. But before that, he seemed to be asking Nature: "Am I going the right way"? And Nature, through the healing of these patients, seemed to answer - "Correct!" He never took any material reward for healing, but only strongly recommended living in harmony with Nature in order to forever forget about all diseases, both bodily and mental. Naturally, after such a miraculous healing, his recommendations were perceived as a divine revelation. In the last years of his life, he began to talk about the fact that a person can and must achieve physical immortality: there are forces in Nature, thanks to which a person can exist indefinitely. You just need to be able to master these forces - first you need to learn how to maintain your health, then expand your consciousness, and then reach that level of physical and spiritual development, at which death will no longer have power over us. About the form in which immortality will be realized, Ivanov said the following: "A person will become light, he will lift himself into the air with his light umbrella, he will not speak, he will not be visible and will be everywhere." At the end of his life, he almost did not belong to the earthly "dense" world. He was seen in different parts of the globe - either by Lake Baikal, then in Moscow, then in California, while he did not even leave his house. In the last years of his life, the popularity of his Teachings has increased incredibly, and at present it has become an integral part of the spiritual life of Russia. The life and work of this great mystic, like his Teaching, is an example of a rare combination of extreme simplicity with amazing spiritual achievements; he, as it were, accumulated in his personality the best spiritual qualities of the Russian people. His spiritual achievements are all the more striking because they were carried out under the conditions of the absolute domination of the theomachic regime, which is extremely hostile to any spiritual search for a bright direction, as a result, spiritual searches cost Porfiry Ivanov a total of more than 12 years in prisons and psychiatric hospitals. The mystical teaching of Porfiry Ivanov is characterized in the international encyclopedia "Mystics of the 1996th century" as "one of the most effective teachings of the 105th century." (Vanderhill E. "Mystics of the XX century", encyclopedia. M .: "Myth" - "Lokid", XNUMX. S. XNUMX). Daniil Andreev in the encyclopedia "Mystics of the XX century" is devoted to a whole section, with the characteristic title "Research of the Beyond". The first publication in 1991 by the Moscow publishing house "Prometheus" of the main work of Daniil Andreev - "Rose of the World", was recognized by critics of various trends as the main event of the year. And, indeed, Daniil Andreev became the creator of a unique syncretic worldview system, created on the basis of his own visionary experience, deeply Orthodox in its essence, and at the same time, absorbing the achievements of Eastern metaphysics and fully corresponding to the spiritual demands of the modern era. "The Rose of the World" is a grandiose treatise on the secret structure of the Universe, on the mystical background of the entire history of earthly civilization and on the future destinies of mankind. At present, this is one of the most ambitious attempts in world mysticism to give an exposition of the deepest esoteric truths in the form of a universal exoteric religious-mystical teaching. The "Rose of the World" analyzes in detail the system of parallel worlds (Daniil Andreev has 242 of them) of Shadanakara - the bramfature of the Earth, that is, our planetary cosmos. And in this respect, the "Rose of the World" by Daniil Andreev is on a par with the "Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri, in which a panorama of the parallel worlds of our planet is also given in poetic form. Daniil Andreev, like Porfiry Ivanov, paid for his spiritual quest with more than ten years in prisons and camps. Bidiya Dandaron never cared about presenting Buddhist philosophy in a public form, he devoted a lot of time to traditional church activities and the study of Buddhist classics. He did not leave his homeland at a time when Buddhism was subjected to the most severe persecution, and until his death he fought for the preservation and dissemination of the tradition of Tantric Buddhism in Russia. AT 1937 BC B. Dandaron was convicted on false charges of anti-Soviet activities, received 25 years of hard labor and was finally released and fully rehabilitated only in 1956 BC In the early 1940s B. Dandaron, together with other Buryat lamas, wrote a letter to Stalin, petitioning for the restoration of Buddhist monasteries in Buryatia. Surprisingly, this petition did not go unanswered: soon the Buryat Buddhists were allowed to open two monasteries. B. Dandaron managed to accomplish a lot. He systematized and described a huge number of original Tibetan manuscripts; created a short Tibetan-Russian dictionary; translated and published "The Source of Wisdom" - a dictionary of terminology of Mahayana Buddhism, created in XVIII in. In parallel with his scientific activities, he was engaged in organizational work on the restoration of the Buddhist church in Buryatia. Buddhists of Central Asia have long been divided into many sects or schools, often at war with each other. Studying authentic sources, B. Dandaron was able to prove that all their contradictions are of a formal nature, and create his own synthetic teaching, combining several different traditions. B. Dandaron was undoubtedly that enlightened Teacher who could convey the light of the Buddha's Teaching not only to his compatriots, but also to people brought up in a completely different cultural tradition. Beginning in the mid-1960s, students from European Russia came to him. He taught them not only tantric practice, but also the basics of Buddhist philosophy. It must be admitted that modern lamas take into account the peculiarities of the perception of their European students and, despite the theoretical denial of personality by Buddhism, they recommend that they preserve and strengthen their personal core as an important tool for liberation. Buddhism can serve as a powerful tool for theoretical psychology, and lamas often switch to its language, familiar to Westerners. In addition, for "missionary" purposes, they often freely operate with European scientific theories about space, time and fundamental interactions (see the books of Dandaron, Tartang Tulku, Trungpa). For example, in the "neo-Buddhism" of Dandaron, an attempt is made to synthesize classical Buddhism with Western philosophy and science. In a letter from B. Dandaron dated March 14, 1957 the following point of view is expressed on parapsychology - an emasculated scientific form of occultism: “It is quite clear to me that modern parapsychologists do the same thing that yogis did, but they go the other way. And they will never, apparently, achieve what yoga achieves because yogis reveal all the hidden energy inherent in a person through the loss of nisvanis (clouded emotions) and the acquisition of divine joy (compassion).Intuitively, I feel the following. 1. Parapsychology, based on moral philosophy, can mitigate the horrors of Christian civilization, about which Leo Tolstoy writes so sadly. 2. Parapsychology can finally solve the problem of human free will, which is the basic and necessary condition of human life. 3. It can finally resolve and reveal the contents of a person's soul. 4. It can pave the way for the development of a new worldwide religious doctrine, the metaphysics of which will be based on the achievements of human science. 5. She can provide a scientific basis for Buddhism... If this happens, then there will be an end to atheism (godlessness) - the moral fall of man. If so, it is more striking in its significance than the discovery of the mysteries of the atom." Thanks to B. Dandaron, Buddhist communities arose in Moscow, Leningrad, Tallinn, Riga and other cities of the USSR. All this led to the 1972 BC the authorities inspired a lawsuit against B. Dandaron and his students on charges of sextant activity. B. Dandaron was sentenced to five years of hard labor, and soon he died in one of the camps on the southern shore of Lake Baikal. Buddhists believe that the enlightened Tibetan lama Gumbum Jayagsy Gegen was reborn in the guise of B. Dandaron. The legend tells that soon after his birth, a delegation of Tibetan lamas arrived in Buryatia with a request to send the boy to be raised in Tibet. However, Lubsan Sandan, the spiritual leader of the Buryat Buddhists, told them: "He is needed here." The teachings of B. Dandaron can be found in his books "Thoughts of a Buddhist. Black Notebook". St. Petersburg, 1997; "Letters on Buddhist Ethics". St. Petersburg, 1997. Of modern Russian mystics and metaphysicians, of particular interest, in the current conditions, are the works of Alexander Dugin, who outlined the "Pentateuch" - "The Ways of the Absolute", "Mysteries of Eurasia", "Hyperborean Theory", "Conspirology", " Conservative Revolution" - the principles of Integral Traditionalism. These five books cover the spectrum of problems that is most relevant in the dramatic and eschatological situation in which Russia as a whole and the Russian people in particular find themselves at present. A. Dugin is also the largest geopolitician of the Eurasian orientation. His fundamental work "Fundamentals of Geopolitics" has become a classic of geopolitical thought. A. Dugin actively uses the Internet to popularize his work and the views of authors close to him in spirit. So almost all the works of A. Dugin and his like-minded people can be found on the relevant Internet sites. Of undoubted interest is also the work of a representative of domestic Islam Heydar Jemal "Orientation-North" is a philosophical, metaphysical and mythological compendium of extraordinary revelations of transcendental knowledge. Of particular importance for overcoming the current global spiritual crisis are the works of the largest Russian mystic and metaphysical writer Yuri Mamleev. The publication in the journal "Questions of Philosophy" of an interview with him - "The Fate of Being" (No. 9, 1992), and then of his work of the same name (No. 10,11, 1993) gave a powerful impetus to the deepening of esoteric knowledge, generally raised modern esotericism to a fundamentally different level of development. Yuri Mamleev made a grandiose attempt in his works to go beyond the world spiritual tradition, which is the basis of all religions and metaphysics. His "Last Doctrine", substantiated conceptually in the work "The Fate of Being", and also presented in artistic form in many of his literary works created by the "method of metaphysical realism", is one of the most original and profound metaphysical concepts in the history of not only Russian, but also world mysticism. The "last doctrine" is the doctrine of what lies beyond the Absolute, that which is transcendent in relation to the Absolute, to Reality and to the higher Self (however, this doctrine has nothing in common with the well-known doctrine of Nirvana, the Divine Nothing, Holy Darkness of the Absolute, etc.). This is the Teaching that God is only the "body" of the truly Transcendent (speaking by analogy), and not the essence of the Transcendent; the latter is, as it were, the true Darkness, the true Ocean, which "surrounds" Reality. In relation to God, this Darkness (of course, we are talking about the true Transcendental Darkness, which has nothing to do with the demonic darkness associated with the world of Being and included in the system of the Absolute) is the same as the Spirit in relation to the Body (of course, taking Note that this analogy is purely external). Since this doctrine teaches that which goes beyond the Absolute, it really deserves the name "Last Doctrine", for it is impossible to go "beyond" this (however, this is its exoteric name, esoterically it is called differently). "The Fate of Being" by Yuri Mamleev rightfully became the main work of the Moscow esoteric collection "Unio Mistica", published in 1997 BC in the publishing house "Terra" and became a notable phenomenon in the history of the latest domestic esotericism. This book begins a series of publications on modern Russian metaphysics that has no analogues in modern culture. The task of the compilers of this series is to present the entire spectrum of esoteric searches and discoveries of the Eurasian continent, in which Russia plays the role of a spiritual pinnacle and stronghold of the future. Book of Veles. The “Book of Veles” - the Holy Scripture of the Slavs - is of great importance for the revival of Russian spirituality, and therefore spirituality throughout the modern world. It opens up to us the spiritual Universe of the ancient Russians. The canonical edition of this book was published in translation and with explanations by the famous Slavic scholar A.I. Asov. ("The Book of Veles". St. Petersburg, "Polytechnic", 2000). This book was carved on beech tablets by Novgorod priests in the XNUMXth century. n. e. "The Book of Veles" describes the history of the Slavs and many other peoples of Eurasia from the time of the Ancestors (XX century BC), up to the XNUMXth century. n. e. It has absorbed the experience of many millennia of spiritual quest, struggle, victories and defeats of many peoples inhabiting Eurasia. “The Book of Veles” is the only sacred scripture of Europe that has survived to this day. Little remains of the sacred books of the ancient Greeks and Romans: the Rhapsodic Theogony of Orpheus, the writings of Musaeus, and the Book of the Sibylline. We know ancient myths and sacred history not from primary sources (holy books), but from transcriptions of ancient authors. The Scandinavian epic, collected in XIII c., songs of the skalds: “Elder Edda” and “Younger Edda”. From the sacred books of the Druids, only the later Irish tales and the “Book of Ferillt” remained, on the basis of which Douglas Monroe published books on Druidic magic: “21 Lessons of Merlin” and “The Lost Books of Merlin”, published in Russian by the Sophia Publishing House. In this series, the “Book of Veles” occupies a special place, since it is a priestly book, therefore, its text is the most ancient Tradition of Europe. And not only Europe. (Let us emphasize once again that she begins her narrative from the 2000th century BC). Stories about the Ancestral Home of the “Book of Veles” are related to stories from the ancient Indian Vedas and ancient Iranian Avestan literature. The tales of the “Book of Veles” about the Ancestors are also similar to the biblical legends about the patriarchs. This book provides an opportunity to study the foundations of the ancient Slavic Vedic era and feel the spirit of ancient Slavic culture. A.I. Asov quite reasonably expresses confidence that “the phenomenon of the “Book of Veles” speaks of the beginning of the era of the Russian Renaissance” (“The Book of Veles”, St. Petersburg, “Polytechnika”, 220. P. XNUMX). Ancient Slavic spirituality. As for ancient Slavic spirituality, the Slavic-Aryan Vedas, which expound the ancient faith of the Slavic and Aryan peoples, are also of unconditional interest here (these books are published by the Arkor publishing house"). In the same series are books such as “Love of the Family,” “Book of the Family Light,” “Drinking from the River of Life,” dedicated to the revival of ancient Slavic paganism. So, for example, in “Rodolyubiya” the following is said about the revival of Slavic paganism: “We are Russians! We have an ancient and glorious history, an enchantingly beautiful and rich Earth, a wise and strong religion - the Holy Faith of our great Ancestors, the ancient Rus-Aryans. Our Faith is not based on ethereal fantasies and empty conjectures, but on direct Knowledge-Knowledge, preserved by the sacred Vedic Tradition, coming from the very Family of the Almighty, the Ancestor of our Ancestors, and confirmed by the direct personal experience of those who inherit Him... And it is not good for us, not only Russians by the fact of birth, but also by Spirit, not to care about the Native Shrines. Forgetting your Source is the same as getting lost in the thicket without a path and hope of return. Losing our Native Faith, are we not losing ourselves in madness?... "("Rodolovie". M., 1999. P. 5-6). A return to spiritual sources, to the Sacred Tradition and the formation on this basis of a worldview of a new era that fully meets the needs of the time is now a necessary condition for the survival of not only the peoples of Russia, but of all mankind. Author: Pankin S.F.
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