著者

ZION Mark N.

出版者

中央大学総合政策学部

雑誌

総合政策研究 (ISSN:13417827)

巻号頁・発行日

no.21, pp.81-108, 2013-03

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When presenting the fundamental beliefs of Christianity to students in Asia, the question is: Where to begin? "Begin with Jesus of Nazareth" is the common answer. Yet, was Jesus of Nazareth the founder of Christianity? In reality, Christianity began from one person's formal letters, Paul of Tarsus (c. 5-67 CE). Through these letters, addressed to various Christ communities around the Roman Empire, we encounter an extraordinary consciousness, one of the great figures of Western civilization and arguably the most influential. These letters show not only Paul's complicated personality but also a complicated social-historical context: the mixtures of ethnic groups in the Eastern Mediterranean of the first-century CE. Paul's letters ignited the most far-reaching social experimentation the world has known. But why would Paul, a Jew in the Diaspora, insist that his religion of Judaism transcend its ethnic boundaries? In this article, I will review a little of these extraordinary letters, with a short biographical sketch, before highlighting two of Paul's permanent contributions to Western religious consciousness: 1) the belief that Jesus of Nazareth's death and resurrection were experientially redemptive; 2) the belief that the Christ congregations were the New Israel. Why Paul articulated these ideas can only be hinted at.

著者

Zion Mark N.

出版者

多摩大学グローバルスタディーズ学部グローバルスタディーズ学科

雑誌

紀要 = Bulletin (ISSN:18838480)

巻号頁・発行日

no.7, pp.123-152, 2015-03-01

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Religion, for reasons difficult to fathom, summons a culture's underlying sensibility. If one is a Jungian, based on the work of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961), then religious impulses are one of the ways the "collective unconscious" emerges (Jung 1954:3-48). If one is a secularist, then perhaps Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is a better guide: religious belief is a defense against nature and death (Freud 1927:31). The tens of millions of Americans with a more literal orientation toward religion would vehemently disagree with both views; for them the divine is an objective reality in everyday life. Religion in America, derived mainly from the Scottish Reformation (1560), has evolved into something uniquely its own. America's defining moment came in August 1801 during a revival that lasted a week in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, altering forever America's spiritual consciousness inherited from Europe. What is the best way to get a handle on America's love affair with God? Or is the affair one of love? Herman Melville (1819-1891), through his sublime novel Moby Dick (1851), poetically reflected America's outrageous spiritual expressions, predicting even what religion in America would become: oddly the individual spiritual quest in a collective context of shared beliefs. The fundamental orientations of America's spiritual life have changed little since Moby Dick was first published. I will highlight Melville's insights into America's homegrown religions as well as compare his great aesthetic achievement, Captain Ahab, with the founder of the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith (1805-1844), which I hope will help to gain a better sense of America's spiritual consciousness.宗教は、その理由を突き止めることは難しいのだが、文化の奥深い感受性を呼び起こす。ユング派なら、スイスの精神分析医であるカール・ユングの業績に基づいて、宗教的衝動は集合的無意識が現れる一つのあり方と考えるだろう。また世俗主義者なら、ジークムント・フロイトの宗教的信念は自然と死に対する防御であるという考えに惹かれるかもしれない。宗教を文字通り信じる傾向のある数多くのアメリカ人は、このどちらに対しても猛反対するだろう。彼らにとって、神聖なるものは日常生活における客観的な現実なのだから。アメリカにおける宗教は、スコットランドの宗教改革にその多くが由来するのだが、アメリカに来てかなり独特な発展を遂げている。その特徴的な出来事は1801年8月、ケンタッキーのケインリッジで1週間続いたリバイバルの時に起きた。そこでは、ヨーロッパ由来の精神的意識が永遠に変わってしまった。アメリカ人の神との恋愛関係をどのように扱うのが一番いいのか。そもそもその関係自体は愛といえるのか?ハーマン・メルヴィルは、その崇高な小説『白鯨』で、アメリカの無法な精神的表現を詩的に表現し、アメリカの宗教がどのようになっていくのかを予言さえしている。共同体で共有された宗教信念において、個人的な精神的探求が行われるという奇妙なものになるというのである。アメリカの精神的生活の基本的な方向性は、白鯨が最初に出版された時からほとんど変わっていない。本論文では、アメリカで発展した宗教についてのメルヴィルの考察を取り上げると同時に、彼の美的な創造物であるエイハブ船長とのちにモルモン教の創始者となったジョセフ・スミスとの比較を行う。それによって、アメリカの宗教的意識の永続的方向転換をより明確にする。

著者

ZION Mark N.

出版者

中央大学総合政策学部

雑誌

総合政策研究 (ISSN:13417827)

巻号頁・発行日

no.24, pp.1-34, 2016-03

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"Sabbatianism" is a movement named after Sabbatai Tzvi (1626-1676), a Jew of the Ottoman Empire. This movement, for all exposed to it, turned the world upside down. Scholars have called it a "transvaluation" within Jewish culture (Scholem 1973:685), meaning it spun accepted norms on their heads in ways that ultimately led to extreme expressions: A place where the violation of the sacred became a sacred duty. Sabbatianism repels as much as it attracts because it speaks to something deep within the human psyche: that fine line in consciousness between the sacred and profane, the moral and immoral, religious devotion and antinomianism, truth and imagination, meaning and nihilism. Sabbatianism developed independently of other messianic movements in Western monotheism, all of which tend to follow remarkably similar patters: Populace movements that forge revolutionary ideas destructive of the religious status quo. For Sabbatians vitality became sacred (Alter 1987:25), so the movement is only different in kind from certain social, artistic, and aesthetic movements, even without Messiahs, that teach the world to see through new eyes, however much the world may squirm over this. All messianic movements attempt to bridge the gap between humanity and the Divine (Davies 1987:80) and while Sabbatianism has also attempted this, it still presents riddles that have yet to be deciphered. I will touch here on a few of its revolutionary features.

著者

ZION Mark N.

出版者

中央大学総合政策学部

雑誌

総合政策研究 (ISSN:13417827)

巻号頁・発行日

no.23, pp.21-50, 2015-03

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Kabbalah, the culmination of mystical and esoteric traditions that stretch back thousands of years, has recently taken a more central place internationally as a source of spiritual inspiration. Kabbalah is seen today as Judaism's most important gift to world culture. This may show that people, in an age impatient with more difficult material, still want to encounter works that are spiritually and imaginatively on the heights. Kabbalah accepts catastrophe as a fundamental reality of life, not exactly a vision that fosters positive thinking. It also concentrates on the absolute need for human responsibility, not a very comforting message for those looking for easy answers (and Kabbalah does not yield its secrets easily). Kabbalah as we know it today formed from opposing forces within Judaism, between the rational (represented by Aristotle) and the intuitive (represented by Plato), a dialectic that I will touch on. Kabbalistic teachings, however, were not well-known until very recently and in fact went through a two hundred year exile (exile being one of Kabbalah's great themes), banished by rationalists of the Enlightenment, only to be resuscitated by people searching for their traditional roots and by some of the world's most gifted scholars. Here I will give an overview of a few basic teachings from the central works of Kabbalah, with a focus on catastrophe and redemption. Human goodness as a way to heal the world, a cosmic drama in which everyone plays a part, is perhaps Kabbalah's greatest lesson for global civilization.

著者

ZION Mark N.

出版者

中央大学総合政策学部

雑誌

総合政策研究 (ISSN:13417827)

巻号頁・発行日

no.20, pp.137-165, 2012-03

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ユダヤ教,キリスト教,イスラム教と,どの宗教を見ても明らかなように,私たちは今,新たな宗教復興の時代に生きていると言える.ジャンバッティスタ・ヴィーコ(1668 ― 1744) によれば,文明は神権政治に始まり貴族政治と民主主義を経て再び神権政治の順で循環しているという.彼が正しければ,私達が生きているのは単に宗教的熱狂の時代ではなく,神権政治への回帰過程であるとも言える.そして,もしそうであれば,聖書の持つ意味合いはかつてないほどに重要な色合いを帯びてくることになる.しかし,この時代がヴィーコの仮説通りの過程ではないとしても,私たちが聖書への理解を深めることは極めて重要である.何故なら,いくつもの時代を経てなお人々を魅了し続けて止まない聖書を理解することは,国々の文化や人々の価値観の基盤を理解することにも繋がる大切な作業だからである.ここでは,私が日本の各大学の教壇で聖書を取り上げてきた経験を踏まえて,聖書を学ぶことの原点に立ち返り,モーゼの書が世に送り出されるに至った経緯即ち聖書誕生の原点について考えてみたいと思う.

著者

Zion Mark N.

出版者

多摩大学グローバルスタディーズ学部

雑誌

紀要 = Bulletin (ISSN:18838480)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.163-173, 2012-03-01

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The study of motivation in the field of second language acquisition, now in its sixth decade, has focused on distinctions between two types of motivation: xtrinsic and intrinsic. This has become a fixed star in the English education osmos, as accepted as any other ongstanding theory. Without minimizing the labor of so many who shaped the direction of this research, I believe it is important to step away from this body of literature and consider its relevance, since research on motivation seems to have been accepted incritically. Since it is largely "unquantifiable," teachers are left with either belief or disbelief, and this, I feel, is counterproductive and may in fact add stresses to both teachers and English education programs. Here, I will briefly consider the conclusions from some studies on motivation.