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Abstract
The article explores the dynamics between literature and religion with the examples of Lucifer and modern Satanism. With John Milton's poem Paradise Lost (1667), the originally Christian myth of Lucifer evolved in a positive direction. Having been adopted by so-called 'literary Satanism,' this character became the basis for a new non-Christian religion, the 'Temple of Set' (founded by Michael Aquino in 1975). The article also argues for a remodelling of the conception of the dynamics between religion and other systems of meaning in the 'European history of religion': not only do religious traditions affect the medium of literature; literature can also affect the religious tradition.
Up to the present, the brief notice on the storage cities of “Pithom” and “Raamses” and the forced labour of the Israelites in Ex 1:11 has been taken as the historical nucleus of a possible exodus scenario under Ramesses ii.
This article presents a critical evaluation of the classical theory, taking into account recent insights in Archaeology, Egyptology, and Philology. Since a number of arguments call the classical theory into question, a historical background of Ex 1:11 in the late 7th century bce becomes more likely, when Judahites had to perform forced labour for the Egyptian hegemon in the Southern Levant.