Persönliche Frömmigkeit. Eine Spurensuche im Ägyptischen Museum

The pedestal of Tukulti-Ninurta I symbolizes the personal prayer of the king, who, asks the god Nusku in a difficult situation to recite his prayers constantly. The prayer to be recited is proposed to be the bilingual text KAR 128+129 which also refers to political problems of the king. The image on the pedestal is therefore not a symbol of a deity but a twocolumn tablet representing the king's prayer. The formerly so-called staff of Nusku or stylus of Nabü should be interpreted as the column marker as maybe known from a relief of Assurbanipal. By multiplying his ways of addressing the gods Assur and Enlil, Tukulti-Ninurta hopes to be heard. The king transfers his prayer and part of his personality into the pedestal by using the symbolic gesture ubdna tardsu. 10 ANonas 1935: zuletzt zusammenfassend MErr.rr-ror-o 2009. 29 -3 6 mit älterer Literatur.

Numen 60, 2013

Ancient Greek healing cults can be studied in the context of "personal piety." This article emphasizes personal aspects of the Greek religion. It shows that the concept of "polis religion" does not embrace major aspects of ancient Greek piety. I analyze the direct and personal relation of worshippers in healing cults, especially that of Apollo, with the deity. By doing so, I put forward a new reading of Greek religion in the context of the concept of "personal piety" developed in Egyptology. The well-known "embeddedness" of religion in the structures of the Ancient Greek city-state led to a one-sided view of ancient Greek religion, as well as to aspects of ritual and "cult" predominating in research. Simultaneously, aspects of "belief " are often labelled as inadequate in describing Greek (and Roman) religion. Religion as ritual and cult is simply one side of the coin. Personal aspects of religion, and direct contact with the deity, based on "belief," are thus the other side of the coin. It follows that they are also the fundament of ritual. It is necessary to combine "polis religion" with "personal piety" to display a complete picture of Greek religion. The Isyllos inscription from Epidaurus is presented here as a final and striking example for this view. It reports the foundation of a cult of the polis on behalf of a personal religious experience.

Personal Piety: four approaches to an elementary form of the religious life. Within the field of religious studies, four ar¬eas offer fruitful approaches to analysing the phenomenon of personal piety. (1) The first is the philosophy of religion. The term ›personal piety‹ reflects this discipline’s dichotomy of re¬ligion into an institutional and a philosophical (or individual) variety. The tendency to think in terms of this dichotomy became established in the eighteenth century and is still considered valid today. (2) In the late nineteenth century, psychologists of religion began to collect and interpret testimonies of personal piety. Two ma¬jor such interpretations are current today: per-sonal piety as a means of helping souls in need of healing (William James), and personal piety as regression to the lost religious world of one’s childhood. (3) Within the history of religions, the example of Egypt is particularly relevant. Hellmut Brunner has interpreted personal piety as being the consequence of the dissolving ar¬chaic worldview: when one’s faithful support of the comprehensive social and cosmic order is no longer felt to guarantee one’s success in life, individuals increasingly came to rely on the friendship and help of a deity. (4) From the perspective of the phenomenology of religion, the distinction, made in traditional Catholic theology, between the ›spirituality‹ of religious virtuosi and the ›personal piety‹ of ordinary be¬lievers offers a relevant comparison. The article explores each of these four approaches mainly on the basis of Christian testimonies. Only through the analysis of examples from a variety of perspectives can we develop a viable notion of personal piety.

In considering the function of the donor portrait in Early Netherlandish painting for the praying beholder, this study tries to give the term „personal piety“ a more distinctive shape. Early Netherlandish painting is created to match the contemporary instructions for meditation and prayer by displaying different emotional models for the beholder to imitiate. But this does not seem to affect the portrait of the kneeling donor, who ist bare of every definable pathognomic expression. As an identification figure it seems to hold no value for the beholder. I argue however, that it does have that function: The analysis of written sources from the Modern Devotion, especially Gerhard Zerbolt van Zuthpens ‚De spiritualibus Ascensionibus‘, shows that the donor portrait is able to provide with its face a blank surface upon which the praying viewer may project the demanded course of emotions – and does not only provide a model of a single emotion. The sources speak of ‚personae‘ the praying man has to adapt. He has to transform (‚formare‘) himself, or more precisely: his self, according to these personas, then experience and feel (‚sentire‘) this transformation and from this point go further in his prayers. Thus the praying beholder is not entering the picture via the donor portrait by watching it, but he is thrown back to evaluate his own emotions and status before God. This effect is even stronger, if the beholder is the pictured donor himself, for example in a devotional portrait diptych. His own face shown to him in this mirroring way is like a catalyst to a process of cognition, a mutual growth from selfknowledge to a knowledge of God. Again written sources can affirm this argument: One may find these thoughts that were developed by the authors of the Modern Devotion absorbed in later writings like the speculum literature of the 15th century and thus in the librarys of the same donors. Selfknowledge as presented by these sources and with the donor portrait as its ‚device‘ can be identified as the specific feature of late medieval personal piety.

The article explores the meaning of personal piety for transformations in the concept of person in ancient Israel and its environment. Therefore, it clarifies the relevant terms such as P/personal piety ("P/persönliche Frömmigkeit"), everyday religiosity ("Alltagsreligiosität"), Family / Household / Domestic Religion, individual religiosity ("individuelle Religiosität"). Traces of a personal piety known from Egypt are found in a Babylonian text from the middle of the 1st millennium BC (the lament of Nabû-šuma-ukîn) and in the Israelite psalms, especially Ps 27 and 42-43. Here, features of a "personal piety" can be found such as the longing for closeness to God, the supplication for help from the personal God and an intimate relationship with Him, as well es new forms of addressing the interior: in Ps 27 the heart speaks, in Ps 42-43 the speaker talks to the own naepaeš. Thus forms of "Personal piety" proof to be important for the transformation of the concept of person.

Published in: Jesus der Christus im Glauben der einen Kirche. Christologie – Kirchen des Ostens – Ökumenische Dialoge, herausgegeben von Theresia HAINTHALER, Dirk ANSORGE und Ansgar WUCHERPFENNIG, Herder, Freiburg i.Br. 2019, pp. 187-216.

Es war nicht meine Absicht, auf den Weg zurückzugehen, den ich schon vor vielen Jahren beschritten habe 2 . Aber bei der erneuten Beschäftigung mit der patristischen Christologie in der Epoche nach Chalcedon konnte ich nicht umhin, mir die alte Frage wieder zu stellen: Inwieweit hat die dogmatische Entwicklung betreffs des Christus-Glaubens, die zwischen dem 5. und dem 7. Jh. stattfand, die Frömmigkeit der Christen jener Zeit geprägt? Hatte vielleicht Hermann Dörries Recht, als er zwar im Blick auf die Wirkung der Bibel im ältesten Mönchtum behauptete, dass sie "der Gefahr ausgesetzt" wurde, "das Schicksal des Dogmas zu teilen, unangetastet, aber unumfragt und so zur Unwirksamkeit verurteilt zu werden" 3 ? Sollte man in diesem Sinne von einer "Unwirksamkeit" des christologischen Dogmas im Unterschied zum trinitarischen sprechen? Denn das Glaubenssymbol von Nizäa und Konstantinopel bildete nicht nur die Grundlage der Taufkateche-1 Vor 45 Jahren durfte ich als junger Stipendiat beim Istituto per le Scienze Religiose di Bologna, an einem Seminar des damaligen Prof. Alois Grillmeier zum "Codex Encyclius" des Kaisers Leo I. und der Rezeption der Christologie von Chalkedon teilnehmen, das er im Frühling 1973 in Bologna hielt. Diese Gelegenheit war nicht nur interessant und anregend für mich, sondern auch hilfreich bei der Bestimmung meines zukünftigen Forschungsthemas, nämlich die Kirche Palästinas in den christologischen Streitigkeiten. Danach habe ich immer wieder auf die grundlegenden Arbeiten von Kard. Grillmeier zurückgegriffen. Heute ist es für mich eine besondere Freude, aus seinem lebendigen Erbe weiter zu schöpfen und in dankbarer Erinnerung an ihn diesen Beitrag zu bieten.

Curiositas. Jahrbuch für Museologie und museale Quellenkunde 14-15, 2016

This paper deals with the origins of the Egyptian museums in Germany taking into account the five main tasks of a museum: to collect, to preserve, to carry out research, to display and to share. It therefore describes the historical development of the Egyptian collections from the 16th-century Kunstkammer up to the creation of the Egyptian museums in the 19th century. The study of this historical development is arranged in two phases: The first phase runs from the inception of the Münchner Kunstkammer 1563–1567 until the inauguration of the Dresden Columbarium and Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition; the second phase concerns the formation of the first great Egyptian collections in Gotha, Berlin and Munich in the 19th century .

Hermeneutische Blätter, 1998

Kann man heute überhaupt noch von "Frömmigkeit" sprechen? Das Wort scheint überholt, abgetan, und es besteht wenig Hoffnung, es neu aufwerten zu können. Es lässt gleich negative Assoziationen aufkommen, wie etwa in fol genden Ableitungen: frömmeln, Frömmler, Frömmelei, frömmlerisch. So be zeichnen denn auch in spontanem Verständnis die Wörter "fromm" und "Frömmigkeit" religiöse Einstellungen, die eher wirklichkeitsfremd, in sich selbst verschlossen, wenig gesprächsfähig sind, und deshalb das genaue Ge genteil von Freiheit evozieren. Von diesem Verständnis her beurteilt scheint die Verbindung, die meine Überschrift andeutet, schlechterdings absurd: wenn es so etwas wie Frömmig keit überhaupt noch gibt, dann ist sie nicht kritisch, sondern viel eher unkri tisch. Für sie ist kritisches Denken gefährlich, bedrohend, und deshalb ist sie nicht bereit, sich auf die kritischen Infragestellungen des Denkens einzulassen, siedelt sich lieber jenseits des Denkens an. Trotzdem möchte ich es versuchen, gerade durch diese anscheinend frag würdige Verbindung einen neuen Zugang zum Thema Frömmigkeit zu finden. Doch zunächst soll die Berechti gu ng dieses Versuchs noch etwas genauer er örtert werden.