Persian apocalyptic

Mémoire présenté par :
Erwan MOREAU
en vue de l'obtention du diplôme de :
MASTER 2 RECHERCHE
Domaine : Sciences humaines et sociales
Mention : Ethnologie-Sociologie
Spécialité : SOCIOLOGIE
Préparé sous la direction de M. Jean Bruno RENARD, professeur de Sociologie
Juin 2014
Mention obtenue : très bien


Abstract (French) :

Le synonyme le plus proche du terme "monstre" est l'expression « contre-nature » (Aristote, Saint Augustin, Canguilhem, Lascault, Cuny Le Callet, Valton, etc.). Sentence paradoxale s'il en est quand on sait qu'au niveau biologique, il est entendu que rien de ce que produit la Nature ne peut voir le jour indépendamment du respect de ses lois et qu'il est le propre de l'imagination de pouvoir y créer des exceptions.

Mais parallèlement à la Nature, objet de la biologie et de la physique, se trouve une autre « nature » : la « connaissance ordinaire » (Aristote employait pour sa part le terme de « cours ordinaire », « ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ » en parlant du statut contre-nature du monstre), cette « chose que l'organisme construit dans le but de créer un ordre dans le flux de l'expérience »

Ainsi, tout monstre peut être traduit comme étant ce qui apparaît contraire à une  « connaissance ordinaire », à une réalité sensible, dans son acception la plus large, c'est-à-dire orientée vers l'esthétique (le plus couramment rattaché à une vision anthropocentrée) et/ou vers l'éthique (intolérance idéologique).

Aussi par le partage des affects que met en œuvre une communauté d'esprits (religieuse, laïque, révolutionnaire, impérialiste, etc.), des éléments « contre-nature » peuvent apparaître à un niveau macrosociologique. Éléments émergeant de l'esprit gnostique et de son succédané l'esprit dogmatique, chacun ayant pour spécificité de mettre en exergue le dualisme entre bien et mal, connaissance et ignorance les entraînant ainsi vers l'ère de la déliquescence, de la décadence, en somme vers les temps eschatologiques et leurs abominations monstrueuses.


Abstract (English) :

The best synonym for the word ‘monster’ is the expression ‘unnatural’’ (Aristote, Saint Augustin, Canguilhem, Lascault, Cuny Le Callet, Valton, etc.). That is a paradoxical sentence - if any - when we know that biologically speaking nothing produced by Nature can exist regardless of the respect of its laws. It is among the characteristics of imagination to create exceptions.

But parallel to the Nature as objet of biology and physic is another kind of ‘nature’: the ‘ordinary knowledge’. (Artistote named it the ‘ordinary course’ (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ) to mention the unnatural aspect of monster), this ‘thing that is produced by the organism to create an order within the experience’s flow’.

Then any monster can be understood as what appears in contrary to an ‘ordinary knowledge’, a ‘sensitive reality’ in every sense, that is to say aesthetics- (mostly associated to an anthropocentred vision) and/or ethicspositioned (ideological intolerance).

And the sharing of affections made by a minds’ community (religious, lay, revolutionary or imperialist, etc.) can reveal some ‘unnatural’ elements at the level of macrosociology. Elements that are emerging from the Gnostic spirit and its substitute: the dogmatic spirit. Each specifically brings out the dualism between good and evil, knowledge and ignorance that leads towards the decay, decline age - in other words towards eschatological times and their monstrous abominations.

A Study of an apocalyptic work known in Slavonic only.

The most important conclusions are the following:
1. The available Slavonic work The Twelve Dreams of Shahaisha originated in the Old Bulgarian literature .
2. It was translated directly from Syriac.
3. The Syriac Christian archetype was produced in Iran, within the wide stream of the apocalyptic literature in Syriac provoked by the Arab conquest .
4. The literary frame of the Dreams is inherited from a Second Temple Jewish legend of the Jannes and Jambres cycle, where the protagonists were an unnamed Pharaoh and Jambres (under his Aramaic name mmr’), and which was dealing with a terrifying dream of the Pharaoh and its interpretation by Jambres.
5. In the Dreams of Shahaisha, the anonymous Pharaoh became the anonymous Shahanshah, whereas Jambres preserved his name in an almost unaltered form as Mamer (or, probably, *Mamerā, with further lost of the ending in Slavonic). Egypt as the place of action and the empire whose future is predicted was changed to Iran.
6. The Syriac archetype of the Dreams was produced with stuffing the ancient Jewish literary frame with different locally available sources and, most probably, some original creative production as well.
7. Some of the local sources belonged to internationally widespread folktale motives (as Veselovsky has shown for the dream Nr 5).
8. The most important sources were the written ones. One of them was a Middle Iranian legend about the serial dreams of an Indian king before the invasion of Alexander the Great into India (where Alexander was considered as one of the kings of Iran). A late avatar of this legend is preserved in the Shanameh as the story of the dreams of Kaid. This legend contributed to modify the Jewish literary frame (the unique dream was replaced with a series of dreams) and provided the contents and interpretations for, at least, two dreams, Nrs 3 and 7.
9. This Pahlavi legend had, in turn, an Indian (Buddhist or Jainist) prototype that provided to it, at least, the general frame and the contents for the same two dreams. In this legend, the king was the Indian king of Alexander’s epoch, Candragupta, the founder of the Maurya dynasty.
10. This Indian legend had, in turn, a Buddhist prototype in the Mahāsupina-Jātaka and/or similar legends concerning the dreams of the King Pasenajit .

ʿAli Akbar Khatāyi's Khatāynāmeh (Book of China), a detailed description of state and society in Ming China written in 922/1516, includes citations from the Kanz al-Haqāyeq (attributed to Mahmud Shabestari) and ʿAttār's Elāhināmeh. By citing these two texts at key points in his description of the Chinese government, Khatāyi articulates a radical political vision in which the civil officials, rather than the emperor, are the true rulers. Furthermore, by using the Kanz al-Haqāyeq as a portal text, and through frequent citations of other gnostic poetry, he crafts his own authorial presence by identifying his own text with fotovvat and gnosticism, and invokes a conceptual framework based on the thought of Ibn ʿArabi epitomized in his intertexts.

BAHA’U’LLAH AS ZOROASTRIAN SAVIOUR (1998)

Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as Zoroastrian Saviour.” Baha’i Studies Review 8 (1998): 14–33. 

https://www.academia.edu/4332699/_Baha_u_llah_as_Zoroastrian_Saviour_1998_

ABSTRACT

This paper explores theoretical tensions between modern scholarship and modern messiahship. Messiahs, typically, advance truth claims and adduce proof texts. Prophecies foretell; messiahs fulfill. But what if the proof texts are other than what they purport to be? What if a prophecy turns out not to be genuine? How might this affect the truth claim? An ideal case-study is that of Bahā’u’llāh, whose claim to multiple messiahship is unusual in the history of religions, paralleled only by the second-century world-prophet, Mānī (d. 276).

Bahā’u’llāh’s truth-claims were anchored in several apocalyptic traditions, interpreted as convergent. Bahā’u’llāh’s claim to be Shāh Bahrām Varjāvand, the Zoroastrian messiah, is a case in point. A theoretical problem arises once it is shown that Zoroastrian apocalypses that foretell the advent of Shāh Bahrām are primarily medieval texts, lamenting the Byzantine, Arab and Turkish invasions of Iran. These texts are hardly prophecies, but are cast in the form of prophecies, through use of a literary device known as “vaticinium ex eventu” (prophecy after the event). 

These prophecies are a type of inverse history, where recent history (the calamity of conquest) is recounted, followed by a scenario expressed in the future perfect tense (prophecies), which more or less narrates what should have been, in the name of what shall be. It will be shown that Bahā’u’llāh’s appeal to the Shāh Bahrām tradition circumvents this problem by radically reinterpreting the Zoroastrian prophecies themselves, thereby reinventing the figure of Shāh Bahrām.

Com o intuito de expor o conteúdo da apocalíptica com suas particularidades histórico-sociais, este artigo propõe um olhar para tal literatura a partir de dois aspectos constituintes fundamentais: literatura apocalíptica como resultado de perseguição e literatura apocalíptica como composição de diversas fontes.

Este é um estudo sobre o problema do mal a partir do Livro dos Vigilantes ( 1 Enoque  1-36), um obra apocalíptica atribuída ao patriarca bíblico Enoque e o mais antigo texto existente que contém o motivo da instrução angélica ilícita. O mito dos Vigilantes, que ocupa a parte central do livro, é uma reinterpretação do relato de Gênesis 6,1-4, que fala da relação dos “filhos de Deus” ( bane ha-elohim) com as “filhas dos homens” ( banot ha-adam): alguns anjos, atraídos pela beleza das “filhas dos homens” , abandonaram o céu, uniram-se a elas e geraram os gigantes, que ensinaram aos seres humanos todo o tipo de mistérios, por meio dos quais eles se perderam

... Page 5. LONGING FOR THE END A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization Frederic J. Baumgartner palgrave Page 6. ... p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-312-23834-7 (paperback) 1. Millennialism—History. 2. Civilization, Western. I. Title. ...