How did the songs of Pindar solicit the language of Greek polytheism? How could their words generate ritual knowledge and provoke experience? Pindar was long recognised as a master of piety and an authority on divine matters, and his poems remained privileged points of reference for thinking ritual occasions like festivals, the sanctuaries where they were held, and ritual types like sacrifice. Focusing on sacrifice, this chapter looks at the ritual language produced by Pindaric poetry, rather than the one it reflects, and its inscription in the ritual archive of Greek culture. It is concerned with the poet’s enduring role as an agent in the dynamic system of Greek polytheism. After a brief survey of the prominence of sacrifice in the Pindaric biographical tradition, different aspects of the sacrifices found in the poems of Pindar are reviewed and illustrated through case studies, most notably passages from Pythian 5, Isthmian 4, and Olympian 10.

By the time of his death, Lincoln had earned substantial recognition as a great president, even admiration as a statesman of outstanding quality. His assassination heightened the sense of loss and mourning Americans and others felt, in tributes, eulogies and sermons.

The image in Plate 13 is now housed in the City Museum of Münster. The museum dates it to 1491. On the back, their website informs us, is the name of an otherwise unknown painter, Seewald. The museum lists it as “Faces without Eyes,” in which the eyes of all but Christ and two others have been “carefully removed such that one can often see the wood beneath.” The online description glosses the removal of the paint designating eyes as “destructions,” evoking “the immediate association” of “iconoclasts of the Reformation period.” As the Museum’s website suggests, there is a long tradition of using the word “iconoclasm” to name a part of what happened in the sixteenth century and a rich and dense body of scholarship on “the destruction of art.” But, as the painting materializes, the word has never fit as a name for what Evangelicals did.

When they became acquainted with Crete, the Mycenaeans were influenced by the Minoans, not only in artistic matters but also in the whole system of organization of their socio-economic life and most importantly in the field of religion; but a thorough examination shows that the ancestral religion of the Mycenaeans differs from the Minoan one, even if at first sight there are similarities. The Mycenaean religion is polytheistic; the nameless Cretan Great goddess is worshipped but also a number of male gods (though without any iconography), named Zeus, Poseidon or Hermes; syncretism was its central characteristic. In later times, as the Cretan spiritual dominance waned, typically Minoan symbols lost their prime symbolic power to the benefit of Mycenaean conceptions. Official and popular religion, the function of open-air and built sanctuaries, the symbols, rituals and Linear B tablets are subjects constantly debated, and yet the essence of Mycenaean religion, the related ideas and concepts escape us.

This chapter explores the priestly theology of space within the tabernacle and how this expands to the holy land where Israel will dwell. The tabernacle and God’s abiding presence are the center of all holiness for the priestly authors. Only ordained priests may approach his holiness. The consecration of the altar is a high point in the theology of Leviticus and has an impact on its theology of the land and the Jubilee.

This chapter traces the consequences of the Laudians’ view of the church as the house of God for the internal arrangements and beautification of the church and its fabric. It draws out the full practical and theological significance of the Laudian ideal of the beauty of holiness. Their claims that their policies and practices were based in part on the Jewish temple and in part on the cathedrals and the Chapel Royal are outlined and assessed.

This chapter shows how the Laudians conceived the history of the church as a succession of sacrifices and altars stretching from Adam or Abel through the actual sacrifices of the Jews, under first natural, and then Mosaic law, and then through the spiritual sacrifices offered up by and in Christian churches. Where there were sacrifices there also altars and priests, and so the history of the church was conceived as a succession of consecrated persons and spaces, centred on altars, and then on episcopal chairs, stretching from the apostles to the present. The chapter shows the Laudians attempting to trace the presence in the primitive church, and then in the church of England, of the basic triad of priest, sacrifice and altar. They encountered some issues in so doing in the post-reformation church of England and the chapter shows some of their critics, most notably Bishop Williams, pointing that out and the Laudians responding with difficulty to those criticisms.

The Laudian view of the sacraments as the places where Christ’s presence in its church reached its apogee and of the altar as the site of the most intense divine presence in the church are expounded. The Laudians placed the reception of the sacrament at the centre of the collective worship of the church and of the life of faith, and thus made the altar the focal point of divine worship. The life of faith was defined in sacramental terms as a journey from font to altar, and stress placed on the need to give physical expression to these views and priorities through bowing towards the altar and worshipping towards the east. The Laudian altar policy, which placed railed-off communion tables altarwise at the east end of the church and reoriented worship towards them was the logical expression of such views. Through a case study of the church at East Knoyle, the communion room and altar are shown to have been that part of the church where the Laudians conceived the church triumphant and church militant came into closest contact in this life; something rendered explicit by their repeated insistence that angels attended the reception of the sacrament.

This chapter discusses Hadrian’s taste in poetry (a preference for Ennius over Vergil; Antimachus over Homer); his own surviving poems, with discussion of some dedicatory and sepulchral epigrams, and with a proposal about the nature of the possibly polymetric Catachannae mentioned by the Augustan History; and poetry composed with an eye to his approval, like the Altar of the high equestrian official L. Iulius Vestinus (perhaps dateable precisely to 24 January AD 132) and the mysterious inscribed elegiacs from Baetica, signed by ‘Arrian the proconsul’, on a hunter’s proper offerings to Artemis.

This third chapter of Part II continues the study of the Narrative of the Transjordanian Tribes, examiningtexts in Deuteronomy and Joshua that document these tribes’ wartime service. The chapter devotes particular attention to the culminating episode that depicts a dramatic turn of events in which Israel comes close to waging war against these tribes.

Homeric supplication is a customary type of earnest entreaty associated with Zeus, Hikesios, and other gods and occurring either between individuals or at altars that give the suppliant access to a household or community.

Homeric offerings take forms including animal sacrifice, vegetal offerings, dedications, and libations serving purposes such as propitiation, thanksgiving, and fulfilling vows.