@magnusarvid
https://magnusarvid.substack.com/ π©π° PhD, Religious Studies, University of Bergen π³π΄ Master's in History of Religion (the Religious Roots of Europe-programme) Bachelor's in Assyriology + minor in Modern Standard Arabic and modern middle eastern history
And weβre back!
What points of commonalities can be drawn between Ezekiel, Muhammad, Jesus, Thales of Miletus, a friggin medieval Danish king, and Gilgamesh???
Well, as usual, youβll have to come on down to see! (Yes, title refers to "Days of Our Lives", IYKYK)
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
And weβre back!
What points of commonalities can be drawn between Ezekiel, Muhammad, Jesus, Thales of Miletus, friggin medieval Danish king, and Gilgamesh???
Well, as usual, youβll have to come on down to see!
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
New Journal Published!
The goal is simple: To bring new research on religious studies to a wider, public audience, without the sometimes massive paywalls scientific journals put up - both for readers and authors.
religiousrootsjournal.substack.com
Check us out here - you wonβt regret it!
Neither, actually, all I have to say to this is lol
Steely Dan, Kanye West samples, B.B. King, Chuck D, Gnosticism, early Christianity and Judaism, Gilgamesh, the Bible. What in the possible cosmos could all these have in common?
Only one way to find out.
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
Coming soon!
And keeping in the hip-hop theme, I did also have a pretty fun time dissecting and discussing KRS' "The Truth"
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
Ah, where it all started. What is religion? What does it have to do with old school hiphop?
Only one way to find out!
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
ππππ»π»π»
Did you know "ghoul" comes from Arabic ΨΊΩΩ "ghΕ«l", which itself is cognate with Akkadian "GallΓ»"?
And what in the world could those have in common with Draugr from old norse myth?
That and more spooky Halloween ruminations, come on down!
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
Being non-American and, generally speaking, philosophically Liberal, I always found the pan-American obsession with "race" strange (post WW2-Danes associate the idea of "human races" with Nazism)
- In this essay I use an often overlooked (but curious) example:
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
ππππ»π»π»
Did you know "ghoul" comes from Arabic ΨΊΩΩ "ghΕ«l", which itself is cognate with Akkadian "GallΓ»"?
And what in the world could those have in common with Draugr from old norse myth?
That and more spooky Halloween ruminations, come on down!
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
Coming soon!
What language(s) was the Bible(s) written in? Why is the word "synagogue" Greek? What actually *were* synagogues in late antiquity?
More on that, and the blurred lines between religious groups and the multilingual world of the late antique Mediterranean over here:
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
What am I doing in this ancient synagogue in the ruins of the habour city of Ostia near Rome? And what is Rabbic Judaism??
Only one way to find out:
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
PART 2:
Have you ever wondered how Islam really sort of works, you know, when you get your hands into the nitty-gritty of interpreting verses, making rules and laws, figuring out who has the right interpretation, that stuff?
I happen to have a two-part series for you.
PART 1:
Have you ever wondered how Islam really sort of works, you know, when you get your hands into the nitty-gritty of interpreting verses, making rules and laws, figuring out who has the right interpretation, that stuff?
I happen to have a two-part series for you.
FYI to anyone interested: The actual "Tower of Babel" in the Hebrew Bible likely referred to the Ziggurat of Marduk in Babylon, which in all likelihood looked nothing like this painting, the architecture in which is incredibly romanesque, seems to be inspired by the Flavian Amphitheater!
FUN WITH LETTERS, PART 2:
π Certainly not impossible!
A historians primary work is reading texts, and trying to figure out their contexts, sometimes without even having the entire text available - and when we read religious literature, really, we're doing a kind of metaphysical archaeology on the long-abandoned battlefields of interpretation.
Link to more jokes!
etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/proverbs/t.6...
Did you know our oldest recorded joke (in writing) is about 4000 years old, and is literally a "An X walked into a bar"-style joke?
I wanted to keep this intro-text so I have sneakily put it in a picture to cheat the letter-counter, hehehehe
Anyways, in my MA thesis I wrote a bit about how forerunners of the nazi ideology and it's impact on studies of history and religion in Germany!
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
STOP DOOMSCROLLING,
and instead go check out this little essay on existing paired with a few music recommendations ranging from Saharan desert blues to Swedish folk!
open.substack.com/pub/magnusar...
What does KRS-One, House of Pain, The Babylonian Talmud, early 1st millennium CE synagogues, early Hip-Hop, and the modern popular/scientific conception of βReligionβ have to do with each other?
Only one way to find out!
Did you know the Latin letter βAβ, which originates (probably) in Phoenician, was originally a drawing of the face of a bull? Letters tend to get flipped around in all sort of ways when they travel around the world, but letβs have a look at an upside-down a:
MOOOOO
Fantastic, welcome!
I also made a podcast if reading isn't your thing!
I am about to embark on a PhD at the University of Bergen, Norway.
I'll look into how emotions and expressions of emotions relate to total devotion and radical religion in the interreligious and highly competitive religious and intellectual environs the Eastern Mediterranean. Here's a lil intro!
Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
We often think of these as separate entities, but how separate are they? Or maybe rather, how separate were they? And can we learn something from re-learning the history of how these three religions developed?