Search

Blasphemy (Gk., blasphemía, ‘abuse’ e.g., verbal; also ‘abuse of God’) is disparagement of God. The status of blasphemy is indicated in Jewish and Roman law themselves. It was adopted by the medieval imperial and canonical codes from Justinian's Novels 77 (c. 540 CE). The concept is marked by the European legal tradition, and, to a lesser degree, by the monotheistic notion of God. Its generalization is therefore not unproblematic. For the sake of a specification of the concept in religious studies, these origins are first rendered explicit,1 and then abstract criteria are drawn u…

The word ‘holy,’ or ‘sacred,’ denotes an area completely bounded off from the everyday (‘profane’), and simply never to be available to the human being. Accordingly, special rules are in force for dealing with sacred objects, buildings, and persons. A type of theory of the Holy attributes the latter to other quantities, for example, sociologically to society (Durkheim), or to aggression (Girard) in anthropological sociology. On the other hand, the Holy can be conceived as a category of its own, incapable of reduction, as in the pheno…

1. The word ‘taboo’ comes from the Polynesian tápu and denotes, on one hand, a prohibition by which an object is withdrawn from everyday use, and on the other, the object itself. A taboo can pertain to gods, human beings, bodily parts, objects, types of relationship, words, areas or regions, or, for example, a tribe. Depending on who prescribes it—for example a chief or a transcendent power—the nature of the obligation, and in case of transgression the severity of the punishment, can oscillate. A taboo can also be removed. 2. At first, conceptions of the taboo were researched region…