Dr.GH

The easiest way to see how we determine things like whether a structure is a temple or what have you is to look at some actuall examples. I recommend:

Black, Jeremy, Anthony Green, Tessa Rickards (illustrator)
2003 Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (or via: amazon.co.uk) Austin: University of Texas Press.

Finkelstein, Israel, Neil Silberman
2001 The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (or via: amazon.co.uk) New York: The Free Press

Mazar, Amihai
1992 Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000-586 B.C.E. (or via: amazon.co.uk) The Anchor Bible Reference Library New York: ABRL/Doubleday

There are many other books that are quite good, but those will more than serve your purpose.

Amaleq13

I would think that would present the same inherent difficulties and require the same sort of inferences. I don't see much difference between an unreadable language and a statue lacking any written explanation.

Sounds like that would address several points mentioned in this discussion (including the potential problems working with ancient texts).

If you can bring some light to what is involved in reaching the conclusion without creating an entire college course, I would certainly be interested.

Hex

Well, I'll do my best. I won't be able to get back to this until next week. Should we start a new topic for this?

spin

How does one separate cultic from religious? Surely cultic is an aspect of religious.


spin

Hex

Well ... Would you say that the people going out and learning Klingon and inventing a culture based off a TV/Movie series are being rather ... cultic? But doing so without religion?

(No offense to Trekkies, just ... It's such a good example ... )

spin

Naaa, in my understanding, Klingon might be kult, but it ain't cult. Well, if you insist more, I'll talk about cult1 and cult2, where cult2 is the modern cliche. Monk can have a cult following, butcha wouldn't call it a cult, though people might use cult2 in regard to it.


spin

Hex

Well ... How about Masons 100 years ago? Or the Stonemasons' or Merchant's Guilds in the Middle Ages? Secret signs, but not necessarily any more religious than the rest of society?

spin

This'll get to be a bit of a game if we continue. I say, "naaa", and you say, "well, whaddabout...?" Associations often have performative aspects to them. You've picked out a few, but you could add street gangs or the army. The performative aspects are for uniformity and a sense of belonging that separates from others. If you is a bro, you wear them clo's an' you wok that wok an' you tok that tok an' you slap them hans, so hey! you know yo' bros. Cult it ain't. We don't need to do the delta-iota-kappas.


spin

Hex

Fair enough.

But why -isn't- it a cult?

Or ... wait ...

Archaeological type of cult or contemporary Judeo-Christian religion type of cult?

fanucon

Cult is an annoying term because its considered offensive to the religious folks and used as a weapon by the non


theres a Zombie movies cult.

Cult has been given a horrible name for a term that isnt nearly as damaging.

its like the term molest

"to bother, interfere with, or annoy."