The present volume contains seven articles by experts on various ancient religions, along with a closing article by a philosopher and an epilogue by a theoretical physicist. There are two articles in German, five in English and two in French. The book is beautifully bound, with colour plates and images, and an elegant dustcover with a detail from a Chinese Manichaean cosmological tableau. The idea behind the volume, conceived by the organisers of the Entretiens, F. and E., is excellent: gather a group of great scholars at the idyllic villa of the Fondation Hardt at Vandoeuvres, take them on an excursion to the nearby CERN-accelerator, and ask them to present cosmogonic and cosmological traditions in their respective fields of expertise. The result is what certainly seems to have been a stimulating as well as pleasant conference with a highly readable proceedings volume. The reader gains some sense of the atmosphere by the responses that are printed after the various papers, although it is unclear to what degree these responses were prepared beforehand or formulated on the spot (they contain quotes and bibliographical references, which of course might have been added in the editing process).
S. Maul gives a very good survey of the sources and salience of the Babylonian epic of creation, Enuma Elish, in Mesopotamian culture. The first stanzas of the epic in translation are given in full, with running commentaries. Maul lucidly shows how the epic was tied to cultic performance at specific festivals, and how it was a vehicle for the imperial ideology of Babylon. Maul asserts that the succession of the three gods Anschar, Anum and Ea are in fact aspects of one god in Enuma Elish, however when he later describes how Marduk rises to assume the place of this ‘trinity’ (Dreieinigkeit), he names them An, Enlil and Ea; heaven, earth and water (pp. 31–2), which is somewhat confusing to a non-specialist. The value of including the discussions in the volume is immediately apparent, for example it is only here that we learn that the author of the text likely wrote in the reign of Nebuchadnessar I, whereas the theological developments reflected in the text stem from the earlier reign of Hammurabi (pp. 40–1).
K. Schmid's article claims that Genesis 1 narrates the creation of an idealised ‘counterworld’ (Gegenwelt) that only comes to be the present world, subject to senses and experiences, after the Flood and the blessing of humankind by God. This resembles the kind of Platonic exegesis of Genesis practised by Philo: one narration concerns the establishment of the paradigmatic world and humankind in the immaterial world of ideas, before the second creation of the world and humankind subject to the senses. Schmid does not acknowledge this ancient precursor, though Philo is treated by Runia later in the volume. A graver problem is how Schmid excludes pertinent passages: when debating the reason for the flood, which God gives in Gen. 6.11–13, he makes it seem that the problem is the shedding of blood and possibly the eating of flesh, a topic that reappears in Gen. 9. However, the narrative preceding Gen. 6.11–13 is the passage concerning sons of God taking the daughters of men as wives (6.1–4). As is well known, but again not mentioned by Schmid, a significant tradition represented by 1 Enoch perceived this as a fall of angels who taught humans sinful arts, which were the direct cause of the deluge.
Next, J.S. Clay takes up the important question of who has the authority to make pronouncements on cosmogony in her excellent treatment of Homer, Hesiod, Parmenides and Empedocles. Clay shows how the poets obtain authority by claiming a special relationship to divine powers, although these can sometimes be fickle and untrustworthy.
Poetic authority is again discussed by G. Campbell, with reference to Lucretius and his De rerum natura, who reaches the unexpected conclusion that the Epicurean claims oracular powers from having surveyed the cosmos by flights of thought.
After this, D.T. Runia goes on to add a third member, Alexandria, to the conceptual poles of Athens–Jerusalem in Western thought. Runia brilliantly treats three contributions from Alexandria which have been of great importance for the history of ideas and religion: the Septuagint, Philo and Origen. Runia shows how these sources treat the concepts of Cosmos, Nomos and Logos, and how they must be understood against the background of the concrete social situations of Jews and Christians in Alexandria.
J.D. BeDuhn next demonstrates the syncretism in the cosmogony of Mani. This is of course a well-known fact, but whereas the affiliations to Persian Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity (including ‘Gnostic’ cosmogonies) are well known, BeDuhn also demonstrates that Mani to a great extent was aware of and utilised Mesopotamian mytholegoumena.
Concluding the main part of the book, dealing with historical examples of cosmologies and cosmogonies, is K. Volk's excellent treatment of the third-century b.c.e. astronomical poem of Aratus of Soloi, and its reception in the Greek and Latin world. Volk shows that although this poem now lies in relative obscurity, it was once obligatory reading for Greek schoolboys, and was imitated, adapted and alluded to in Latin poetry. The poem is thus of immense importance for the gradual disappearance of the three-tiered classical cosmos of heaven–earth–underworld, and the ascendancy of the Ptolemaic cosmology.
The eighth chapter, by R. Brague, is self-professedly non-historical and rather philosophical, although it does cite ancient and modern authorities for support. Brague asserts that the term ‘cosmos’ should be understood – philosophically – to indicate totality and orderliness, and that the terms cosmography and cosmogony should be understood to refer respectively to its mapping out and emergence. Cosmology, on the other hand, should refer to the subjective meaning, the why, of the cosmos, and thus also to the place of humans therein. It is claimed that whereas such cosmologies existed in antiquity, they have disappeared from view for modern man. My own reservations on this proposal are also voiced by some of the rejoinders in the discussion, which again shows the utility of such a section in conference volumes.
Some disapproval for Brague's comments, that modern science on the cosmos is basically philosophically ‘uninteresting’, is also voiced in the epilogue, by the physicist R. Durrer. While Durrer admits that modern cosmology is uninterested in man's specific role in the universe – which is infinitesimal – she admirably evokes the sense of wonder elicited by modern cosmological – if not in Brague's sense – theories. Although the technical parts were hard to follow for the present reviewer, Durrer gives a basic introduction to our current understanding of the expanding universe, and its still unsolved mysteries. One might argue against Brague that for ancient philosophers, as P. Hadot has shown, true knowledge of the universe is a prerequisite for knowing how to act therein, and so even if the universe is fundamentally uncaring of its human denizens, knowledge of the cosmos and its coming-into-being might still be relevant for human action.
The book offers much insight into a plethora of cosmologies and cosmogonies. Some omissions are felt: one should have liked a chapter on Egyptian cosmogonies, and one devoted to Plato's Timaeus. Yet as it stands, several of the articles are in dialogue with each other; the Enuma Elish in particular is referred to by most of the contributors. This slight Mesopotamian bias can be fully excused in such a rich book.
