The Cosmography of Paradise

the cosmography of paradise
The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe

4 MARCH 2009 EVENING LECTURE AT UCL
5 - 6 MARCH COLLOQUIUM AT THE WARBURG INSTITUTE
WOBURN SQUARE, LONDON WC1H 0AB

Organised by Alessandro Scafi (The Warburg Institute)
with the cooperation of Mark Geller (Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL),
and the support of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq,
the Institute of Jewish Studies and the School of Advanced Study

Admission £20.00 per day. Concessions £10.00 per day (Evening lecture free)
For further information or to reserve a place, contact Elizabeth Witchell at the Warburg Institute.
(Elizabeth.Witchell@sas.ac.uk)

Presentation |Programme| Posters

THE COSMOGRAPHY OF PARADISE
The Other World from Ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Europe

This conference will examine the theme of Paradise from various comparative perspectives, focussing especially on how in different ages and traditions, but especially from the ancient Near East to the European Middle Ages, theories about the structure of the physical cosmos have shaped ideas about the nature of “the other world”.

The notion of Paradise has received a fair amount of scholarly attention over the past few decades, but the prevailing tendency has been to study the notion within a specific ancient or medieval tradition and with respect to just one particular theme in the period. Those who seek a broader or more comparative approach, by contrast, will certainly find fairly general surveys of the idea, but these are usually centred on the Christian tradition and include little more than preliminary references to Antiquity (such as McDannell, Lang, Heaven: A History, 1988; Delumeau, Une histoire du paradis, 1992; Bernheim, Stavridès, Paradis, Paradis; Burton Russell, A History of Heaven, 1997 etc). More recently, however, comparative studies of the concept of Paradise have begun to appear: for example, Paradise Interpreted, ed. Luttikhuizen et al., 1999, which discusses the reception of the biblical accounts in early Jewish writings, early Christian apocryphal and Gnostic literature, and early and medieval mainstream Christianity; and recent scholarly investigations have also been undertaken on the transmission of geographical and cosmographical ideas in Late Antiquity (such as Inglebert, Interpretatio Christiana: Les Mutations des savoirs, 2001). Against this background, the aim of this conference is to investigate further the emergence and development of the notion of Paradise from the ancient Near East to the European Middle Ages by focussing on how the relationship between Paradise and the physical universe has been understood in various traditions: Sumerian, ancient Iranian, Archaic Greek, Orphic, Egyptian, Roman, early Christian, Gnostic, Buddhist, Byzantine, Islamic, Scandinavian, Irish and Latin Western. This approach has not yet been attempted, but seems to be essential for elucidating further the notion of Paradise, defined as a perfect state beyond time and space, in so far as the historical formation of such an idea relied heavily upon a variety of temporally and culturally conditioned concepts of the physical cosmos as a finite and imperfect realm. The conference’s emphasis on the cosmographical context of the history of the idea of Paradise in the ancient Near Eastern and European traditions is intended to bring as much specialist knowledge as possible to bear on the following questions: Where is Paradise? How is it reached? How is it known about? To what extent do visions of Paradise reflect the features of this world? Are different perspectives on Paradise in ancient and medieval thought independent or inter-related? The conference will not only provide an occasion for continuing the dialogue which began in August 2007 at a colloquium in Bergen on the topic of Hell (which included papers by many of the speakers here), but it will also bring together a wider group of scholars from different intellectual backgrounds who can enhance this collaborative and comparative investigation of the relationship between ideas of Paradise and cosmography in history. The conference is expected to attract a substantial number of students, researchers and scholars from a variety of disciplines, not least because the topic is of enduring interest.

6.15 p.m. Wine reception in the Terrace Restaurant UCL
followed by Evening Lecture at 6.45 p.m.
in the Chadwick Lecture Theatre, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

The Birth of Paradise: to Early Christianity, via Greece, Persia and Israel

by Jan N. Bremmer, University of Groningen

Admission to lecture free

Early registration is recommended. Conference registration fee: £40.00 (£20.00 for students)
The fee can be paid at the door in cash or by UK bank cheque but not by credit card.
To register please contact Elizabeth Witchell at the Warburg Institute
elizabeth.witchell@sas.ac.uk

11.20 Nicolas Wyatt, University of Edinburgh: A Garden for the Living – Cultic and Ideological Aspects of Paradise

12.05 Annette Y. Reed, University of Pennsylvania: Paradise and Heavenly Ascent in Enochic Literature

2.15 Antonio Panaino, University of Bologna: Around, Inside and Beyond the Wall. Names, Ideas and Images of Paradise in pre-Islamic Iran

3.00 Emilie Savage-Smith, University of Oxford: Paradise in Medieval Islam

4.15 Nanno Marinatos, University of Illinois at Chicago: Passages to Paradise in the East Mediterranean

5.00 Dimitris Kyrtatas, University of Thessaly (Volos): Seeking for Paradise in the Desert

5.45 Einar Thomassen, University of Bergen: Gnostic Revelations on the Passage to the Beyond

Friday 6 March
Lecture Room
The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB

10.15 Michael Paschalis, University of Crete: Roman ‘Paradise’: What is it Like?

11.20 Veronica Della Dora, University of Bristol: ‘The Heavens Declare the Glory of God’: Mapping the Cosmos on Byzantine and post-Byzantine Icons

12.05 Florentina Badalanova-Geller, Royal Anthropological Institute/UCL: Paradise in Slavonic Tradition

2.15 Danuta Shanzer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Food and the Senses in Paradise

4.05 Corin Braga, University of Cluj: Fisi. Ecstatic Voyages in the Afterworld in Irish Celtic- Christian Mythology

4.50 Anders Hultgård, University of Uppsala: Valhalla and Heaven: Scandinavian Images of Paradise in a Period of Religious change

5.35 Rudolf Simek, University of Bonn: Visions of Paradise in Western and Northern Medieval Europe