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"Thousand and One Nights" (inner form): *
The stories proceed out of the original tale (Scheherazade); some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions have a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more. Most of text is prose, occasionally verse is used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. The content varies widely to include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques & various forms of erotica. Numerous stories depict jinns, ghouls, apes, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally.
In the mid-20th century, Nabia Abbott found a document with a few lines of an Arabic work with the title The Book of the Tale of a Thousand Nights, dating from the 9th century, the earliest known surviving fragment. In the 10th century Ibn al-Nadim compiled a catalogue of books in Baghdad & remarked that the Sassanid kings of Iran enjoyed "evening tales and fables". He then writes about the Hezār Afsān, explaining the frame story it employs (bloodthirsty king kills off a succession of wives after their wedding night). The first reference to the Arabic version under its full title The One Thousand and One Nights appears in Cairo in the 12th century. Spengler considers this a Magian Culture literary artefact.
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Neo-Pythagoreans (nature of bodies): *
Attempt to re-introduce a mystical religious element into Hellenistic philosophy (dominated by Stoics & regarded as arid formalism). The founders (notably Nigidius Figulus) sought to link their doctrines with the traditions of Pythagoras & Plato. They focused on Plato’s attempt to combine his Ideas with Pythagorean number theory; they identified the Good with the Monad (the Supreme Being, one, and all things- duality of the Infinite with the Measured). They emphasized the distinction between the soul and the body. God must be worshipped spiritually by prayer & the will to be good, not in outward action. The soul must be free of its material surrounding, the "muddy vesture of decay," by an ascetic habit of life. Bodily pleasures and all sensuous impulses must be abandoned as detrimental to the spiritual purity of the soul. God is the principle of good, Matter the groundwork of Evil.
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Philo (metaphysics):
Philo refers to God as Oneness, a universal mind, whose thoughts produce the ideal “forms” of Plato. These forms give order to the world, to allow men to understand it. Men’s minds are images (imperfect) of God’s mind. As such men’s minds can understand the world, except for their pre-occupation with the material & physical world. This connection with the real physical world, disconnect them from God. Words too (as they are material) will limit our understanding of God. We can describe God not by using words to describe what he is not. Our description (words) is but an approximation, we need a mystical understanding to fully appreciate God, Oneness. Even the words in the Bible (OT) are only a approximations of Truth. He interpreted stories in the Bible as metaphors for the Platonic form, not as literal truths. The bible gives us symbols & imagery; allegory was his key device in his interpretation of the OT. He demonstrated that the Bible & Plato were on the same track, they were compatible. Allegory was a way in which Phil (and Neo-Platonists) reconciled the material world & the ideal things. His allegorical exegesis was important for early Christian Church Fathers (as well as Islamic thinkers) & some scholars hold that his concept of the Logos as God's creative principle influenced early Christology. He had little sway within Rabbinic Judaism. Philo was inspired by Aristobulus of Paneas and the Alexandrian School.
See Neo-Platonism
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Islamic philosophy: *
Alfarabi (873–950) produced the first writings on logic with non-Aristotelian elements; he discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms of inference. He preserved the original Greek texts in the Middle Ages owing to his commentaries and treatises & influenced many prominent philosophers (Avicenna and Maimonides). He was influenced by the neo-Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria. Other significant influences were Ptolemy (his planetary model) and elements of Neo-Platonism. From this latter he borrowed Emanationism which informs his cosmology. He posits that all things are derived from the first reality, a perfect God, through steps of degradation; at every step the emanating beings are less pure, less perfect, less divine. The process of emanation begins with the First Cause, whose principal activity is self-contemplation; the First Cause, by thinking of itself, "overflows" and the incorporeal entity of the second intellect "emanates" from it. The cascade of emanation continues until it reaches the tenth intellect, beneath which is the material world. Human beings are unique because they stand between 2 worlds: the "higher", immaterial world of the celestial intellects and universal intelligibles (these are the causal intermediaries between the First Cause –God, and the material world), and the "lower", material world of generation and decay; they inhabit a physical body, and so belong to the "lower" world, but they also have a rational capacity, which connects them to the "higher" realm.
Avicenna (980-1037) Persian polymath, regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers & writers of the Islamic Golden Age. He was influenced by al-Farabi. He initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence and existence. His Neo-platonic scheme of "emanations" became fundamental in the Kalam (school of theological discourse) in the 12th century.
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Councils (on the substantiality of Christ): *
First Council of Nicaea (325): promoted Homoousion, describing Jesus (God the Son) as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father; it is an most important theological concepts in the Trinitarian doctrine & was enshrined in the Nicaean creed. It was opposed by Arianism, a non-Trinitarian doctrine asserting that Christ is the Son of God, begotten by God the Father at a point in time, but is distinct from the Father & therefore subordinate to him, but the Son is also God.
First Council of Constantinople (381): approved the Nicene Creed & condemned Apollinarism, the teaching that there was no human mind or soul in Christ.
First Council of Ephesus (431): called to settle the christological controversy surrounding Nestorianism. Nestorius, (Patriarch of Constantinople), opposed use of the term Theotokos or"God-Bearer", a term used to describe Mary as Mother of God. Instead he taught that there were 2 separate persons in the Christ (substance again). The council deposed Nestorius, repudiated his doctrine & proclaimed as doctrine the Virgin Mary as the Theotokos.
Council of Chalcedon (451): repudiated monophysitism (a doctrine claiming that following Christ’s incarnation he had a single nature, a syntheses of divine & human), described and delineated the "Hypostatic Union" (Christ is both God and Man simultaneously) and two natures of Christ, human and divine.
Second Council of Constantinople (553): Emperor Justinian called the Council to appeal to Miaphysitism, the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria. It held that in the person of Christ, divine nature & human nature are united in a compound nature, the 2 being perfectly united. The teaching of Cyril was supported & the council condemned writings which defended the Christology of Nestorius (the Antiochene tradition). This group taught that there were 2 separate persons in the Incarnate Christ
Third Council of Constantinople (680–681): repudiated monothelitism, a doctrine which previously had widespread support when formulated in 638; instead the Council affirmed that Christ had both human and divine wills.
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tapestry backgrounds (depth of space was covered up): *
The tapestry was made in 6 sections, each 78-foot wide by 20-foot high, each scene has a red or blue background, alternating between the sections. The tapestry is dominated by blue, red and ivory coloured threads, supported by orange and green colours, with gilt and silver woven into the wool and silk. Jean Bondol's weaving follows the Franco-Flemish school of tapestry design, with rich, realist, fluid images placed into a simple, clear structure through the course of the tapestry. The angels and monsters are depicted with considerable energy & colour, their impact reinforced by the size of the tapestry, allowing them to be larger than life-size. The tapestry takes an unusual approach to portraying the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Death. The depiction of Death in this tapestry follows the style then becoming popular in England: he is represented as a decaying corpse, rather than the more common 14th century portrayal of Death as a conventional, living person.
See illustrations below
The First Horsman: War The third horseman: Famine The fourth horseman: Death
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