Jan Assmann (1938-2024), “Rise of Monotheism in the Ancient World 03: No god but God: Revolutionary and Exclusive Monotheism”
Monday, 6 December 2004, 19:00 IDT
Van-Leer Institute
43 Jabotinsky Street
Jerusalem 9214116
ISRAEL
Chaired by Shaul Shaked
Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
Lecture Summary: Starting with the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten in the fourteenth century BCE, and continuing with those movements in Biblical history which the name “Moses” stands for, the ancient world saw the advent of a form of monotheism which – at least in its own understanding – opposed traditional religion and related to what went before in terms of revolution rather than evolution. The lecture will concentrate on the most problematic aspect of revolutionary and exclusive monotheism which is the language of violence, trying to show that violence is not a necessary consequence but only an implicit potentiality of monotheism.
This lecture series was published as Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Madison, 2008).
Jan Assmann (1938-2024) was a leading scholar in the fields of Egyptology, memory and culture studies, comparative literature, and the history of religion. He studied at Heidelberg, Munich, Göttingen and Paris. He served as professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg from 1976 to 2003 and taught at several other universities in Europe, Israel, and the United States. His many awards included a 1996 Max Planck Award for Research, a German historians’ prize in 1998, and honorary degrees from several institutions of higher learning. He is the author of numerous books, including Moses the Egyptian, The Price of Monotheism, and Cultural Memory and Early Civilization, Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism. Since 1968 he was married to Aleida née Bornkamm. They had 5 children.
