Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Vergleich: Moses - Homer

Kurzinhalt: That was less than the Mosaic insight that placed the people in the present under God; but it was more inasmuch as the singers appealed to the psyche of every man singly.

Textausschnitt: 143a The Hellenes had no Message and Covenant from Sinai to create them a Chosen People in historical form. They had no Moses to lead them from the bondage of Pharaoh to the freedom of God. But they had the prophetic singers who experienced man in his immediacy under the gods; who articulated the gulf between the misery of the mortal condition and the glory of memorable deeds, between human blindness and divine wisdom; and who created the paradigms of noble action as guides for men who desired to live in Memory. That was less than the Mosaic insight that placed the people in the present under God; but it was more inasmuch as the singers appealed to the psyche of every man singly. From its very beginning the appeal went to the divine essence of order in the soul, to the immortal core. The experience of immortality, to be sure, was still bound by the cosmos as were the gods. Man could not yet, through the sanctification of life and divine grace in death, move toward the beatific vision,- but he could place himself before the gods forever by action that entered the stream of Memory through the song of their prophets.1 (Fs)