Language and Religion: The Gods Behind the Words

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

This session will host Alexander Kulik for a presentation highlighting the role of language in the religious transformations of Antiquity. By tracing the entry of Hebrew faith into the Greek world, he offers a fresh reflection on the emergence of a transcultural monotheism and on the power of words in shaping belief.

"Religious change is often narrated through new beliefs, sacred texts, or dramatic events. Yet some of the most radical transformations occur quietly, within ordinary words whose internal logic and possibilities are not fully governed by external doctrinal or institutional aims. This lecture examines how religious vocabulary in Antiquity carried hidden worlds of meaning–'invisible gods behind the words'–that shaped how people conceived the divine, the human, and everything in between.

After considering how language–and, more broadly, systems of mediation–frame religious experience and other belief systems, the lecture turns to the moment when Hebrew faith entered the Greek linguistic and intellectual world, catalysing what might be called 'transcultural monotheism', a foundation of Western civilisation in both its confessional and secular forms.

Through targeted case studies, the lecture offers innovative reinterpretations of key religious concepts as they passed between Hebrew and Greek, and explores what these transfers reveal about the mechanisms underpinning the formation of early Judaism and Christianity, as well as the enduring power of language. This lecture may be of interest to scholars of intellectual history and religious studies, language theory, mediation and semiotics, translation studies and historical linguistics, ancient Jewish and Christian studies, and Hebrew and Greek philology–as well as to anyone interested in how symbolic representation shapes beliefs across cultures."

Speaker

Alexander Kulik studied at the Moscow State University, earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conducted post-doctoral research at Harvard University. He currently serves as Professor (previously also Chair) of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and Chair of the Academic Committee of the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds the Tamara and Savely Grinberg Chair of Russian Studies and is a Member of the International Committee of Slavists (UNESCO). His research focuses on the cross-cultural transmission of texts and ideas.