The ritual of the red heifer described in Numbers 19 is one of the most difficult to interpret and was therefore of particular interest to Jewish commentators. It has many parallels with other rituals in the Pentateuch, especially the rituals of the Day of Atonement and the rituals of cleansing from “leprosy”, but it also has many unique features – the red heifer itself, the ritual killing of the animal outside the camp, the ritual use of the ashes, the purification of the one who touches the dead, the impurity of those who participate in the ritual. In the Christian tradition, almost all perceptions of this rite have been based on its allegorical understanding through the prism of Hebrews 9:13-14, where the ashes of the heifer are compared to the blood of Christ. However, we believe that this ritual is of great significance to the author of Hebrews and occupies an important place in his extensive ritualtemporal language. He makes several indirect references to the ritual of the red heifer and the closely related purification from “leprosy”, using not a simple allegory but a profound imagery based on a blending of different rituals, taking into account their theological significance. The inclusion rituals of purification from impurity, and in particular the ritual of the red heifer in the temple imagery of the Hebrews allows the writer of Hebrews to reveal more deeply the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. It is also important in demonstrating a new type of understanding of the sacred and the elimination of material objects from Christian religious thought, in contrast to both Second Temple Judaism and other forms of religious consciousness contemporary with the author of the Hebrews. In this article we analyze the ritual itself in the Book of Numbers (LXX), its perception in tradition and in scholarly literature, its reflection in Hebrews, and its role in the argumentation of the author of Hebrews.

The article presents an analysis of Tamar’s function in the Gospel of Matthew 1:3 in the light of Jewish justification hermeneutics. The author uses an intertextual analysis of precedent phenomena, a comparative method, and a hermeneutic analysis of texts according to the classification of A. Steinsaltz. This research compares the image of Tamar in the following precedent texts: Hebrew Bible, the Book of Jubilees, the Testament of Judas, the works of Philo of Alexandria, rabbinic and patristic literature. The study reveals exculpatory motives in biblical and Jewish literature, such as secrecy and deception for the purpose of salvation, change of nationality, “a marriage made in Heaven”, “a transgression performed for the sake of Heaven”, exceptions that allow the Messianic family to break the law. These results are compared with three main modern interpretations: redemption of sinners, salvation of pagans, scandalous prototypes of Mary. The author claims that Matthew implicitly uses Jewish hermeneutic techniques in his argumentation, such as the hint, gezera shava, binyan av, and kal vahomer. This article is the first part of the study of the four women in the genealogy of Jesus.

In the early Christian text “The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity” we can see the traces of polemic among Christians of the 2nd – 3rd centuries about the possibility and significance of new revelations of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, there is a widespread opinion among scholars that this martyrdom containing the descriptions of divine visions has been influenced by the “New Prophecy” movement – the so-called “Montanism”. The adherents of this movement honored new prophets who could receive new revelations of the Spirit more than members of the emerging church hierarchy, believed that the imminent end of the world was near, and demanded a strict and rigorous lifestyle from their followers. However, the paper shows that the visions of the martyrs Perpetua and Saturus do not resemble the ecstatic prophecies of the priest Montanus and his companions from Asia Minor, and the content of “The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity” does not show any other specific signs of this early Christian movement. The glorification of martyrdom, the great interest in eschatology, the high importance of women in the community, and the profound attention to visions and prophecies can be regarded as common features that were characteristic of many Christian communities in the 2nd – 3rd centuries and were especially evident in North Africa.

The Hôtel de Guise, the Paris residence of the younger branch of the House of Lorraine, was conceived as a politically significant place. The mansion also played an important role in the public image of its owner, Duke Francis de Guise. The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of the Adoration of the Magi in the representation of the Guise. This subject was represented in the painting of the chapel of the Hôtel de Guise, an unpreserved work by Niccolo dell’Abbate, designed by Francesco Primaticcio. The Adoration of the Magi is a popular plot in European religious art of the 15th – 16th centuries. This story in the representation of noble houses made it possible to combine the demonstration of piety with political meanings. Unlike Italian and German art, in France this plot is much less common. The more interesting is the image of Duke François de Guise in the image of the King. François de Guise was presented as the embodiment of military prowess and Christian piety. It corresponded to the public image of Duke and the religious policy of the French court of the mid-16th century.

The article is devoted to the little known topic of the design of bindings of Old Believer books in the 2nd part of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century. During this period, new technological solutions began to be used in bookbinding workshops to save time and effort while maintaining the appearance of new bindings to medieval patterns. As a result, bookbinding production acquired an industrial flow character. This particular story demonstrates a more general pattern: the Old Believers readily accepted technological and cultural innovations they needed and easily justified their use in their activities, assimilating and adapting new trends. The article raises the question of typologizing the results of such innovations in the bookbinding craft – the cliche frames that appeared massively in the period under review among the embossed decor of the bindings of Old Believer publications. Several types of stamping with cliche frames on old printed publications for Old Believers are described. The article was written on the basis of an analysis of Old Believer books in the collections of the Laboratory of Archaeographic Research of Ural University and private book collections examined during field observations by employees of Archaeographic Laboratory of Moscow State University.

The theatrical practice of Klim, a contemporary Russian director, contains a ritual practice that serves “subjective religiosity.” Using the work of ritual researchers who worked in parallel with the development of the line of returning the theater to its rituality in the European theatre, and later in the Russian one, we make an attempt to trace the change in attitude towards this rituality from the first theoretical reflections of Antonin Artaud to actual practice, the last and most accurate an example of which is the “zero ritual” developed by Klim. We show what religious motives and elements of ritual practices are included in the “zero ritual” and how this contributes to the implementation of “subjective religiosity” according to the stories of witnesses and participants of this ritual.

The article examines the problem of scientific foundations for the anti-religious propaganda in the USSR in the 1920s – 1930s in the context of the development of religious studies. The materials of the journal “Anti-Religious” analyzed by the authors indicate that during the “cultural revolution” research work on the study of religion was accompanied by the collection and creation of visual documents on the ethno-confessional composition of the USSR. Soviet religious scholars and ethnographers created religious maps as well as a corpus of unique photo and film documents on religious groups, anti-religious poster art, theater, exhibition and museum work related to issues of atheism. Materials of a religious studies, collected and created by scientists, and ideas developed by anti-religious propagandists in the 1920s and 1930s, made it possible, among other things, to formulate the concept of anti-religious cinema as a specific genre of Soviet propaganda films. Particular attention is paid to the ideas of anti-religious cinematography, which were formulated in the 1930s by the anti-religious propagandist V.V. Stepanov (1898–1938). For the first time in Russian science, his basic principles of visualization of religious groups in the work “Cinema and antireligious propaganda” (1928) are outlined.