The article considers the evolution of visual language in Old Kingdom Egypt. This process anticipated the usage of images to convey mythological content on the Middle Kingdom coffins. During the V dyn. glimpses of transformation of cult images began to emerge. Along the “realistic” depiction of the funerary cult some compositions started to refer to mythological consequences of its successful implementation. Following J. Assmann we can say that the “sacramental explanation” of the ritual action was thus incorporated in the composition of cult images.

The article investigates the problem of mythological interpretation of a distinct type of ritual implement – libation basin. Initially its function was instrumental, namely to accept the sacrificial substances. During the IV dyn. it was as well interpreted as a lake, but in literature one can also find its mythological interpretation as the eternal waters of Nun. To delineate more sharply the boundaries of possible mythological interpretation, the author refers to the term “constellation” proposed by J. Assmann. In this perspective the similarity between verbal and visual texts could be confirmed by identity of the characters, as well as of the attributes of their interaction. Along these lines it is argued that the closest textual parallel to the libation basins is to be found in the group of utterances associated with the arrival of the deceased to the Fields of Offerings, to the butler of god Ra. The latter can be the personification of the flood and water abundance Agebi.

This article is a historical and religious analysis of the Gospel’s story about the execution of John the Baptist. The first part of the work deals with the modern theories and reconstructions of the history and genealogy of the Herodian family. The comparative analysis of the Gospels, Josephus and several other witnesses shows that the dancer could be not only Salome, the daughter of Herodias, but it could also be Herodias Salome, the young daughter of Herod Antipas and Nabatean princess Phasaelis. This fact opens an alternative reading of the story: we can see not only the story about confrontation of Eros and Thanatos, but also the story about the innocence as a weapon of evil minds. The second part of the paper is the analyses of the story as a myth. In process we can understand the significance and the meaning of the episode on three levels: literal (Jesus is not John, since the second was recently decapitated), mythological (John is the “forerunning sacrifice” of Jesus а sacrifice made according to the pagan mythological model) and theological (the death of John is the end of the old mythological system based on the sacrifice and the forerunning of the new one, based on the “non-sacrificial” principal of non-violence).

The article comprises the first Russian translation of the apocryphal Preaching of Andrew – a fifth- or sixth- century literary work, originally composed in Sahidic Coptic, whose complete text survives in an Arabic translation. The Russian translation is accompanied by a brief commentary and preceded by introductory notes.

The study focuses on the community of Followers of Christ’s Faith (“Khristovery”), which was active in Moscow during the eighteenth century. Most of the evidence is drawn from Merchant Krupennikov’s File (1747) found among the documents of the Holy Synod in St Petersburg and currently held in the Russian State Historical Archive. 

This article provides an overview of the social forms created or changed by Protestantism in the 16th – first half of the 19th centuries. It is shown that Protestantism not only used the old social forms, but also created new ones that formed the basis of a new type of Western society – civil society. An overview of already existing social forms is given: agricultural communes, representative assemblies and professional corporations, parties, schools and universities, church communities. The agricultural commune became the lot of closed groups that created their own mini-society. Noble and city assemblies, professional associations including informal associations of clergy (contubernias), parties became a platform for Lutherans and Calvinists. Protestant schools performed not only an educational but also a missionary function, universities were used to train pastors and preachers and to form a Protestant intellectual elite. The Protestant church community gave rise to such social forms as small home groups, colleges, commissions and committees. Educational and discussion clubs were actively used by Calvinists during the Dutch and English revolutions. The social creativity of the Protestants was intended to strengthen Protestantism in society and to promote the creation of a “new human” brought up in the Protestant doctrine.

The aim of the article is to characterize Russian modern spiritualism movement as a religious phenomenon of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article offers answers to the following questions: it meditates upon the relation of esoterism and religion in the debate about the religious nature of modern spiritualism; it proposes the necessary distinction between occultism and spiritualism in relation to the position of Christian spiritualists; it posits spiritualism as a phenomenon of both religious modernism and fundamentalism in the light of the conflict between the universalist oriented spiritualist metaphysics and the national oriented tradition; it asserts the typology of Russian Christian spiritualism and gives account of its connections/correlations/synthesis with orthodoxy as lived religion in the Russian Empire. The central thesis of the article suggests that Christian spiritualism should be researched in the context of Christian tradition, as a means of its religious renewal and, more broadly, as one of the Christian reformation movements.