Much more than flesh and bones: the body and the relationship with God in the Hebrew Bible
Renan FRIGHETTO, Willibaldo RUPPENTHAL NETO
Original title: Muito mais que carne e ossos: o corpo e a relação com Deus na Bíblia Hebraica
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Body, God, Hebrew Bible, Soul.
This paper aims to analyze how the Hebrew Bible presents the human body, studying the biblical texts with particular attention to important terms for Jewish anthropology, like bāsār, usually translated as “body”, and nefesh, normally translated as “soul”, in order to highlight their particularity. This study intends to present not only the valuation of the body in the Hebrew Bible, but also its importance in the relationship between man and God according to the biblical perspective.
Musica Dolorosa – Symphony of the Sublime and the Grotesque
Antonio Celso RIBEIRO
Original title: Musica Dolorosa – Sinfonia do Sublime e do Grotesco
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
Keywords: Body, Middle Ages, Music, Self-flagellation, Sin, Soul.
The present work intends to briefly analyze the role of the music in the mortification of the human body as atonement for sins, either voluntary as in the ritual of self-flagellation, and/or imposed for corporal punishment being both perceived as a source of pleasure, pain, desire, and expiation culminanting in the spectacle of scourging. Starting from the concept of the duality of the soul and the body, as suggested by several medieval allegories, the paper aims to make correlations between music, body, desire, religious fanaticism and madness in European Middle Ages, being these relationships the corporeality of musical and religious experience, i.e. through the experience of (self)-imposed flagellation, ascestics would insist the human body would function as a musical instrument where it skin, tendons, throat, torso could be beaten, strechted, plucked, and strummed to produce resonances that were in accord with the pitch and timbre of the crucified Jesus, whose exposed ribs and extended sinews turned him into the harp of the salvation in countless medieval allegories.
