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Them and Us
1 The objective of this book was to identify the perceptions that underlie cultural expressions, and to see at the same time the structural coherence that serves as a means of interpretation for an in-depth evaluation in order to appreciate the dimensions that human experience can reach.
2 The connection between institutions and spirituality is certainly arguable, in the sense that I explicitly offer the basis for a discussion and therefore for a range of possibly divergent evaluations. I do think that I have achieved the results I sought, in highlighting both the nature of the method that puts spirituality at the basis of religion and its applicability in the specific case of Mesopotamia and the Bible.
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Appropriation in a Humanistic Way
3 The universally valid perceptions that underlie Mesopotamian and Biblical spirituality invite us to make them our own, to appropriate them in a humanistic way. These two attitudes are still present in our culture, and the study I have proposed of the first historical manifestations of these perceptions can therefore help to clarify not only the humus in which the two systems are rooted, but also the very nature of the perceptual and cultural phenomena that still condition our reception of these values.
Back to top: Chapter 24
Authority
4 In the Mesopotamian world, authority is limited to the intrinsic coherence of data; in the biblical world it is based on the extrinsic intervention of God. In the first case, the object of perception defines itself passively; in the other, the object of perception refers to an active subject who is seen as the ultimate cause of perception itself.
5 The two spiritualities can still speak to our sensibility today with the eloquence that comes from seeing in them a complex and complete human experience, which deals in terms very similar to ours with the greatest and most disconcerting questions of life.