Создавањето место во космогонијата – со акцент на Тимај и на Енума Елиш

Abstract

The paper outlines the need for places in the primordial creation of the world, as part of the religious narrative of archaic religions. The importance of sacred spaces in the worldview of homo religiosus is shown through the sacred-profane dichotomy and the necessity to turn chaos (the outer, unknown territory of non-being, or threatening being) into cosmos (a familiar, safe and ordered setting). The Receptacle (khora) in Plato’s Timaeus is given as an example of preexisting place in a cosmogonic allegory (as, while following some patterns typical of earlier cosmogonies, Timaeus is a work of philosophy, and not a sacred myth), along with some contemporary interpretations of its meaning. The places (deities) in Enuma eliš, the Babilonian creation myth, as a typical early cosmogonial system, are briefly analysed under the banner of the theory of the sacred (as sacred places in the beginning of the world), and are presented in comparison with the space (the Receptacle/khora) as matrix in Timaeus.