The objective of this article is to define a specific visual relationship with the divine in the verbal discourse of the ancient Mediterranean culture based on the analysis of three specific historical-cultural patterns: the Greek Magical Papyri, the Liturgy of Mithras, and the texts of the first Christians communities. This epiphanic visuality will be analyzed from the Greek verb ἀτενίζω (“look intensely”): this verb is attested in the three patterns mentioned above, and in all of them it refers to a epiphanic gaze of the communities of devotees who encounter a superior divine presence in the form of a figurative sign. The textual recurrence of the verb, and the agents involved in its action, will allow us to propose a taxonomy of analysis to categorize in detail how this visual relationship between the devotees and the divine presence occurred in multiple spaces and times. Therefore, what we propose is an analysis of how the semantic nuances of this verbal form are bearing witness to a specific religious experience lived by different communities of devotees from Greek culture to the first centuries of Christianity.
This article examines Pausanias’ use of the main words attested to refer to divine names, such as onoma, epiklēsis and epōnumia. Onoma is the most general word since it can by applied to any type of name. Epiklēsis does not refer to an epithet, but more generally to a surname : it can be either an epithet or a heteronym, either a cultic epithet or a poetic one. Lastly, the epōnumia can be understood as an eponymous name: the deity bearing a epōnumia takes its name after someone or something. Pausanias does not use any specific word to refer to theonyms and to epithets.
The inscriptions of Boeotia contain several onomastic sequences constructed to qualify Herakles. To understand this regional peculiarity, the names of Herakles are studied here in their cultic and mythological context, revealing the entrenchment of different levels of representation of the divinity: he is at once a Panhellenic figure of the gymnasium alongside Hermes, a hero associated with groups of founding warriors in Eastern Boeotia, a healing divinity in Western Boeotia, or the ancestor of civic aristocracies.
