Smaller Publications
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The breasts of the Virgin Mary
Did Mary breastfeed the Christ child? While the Gospels remain silent, Harald Strohm unfolds a fascinating cultural history of the "Maria lactans" in this article. From Jesus' cries of "woe" to the lavish Baroque paintings of Rubens or Jordaens: breastfeeding God was once a central part of a deep psychological folk piety. The text shows how the desire for comfort in times of plague gave rise to bizarre cults like the "bean king festival" - a world in which wine was celebrated as "transformed Mary's milk." An enlightening analysis of the physical side of Christianity.
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Almost like from One Thousand and One Nights
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh – the story of the Magi from the East is one of the most glorious scenes in the Bible. However, Harald Strohm reveals a fascinating parallel in this article: In the year 66 AD, the Armenian king Tiridates traveled to Rome with a massive entourage to submit to Emperor Nero. Was was this real "Train of the Magi" the blueprint for the Gospel of Matthew? Strohm explains how Iranian priests became Christian kings, what astronomy has to do with ancient diplomacy, and why the Star of Bethlehem still follows us today like a balloon on a string from our childhood.
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A God who creates justice and peace
Monotheism did not begin in Israel or Egypt, but in the steppes of ancient Iran. In this article, Harald Strohm clears away the shadow of Zarathustra and shows that the idea of one God was originally a subversive project of priestly elites. Learn how the "contract god" Mitra created the first democratic approaches before the radical prophet Zarathustra demanded divine law that did not tolerate contradiction with Ahura Mazda around 1000 BC. A gripping analysis of the origins of religious terror, political power, and the legacy that reaches back to Islam.
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Against the stoned lying priests
Was the transition to monotheism really a step forward or the victory of a "problem child"? The current article explores Harald Strohm's explosive theory about the birth of the one God in ancient Iran. While Mircea Eliade once celebrated the archaic, Strohm now combines Veda research with modern psychology: He interprets the god Varuna as a developmentally impaired god child who mutated into the tyrannical Ahura Mazda. Read why, according to this analysis, our image of Yahweh to Allah is deeply rooted in a repressed, joyless primeval time – a wake-up call for the science of religion.
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... as well as the following contributions (available in German only) in the ...
Conference proceedings of the 'Lindau Symposia for Religious Studies':
Magic and Regression in Religion and Politics using the Example of the Ancient Iranian Magi
in: Magic and Religion (2010), pp. 45 ff.
King Soma – "Death" and "Resurrection" of an Indo-Iranian Royal Deity
in: Cult of the Ruler and Expectation of Salvation (2010), pp. 49 ff.
Varuna, Ahura Mazda, and Zarathustra – On the Genesis of Ancient Iranian Monotheism
in: Akhenaten and Zarathustra (2012), pp. 119 ff.
Polytheism, multiple personalities, and the forms of consultation with the gods in Vedic India – An approach via David Hume
in: Oracles and Revelation (2013), pp. 109 ff.
Being Breastfed and Being Weaned: A Motif of homo religiosus
in: Homo Religiosus (2014), pp. 305 ff.
Prehistoric Art as Reflected in Linguistically Documented Religions
in: Caves, Cult Sites, Sacred Art (2016), pp. 9 ff.
Mothers in Myth
in: Caves, Cult Sites, Sacred Art (2016), pp. 245 ff.
Published in other anthologies:
Some Religious-Psychological Observations and Reflections on the Apam Napat of Panjikent; in: Commentationes Iranicae (for Vladimir Aaron Livshits on his 90th), ed. Sergius Tokhtasev and Paulus Luria, St. Petersburg 2013, pp. 31 ff. PDF available upon request
Varuna – a God of the "Archaic Superego"; in: The "Inner Judge" in the Individual and in Culture, ed. by B. Steiner a. U. Bahrke, Gießen 2013, pp. 49 ff.
Religion and Early Childhood: The Ancient Indian Soma Sacrifice, Embryos in Cult Huts, and a Pocket Piece of the Roman Mithras Cult; in: The Emotional Dimension of the Enlightenment (Yearbook for Psychohistorical Research 16), ed. by Ludwig Janus et al., Heidelberg 2015, pp. 113 ff.