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The « Phallen » mask. On an epiclesis of Dionysos in Methymna Through a critical reexamination of the texts concerning Dionysos' cultual mask in Methymna, one is led to adopt, for the epiclesis of the god the lectio φαλληος an epithet alluding to the material of the mask — olive wood distorted by sea water. The values the Greeks associated with the word prosopon, a term defining the face and the mask as « open to the view », as well as the fundamentally visuel mode of action caracterizing Dionysos' mask, give support to the inferences of philological analysis.

The institution of divine Power in the image of the temple in Southern India The installation ("pratisthā") of an image of Visnu in a Vaisnava Vaikhānasa temple is financed by a Sacrifier for his own benefit and that of Hindu society. Even today this ritual is performed by the Vaikhānasa priests of South India according to the prescriptions of their canonical Sanskrit texts such as the Samurtārcanādhikarana. To get the expected benefit from the image, the priest draws divine Power into it by this ritual which may be considered as twofold : « Vedic » and « figurative ». The former includes a fire-sacrifice and emphasizes the alleged orthodoxy of the operations, whereas the image itself is the object of the latter which displays two aspects : devotional (i.e. bathing, garlanding, etc. of the deity) and « technical » (mystical procedures yogic or tantric in character).

The Pantheon of Pre-Islamic Southern Arabia 'Athtar, a male Venus-god of irrigation and thunderstorm, had superseded the ancient Semitic supreme god Il as the head of the pantheon, in which the astral element was far from being exclusive. Moreover, each kingdom has its own national god : a male sun-god of irrigation, an imaginary ancestor of the nation and/or of its ruler, or a sun-goddess. The gods appear frequently with a consort of the opposite sex. Specific divinities for each kingdom, frequently known only by name, were in charge of irrigation, the healing of sickness, etc. The monumental inscriptions (exclusive of any mythological literature) and a limited iconography do not allow to construct a system from this meagre data.

Midrash and Byzantium : A French translation of the « Midrash Rabba » The appearance of the first volume of a French translation of the "Midrash Rabba" provides an opportunity for reflection on the general character of this classical Jewish text, and on the way it should be approached today. Several possible approaches are outlined. A truly critical approach should recognise the particular character of each individual midrash, and should also recognise that a midrash is not merely a mechanical compilation of earlier material but the work of an author living ai a specific time and place. The fad that the midrashim are commonly quarried by students of rabbinics should not blind us to the fact that they are actually Byzantine works, betraying many specifically Byzantine preoccupations.