Maine ja taevane kodumaa. Võrdlevaid jooni oma paiga kultuuriloost

Abstract

The Earthly and Heavenly Homeland. A Comparative Study of the Cultural History of „Own Place"
In this article, I will analyse the anthropological and theological meanings of homeland, I will show the different types of homeland that can be differentiated in this light and I will give an overview of the following treatments of homeland: the Old Testament, the New Testament, the ancient world, European Enlightenment and Romanticism. To conclude, I will show how different treatments of homeland can merge in the context of migration.
I differentiate three types in the articulation of the relationship between people and their homeland: 1) our home is the whole world; 2) our home is the whole organised world; 3) our home is the centre of the world. This is a theoretical typology, its clear types are met rarely; these types largely coexist, being parallel to each other. Therefore, the whole organised world (2) can also contain semantically important sectors on its area, which point to the home located in the centre (3).
In the Old Testament, all the above types are represented: 1) before succumbing to sin, man lived in the Garden of Eden, which, in a sacred level, signified the whole world - the man was sent to live there and to take care of it. 2) After succumbing to sin, God drove man out of the Garden of Eden. The process of organising and drawing the limits starts, out of which the Holy Land finally emerged, as the organised/cosmocised sector of the world. 3) The Holy Land is also at the centre of the world at the same time, and it contains different concentric spheres that focus around the centre: the closer to the centre a particular sphere is, the closer it is to God and, subsequently, the holier.
The New Testament treatment of homeland, however, excludes the two latter types from the three differentiated categories. The first type, nevertheless, is valid conditionally (of course one has to specify that the transcendent sphere is referred to here), whilst admitting that one is in exile from homeland.
As a comparison, I will also provide examples of the treatment of homeland in the ancient traditions, The European Enlightenment and Romanticism, and, finally, I will show the motives for selecting a homeland in various migrations.