Media vita in morte sumus

The article explores the question of how to understand the experience of the simultaneity of life and death expressed in the Gregorian chant Media vita in morte sumus, which preoccupied the ancient cultures in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine, and Greece. A particular focus is placed on the Northwest-Semitic myth of the weather god and his battle against chaos in the form of the sea and death, both attested to in the Ugaritic Baal epic and in the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible. The article shows the relation of the myth to the reality of human experience in the cultic practice of ancestor worship and the ritual of lamentation and thanksgiving, as well as in the older tradition of Wisdom. Furthermore, it traces the later transformations under new theological auspices that both the myth itself and the religious practice and teaching of wisdom have undergone in the context of the biblical tradition of the Old and New Testaments.