月4日托福阅读真题解析.docVIP

2013年7月14日托福阅读真题解析 第一篇 TOPIC：Ancient Greek sarced groves希腊圣林 讲古希腊精神文明和自然有关，尊重自然和宗教信仰有关，他们把神龛建在树木植物多的地方。不仅古希腊人这样，欧洲其他地方的人也有类似文化，举了欧洲人用树作为神灵的例子。然后讲了希腊人认为god真实存在，最后谈到保护问题（有一道句子简化题，与亚里士多德和golden age有关。 补充版本二： 有关Ancient Greek sarced groves。讲它怎么跟神有关了，希腊人怎么敬畏他，又跟别人怎么不一样了（神住在林子里，在地上不是天上） 又说希腊人不孤单，别的地方也有把林子供起来的，还有这个groves是imperfect的，因为神化后添了别的东西，不自然了。还有因此希腊人特别注重保护林子。 解析：本文属古代文明相关话题，所考察的希腊文明在托福过去考试中曾以多种不同角度进行过考察，因其对于欧美文化发展的意义极为重大。下附关于希腊圣林的介绍。 Sacred Groves – the Secret Power of Trees Sacred groves of olive and other trees were an intrinsic part of early religion. They were the meeting points of the world of the gods and the world of the humans, the mortals. Here priests offered animal sacrifice to please the gods, linking the world of the ordinary with that of the invisible and the spiritual. According to Pliny the Elder in Historia naturalis: Book XII, the trees formed the first temples of the gods, and even at the present day, the country people, preserving in all their simplicity their ancient rites, consecrate the finest among their trees to some divinity….each kind of tree remains immutably consecrated to its own peculiar divinity, the beech to Jupiter, the laurel to Apollo, the olive to Minerva, the myrtle to Venus, and the poplar to Hercules: besides which, it is our belief that the Sylvans, the Fauns, and various kinds of goddess Nymphs, have the tutelage of the woods, and we look upon those deities as especially appointed to preside over them by the will of heaven. The ancient Greeks and the Romans were not the only people to hold the tree sacred. Sacred groves were, and can still be found scattered as far afield as India, the Middle East, Africa, Japan and any region with Celtic ancestry. Celtic sacred groves were called Nemetons, or Nemeta. They were the meeting places of the druids who preferred to perform their rituals in the open air. Many considered them no-go areas where only the initiated could venture safely. The ancient Roman poet Lucan described a sac