The Seba library treats Bosom in 7 passages, across 6 authors (including John of Damascus, Eliade, Mircea, Lattimore, Richmond).
the idea seems to have been that as the Son is in the bosom of the Father so the Spirit is in the bosom of the Son.
This passage articulates the bosom as a theological metaphor for interior relational containment within the divine, structuring the Trinitarian processions as nested acts of indwelling.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
The first men lived for a certain time in the breast of their mother, that is, in the depths of the earth. There in the telluric abyss they led a half-human life; in some sort they were still imperfectly formed embryos.
Eliade treats the bosom/breast of Terra Mater as a primordial uterine space of incompletion from which humanity must emerge, linking cosmogonic myth to the depth-psychological theme of separation from the containing maternal ground.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
beside her went an attendant carrying the boy in the fold of her bosom, a little child, only a baby, Hektor’s son, the admired, beautiful as a star shining.
Homer’s image of Astyanax carried in the fold of a servant’s bosom grounds the term in an embodied scene of tenderness and mortal vulnerability, counterpointing martial heroism with the protective intimacy of the containing body.
, The Iliad of Homer, 2011thesis
G. Ripley, ‘The Bosom Book’ in Collectanea Chemica (London: Stuart, 1963), 141.
Hillman’s citation of Ripley’s alchemical ‘Bosom Book’ positions the term within the tradition of intimate, hidden transmission of esoteric knowledge, where the bosom names a container of secret or inward doctrine.
, Senex and Puer: An Aspect of the Historical and Psychological Present, 1967supporting
She was in love with the god and she repeatedly went to the sea and scooped water into her bosom with her hands until Poseidon begat the twins by her.
Kerényi’s mythological narrative uses the bosom as the site of erotic-cosmogonic encounter, where the human female body becomes the vessel through which divine generative power is received.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
KOA1tWO’lC; ‘bosom-like, full of bays’ (E., Plb.); KOA1tLac; ‘puffIng up’… IE *kwelp- ‘curve, vault’
Beekes traces the Greek kolpos (bosom) to a Proto-Indo-European root for vaulting and curvature, etymologically unifying the body’s enclosing fold with geographical bays and architectural arches.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
she might be taken with desire to lie in love with her next her skin, and she might be able to drift an innocent warm sleep across his eyelids, and seal his crafty perceptions.
This Homeric passage evokes the intimate proximity of bodies as a site of erotic deception, tangentially related to the bosom’s topology of closeness and concealment without naming the term explicitly.
, The Iliad of Homer, 2011aside