Download or read book Angels in Late Ancient Christianity written by Ellen Muehlberger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, developed by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.
Download or read book Band of Angels written by Kate Cooper and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A distinguished ancient historian’s elegant study of the extraordinary women who helped lay the foundations of the early Christian church” (Kirkus Reviews). According to most recorded history, women in the ancient world lived invisibly. In Band of Angels, historian Kate Cooper has pieced together their story from the few contemporary accounts that have survived. Through painstaking detective work, she renders both the past and the present in a new light. Band of Angels tells the remarkable story of how a new understanding of relationships took root in the ancient world. Women from all walks of life played an invaluable role in Christianity's rapid expansion. Their story is a testament to what unseen people can achieve, and how the power of ideas can change the world, on household at a time.
Download or read book Ancient Angels written by Rangar Cline and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Angels brings together inscriptional, literary, and archaeological evidence for angels (angeloi) in Roman-era religions. The book examines Roman conceptions of angels, angel veneration, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion.
Download or read book Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity written by Annette Yoshiko Reed and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-28 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the early history of Jewish-Christian relations focussing on the fallen angels.
Download or read book Angels written by Charlotte Montague and published by Canary Press eBooks. This book was released on 2011 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 50 per cent of Americans and over one third of British people believe that we all have a guardian angel that protects us throughout our lives. More people believe in these divine bodyguards than in global warming. It is truly astonishing how many spiritually aware people have seen or sensed an angel’s presence at a time of contemplation or hardship. Angels have been protecting us for centuries. This book explores the cultural origins of the heavenly messengers that guide and heal every one of us and reveals compelling real-life encounters with angels. The result is a fascinating insight into the world of angels and their everyday presence among us. Contents: Angels through the ages, angels in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Kabbalism. Angel links with black magic, occultism and ancient astrology. Paganism. Angel healers: what your angel can do for you. Angel encounters: real-life stories from people around the world.
Download or read book Michael and Christ written by Darrell D. Hannah and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darrell D. Hannah engages the debate over 'angelomorphic Christology'. He shows that more than one form of angel or angelomorphic Christology was current in early Christianity and that Michael traditions in particular provided a conceptual framework in which Christ's heavenly significance was understood.
Download or read book Augustine s Theology of Angels written by Elizabeth Klein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Angels and creation -- Angelic community -- Angels in salvation history -- Augustine and spiritual warfare
Download or read book Moment of Reckoning written by Ellen Muehlberger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late antiquity saw a proliferation of Christian texts dwelling on the emotions and physical sensations of dying, not as a heroic martyr in a public square or a judge's court, but as an individual, at home in a bed or in a private room. In sermons, letters, and ascetic traditions, late ancient Christians imagined the last minutes of life and the events that followed death in elaborate detail. The majority of these imagined scenarios linked the quality of the experience to the moral state of the person who died. Death was no longer the "happy ending," in Judith Perkins's words, it had been to Christians of the first three centuries, an escape from the difficult and painful world. Instead, death was most often imagined as a terrifying, desperate experience. This book is the first to trace how, in late ancient Christianity, death came to be thought of as a moment of reckoning: a physical ordeal whose pain is followed by an immediate judgment of one's actions by angels and demons and, after that, fitting punishment. Because late ancient Christian culture valued the use of the imagination as a religious tool and because Christian teachers encouraged Christians to revisit the prospect of their deaths often, this novel description of death was more than an abstract idea. Rather, its appearance ushered in a new ethical sensibility among Christians, in which one's death was to be imagined frequently and anticipated in detail. This was, at first glance, meant as a tool for individuals: preachers counted on the fact that becoming aware of a judgment arriving at the end of one's life tends to sharpen one's scruples. But, as this book argues, the change in Christian sensibility toward death did not just affect individuals. Once established, it shifted the ethics of Christianity as a tradition. This is because death repeatedly and frequently imagined as the moment of reckoning created a fund of images and ideas about what constituted a human being and how variances in human morality should be treated. This had significant effects on the Christian assumption of power in late antiquity, especially in the case of the capacity to authorize violence against others. The thinking about death traced here thus contributed to the seemingly paradoxical situation in which Christians proclaimed their identity with a crucified person, yet were willing to use force against their ideological opponents.
Download or read book Late Ancient Knowing written by Catherine M. Chin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Late Ancient Knowing explores how people in late antiquity went about knowing their world and how this knowing shaped late ancient lives. Each essay is dedicated to a single concept--'Animal,' 'Demon,' 'Countryside,' 'Christianization,' 'God'--studying the ways in which individuals and societies in this period created and interacted with visible and invisible realities. Rather than narrating late ancient history based on facts defensible in modern historical terms, these essays attempt to create histories based on what are now considered late ancient fictions, the now-discarded paradigms of late ancient thought"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Invoking Angels written by Claire Fanger and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A collection of essays examining medieval and early modern texts aimed at performing magic or receiving illumination via the mediation of angels. Includes discussion of Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Wrestling with Angels written by Kevin Sullivan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph explores the relationship between angels and humans during the late Second Temple and early Christian period (200BCE-100CE). The issue of the similarity of appearance between humans and angels is considered in the first part of the book. In the second part three topics are covered: humans and angels living together in communities, angels as recipients of human hospitality, and the possibility of human-angel hybrid offspring. This study provides insight into how the ancient Jews and Christians defined "angel", and it argues that a clear distinction was maintained between angels and humans. These analyses have implications for our understanding of nascent Christology as well as soteriology, and also for our understanding of early Jewish Mysticism.
Download or read book Wrestling with Angels written by Kevin Patrick Sullivan and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did Biblical authors believe that human beings could become angels? This book examines the available evidence from the period (200BCE-100CE) to determine the precise nature of the relationship between humans and angels.
Download or read book Lifted by Angels written by Joel J. Miller and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the relationship between people and angels, through the eyes of the early church. Heaven is closer than we realize. Its boundaries overlap our own, and angels move in and out of our porous present, this moment that seems to us so solid and concrete. If that reality seems dim to us now, it beamed for the early Christians. Through their writings, sermons, songs, and art, the ancient faithful confessed a powerful and vivid belief that angels help carry us on our journey to God. Rooted in the Scripture and following this ancient understanding, Lifted by Angels reveals: the role that angels play in the lives of people and in God’s plan of salvation the different ranks and functions of angels how Satan and his demons fell from grace and plagued humans the functions of guardian angels and how God assigns them to fit our personal needs how guardian angels help us resist evil, temptation, and the devil the way angels join with us in our prayers, even adding their own to ours the service angels provide in worship Featuring examples of angels in ancient icons and frescoes and supported by extensive research on the early church and its pastors, poets, theologians, and artists, Lifted by Angels answers universal curiosity about angels and the unseen world, leaving readers inspired and hopeful about the nearness of God.
Download or read book On My Right Michael On My Left Gabriel written by Mika Ahuvia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction : angelic greetings or Shalom Aleichem -- At home with the angels : Babylonian ritual sources -- Out and about with the angels : Palestinian ritual sources -- No angels? early rabbinic sources -- In the image of God, not angels : rabbinic sources -- In the image of the angels : liturgical sources -- Israel among the angels : Late rabbinic sources -- Jewish mystics and the angelic realms : early mystical sources -- Conclusion : angels in Judaism and the religions of late antiquity -- Appendix A : table -- Appendix B : description of table.
Download or read book Michael and Christ written by Darrell D. Hannah and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 1999 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years a number of New Testament scholars have argued that Jewish beliefs and traditions about the principal angel hold the key to understanding why early Christians came to make such exalted claims about Jesus of Nazareth. Jewish and early Christian traditions about the archangel Michael provide a ready test for this thesis. For Michael is very often the principal figure in Jewish and early Christian angelology. Darrell D. Hannah examines Michael traditions from the Old Testament, Jewish apocalyptic, Qumran, Philo, the Rabbis, Merkabah mysticism, the New Testament, Christian apocalyptic, the New Testament Apocrypha, and the Fathers of the second century. From this mass of literature three forms of angelic Christology are evidenced. First, some early 'orthodox' Christians developed an 'theophanic angel Christology'. That is, they interpreted Old Testament passages about the 'angel of the Lord' as 'pre-incarnate manifestations' of Christ. Secondly, some 'heretical' forms of Jewish Christianity identified Christ as an incarnation of the highest archangel. Finally, some Christians found in Jewish speculations about the Principal Angel (Michael, Metatron, Yahoel, etc.) a conceptual framework within which to place a second divine figure. Principal angel traditions, particularly those about the archangel Michael, were useful for elucidating the significance of Christ. However, 'orthodox' Christians who made use of these traditions were very careful to avoid any implication that Christ possessed an angelic nature. 'Orthodox' Christians never regarded Christ merely as an angel, not even as the angel. The Shepherd of Hermas identified Christ with Michael, but would seem to have been unique in this.
Download or read book Demons Angels and Writing in Ancient Judaism written by Annette Yoshiko Reed and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new explanation of the beginnings of Jewish angelology and demonology, drawing on non-canonical writings and Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls.
Download or read book Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages written by David Keck and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-23 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently angels have made a remarkable comeback in the popular imagination; their real heyday, however, was the Middle Ages. From the great shrines dedicated to Michael the Archangel at Mont-St-Michel and Monte Garano to the elaborate metaphysical speculations of the great thirteenth-century scholastics, angels dominated the physical, temporal, and intellectual landscape of the medieval West. This book offers a full-scale study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages. Seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society, David Keck considers a wide range of fascinating questions such as: Why do angels appear on baptismal fonts? How and why did angels become normative for certain members of the church? How did they become a required course of study? Did popular beliefs about angels diverge from the angelologies of the theologians? Why did some heretics claim to derive their authority from heavenly spirits? Keck spreads his net wide in the attempt to catch traces of angels and angelic beliefs in as many portions of the medieval world as possible. Metaphysics and mystery plays, prayers and pilgrimages, Cathars and cathedrals-all these and many more disparate sources taken together reveal a society deeply engaged with angels on all its levels and in some unlikely ways.
