Download or read book Forbidden Oracles written by AnneMarie Luijendijk and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book centers on The Gospel of the Lots of Mary, a previously unknown text preserved in a fifth- or sixth-century Coptic miniature codex. It presents the first critical edition and translation of this new text. My book is also a project about religious praxis and authority, as I situate the manuscript within the context of practices of and debates around divination in the ancient Mediterranean world."--Preface, p. [vii].
Download or read book Jesus the Oracle written by Annelies Gisela Moeser and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2023-09-25 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jesus the Oracle, Annelies Gisela Moeser reads Jesus’s journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem in Mark’s gospel through the cultural context of second/third century Roman Egypt. Moeser provides a rich description of the Egyptian practice of oracles, including processional oracles, to build a model with which to read Mark. This prism brings attention to descriptions of Jesus’s supernatural knowledge and wisdom, such as in the story of the Rich Man (Mk 10:17–22). In contrast to Clement of Alexandria’s homily on the Rich Man which counseled detachment from possessions, this reading from a non-elite perspective considers Jesus’s advice to be more radical. This model of processional oracles highlights the importance of access to the divine, including by non-elite crowds, by persons with disabilities (e.g., in comparing Bartimaeus [Mk 10:46–52] with Gemellus Horion of Karanis [a town in Egypt]), and by children. Traditional Egyptian religion upheld the existing sociopolitical regime. However, Jesus’s procession and proclamation of the basileia (reign) of G*d subverts the Roman world order and that of their local, elite allies.
Download or read book Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses written by Laura Salah Nasrallah and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how Ancient Christians both used curses and criticized them in ancient Mediterranean religion and society.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual written by Risto Uro and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook provides an indispensable account of the ritual world of early Christianity from the beginning of the movement up to the end of the sixth century.
Download or read book Ancient Prophecy written by Martti Nissinen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation A study of the phenomenon of prophecy as documented in ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible as well as Greek sources, from the twenty-first century BCE to the second century CE.
Download or read book The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics written by Robert Wiśniewski and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians have often admired and venerated the martyrs who died for their faith, but for a long time thought that the bodies of martyrs should remain undisturbed in their graves. Initially, the Christian attitude towards the bones of the dead, saint or not, was that of respectful distance. The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics examines how this attitude changed in the mid-fourth century. Robert Wi'niewski investigates how Christians began to believe in the power of relics, first over demons, then over physical diseases and enemies. He considers how the faithful sought to reveal hidden knowledge at the tombs of saints and why they buried the dead close to them. An essential element of this new belief was a strong conviction that the power of relics was transferred in a physical way and so the following chapters study relics as material objects. Wi'niewski analyses how contact with relics operated and how close it was. Did people touch, kiss, or look at the very bones, or just at tombs and reliquaries which contained them? When did the custom of dividing relics begin? Finally, the book deals with discussions and polemics concerning relics, and attempts to find out the strength of the opposition which this new phenomenon had to face, both within and outside Christianity, on its way to become an essential element of medieval religiosity.
Download or read book My Lots are in Thy Hands Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity written by AnneMarie Luijendijk and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sortilege—the making of decisions by casting lots—was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity, AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.
Download or read book Monastic Economies in Late Antique Egypt and Palestine written by Louise Blanke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-20 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book situates discussions of Christian monasticism in Egypt and Palestine within the socio-economic world of the long Late Antiquity, from the golden age of monasticism into and well beyond the Arab conquest (fifth to tenth century). Its thirteen chapters present new research into the rich corpus of textual sources and archaeological remains and move beyond traditional studies that have treated monastic communities as religious entities in physical seclusion from society. The volume brings together scholars working across traditional boundaries of subject and geography and explores a diverse range of topics from the production of food and wine to networks of scribes, patronage, and monastic visitation. As such, it paints a vivid picture of busy monastic lives dependent on and led in tandem with the non-monastic world.
Download or read book New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity written by Brice C. Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brice C. Jones presents a comprehensive analysis of Greek amulets from late antique Egypt which contain New Testament citations. He evaluates the words they contain in terms of their text-critical value. The use of New Testament texts on amulets was common in late antiquity. These citations were extracted from their larger Biblical contexts and used for ritual purposes that have traditionally been understood in terms of the ambiguous category of 'magic'. Often, these citations were used to invoke the divine for some favour, healing or protection. For various reasons, however, these citations have not played a significant role in the study of the text of the Greek New Testament. As such, this is the first systematic treatment of Greek New Testament citations on amulets from late antique Egypt. Jones' work has real implications for how amulets and other such witnesses from this era should be treated in the future of the discipline of New Testament textual criticism.
Download or read book Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis written by Mattias Brand and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in Open Access with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Winner of the Manfred Lautenschläger Award! Religion is never simply there. In Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis, Mattias Brand shows where and when ordinary individuals and families in Egypt practiced a Manichaean way of life. Rather than portraying this ancient religion as a well-structured, totalizing community, the fourth-century papyri sketch a dynamic image of lived religious practice, with all the contradictions, fuzzy boundaries, and limitations of everyday life. Following these microhistorical insights, this book demonstrates how family life, gift-giving, death rituals, communal gatherings, and book writing are connected to our larger academic debates about religious change in late antiquity.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of New Testament Gender and Sexuality written by Benjamin H. Dunning and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 733 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over several decades, scholarship in New Testament and early Christianity has drawn attention both to the ways in which ancient Mediterranean conceptions of embodiment, sexual difference, and desire were fundamentally different from modern ones and also to important lines of genealogical connection between the past and the present. The result is that the study of "gender" and "sexuality" in early Christianity has become an increasingly complex undertaking. This is a complexity produced not only by the intricacies of conflicting historical data, but also by historicizing approaches that query the very terms of analysis whereby we inquire into these questions in the first place. Yet at the same time, recent work on these topics has produced a rich and nuanced body of scholarly literature that has contributed substantially to our understanding of early Christian history and also proved relevant to ongoing theological and social debates. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in the New Testament provides a roadmap to this lively scholarly landscape, introducing both students and other scholars to the relevant problems, debates, and issues. Leading scholars in the field offer original contributions by way of synthesis, critical interrogation, and proposals for future questions, hypotheses, and research trajectories.
Download or read book Dreams Nature and Practices as Signs of the Future in the Middle Ages written by Klaus Herbers and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great number of historical examples show how desperate people sought to obtain a glimpse of the future or explain certain incidents retrospectively through signs that had occurred in advance. In that sense, signs are always considered a portent of future events. In different societies, and at different times, the written or unwritten rules regarding their interpretation varied, although there was perhaps a common understanding of these processes. This present volume collates essays from specialists in the field of prognostication in the European Middle Ages. Contributors are Klaus Herbers, Wolfram Brandes, Zhao Lu, Rolf Scheuermann, Thomas Krümpel, Bernardo Bertholin Kerr, Gaelle Bosseman, Julia Eva Wannenmacher (†), Matthias Kaup, Vincent Gossaert, Jürgen Gebhardt, Matthias Gebauer, Richard Landes.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels written by Stephen C. Barton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the history of Christianity, the four canonical gospels have proven to be vital resources for Christian thought and practice, and an inspiration for humanistic culture generally. Indeed, the gospels and their interpretation have had a profound impact on theology, philosophy, the sciences, ethics, worship, architecture, and the creative arts. Building on the strengths of the first edition, The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels, 2nd edition, takes account of new directions in gospels research, notably: the milieu in which the gospels were read, copied, and circulated alongside non-canonical gospels; renewed debates about the sources of the gospels and their interrelations; how central gospel themes are illuminated by a variety of critical approaches and theological readings; the reception of the gospels over time and in various media; and how the gospels give insight into the human condition.
Download or read book Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion written by Stephen J. Shoemaker and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strangely overlooked despite, or perhaps because of, her centrality in Christian devotion. Gathering together fresh information from often neglected sources, including early liturgical texts and Dormition and Assumption apocrypha, Stephen Shoemaker reveals that Marian devotion played a far more vital role in the development of early Christian belief and practice than has been previously recognized, finding evidence that dates back to the latter half of the second century. Through extensive research, the author is able to provide a fascinating background to the hitherto inexplicable "explosion" of Marian devotion that historians and theologians have pondered for decades, offering a wide-ranging study that challenges many conventional beliefs surrounding the subject of Mary, Mother of God.
Download or read book Daughters of Hecate written by Kimberly B. Stratton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daughters of Hecate unites for the first time research on the problem of gender and magic in three ancient Mediterranean societies: early Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture. The book illuminates the gendering of ancient magic by approaching the topic from three distinct disciplinary perspectives: literary stereotyping, the social application of magic discourse, and material culture. The authors probe the foundations of, processes, and motivations behind gendered stereotypes, beginning with Western culture's earliest associations of women and magic in the Bible and Homer's Odyssey. Daughters of Hecate provides a nuanced exploration of the topic while avoiding reductive approaches. In fact, the essays in this volume uncover complexities and counter-discourses that challenge, rather than reaffirm, many gendered stereotypes taken for granted and reified by most modern scholarship. By combining critical theoretical methods with research into literary and material evidence, Daughters of Hecate interrogates a false association that has persisted from antiquity, to early modern witch hunts, to the present day.
Download or read book Reading the Liver written by William Furley and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "William Furley and Victor Gysembergh present a study of ancient Greek extispicy (a form of prophecy by consulting animal entrails) based on the remains of ancient technical manuals on the subject. The aim is to study the papyrological texts in detail for their meaning and to relate this to similar practices in other parts of the ancient world"--
Download or read book A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity written by Josef Lössl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive review of the development, geographic spread, and cultural influence of religion in Late Antiquity A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity offers an authoritative and comprehensive survey of religion in Late Antiquity. This historical era spanned from the second century to the eighth century of the Common Era. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the Companion explores the evolution and development of religion and the role various religions played in the cultural, political, and social transformations of the late antique period. The authors examine the theories and methods used in the study of religion during this period, consider the most notable historical developments, and reveal how religions spread geographically. The authors also review the major religious traditions that emerged in Late Antiquity and include reflections on the interaction of these religions within their particular societies and cultures. This important Companion: Brings together in one volume the work of a notable team of international scholars Explores the principal geographical divisions of the late antique world Offers a deep examination of the predominant religions of Late Antiquity Examines established views in the scholarly assessment of the religions of Late Antiquity Includes information on the current trends in late-antique scholarship on religion Written for scholars and students of religion, A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity offers a comprehensive survey of religion and the influence religion played in the culture, politics, and social change during the late antique period.
