Download or read book Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions written by Ra'anan S. Boustan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-08-16 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of heaven held a special place in the late antique imagination, which was marked by a poignant sense of the relevance of otherworldly realities for earthly life. Such concerns can be found not only in Judaism and Christianity but also in the Greco-Roman religious, philosophical, scientific, and 'magical' traditions. Transcending social, regional and creedal boundaries, the preocupation with heaven in Late Antiquity serves as a focus for an interdisciplinary approach to understanding this formative era in Western culture and history. Drawing upon the expertise of scholars of Classics, Ancient History, Jewish Studies and Patristics, this volume explores the different functions of heavenly imagery in different texts and traditions in order to map the patterns of unity and diversity within the religious landscape of Late Antiquity.
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 The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity written by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late Antiquity, the period of transition from the crisis of Roman Empire in the third century to the Middle Ages, has traditionally been considered only in terms of the 'decline' from classical standards. Recent classical scholarship strives to consider this period on its own terms. Taking the reign of Constantine the Great as its starting point, this book examines the unique intersection of rhetoric, religion and politics in Late Antiquity. Expert scholars come together to examine ancient rhetorical texts to explore the ways in which late antique authors drew upon classical traditions, presenting Roman and post-Roman religious and political institutions in order to establish a desired image of a 'new era'. This book provides new insights into how the post-Roman Germanic West, Byzantine East and Muslim South appropriated and transformed the political, intellectual and cultural legacy inherited from the late Roman Empire and its borderlands.
Download or read book Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-05-17 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the ongoing Late Antique Archaeology series draws on material and textual evidence to explore the diverse religious world of Late Antiquity. Subjects include Jews and Samaritans, orthodoxy and heresy, pilgrimage, stylites, magic, the sacred and the secular.
Download or read book Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity written by Paul Dilley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the personal practices and group rituals for monitoring and training the thoughts of ancient Christian monks. It focuses on the earliest sources for communal monasticism, many translated into English for the first time, while drawing on cognitive studies to understand key disciplines like prayer and collective repentance.
Download or read book Revelation Literature and Community in Late Antiquity written by Philippa Townsend and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2011 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers from a conference held 2007, Princeton University.
Download or read book The Ways That Never Parted written by Adam H. Becker and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * The first paperback edition of the hardcover published by Mohr Siebeck in 2003 * Startling, state-of-the-art essays on Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity * Includes a new preface by the editors discussing scholarships since 2003
Download or read book The Book of Genesis in Late Antiquity written by Emmanouela Grypeou and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Genesis in Late Antiquity: Encounters between Jewish and Christian Exegesis examines the relationship between rabbinic and Christian exegetical writings of Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire and Mesopotamia. The volume identifies and analyses evidence of potential ‘encounters’ between rabbinic and Christian interpretations of the book of Genesis. Each chapter investigates exegesis of a different episode of Genesis, including the Paradise Story, Cain and Abel, the Flood Story, Abraham and Melchizedek, Hagar and Ishmael, Jacob’s Ladder, Joseph and Potiphar and the Blessing on Judah. The book discusses a wide range of Jewish and Christian literature, including primarily rabbinic and patristic traditions, but also apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Philo and Josephus. The volume sheds light on the history of the relationship between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, and brings together two scholars (of Rabbinics and of Eastern Christianity) in a truly collaborative work. The research was funded by an award from the Leverhulme Trust at the Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge, UK, and the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies of the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK.
Download or read book Theurgy in Late Antiquity written by Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theurgy is commonly taken to denote a complex of rites which are based on the so-called Chaldean Oracles, a collection of oracles in hexameters, which were probably composed during the late 2nd century AD. These rituals are mostly known through Neoplatonic sources, who engage in a passionate debate about their relevance to the salvation of the soul and thus to the philosopher's ultimate goal. Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler examines the development of the discourse on theurgy, attempting to reconstruct what was understood as theurgic ritual in the late antique sources. Withstanding the temptation to impose a unity on the disparate sources which span several centuries, she thus goes beyond the picture of a coherent, extra-philosophical tradition drawn by the Neoplatonists to sketch the variations in the rituals subsumed under 'theurgy' and their function, and shows how every author constructs his own 'theurgy'. This perspective leads to consider theurgy as an example of an 'artificial' ritual tradition, composed from already existing elements to create something claimed as sui generis. Theurgy offers the great opportunity to look at such a tradition from its beginning up to its end and to analyse the mechanisms of inventing and reinventing such a ritual tradition in process.
Download or read book Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity written by Eduard Iricinschi and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2008 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The papers collected in this volume shift the focus away from "heretics" and "heresy" to heresiological discourse, by contextualizing the late antique Jewish and Christian groups that produced our extant literature. The contributors to the volume draw from multiple literary corpora and genres, bringing a variety of late antique perspective to explore the discursive construction of the Other. They unravel ethnic identities, and re-create the multiple voices textured in the dialogue between the "orthodox" and "heretical" writers."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Visual Rhetoric of the Married Laity in Late Antiquity written by Mark D. Ellison and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines third- and fourth-century portraits of married Christians and associated images, reading them as visual rhetoric in early Christian conversations about marriage and celibacy, and recovering lay perspectives underrepresented or missing in literary sources. Historians of early Christianity have grown increasingly aware that written sources display an enthusiasm for asceticism and sexual renunciation that was far from representative of the lives of most early Christians. Often called a “silent majority,” the married laity in fact left behind a significant body of work in the material record. Particularly in and around Rome, they commissioned and used such objects as sarcophagi, paintings, glass vessels, finger rings, luxury silver, other jewellery items, gems, and seals that bore their portraits and other iconographic forms of self-representation. This study is the first to undertake a sustained exploration of these material sources in the context of early Christian discourses and practices related to marriage, sexuality, and celibacy. Reading this visual evidence increases understanding of the population who created it, the religious commitments they asserted, and the comparatively moderate forms of piety they set forth as meritorious alternatives to the ascetic ideal. In their visual rhetoric, these artifacts and images comprise additional voices in Late Antique conversations about idealized ways of Christian life, and ultimately provide a fuller picture of the early Christian world. Plentifully illustrated with photographs and drawings, this volume provides readers access to primary material evidence. Such evidence, like textual sources, require critical interpretation; this study sets forth a careful methodology for iconographic analysis and applies it to identify the potential intentions of patrons and artists and the perceptions of viewers. It compares iconography to literary sources and ritual practices as part of the interpretive process, clarifying the ways images had a rhetorical edge and contributed to larger conversations. Accessibly written, The Visual Rhetoric of the Married Laity in Late Antiquity is of interest to students and scholars working on Late Antiquity, early Christian and late Roman social history, marriage and celibacy in early Christianity, and early Christian, Roman, and Byzantine art.
Download or read book From Martyr to Mystic written by Raʻanan S. Boustan and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2005 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study provides a critical analysis of Nurcholish Madjid's attempt to interpret Islam within the framework of modern Indonesia. Special attention is paid to his ideas and activities during the years leading to the 1998 downfall of President Soeharto, and the development towards democracy that followed. Although many of these ideas have been embraced by significant sectors of official Indonesia, they have also received harsh criticism from the representatives of more conservative interpretations of Islam and, more recently, from secular Muslims as well."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Housing in Late Antiquity written by Luke Lavan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers, arising from the conference series Late Antique Archaeology, examines the housing in the late antique period, through thematic and regional syntheses, complemented by cases studies and two bibliographic essays.
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 Empsychoi Logoi Religious Innovations in Antiquity written by Alberdina Houtman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-11-30 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fact that religions show internal variation and develop over time is not only a problem for believers, but has also long engaged scholars. This is especially true for the religions of the ancient world, where the mere idea of innovation in religious matters evoked notions of revolution and destruction. With the emergence of new religious identities from the first century onwards, we begin to find traces of an entirely new vision of religion. The question was not whether a particular belief was new, but whether it was true and the two were no longer felt to be mutually exclusive. The present volume brings together articles that study this transformation, ranging from broad overviews to detailed case-studies.
Download or read book Greek Literature in Late Antiquity written by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late Antiquity has attracted a significant amount of attention in recent years. As a historical period it has thus far been defined by the transformation of Roman institutions, the emergence of distinct religious cultures (Jewish, Christian, Islamic), and the transmission of ancient knowledge to medieval and early modern Europe. Despite all this, the study of late antique literary culture is still in its infancy, especially for the Greek and other eastern texts examined in this volume. The contributions here presented make new inroads into a rich literature notable above all for its flexibility and unparalleled creativity in combining multiple languages and literary traditions. The authors and texts discussed include Philostratus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Nonnos of Panopolis, the important St Polyeuktos epigram, and numerous others. The volume makes use of a variety of interdisciplinary approaches in an attempt to provoke discussion on change (Dynamism), literary education (Didacticism), and reception studies (Classicism). The result is a study which highlights the erudition and literary sophistication characteristic of the period and brings questions of contextualization, linguistic association, and artistic imagination to bear on little-known or undervalued texts, without neglecting important evidence from material culture and social practices. With contributions by both established scholars and young innovators in the field of late antique studies, there is no work of comparable authority or scope currently available. This volume will stimulate further interest in a range of untapped texts from Late Antiquity.
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.
