Download or read book Greek Wisdom Literature and the Middle Ages written by Francisco Rodríguez Adrados and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 13th-century Toledo, King Alfonso the Wise fostered the publication of Castilian translations of certain Arabic works that had in turn been translated from Greek and Pehlvi. In this book, which is the revised English version of the Spanish original published under the title of Modelos griegos de la sabiduría castellana y europea, the author studies four of these Castilian translations - the Libro de los Buenos Proverbios, Poridad de las Poridades or Secreto de secretos, Bocados de Oro and Historia de la Donzella Teodor - works of sapiential literature that had an enormous influence in all of Europe. Their Arabic models had been translated from Greek in Bagdad at the instigation of the great caliphs of the 9th century and also in the Fatamid court at Cairo in the 11th century. The traditional view is that this literature is simply of oriental origin, but the author believes that the models were Greek Byzantine works discovered by the Arabs in Syria and Egypt in the 7th and 8th centuries. Their true origin is to be found in the Greek sapiential literature that developed around the figures of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Alexander in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine schools of philosophy; its influence can frequently be found reflected in authors of Christian literature. A detailed study of themes, vocabulary and expressions in the works themselves confirms these origins.
Download or read book The Greek Search for Wisdom written by Michael K. Kellogg and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said that all of Western philosophy was "but a series of footnotes to Plato." By the same token, one could argue that all of Western civilization is but an extension of the ancient Greek cultural legacy. The Greeks invented tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, philosophy, and democracy. They also made remarkable advances in science, medicine, and mathematics. In the author’s view, what ties this wide-ranging intellectual ferment together is a restless search for wisdom. The author looks at ten outstanding examples of Greek wisdom, offering fresh and engaging portraits of the epic poets (Homer, Hesiod); dramatists (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes); historians (Herodotus, Thucydides); and philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) against the background of Greek history. In each case he asks what the author has to tell us— regardless of genre—about our place in the world and how we should live our lives. By surveying some of the highest peaks of ancient civilization, the author argues that we gain perspective on the historical terrain that lies below. This book presents an eloquent and convincing case that a study of the Greek classics, as Gustave Flaubert explained, makes us "greater, wiser, purer."
Download or read book The Legend of the Middle Ages written by Rémi Brague and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a penetrating interview and sixteen essays that explore key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, RémiBrague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions for the philosophical problems they all faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others’ ideas with skepticism, if not disdain. Brague’s portrayal of this misunderstood age brings to life not only its philosophical and theological nuances, but also lessons for our own time.
Download or read book Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians written by Chris R. Armstrong and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and the faith was only later recovered by the sixteenth-century Reformers or even the eighteenth-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants. Church historian Chris Armstrong helps readers see beyond modern caricatures of the medieval church to the animating Christian spirit of that age. He believes today's church could learn a number of lessons from medieval faith, such as how the gospel speaks to ordinary, embodied human life in this world. Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians explores key ideas, figures, and movements from the Middle Ages in conversation with C. S. Lewis and other thinkers, helping contemporary Christians discover authentic faith and renewal in a forgotten age.
Download or read book The Wisdom of the Middle Ages written by Michael K. Kellogg and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An overview and appreciation of medieval literature for lay readers that takes account of major intellectual trends, various genres, and key historical figures of the period."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages written by Stephen Gersh and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays delineates the history of the rather disparate intellectual tradition usually labeled as "Platonic" or "Neoplatonic". In chronological order, the book covers the most eminent philosophic schools of thought within that tradition. The most important terms of the Platonic tradition are studied together with a discussion of their semantic implications, the philosophical and theological claims associated with the terms, the sources that furnish the terms, and the intellectual traditions aligned with or opposed to them. The contributors thereby provide a vivid intellectual map of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Contributions are written in English or German.
Download or read book Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World written by Sara De Martin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book moves beyond the debate on ‘wisdom literature’, ongoing in biblical studies, to demonstrate the productivity of ‘wisdom’ as a literary category. Featuring work by scholars of Egyptology, classics, biblical and Near Eastern studies, it offers fresh perspectives on what makes a text ‘wisdom’. This interdisciplinary volume widens the scope of the investigation into ‘wisdom literature’, chronologically, geographically, and methodologically. Readers are given insights into how the label ‘wisdom’ contributes to our understanding of diverse literary forms across time periods and cultural contexts. In the volume’s introduction, the editors consider ‘wisdom’ as a ‘discourse’, shifting the focus from the debate on whether ‘wisdom literature’ is a genre to the properties of the texts, namely exploring what makes a text ‘wisdom’. This offers a methodological backdrop against which the diverse approaches of the single authors productively coexist, showing how different methodologies can be integrated to reframe our conceptions of ancient literary genres. The chapters in this volume examine texts that are the products of different ancient cultures, with several of them bridging diverse cultural, social, and chronological contexts. By sampling how different methodologies interact both within individual interpretative efforts and in wider attempts to understand cross-cultural literary phenomena, this volume also contributes new perspectives to the scholarship on ancient literary genres. Wisdom Discourse in the Ancient World will interest both students and scholars of the ancient Near East, Egyptology, classical studies, biblical studies, and theology and religious studies, particularly those working on wisdom literature in antiquity. It will also appeal to readers with an interest in comparative approaches and genre studies more broadly.
Download or read book Curing Mad Truths written by Rémi Brague and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his first book composed in English, Rémi Brague maintains that there is a fundamental problem with modernity: we no longer consider the created world and humanity as intrinsically valuable. Curing Mad Truths, based on a number of Brague's lectures to English-speaking audiences, explores the idea that humanity must return to the Middle Ages. Not the Middle Ages of purported backwardness and barbarism, but rather a Middle Ages that understood creation—including human beings—as the product of an intelligent and benevolent God. The positive developments that have come about due to the modern project, be they health, knowledge, freedom, or peace, are not grounded in a rational project because human existence itself is no longer the good that it once was. Brague turns to our intellectual forebears of the medieval world to present a reasoned argument as to why humanity and civilizations are goods worth promoting and preserving. Curing Mad Truths will be of interest to a learned audience of philosophers, historians, and medievalists.
Download or read book A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages written by David Zuwiyya and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on decades of research on Alexander literature from all over the world, this book is bound to become a medievalist's best companion. It studies Alexander romances from the East and the West in literary form and content.
Download or read book The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism written by Daniele Pevarello and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniele Pevarello analyzes the Sentences of Sextus, a second century collection of Greek aphorisms compiled by Sextus, an otherwise unknown Christian author. The specific character of Sextus' collection lies in the fact that the Sentences are a Christian rewriting of Hellenistic sayings, some of which are still preserved in pagan gnomologies and in Porphyry. Pevarello investigates the problem of continuity and discontinuity between the ascetic tendencies of the Christian compiler and aphorisms promoting self-control in his pagan sources. In particular, he shows how some aspects of the Stoic, Cynic, Platonic and Pythagorean moral traditions, such as sexual restraint, voluntary poverty, the practice of silence and of a secluded life were creatively combined with Sextus' ascetic agenda against the background of the biblical tradition. Drawing on this adoption of Hellenistic moral traditions, Pevarello shows how great a part the moral tradition of Greek paideia played in the shaping and development of self-restraint among early Christian ascetics.
Download or read book Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Noted Greeks of the Middle Ages written by John Antonakos and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Byzantine Greeks continued the spectacular ancient Greek civilization for another thousand years. Like their forefathers, they were involved in every art and science. Approximately 250 key personalities contributed greatly to Byzantine culture. This book describes the known work of these medieval personalities. There are various books that give the lives of the more famous of these medieval Greeks. There are a number of biographical dictionaries that give one-line descriptions of more of these medieval personalities. This book, though, is an attempt to describe the major points about all Medieval Greek personalities of which anything is known. It is a handy encyclopedia in which one can quickly find the salient features of any Medieval Greek personality. Each article in this book has the following order: the personality's name is stated, this is followed by his birth and death years or whatever of these can be approximated. The first sentence of the text gives the areas in which the personality was active and his birthplace if known. This is followed by a description of whatever is known about the character and life of the personality. The article concludes with the material or intellectual accomplishments of the personality.
Download or read book The Western Intellectual Tradition written by David C. Riede and published by . This book was released on 1980-12 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reading and Wisdom written by Edward D. English and published by University of Notre Dame Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Augustine's De doctrina christiana has long been recognised as a significant work for understanding the balanced interaction between classical learning and Christianity, as a handbook for spiritual development, and as a guide to the homiletic and exegetical principles of preaching and sacred scripture. More recently, the work has also been interpreted as laying the groundwork for the study of semiotics and hermeneutics. The 11 essays in this volume, which were presented at a 1991 conference held at the University of Notre Dame, address the question of whether De doctrina christiana is a classic work of the Western cultural tradition.
Download or read book Diplomacy in the Early Islamic World written by Maria Vaiou and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-13 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arab messengers played a vital role in the medieval Islamic world and its diplomatic relations with foreign powers. An innovative treatise from the 10th Century ("Rusul al-Muluk", "Messengers of Kings") is perhaps the most important account of the diplomacy of the period, and it is here translated into English for the first time. "Rusul al-Muluk" draws on examples from the Qur'an and other sources which extend from the period of al-jahiliyya to the time of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim (218-227/833-842). In the only medieval Arabic work which exists on the conduct of messengers and their qualifications, the author Ibn al-Farr rejects jihadist policies in favor of quiet diplomacy and a pragmatic outlook of constructive realpolitik. "Rusul al-Muluk" is an extraordinarily important and original contribution to our understanding of the early Islamic world and the field of International Relations and Diplomatic History.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Medieval Philosophy and Theology written by Stephen F. Brown and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-10 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition concentrates on various philosophers and theologians from the medieval Arabian, Jewish, and Christian worlds. It principally centers on authors such as Abumashar, Saadiah Gaon and Alcuin from the eighth century and follows the intellectual developments of the three traditions up to the fifteenth-century Ibn Khaldun, Hasdai Crescas and Marsilio Ficino. The spiritual journeys presuppose earlier human sources, such as the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Porphyry and various Stoic authors, the revealed teachings of the Jewish Law, the Koran and the Christian Bible. The Fathers of the Church, such as St. Augustine and Gregory the Great, provided examples of theology in their attempts to reconcile revealed truth and man’s philosophical knowledge and deserve attention as pre-medieval contributors to medieval intellectual life. Avicenna and Averroes, Maimonides and Gersonides, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, stand out in the three traditions as special medieval contributors who deserve more attention. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Medieval Philosophy and Theology contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important persons, events, and concepts that shaped medieval philosophy and theology. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about medieval philosophy and theology.
Download or read book Aristotle s Children written by Richard E. Rubenstein and published by HMH. This book was released on 2004-09-20 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true account of a turning point in medieval history that shaped the modern world, from “a superb storyteller” and the author of When Jesus Became God (Los Angeles Times). Europe was in the long slumber of the Middle Ages, the Roman Empire was in tatters, and the Greek language was all but forgotten—until a group of twelfth-century scholars rediscovered and translated the works of Aristotle. The philosopher’s ideas spread like wildfire across Europe, offering the scientific view that the natural world, including the soul of man, was a proper subject of study. The rediscovery of these ancient ideas would spark riots and heresy trials, cause major upheavals in the Catholic Church—and also set the stage for today’s rift between reason and religion. Aristotle’s Children transports us back to this pivotal moment in world history, rendering the controversies of the Middle Ages lively and accessible, and allowing us to understand the philosophical ideas that are fundamental to modern thought. “A superb storyteller who breathes new life into such fascinating figures as Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Aristotle himself.” —Los Angeles Times “Rubenstein’s lively prose, his lucid insights and his crystal-clear historical analyses make this a first-rate study in the history of ideas.” —Publishers Weekly
