Naomi Koltun-Fromm
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199736485
- eISBN:
- 9780199866427
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199736485.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies, Religion and Society
Hermeneutics of Holiness focuses on the historical, theological, and literary trajectories of the Hebrew biblical notions of holiness from the biblical context into the fourth-century Jewish and ...
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Hermeneutics of Holiness focuses on the historical, theological, and literary trajectories of the Hebrew biblical notions of holiness from the biblical context into the fourth-century Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions. This work is particularly interested in how holy communities are formed and in what ways these individuals or communities derive their notions of holiness from the biblical texts. Moreover, this book examines how and why these notions of holy-community often intersect with ideals of sexuality, sexual practice, and asceticism. The book first examines biblical constructs of holiness but then follows these ideas along their various interpretive developments through the Second Temple Literature (Ezra, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls), early Christian literature (New Testament) and the early Syriac Christian tradition (Odes of Solomon, Acts of Judah Thomas, Aphrahat) on the one hand, and the Rabbinic literature on the other. This study ends with a comparative analysis between the Syriac Christian literature and early Rabbinic writings in order to better understand both the similarities between and the diversity of holiness and sexuality constructs, as well as biblical interpretive practices and traditions in these communities. In the end, this book argues that early Christian and Jewish notions of sexual production and sexual restraint derive from shared interpretive traditions of biblical holiness.Less
Hermeneutics of Holiness focuses on the historical, theological, and literary trajectories of the Hebrew biblical notions of holiness from the biblical context into the fourth-century Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions. This work is particularly interested in how holy communities are formed and in what ways these individuals or communities derive their notions of holiness from the biblical texts. Moreover, this book examines how and why these notions of holy-community often intersect with ideals of sexuality, sexual practice, and asceticism. The book first examines biblical constructs of holiness but then follows these ideas along their various interpretive developments through the Second Temple Literature (Ezra, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls), early Christian literature (New Testament) and the early Syriac Christian tradition (Odes of Solomon, Acts of Judah Thomas, Aphrahat) on the one hand, and the Rabbinic literature on the other. This study ends with a comparative analysis between the Syriac Christian literature and early Rabbinic writings in order to better understand both the similarities between and the diversity of holiness and sexuality constructs, as well as biblical interpretive practices and traditions in these communities. In the end, this book argues that early Christian and Jewish notions of sexual production and sexual restraint derive from shared interpretive traditions of biblical holiness.
Geoffrey S. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199386789
- eISBN:
- 9780199386802
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199386789.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter revisits a topic that has received much attention in scholarship: Justin’s role in the emergence of the heresiological tradition. Since Justin is often thought to have authored the ...
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This chapter revisits a topic that has received much attention in scholarship: Justin’s role in the emergence of the heresiological tradition. Since Justin is often thought to have authored the earliest known heresy catalogue, the Syntagma against All the Heresies, he is credited with the “invention” of heresiology. This chapter, however, reevaluates Justin’s status as the founder of heresiology by arguing that he likely did not compose the Syntagma against All the Heresies. When he mentions the treatise in 1Apology 26, he uses the language of advertisement, not of authorship. Despite the likelihood that Justin did not compose this earliest known heresy catalogue, he nonetheless plays an important role in the early heresiological tradition by promoting the treatise and making it available to a wide audience. Justin may not be the progenitor of the Christian heresiological tradition, but he certainly lent stability to it by popularizing one particular catalogue over and above others.Less
This chapter revisits a topic that has received much attention in scholarship: Justin’s role in the emergence of the heresiological tradition. Since Justin is often thought to have authored the earliest known heresy catalogue, the Syntagma against All the Heresies, he is credited with the “invention” of heresiology. This chapter, however, reevaluates Justin’s status as the founder of heresiology by arguing that he likely did not compose the Syntagma against All the Heresies. When he mentions the treatise in 1Apology 26, he uses the language of advertisement, not of authorship. Despite the likelihood that Justin did not compose this earliest known heresy catalogue, he nonetheless plays an important role in the early heresiological tradition by promoting the treatise and making it available to a wide audience. Justin may not be the progenitor of the Christian heresiological tradition, but he certainly lent stability to it by popularizing one particular catalogue over and above others.
Juan Chapa
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199566365
- eISBN:
- 9780191740985
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566365.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter looks at the available manuscript evidence of the Fourth Gospel before the great uncial codices from the fourth century were written. It presents an overview of the sixteen papyri and a ...
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This chapter looks at the available manuscript evidence of the Fourth Gospel before the great uncial codices from the fourth century were written. It presents an overview of the sixteen papyri and a parchment of the Gospel of John, paying more attention to the two largest and most important papyri: P66 and P75. An assessment on the scribal behaviour and the quality of the text they transmit is given for these two manuscripts and for most of the others. From the extant evidence it is argued that the scribes were on the whole concerned with copying the text accurately and that most of the early manuscripts attest a rather ‘normal’ text of the ‘Alexandrian’ type.Less
This chapter looks at the available manuscript evidence of the Fourth Gospel before the great uncial codices from the fourth century were written. It presents an overview of the sixteen papyri and a parchment of the Gospel of John, paying more attention to the two largest and most important papyri: P66 and P75. An assessment on the scribal behaviour and the quality of the text they transmit is given for these two manuscripts and for most of the others. From the extant evidence it is argued that the scribes were on the whole concerned with copying the text accurately and that most of the early manuscripts attest a rather ‘normal’ text of the ‘Alexandrian’ type.
Karla Pollmann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198726487
- eISBN:
- 9780191793295
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198726487.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies, Religion and Literature
With the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, increasing numbers of educated people converted to this new belief. As Christianity did not have its own educational institutions, the issue of how ...
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With the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, increasing numbers of educated people converted to this new belief. As Christianity did not have its own educational institutions, the issue of how to harmonize pagan education and Christian convictions became increasingly pressing. Especially classical poetry, the staple diet of pagan education, was considered morally corrupting (because of its deceitful mythological content) and damaging for the salvation of the soul (because of the false gods it advocated). But Christianity recoiled from an unqualified anti-intellectual attitude, while at the same time the experiment of creating an idiosyncratic form of genuinely Christian poetry failed (the sole exception being the poet Commodianus). This book argues that, instead, Christian poets made creative use of the classical literary tradition, and—in addition to blending it with Judaeo-Christian biblical exegesis—exploited poetry’s special ability of enhancing the effectiveness of communication through aesthetic means. It seeks to explore these strategies through a close analysis of a wide range of Christian, and for comparison partly also pagan, writers mainly from the fourth to sixth centuries. The book reveals that early Christianity was not a hermetically sealed uniform body, but displays a rich spectrum of possibilities in dealing with the past and a willingness to engage with and adapt the surrounding culture(s), thereby developing diverse and changing responses to historical challenges. By demonstrating throughout that authority is a key in understanding the long denigrated and misunderstood early Christian poets, this book reaches the ground-breaking conclusion that early Christian poetry is an art form that gains its justification by adding cultural authority to Christianity. Thus, in a wider sense this book engages with the recently emerged scholarly interest in aspects of religion as cultural phenomena.Less
With the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, increasing numbers of educated people converted to this new belief. As Christianity did not have its own educational institutions, the issue of how to harmonize pagan education and Christian convictions became increasingly pressing. Especially classical poetry, the staple diet of pagan education, was considered morally corrupting (because of its deceitful mythological content) and damaging for the salvation of the soul (because of the false gods it advocated). But Christianity recoiled from an unqualified anti-intellectual attitude, while at the same time the experiment of creating an idiosyncratic form of genuinely Christian poetry failed (the sole exception being the poet Commodianus). This book argues that, instead, Christian poets made creative use of the classical literary tradition, and—in addition to blending it with Judaeo-Christian biblical exegesis—exploited poetry’s special ability of enhancing the effectiveness of communication through aesthetic means. It seeks to explore these strategies through a close analysis of a wide range of Christian, and for comparison partly also pagan, writers mainly from the fourth to sixth centuries. The book reveals that early Christianity was not a hermetically sealed uniform body, but displays a rich spectrum of possibilities in dealing with the past and a willingness to engage with and adapt the surrounding culture(s), thereby developing diverse and changing responses to historical challenges. By demonstrating throughout that authority is a key in understanding the long denigrated and misunderstood early Christian poets, this book reaches the ground-breaking conclusion that early Christian poetry is an art form that gains its justification by adding cultural authority to Christianity. Thus, in a wider sense this book engages with the recently emerged scholarly interest in aspects of religion as cultural phenomena.
Josef Lössl
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199656035
- eISBN:
- 9780191767821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656035.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World, Early Christian Studies
This essay focuses on the engagement of early Christian literature with ‘other religions’ and with the construction of a classical, pagan tradition as a cultural and religious other for the purpose ...
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This essay focuses on the engagement of early Christian literature with ‘other religions’ and with the construction of a classical, pagan tradition as a cultural and religious other for the purpose of shaping a Christian identity. The contention is that by doing so early Christian literature created and preserved, whether intentionally or not, a distinct and in the long run inextinguishable memory of a classical pagan past as an essential part of Christian identity. This has helped to bridge the gap between classical antiquity and modernity and helped Christians to claim a place among the great humanistic world traditions. Yet at the same time Christian authors seem to have struggled with this legacy and sometimes tried to suppress this memory within Christianity as un-biblical and therefore un-Christian. There has also been a tendency to use the ‘pagan past’ to suppress the Jewish legacy in the Christian tradition.Less
This essay focuses on the engagement of early Christian literature with ‘other religions’ and with the construction of a classical, pagan tradition as a cultural and religious other for the purpose of shaping a Christian identity. The contention is that by doing so early Christian literature created and preserved, whether intentionally or not, a distinct and in the long run inextinguishable memory of a classical pagan past as an essential part of Christian identity. This has helped to bridge the gap between classical antiquity and modernity and helped Christians to claim a place among the great humanistic world traditions. Yet at the same time Christian authors seem to have struggled with this legacy and sometimes tried to suppress this memory within Christianity as un-biblical and therefore un-Christian. There has also been a tendency to use the ‘pagan past’ to suppress the Jewish legacy in the Christian tradition.
Hunter H. Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198796428
- eISBN:
- 9780191837708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198796428.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The seventh chapter of this project examines the transmission of Roman plague in literary and visual arts, beginning with the early Christian period and proceeding up through the present day. Such a ...
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The seventh chapter of this project examines the transmission of Roman plague in literary and visual arts, beginning with the early Christian period and proceeding up through the present day. Such a survey is necessarily selective and meant to indicate the range of interpretive possibilities available for readers who are sensitive to the conventions developed in the hexameter treatments of Lucretius, Vergil, and Ovid. The chapter focuses on three areas of reception: early Christian poetry and prose (Endelechius’ Carmen de Mortibus Boum; Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum), visual arts of the Italian Renaissance (e.g. Raphael’s Vergilian Plague of Phrygia [1520’s]) and Anglo-American novels (e.g. Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy). The visual and literary arts discussed here crystallize the interplay between civil strife, familial discord, and epochal evolution evident in the pestilence narratives examined throughout this project. Roman conventions of representing pestilence help us understand how narratives of contagious disease up to the present day have dramatized a tension between ideals of autonomy and distinction and those that foster group cohesion and collectivity.Less
The seventh chapter of this project examines the transmission of Roman plague in literary and visual arts, beginning with the early Christian period and proceeding up through the present day. Such a survey is necessarily selective and meant to indicate the range of interpretive possibilities available for readers who are sensitive to the conventions developed in the hexameter treatments of Lucretius, Vergil, and Ovid. The chapter focuses on three areas of reception: early Christian poetry and prose (Endelechius’ Carmen de Mortibus Boum; Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum), visual arts of the Italian Renaissance (e.g. Raphael’s Vergilian Plague of Phrygia [1520’s]) and Anglo-American novels (e.g. Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam Trilogy). The visual and literary arts discussed here crystallize the interplay between civil strife, familial discord, and epochal evolution evident in the pestilence narratives examined throughout this project. Roman conventions of representing pestilence help us understand how narratives of contagious disease up to the present day have dramatized a tension between ideals of autonomy and distinction and those that foster group cohesion and collectivity.
John Reeves and Annette Yoshiko Reed
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198718413
- eISBN:
- 9780191787683
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198718413.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This book provides scholars with a comprehensive collection of core references extracted from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literature to a plethora of ancient writings associated with the name of ...
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This book provides scholars with a comprehensive collection of core references extracted from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literature to a plethora of ancient writings associated with the name of the biblical character Enoch (Gen 5:214). It assembles citations of and references to writings attributed to Enoch in non-canonical Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literary sources (ranging in age from roughly the third century BCE up through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE) into one convenient thematically arranged repository, and it classifies, compares, and briefly analyzes these references and citations to develop a clearer picture of the scope and range of what one might term “the Enochic library,” or the entire corpus of works attributed to Enoch and his subsequent cross-cultural avatars. The book consists of two parts. The present volume, Volume 1, is devoted to textual traditions about the narratological career of the character Enoch. It collects materials about the distinctive epithets frequently paired with his name, outlines his cultural achievements, articulates his societal roles, describes his interactions with the celestial world, assembles the varied traditions about his eventual fate, and surveys the various identities he is assigned outside the purely biblical world of discourse within other discursive networks and intellectual circles. It also assembles a range of testimonies which express how writings associated with Enoch were evaluated by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Volume 2, currently in preparation, will concentrate upon textual sources which arguably display a knowledge of the peculiar contents, motifs, and themes of extant Enochic literature, including but not limited to 1 Enoch (the Ethiopic Book of Enoch) and 2 Enoch (the Slavonic Book of Enoch).Less
This book provides scholars with a comprehensive collection of core references extracted from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literature to a plethora of ancient writings associated with the name of the biblical character Enoch (Gen 5:214). It assembles citations of and references to writings attributed to Enoch in non-canonical Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literary sources (ranging in age from roughly the third century BCE up through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE) into one convenient thematically arranged repository, and it classifies, compares, and briefly analyzes these references and citations to develop a clearer picture of the scope and range of what one might term “the Enochic library,” or the entire corpus of works attributed to Enoch and his subsequent cross-cultural avatars. The book consists of two parts. The present volume, Volume 1, is devoted to textual traditions about the narratological career of the character Enoch. It collects materials about the distinctive epithets frequently paired with his name, outlines his cultural achievements, articulates his societal roles, describes his interactions with the celestial world, assembles the varied traditions about his eventual fate, and surveys the various identities he is assigned outside the purely biblical world of discourse within other discursive networks and intellectual circles. It also assembles a range of testimonies which express how writings associated with Enoch were evaluated by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Volume 2, currently in preparation, will concentrate upon textual sources which arguably display a knowledge of the peculiar contents, motifs, and themes of extant Enochic literature, including but not limited to 1 Enoch (the Ethiopic Book of Enoch) and 2 Enoch (the Slavonic Book of Enoch).
Jas' Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199355631
- eISBN:
- 9780199355655
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199355631.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture. The dawn of a modern way of being in the world, one that most Europeans and Americans would ...
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The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture. The dawn of a modern way of being in the world, one that most Europeans and Americans would recognize as closely ancestral to their own, is to be found, not in the distant antiquity of Greece nor in the golden age of a Roman Empire that spanned the Mediterranean, but more fundamentally in the original and problematic fusion of Graeco-Roman culture with a new and unexpected foreign element—the arrival of Christianity as an exclusive state religion. For a host of reasons, traditionalist scholarship has failed to give a full and positive account of the formal, aesthetic, and religious transformations of ancient poetics in Late Antiquity. This book attempts to capture the excitement and vibrancy of the living ancient tradition reinventing itself in a new context in the hands of a series of great Latin writers mainly from the fourth and fifth centuries AD. A number of the most distinguished expert voices in later Latin poetry, as well as some of the most promising new scholars, have been specially commissioned to write original material for this volume.Less
The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture. The dawn of a modern way of being in the world, one that most Europeans and Americans would recognize as closely ancestral to their own, is to be found, not in the distant antiquity of Greece nor in the golden age of a Roman Empire that spanned the Mediterranean, but more fundamentally in the original and problematic fusion of Graeco-Roman culture with a new and unexpected foreign element—the arrival of Christianity as an exclusive state religion. For a host of reasons, traditionalist scholarship has failed to give a full and positive account of the formal, aesthetic, and religious transformations of ancient poetics in Late Antiquity. This book attempts to capture the excitement and vibrancy of the living ancient tradition reinventing itself in a new context in the hands of a series of great Latin writers mainly from the fourth and fifth centuries AD. A number of the most distinguished expert voices in later Latin poetry, as well as some of the most promising new scholars, have been specially commissioned to write original material for this volume.
