The Song of Songs and the Testament of Solomon: Solomon's Love Poetry and Christian Magic

2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Rainbow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Love Poetry ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
The Middle Ages

A widespread early Christian tradition regarded Solomon as the great exorcist and magician of antiquity, the forerunner of the exorcistic activity of Jesus, and the genius of later Christian magic and divination. In time, this tradition (henceforth the “Solomon magus” tradition) would become increasingly syncretistic and would yield the numerous grimoires and claviculae of the Middle Ages, but in the early centuries of Christianity, the tradition produced texts which were more or less haggadic, that is, engaged in the exegesis of canonical materials and rooted in earlier Jewish interpretive traditions. Modern students of the documents of this tradition have long perceived its debt to the Old Testament, particularly to the portrait of Solomon in 1 Kgs 5:9–14 (4:29–34), a text which both traditional Christian and modern critical interpreters have subsequently explained in nonmagical terms. While Solomon's magical identity is widely recognized to be inspired by the biblical description of his greatness, little is known about how readers in the Solomon magus tradition interpreted the canonical books of traditional Solomonic authorship—the Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon.

scholarly journals Sophia's theme in world and national spirituality

2004 ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
Yevgen A. Harkovschenko
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Sophia tradition was formed in European philosophical and religious creativity and was developed in the pre-Christian period by Plato. Then it was reflected in Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, the writings of prominent theorists of Christianity - fathers and teachers of the church, mystics of the Middle Ages. This tradition was reflected in the temple architecture and iconography of the Orthodox East, and took a systematic form of the doctrine of sophiology in the "philosophy of unity." The doctrine of Sophia the Wisdom of God is set forth in the biblical book of the parables of the Solomons, as well as in the non-canonical books of the Old Testament - the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach. In Ukraine, Sofia teaching has been known since medieval times and was a feature of Kyiv Christianity.

V. Leges fundamentales: Gesetze, die gleicher sind als andere? Vom Inhalt zum Begriff

2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-254
Author(s):  
Mathias Schmoeckel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract Leges fundamentals: Laws Higher than Others? Their Development from the Concept to the Term. This article investigates the tradition of laws with a higher, central authority, which can be found in the Christian tradition from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, when the Calvinist party finally coined the term “loi fondamentale”. The contrast to other national discussions shows the different starting points and contents of a notion, which rapidly became a common European heritage and merged with the equally new concept of “constitution”.

The Horn of the Unicorn

Antiquity ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 27 (105) ◽  
pp. 15-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Humphrey Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Middle Ages

Though everyone now agrees that the unicorn never existed, this unanimity is quite recent. All through the 19th century there were periodic reports of its presence in darkest Africa or on the Asiatic steppes, and hopes that it would turn out to be a reality died hard. But if there never was such a creature why did the men of the Middle Ages believe in it so firmly and depict it so often? As Christians it was incumbent on them to do so, for it was mentioned in the Old Testament and, therefore, must be real. Its presence there was due to the authors of the Septuagint, the Hellenised Jews who, at Alexandria, in the centuries between the city's foundation and the Christian era, translated their sacred books from Hebrew into Greek and on seven occasions used the word μονόκερως (Greek for unicorn).

scholarly journals Несколько замечаний о необычной славянской редакции "Видения апостола Павла" из рукописных cобраний в Польше

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 193-207
Author(s):  
Ян Страдомский ◽  
Мария Иванова
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Unique Feature ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Middle Ages

The apocryphal Apocalypse of St. Paul the Apostlebelongs to the group of early-Christian texts which exerted significant impact on people’s perceptionof the nether world and the Last Judgment. In the Middle Ages, the text was known in the area ofwestern and eastern Christian literary tradition. Numerous translations also include the renditionof the Apocalypse of St. Paul the Apostle into Church Slavonic, made in Bulgaria between the 10thand the 11th century, whose presence and distribution in the area of southern Slavdom and Rutheniais confirmed by copies of manuscripts. The article is devoted to a manuscript of the Apocalypse ofSt. Paul the Apostle hitherto overlooked in studies, whose unique form supplements and makes theSlavic textual tradition of the manuscript more comprehensible. The unique feature of the discussedcopy is supplementation of the text with an ending, present only in the ancient Syrian and Coptictranslations of the apocryphal text.

A Reading of Robert De Boron

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 499-507
Author(s):  
Mary E. Giffin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Arthurian Literature ◽  
Robert De Boron ◽  
The Middle Ages

In writing the chapter on “The Work of Robert de Boron and the Didot Perceval” for Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Pierre Le Gentil shows that many questions remain unanswered for readers of the Metrical Joseph. Beyond the statements which we understand as the poet's—that at the time when he told the story of the graal he was with his lord Gautier de Montbéliard in peace, that no one had yet told the story, and that he intends to continue with stories of Alain, Petrus, Moyses, and Bron—we have been guided in our reading largely by conjecture. From the fragment of the Merlin which follows the Metrical Joseph in MS. fr. 20047 of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, we can see that the poet places the two works within the concept of the struggle between Christ and Satan for the soul of man. Several of his sources have been pointed out; but beyond a few conclusions from the text itself, a reader wonders at the strange combination of Christian tradition and Celtic legend which Robert de Boron has effected in these two works. Discussions have been complicated by manuscripts of works related in various ways to the poems of MS. fr. 20047, and by the proliferation of stories of the Grail following Robert de Boron's Christianization of Celtic stories which had been circulating for about a hundred years before his time.

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