Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Richard Flower ◽  
Morwenna Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Creation

This chapter provides an overview of scholarly trends and approaches to this topic and outlines the place of this volume and its individual chapters within recent developments. In doing so, it considers a number of linked issues, including what was perceived as falling within the sphere of ‘the religious’ in late antiquity; how religious identities were constructed, activated and expressed; how the notion of late-antique religious identity should be understood and classified by scholars; where ‘rhetoric’ can be located within methods of cultural expression including, but not limited to, traditional literary forms and paideia; and how these methods were employed for the creation and reshaping of concepts of religious identity.

Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
New Perspective

The topic of religious identity in late antiquity is highly contentious. How did individuals and groups come to ascribe identities based on what would now be known as ‘religion’, categorizing themselves and others with regard to Judaism, Manichaeism, traditional Greek and Roman practices, and numerous competing conceptions of Christianity? How and why did examples of self-identification become established, activated, or transformed in response to circumstances? To what extent do labels (ancient and modern) for religious categories reflect a sense of a unified and enduring social or group identity for those included within them? How does religious identity relate to other forms of ancient identity politics (for example, ethnic discourse concerning ‘barbarians’)? This book responds to the recent upsurge of interest in this issue by developing interdisciplinary research between classics, ancient and medieval history, philosophy, religion, patristics, and Byzantine studies, expanding the range of evidence standardly used to explore these questions. In exploring the malleability and potential overlapping of religious identities in late antiquity, as well as their variable expressions in response to different public and private contexts, it challenges some prominent scholarly paradigms through a combination of methodological discussions and case studies of specific texts, authors, genres, themes, and artistic corpora. In particular, rhetoric and religious identity are here brought together and simultaneously interrogated to provide mutual illumination: in what way does a better understanding of rhetoric (its rules, forms, practices) enrich our understanding of the expression of late-antique religious identity? How does an understanding of how religious identity was ascribed, constructed, and contested provide us with a new perspective on rhetoric at work in late antiquity?

‘Very great are your words’

2020 ◽  
pp. 114-127
Author(s):  
Nicholas Baker-Brian
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Sasanian Empire ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Recent Developments

This chapter evaluates the Manichaean Kephalaia-collections from the perspective of recent developments in the study of late-antique rhetoric, specifically the role and context of dialogue in ancient literature and philosophy. It pays close attention to the recently edited material from the Coptic text, The Chapters of the Wisdom of my Lord Mani, by analysing the engagements between Mani and a number of teachers associated with the court of the Sasanian monarch, Shapur I. The chapter highlights the importance of Mani’s dialogues with competitor figures from the Sasanian Empire to the development of the religious identity of Manichaeans in late-antique Persia and Egypt.

The Lex Dei and the Latin Bible

2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-441
Author(s):  
Robert Frakes
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Latin Work ◽  
Shed Light

Two striking developments in late antiquity are the growing influence of Christianity and the codification of Roman law. The first attempt to harmonize these two developments lies in the late antique Latin work known by scholars as the Lex Dei (“Law of God”) or Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum (“Collation of the Laws of Moses and of the Romans”). The anonymous collator of this short legal compendium organized his work following a fairly regular plan, dividing it into sixteen topics (traditionally called titles). Each title begins with a quotation from the Hebrew Bible (in Latin), followed by quotations of passages from Roman jurists and, occasionally, from Roman law. His apparent motive was to demonstrate the similarity between Roman law and the law of God. Scholars have differed over where the collator obtained his Latin translations of passages from the Hebrew Bible. Did he make his own translation from the Greek Septuagint or directly from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves? Did he use the famous Latin translation of Jerome or an older, pre-Jerome, Latin translation of the Bible, known by scholars as the Vetus Latina or Old Latin Bible? Re-examination of the evolution of texts of the Latin Bible and close comparison of biblical passages from the Lex Dei with other surviving Latin versions will confirm that the collator used one of the several versions of the Old Latin Bible that were in circulation in late antiquity. Such a conclusion supports the argument that the religious identity of the collator was Christian (a subject of scholarly controversy for almost a century). Moreover, analysis of the collator's use of the Bible can also shed light on his methodology in compiling his collection.

Ireland in Late Antiquity

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elva Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

It is often assumed that Ireland entered recorded history with the emergence of organized Christianity on the island at some point in the fourth or fifth century C.E. This assumption has meant that the histories of late antique and early medieval Ireland are primarily viewed through the lens of conversion. Religious identities, frequently imagined as a binary opposition of “Christian” and “pagan,” have been a dominant historiographical focus. This essay argues that it is more fruitful to examine the relationship between Ireland and its neighbors from c. 150–c. 550 C.E. through a frontier dynamic, a dynamic in which religious identity was but one factor among many. By recasting the Irish experience in this way, it is possible to take a more comparative approach which cuts against the grain of Irish exceptionalism. Moreover, situating Ireland within the scholarly discourse of late antiquity allows for a new and nuanced understanding of the social and religious changes that characterized this period on the island.

Panegyric and the Discourse of Praise in Late Antiquity

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 291-304
Author(s):  
Catherine Ware
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Epideictic Rhetoric ◽  
The Creation

Although a panegyric can be defined very simply as a speech of praise, it is no longer assumed that praise is also its sole function. What that function might be, however, continues to preoccupy scholarship. Generalisations can be made, but even a nuanced judgement such as ‘every encomium is at once a literary work, a moral problem, and a social rite’ (Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric, ix) can be challenged by the particular: ‘there is no system and there never was. There is circumstance, preference and ambiguity’. The question is further complicated by the evolution of a rhetoric of praise, related to but independent of the formal panegyric, which came to characterise the literature of Late Antiquity and beyond. The questions, therefore, of what a panegyric is and what it is for are highly relevant to modern scholarship, not only to commentaries but, as is apparent from the books under review, to studies of rhetoric, late antique historiography and the creation of the imperial image.

Late Antique Letter Collections

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Letter Collection ◽  
Latin Letter

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 C.E.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised an image of the letter writer and introduces the social and textual histories of each collection. Nearly every chapter focuses on the letter collection of a different late ancient author—from the famous (or even infamous) to the obscure—and investigates its particular issues of content, arrangement, and publication context. On the whole, the volume reveals how late antique letter collections operated as a discrete literary genre with its own conventions, transmission processes, and self-presentational agendas while offering new approaches to interpret both larger letter collections and the individual letters contained within them. Each chapter contributes to a broad argument that scholars should read letter collections as they do representatives of other late antique literary genres, as single texts made up of individual components, with larger thematic and literary characteristics that are as important as those of their component parts.

Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Münz-Manor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Contemporary View ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
The One

The article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. These relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. The significant connections of content between the different genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. Thus the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time.

Unearthing Houses in Porphyreon and Chhim. Structure, Spatial Development, and Decoration of Domestic Spaces in Late Antique Phoenicia

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Tomasz Waliszewski ◽  
Julia Burdajewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Wall Painting ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Functional Study ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Residential Architecture

Porphyreon (Jiyeh/Nebi Younis) and Chhim were large rural settlements situated on the coast of modernday Lebanon, north of the Phoenician city of Sidon. As attested by the remains of residential architecture, they were thriving during the Roman Period and late Antiquity (1st–7th centuries AD). This article presents the preliminary observations on the domestic architecture uncovered at both sites, their spatial and social structure, as well as their furnishing and decoration, based on the fieldwork carried out in recent years by the joint PolishLebanese research team. The focus will be put on the wall painting fragments found in considerable numbers in Porphyreon. The iconographical and functional study of the paintings betrays to what extent the inhabitants of rural settlements in the coastal zone of the Levant were inclined to imitate the decoration of the urban houses known to them from the nearby towns, such as Berytus, but also from religious contexts represented by churches.

Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire, ed., Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Cursor Mundi, 27, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, xviii, 392 p., 141 ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-379
Author(s):  
Kriszta Kotsis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cursor Mundi ◽  
Definition Of

Late antique and early medieval graphic signs have traditionally been studied by narrowly focused specialists leading to the fragmentation and decontextualization of this important body of material. Therefore, the volume aims “to deepen interdisciplinary research on graphic signs” (7) of the third through tenth centuries, with contributions from archaeologists, historians, art historians, a philologist, and a paleographer. Ildar Garipzanov’s introduction defines the central terms (sign, symbol, graphicacy), calls for supplanting the text-image binary with “the concept of the visual-written continuum” (15), and argues that graphicacy was central to visual communication in this period. He emphasizes the agency of graphic signs and notes that their study can amplify our understanding of the definition of personal and group identity, the articulation of power, authority, and religious affiliation, and communication with the supernatural sphere.

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
The Relationship

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions brings together thirteen scholars of late-antique, medieval, and renaissance traditions who discuss magic, religious experience, ritual, and witch-beliefs with the aim of reflecting on the relationship between man and the supernatural. The content of the volume is intriguingly diverse and includes late antique traditions covering erotic love magic, Hellenistic-Egyptian astrology, apotropaic rituals, early Christian amulets, and astrological amulets; medieval traditions focusing on the relationships between magic and disbelief, pagan magic and Christian culture, as well as witchcraft and magic in Britain, Scandinavian sympathetic graphophagy, superstition in sermon literature; and finally Renaissance traditions revolving around Agrippan magic, witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and a Biblical toponym related to the Friulan Benandanti’s visionary experiences. These varied topics reflect the multifaceted ways through which men aimed to establish relationships with the supernatural in diverse cultural traditions, and for different purposes, between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance. These ways eventually contributed to shaping the civilizations of the supernatural or those peculiar patterns which helped men look at themselves through the mirror of their own amazement of being in this world.

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