Explaining Evil in Late Antiquity

Evil ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 129-154
Author(s):  
Dominic J. O’Meara
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Theologian ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius

The problem of evil was often debated in the Greco-Roman world of late antiquity. Two very influential contributors to this debate were the Christian theologian Augustine and the pagan Platonist Proclus, whose theory of evil reached the Middle Ages through a paraphrase in the Pseudo-Dionysius. Augustine and Proclus were both influenced by, and distanced themselves from, the original theory of evil developed by the pagan Platonist philosopher Plotinus in the third century AD. Plotinus identified the indeterminate background (“matter”) against which the physical world appears as the reason for the existence of physical and moral evil. Here a summary of Plotinus’s theory of evil is given, together with a discussion of the various difficulties and objections that arise, in particular in Proclus’s criticism of it.

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Reeves ◽  
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Comprehensive Collection ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

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).

Manicheism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kirwan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The West ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Problem Of Evil

Manicheism is a defunct religion, born in Mesopotamia in the third century ad and last attested in the sixteenth century in China. Its founder, Mani (c.216–76), had some familiarity with Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and aimed to supplant them all. He taught a form of dualism, influenced by earlier Gnostics: God is opposed by forces of darkness; they, not God, created human beings, who nevertheless contain particles of light which can be released by abstemious living. Two points of contrast with Catholic Christianity are particularly striking. First, in Manicheism, sinfulness is the natural state of human beings (because of their creators), and does not stem from Adam’s Fall. Second, the Manichean God did not create and does not control the forces of darkness (although he will eventually triumph); hence the problem of evil does not arise in as stark a form as it does for the all-powerful Christian God. Although Mani’s own missionary journeys took him eastwards, it was in the Roman Empire to the west that the main impact of his teaching was first felt; Augustine of Hippo was an adherent for nine years. The religion was eventually suppressed in the Roman Empire, and driven east by the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia. In the West, various Christian heresies were loosely called Manichean throughout the Middle Ages.

Nicopolis ad Istrum: Backward and Balkan?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. WHITTOW
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

The story of Nicopolis ad Istrum and its citizens exemplifies much that is common to the urban history of the whole Roman Empire. This chapter reviews the history of Nicopolis and its transition into the small fortified site of the fifth to seventh centuries and compares it with the evidence from the Near East and Asia Minor. It argues that Nicopolis may not have experienced a cataclysm as has been suggested, and that, as in the fifth and sixth century west, where landowning elites showed a striking ability to adapt and survive, there was an important element of continuity on the lower Danube, which in turn may account for the distinctive ‘Roman’ element in the early medieval Bulgar state. It also suggests that the term ‘transition to Late Antiquity’ should be applied to what happened at Nicopolis in the third century: what happened there in the fifth was the transition to the middle ages. This chapter also describes late antique urbanism in the Balkans by focusing on the Justiniana Prima site.

The History of Ancient Science: A Personal View

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Personal View ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Ancient Science ◽  
Land Mass ◽  
Third Millennium Bce ◽  
History Of

My subject is the history of science in antiquity, where the convention I adopt for “antiquity” is that it covers everything from the earliest recorded Mesopotamian investigations in the third millennium BCE down to the end of the third century CE, by which time two particularly significant upheavals had taken place at either end of the Euro-Asia land mass. I refer to the Christianization of the Greco-Roman World and the rise of Buddhism in China. That study poses a number of distinctive problems, both substantive and methodological, which I shall go on immediately to identify. At the same time it is particularly worthwhile, in my view, for the light it can throw on very early efforts at understanding the physical world. Let me give a brief preliminary explanation of my main thesis.

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.

Late Roman Precious-Metal Deposits: Worth their Weight in Gold?

Britannia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 427-430
Author(s):  
François Baratte
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Precious Metal ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Title One ◽  
Late Roman

Over recent years the question of ancient hoards, in particular of precious metal, coins, plate or jewellery, has been the subject of numerous considerations (notably S. Gelichi and C. La Rocca (eds), Tesori. Forme di accumulazione della richezza nell'alto medioevo (secoli V–XI) (Rome, 2004)) in order to try to grasp the characteristics of a complex phenomenon that relates to multiple aspects of society in whatever period is under consideration: the economy, social organisation, the possible role of the images … The difficulties encountered by researchers when addressing these problems are illustrated by the ambivalence, indeed the ambiguity in many languages of the term ‘trésor/hoard’. Richard Hobbs has thus chosen, very judiciously, to take as his subject here ‘deposits of precious metal’, which defines the topic perfectly. On the other hand, one could question the descriptor ‘late Roman’ when applied to the period covered here, five centuries, from a.d. 200 to 700. There could be discussion over whether the third century should be included in Late Antiquity; others will challenge whether the sixth century still belongs to that same world. But from the first page H. effectively corrects his title by stating that it also covers the early Byzantine period, something I would feel is a better definition. It may certainly be felt that these are just questions of nomenclature, but they do have their importance for the topic of this study. All the same, the important thing is that H. wanted to study an extended period, as stated by the book's sub-title. One cannot but approve of his choice.

Athenian Twilight: A.D. 267–600

1959 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Homer A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Case History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
The Third ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The City

The excavations that have been conducted since 1931 by the American School of Classical Studies in the Athenian Agora have illumined virtually all phases in the development of the civic centre from its modest beginnings in the time of Solon to its dramatic end in the third century of our era. The exploration has also made it possible to trace the history of habitation in the area from Neolithic times down to the present day. One of the periods for which the excavations have yielded especially abundant documentation is late antiquity, more specifically the centuries from the third through the sixth. The new evidence has led to the correction of various misapprehensions that had arisen because of the paucity of evidence previously available for the study of this period. The results are the more interesting because our detailed knowledge of what happened in the Agora now helps in understanding contemporary developments in the city as a whole. Athens in fact has become a useful ‘case history’ for the study of the actual way in which ancient civilization went to pieces in one of the best known and most characteristic communities of the ancient world.

Rome's Holy Mountain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Moralee
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Remote Past

Rome’s Capitoline Hill was the smallest of the Seven Hills of Rome. Yet in the long history of the Roman state it was the empire’s holy mountain. The hill was the setting of many of Rome’s most beloved stories, involving Aeneas, Romulus, Tarpeia, and Manlius. It also held significant monuments, including the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, a location that marked the spot where Jupiter made the hill his earthly home in the age before humanity. This book follows the history of the Capitoline Hill into late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, asking what happened to a holy mountain as the empire that deemed it thus became a Christian republic. This is not a history of the hill’s tonnage of marble- and gold-bedecked monuments but, rather, an investigation into how the hill was used, imagined, and known from the third to the seventh century CE. During this time, the triumph and other processions to the top of the hill were no longer enacted. But the hill persisted as a densely populated urban zone and continued to supply a bridge to fragmented memories of an increasingly remote past through its toponyms. This book is also about a series of Christian engagements with the Capitoline Hill’s different registers of memory, the transmission and dissection of anecdotes, and the invention of alternate understandings of the hill’s role in Roman history. What lingered long after the state’s disintegration in the fifth century were the hill’s associations with the raw power of Rome’s empire.

History, Faith, Fortuna

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

Chronologically and conceptually, this chapter links classical antiquity to the middle ages. Most of its focus is on the second to sixth centuries, and especially the overlap of ‘late antiquity’ and the ‘patristic era’, or the era of the church fathers. It addresses historical thinking in Christianity in the context of Christianity’s relationship to Greco-Roman and Jewish influences. It is a story of intellectual novelty, and of imposition, but just as much it is a tale of syncretism. Of the rationales for History identified in the introduction, the two figuring largest in this chapter are History as Speculative Philosophy and History as Identity, the latter especially in its genealogical form. Along the way in the chapter, attention is devoted to the relationship between grand conceptualizations of the overall historical process and the study of human choice and agency. That discussion illustrates similarities as well as contrasts in the way causal explanations can operate in disparate sorts of historical account, whether or not divine or quasi-divine forces are involved. The point looking forward is that at certain levels secular and non-secular Histories need not conflict.

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