scholarly journals Embracing Icons: The Face of Jacob on the Throne of God

Images ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Neis

AbstractRachel Neis' article treats Hekhalot Rabbati, a collection of early Jewish mystical traditions, and more specifically §§ 152–169, a series of Qedusha hymns. These hymns are liturgical performances, the highlight of which is God's passionate embrace of the Jacob icon on his throne as triggered by Israel's utterance of the Qedusha. §§ 152–169 also set forth an ocular choreography such that the gazes of Israel and God are exchanged during the recitation of the Qedusha. The article set these traditions within the history of similar Jewish traditions preserved in Rabbinic literature. It will be argued that §§ 152–169 date to the early Byzantine period, reflecting a Jewish interest in images of the sacred parallel to the contemporaneous Christian intensification of the cult of images and preoccupation with the nature of religious images.

Starinar ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 277-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Zivic

The excavations of the trial trenches extra muros Romuliana, in the 2005-2007 period, were carried out in cooperation with the DAI RGK (R?misch-Germanische Kommission des Deutches Arh?ologische Instituts), in order to verify the results of a previously conducted geophysical survey. Although the number of finds obtained from the eight test-pits (05/1, 05/2, 06/1, 06/2, 07/1, 07/2 07/3 and 07/4), that had been explored during four campaigns, was not big among them we can still find artifacts of great importance for studying the history of Romuliana, relating to the Late Classical and Early Byzantine period, from the end of the III up to the end of the VI century A.D. We point out finds of cruciform, gold fibula, coming from the tomb explored in the year 2005, and a gilded specimen with imperial portraits, from grave 6 explored in 2006. Finds of early Byzantine bronze fibulae, with a reversed back foot, are also of some importance, as well as glass vessels and a large number of iron tools. The finds in the catalogue are listed according to the explored units.


Author(s):  
Alexander I. Aibabin

From the large-scale archaeological researches of individual urban centres located on the Inner Mountain Ridge of the Crimea, atop of the plateaus of Mangup, Eski-Kermen, and Bakla, there are enough reasons to identify and reconstruct the Early Byzantine and Khazar Periods in the evolution of these towns. The analysis of written sources and materials of archaeological excavations allows the one to substantiate the chronology of the two initial periods in the history of the evolution of the towns located on the Inner Mountain Ridge as: 1 – Early Byzantine, from 582 AD to the early eighth century; 2 – Khazar, from the early eighth century to 841 AD. In the early sixth century, there was the only oppidum or civitatium Dory known in the region in question. Obviously, its fortifications were built by the Goths living atop of the plateau of Mangup from the mid-third century on. In the Early Byzantine Period, in the late sixth century, when the region of Dory was incorporated into the Empire’s borderland province, military engineers realised the state-sponsored program and constructed fortifications and a church in the castle (κάστρον) of Δόροϛ and fortified towns of various types (πόλισμα) atop of the mountains of Eski-Kermen and Bakla. Although the engineers immediately planned and constructed fortifications, access roads, gates, sally ports, a church, streets, and other objects on a greater part of the uninhabited plateau of Eski-Kermen, only the citadel was built on the already inhabited terrace of the plateau of Bakla. In the Khazar Period, Δόροϛ kept the status of the capital of Gothia and the bishop’s see. At Eski-Kermen there probably was an archon supervising the building of the town according to a single plan, while at Bakla there appeared suburban area covered by residential houses. The archontes of the towns located atop of Eski-Kermen and Bakla were civil and church governors of the klimata, just as their predecessors had done earlier.


2021 ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Rebecca W. Corrie

Perhaps no form of visual culture is more closely associated with the history and religious life of the Byzantine Empire than the painted icon. Known from the Early Byzantine period in encaustic images, its theological and liturgical functions are usually understood in light of theory that emerged in the wake of the Iconoclastic Controversy. As the imprinting of sacred form on matter, icons provide access to the sacred. Although often characterized as static and unchanging, they were produced in a variety of media, and over time new formats and new image types appeared. Recent discussions of Byzantine icons have successfully employed anthropological theory. Continued investigation of the reception of icons beyond the empire’s borders will similarly illuminate the history of their meaning and form.


2013 ◽  
pp. 75-111
Author(s):  
Marko Draskovic

Supported by broader sighting at economic, social and other vital historic structures of Sardis in Early byzantine period, partly by digressions at relevant singularities of the contemporary urban order itself, the paper tries to suggest a new interpretation of economic and other circumstances which in 459. led to signing an agreement between ekdikos and builders of Sardis.


Author(s):  
Nikolaу Alekseienko

Introduction. Written sources and epigraphic monuments reflecting the history of Early Byzantine Cherson keep a few isolated accounts of some representatives of a large imperial administrative apparatus, which certainly existed in the city from the late 5th to the 8th century (komes, bikarios, doux, and archon). Methods. Sigillographic monuments supply some extra information of the stratum of local officials in the period under consideration. The set of seals of Chersonites and their addressees from the early Byzantine period allows to uncover a variety of correspondents from military and civil departments (magistros, stratelates, droungarios, kommerkiarios, notarios, magistrianos, arkarios, hermeneutes, and others). In my point of view, these sources indicate parallel local officials who worked in Cherson and its environs, show that the city established appropriate bureaucratic offices, and inform of its rather high status as an important strategic, administrative, and economic stronghold. Analysis. Today it is possible to enlarge this group with several new seals from the 6th to the 8th century, partially originating from the vicinity of Cherson. There are molybdoboulla of asekretis, referendarios, chartoularios, genikos kommerkiarios, komes and senator – illoustrios. Results. This way, the early Byzantine seals of Cherson and its neighbourhood supply reasons to consider that, from the 6th to the 8th century, this provincial centre got a number of various magistracies to control different aspects of the city life, from common records management to land register, foreign trade, and diplomatic missions sent by the basileus.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Sandford

This article begins by outlining contemporary anti-work politics, which form the basis of Sandford’s reading. After providing a brief history of anti-work politics, Sandford examines recent scholarly treatments of Jesus’ relationship to work. An examination of a number of texts across the gospel traditions leads Sandford to argue that Jesus can be read as a ‘luxury communist’ whose behaviour flies in the face of the Protestant work ethic. Ultimately, Sandford foregrounds those texts in which Jesus discourages his followers from working, and undermines work as an ‘end in itself’, contextualising these statements in relation to other gospel texts about asceticism and the redistribution of wealth.


Author(s):  
S. V. Ushakov

Hundreds of scientific works are devoted to the study of the Tauric Chersonesus, but the problem of chronology and periodization of its ancient history is not sufficiently developed in historiography. Analysis of scientific literature and a number of sources concerning this subject allows to define the chronological framework and to reveal 10 stages of the history of ancient Chersonesos (as a preliminary definition). The early stage, the Foundation and formation of the Polis, is defined from the middle/last third of the VI century (or the first half of the V century BC) to the end of the V century BC. The end of the late-Antique − early-Byzantine (transitional) time in Chersonesos can be attributed to the second half of the VI – first third of the VII centuries ad).


Author(s):  
Chris Forster

Modernist literature is inextricable from the history of obscenity. The trials of such figures as James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Radclyffe Hall loom large in accounts of twentieth-century literature. Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity reveals the ways that debates about obscenity and literature were shaped by changes in the history of media. The emergence of film, photography, and new printing technologies shaped how “literary value” was understood, altering how obscenity was defined and which texts were considered obscene. Filthy Material rereads the history of modernist obscenity to discover the role played by technological media in debates about obscenity. The shift from the intense censorship of the early twentieth century to the effective “end of obscenity” for literature at the middle of the century was not simply a product of cultural liberalization but also of a changing media ecology. Filthy Material brings together media theory and archival research to offer a fresh account of modernist obscenity with novel readings of works of modernist literature. It sheds new light on figures at the center of modernism’s obscenity trials (such as Joyce and Lawrence), demonstrates the relevance of the discourse of obscenity to understanding figures not typically associated with obscenity debates (such as T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis), and introduces new figures to our account of modernism (such as Norah James and Jack Kahane). It reveals how modernist obscenity reflected a contest over the literary in the face of new media technologies.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Knust

The pericope adulterae (John 7:53–8:11) is often interpreted as an inherently feminist story, one that validates women’s humanity in the face of a patriarchal order determined to reduce sexual sinners and women more generally to the status of object. Reading this story within a framework of queer narratology, however, leads to a different point of view, one that challenges the consequences of seeking rescue from a god and a text that are both quite willing to forge male homosocial bonds at a woman’s expense. As the history of this story also shows, texts and their meanings remain unsettled and therefore open to further unpredictable and contingent elaboration. Pondering my own feminist commitments, I attempt to imagine a world and a story where a woman is a person and Jesus is in need of rescue. Perhaps such a world is possible. Or perhaps it is not.


Author(s):  
Elisabeth van Houts

This book contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe c. 900–1300. The focus will be on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage. The book consists of three parts: the first part (Getting Married) is devoted to the process of getting married and wedding celebrations, the second part (Married Life) discusses the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage, while the third part (Alternative Living) explores concubinage and polygyny as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions. Four main themes are central to the book. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member’s freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.


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