Job and his Wife as Exemplary Figures in the Preaching of John Chrysostom

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-515
Author(s):  
Douglas Finn
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Marital Relationships ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Domestic Activity ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Biblical Figures

Abstract This article surveys John Chrysostom’s preaching on the biblical figures of Job and his wife. Chrysostom’s exegesis is situated into two contexts: (1) his related interpretation of Adam and Eve in Genesis, and (2) his theology of adaptable divine pedagogy and practice of medico-philosophical psychagogy. This twofold contextualization enables us to see how Chrysostom deploys these figures in his preaching as a means of re-ordering gendered marital relationships within the late antique Christian household and cultivating an attentiveness to the methods of divine pedagogy. In the final section of the essay, we highlight two spheres of domestic activity in particular—mealtime and grieving—over which Chrysostom seeks to gain control through the ritualized internalization of the examples of Job and his wife.

The Power of the Cross and Cruciform Devices in the Carolingian World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Early Byzantine

This chapter shows the unquestionable role of the sign of the cross as the primary sign of divine authority in Carolingian material and manuscript culture, a role partly achieved at the expense of the diminishing symbolic importance of the late antique christograms. It also analyses the appearance of new cruciform devices in the ninth century as well as the adaptation of the early Byzantine tradition of cruciform invocational monograms in Carolingian manuscript culture, as exemplified in the Bible of San Paolo fuori le mura and several other religious manuscripts. The final section examines some Carolingian carmina figurata and, most importantly, Hrabanus Maurus’ In honorem sanctae crucis, as a window into Carolingian graphicacy and the paramount importance of the sign of the cross as its ultimate organizing principle.

Mime and the Dangers of Laughter in Late Antiquity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Webb
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
John Chrysostom

This chapter asks why joking and laughter were perceived as so dangerous and problematic by early Christians. Condemnations of laughter in the sermons of John Chrysostom refer to Paul’s rejections of eutrapelia (wittiness) in his Letter to the Ephesians and seek to create an association with Late Antique stage practices, particularly the comic performances of the mimes. In so doing, Chrysostom plays on widespread social prejudices against the mime. He also activates the root meaning of eutrapelia or ‘versatility’, thus identifying it firmly with theatrical role play. One result of this move, however, is to highlight a particular aspect of humour and its effects: much humour, including that of the mimes, demands a degree of intellectual versatility, the ability to see situations and practices from a different perspective and it may be precisely this that underlies the ban on laughter and wittiness pronounced by Paul and taken up by Chrysostom and others

scholarly journals Late Antiquity and World History

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
World History ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Local Perspectives ◽  
Evolutionary Interpretation

The flourishing of late-antique studies in the last half-century has coincided with the rise of “world history” as an area of academic research. To an extent, some overlap has occurred, particularly with Sasanian Persia being considered alongside the late Roman Empire as constituting an essential component in what we think of in terms of the “shape” of late antiquity. Yet it is still the case that many approaches to late antiquity are bound up with conventional western narratives of historical progress, as defined in Jack Goody's The Theft of History (2006). Indeed, the debate about whether late antiquity was an age of dynamic transformation (as argued by Peter Brown and his disciples) or one of catastrophic disruption (as asserted, most recently, by Bryan Ward-Perkins) can be regarded as representing two different faces of an essentially evolutionary interpretation of western historical development. This article argues, however, that we can challenge such conventional narrative frameworks by taking a world historical perspective on late antiquity. It shows, first, that our interpretation of late antiquity depends on sources that themselves are representative of myriad local perspectives. Secondly, it argues that since Gibbon's time these sources have been made to serve an essentially western construct of and debate about history. The final section considers how taking a more global perspective allows us to challenge conventional approaches to and narratives of late antiquity.

scholarly journals Statue habit and statue culture in Late Antique Rome

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract The statue habit was a defining characteristic of Classical cities, and its demise in Late Antiquity has recently attracted scholarly attention. This article analyzes this process in the city of Rome, charting the decline and abandonment of the practice of setting up free-standing statues between the end of the 3rd c. and the mid 7th c. CE. Focusing on the epigraphic evidence for new dedications, it discusses the nature of the habit in terms of its differences from and continuities with earlier periods. The quantitative evolution of the habit suggests that its end was associated with deeper transformations. The final section examines the broader significance of setting up statues in Late Antique Rome, arguing that the decline of the statue habit must be understood in the context of a new statue culture that saw statue dedications in an antiquarian light, rather than as part of an organic honorific language.

Wisdom in Dialogue with Greek Civilization

2021 ◽  
pp. 154-172
Author(s):  
Michael C. Legaspi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Greek Thought ◽  
Greek Civilization

This article surveys attempts to explore the relation of the so-called Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible—the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes—to figures and texts within Greek civilization. “Classical” and “biblical” texts have furnished a two-sided wisdom discourse within Western culture throughout the late antique, medieval, and early modern periods. Nevertheless, focused, comparative examinations of Wisdom texts in the two streams of tradition have not featured prominently in modern critical treatments of Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. This article provides a brief review of essential backgrounds: the old dialectic between “Athens” and “Jerusalem” as well as modern attempts to distinguish “Hebrew thought” from “Greek thought.” The final section of the article turns to more recent examinations of specific parallels between the book of Ecclesiastes and Greek skepticism, the book of Job and Greek tragedy, and the book of Proverbs and virtue ethics.

Biblical-Qur’anic Figures

2019 ◽  
pp. 379-418
Author(s):  
Angelika Neuwirth
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Biblical Figures

In this chapter, a detailed depiction is offered of the development of specific biblical figures and narratives in the Qur’an. Each figure reflects the Qur’anic reframing of the role of prophecy in general and the biblical figuration of prophecy and Prophets in specific. The depictions of these figures are set against the background of their evidence in the preceding Late Antique religious and literary traditions, including Alexander legends, Christian homilies, and the Jewish accounts of Josephus.

Making Law and Recording It: Part I

John Selden ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 159-193
Author(s):  
Jason P. Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
English Poet ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Westminster Assembly

This chapter analyzes Selden’s contribution to the struggle to define the reach of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the mid-1640s, as Presbyterians in the Westminster Assembly of Divines fought to have the power to exclude the “ignorant” and “scandalous” from communion. For Selden, the issue of excommunication turned—as it had in his handling of the topic of an ecclesiastical right to tithes—on the question of whether the clergy’s authority was God-given or man-made. The final section of the chapter suggests that Milton’s position on excommunication can only be indirectly inferred from his writings—in particular from his poem “On the New Forcers of Conscience,” which explicitly attacks the Assembly on plurality and the grouping of English churches in classes. Selden acknowledged that the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise might be construed as an “excommunication,” a cursing or anathemata. But Milton, who would become the great English poet of exile, failed to take the imaginative leap that would connect exile with excommunication.

scholarly journals Análisis de la evolución constructiva de las estructuras excavadas en el yacimiento de A Cidadela (Sobrado dos Monxes, A Coruña) y propuestas interpretativas sobre sus "fases tardoantiguas"

2015 ◽  
pp. 69-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebeca Blanco-Rotea ◽  
José Manuel Costa García ◽  
José Carlos Sánchez Pardo
Keyword(s):  
Sequence Analysis ◽  
Global Assessment ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Marie Curie ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
First Time

Se presentan los resultados del estudio llevado a cabo en el yacimiento de A Cidadela (Sobrado dos Monxes, A Coruña) en el marco del proyecto Marie Curie Early Medieval Churches: History, Archaeology and Heritage (EMCHAHE). Este yacimiento comprende los restos de un recinto militar romano de los siglos II-III d.C. y sucesivas ocupaciones de épocas tardoantigua y altomedieval, todavía poco conocidas. El estudio presentado se basa en un enfoque interdisciplinar que combina por primera vez una revisión de todo el material generado a partir de las distintas excavaciones arqueológicas pre-estratigráficas y estratigráficas llevadas a cabo en el yacimiento, con la lectura estratigráfica de paramentos. En esta revisión se ha hecho especial hincapié en la reocupación del fuerte en época tardoantigua y especialmente en una serie de estructuras identificadas como posible iglesia. Pese a que se trata de resultados preliminares, los datos obtenidos permiten hablar de una fase de reocupación mucho más importante en todo este recinto de lo pensado hasta el momento. En base a estos resultados, se realiza una valoración del papel de este yacimiento en el contexto del conocimiento actual sobre la Tardoantigüedad en Galicia. Constructive sequence analysis of the excavated structures of A Cidadela site (Sobrado dos Monxes, A Coruña) and interpretative proposals on its "late antique phases" - This paper presents the research carried out at the archaeological site of A Cidadela (Sobrado dos Monxes, A Coruña) in the framework of the Marie Curie Early Medieval Churches: History, Archaeology and Heritage (EMCHAHE) project. This site, excavated through several campaigns since 1934 comprises the remains of a Roman Camp of the 2nd-3rd centuries AD as well as a series of further late antique and early medieval reoccu-pations. The study is based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines a review, for the first time, of all the excavations at the site with the stratigraphical analyisis of the standing walls. Special emphasis has been placed on the late antique phases and, mainly, on some structures interpreted as a possible church. Although these are preliminary results, the data already available indicates a more intense reoccupation of the whole site in this period than traditionally considered. Basing on these results, a global assessment of the role of this site in the context of Late Antique Galicia is presented in the final section.

Socratic Dialogue or Courtroom Debate? Judicial Rhetoric and Stasis Theory in the Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Demetrios Katos
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
Socratic Dialogue ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
Judicial Rhetoric

AbstractThe Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom (written c. 407/8) has long puzzled modern readers on account of its choice of the dialogue form and its bewildering organization. Its attribution to Palladius of Helenopolis (c. 363-430) has often been contested, too. This article proposes that the dialogue form was chosen to convey the spirit of advocacy that lies at the heart of this composition, and then demonstrates that various compositional decisions can be explained by principles of judicial rhetoric and late antique stasis (issue) theory, particularly those of Hermogenes of Tarsus (c. 160-230) whose rhetorical handbook had become important by the fourth and fifth centuries in rhetorical training. These elements suggest that the author of the Dialogue was well trained in judicial rhetoric and that he composed this work primarily to make a case for John's restoration to the diptychs as bishop, rather than as a biographical or historical record as previously assumed. The influence of stasis theory in this composition also confirms the continued importance of judicial rhetoric in the late empire and bolsters the case for the authorship of Palladius, who had been commissioned by John to investigate charges raised against Antoninus of Ephesus and by Innocent of Rome to petition Arcadius for John's restoration.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document