Christus Virgo

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Sissel Undheim
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The description of Christ as a virgin, 'Christus virgo', does occur at rare occasions in Early Christian and late antique texts. Considering that 'virgo' was a term that most commonly described the sexual and moral status of a member of the female sex, such representations of Christ as a virgin may exemplify some of the complex negotiations over gender, salvation, sanctity and Christology that we find in the writings of the Church fathers. The article provides some suggestions as to how we can understand the notion of the virgin Christ within the context of early Christian and late antique theological debates on the one hand, and in light of the growing interest in sacred virginity on the other.

Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elif Keser Kayaalp
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Church Architecture ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Frontier Region ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia examines the church architecture of Northern Mesopotamia between the fourth and eighth centuries. It focuses on settlements, plan types, artistic encounters, the remarkable continuity of the classical tradition in the architectural decoration, the heterogeneity of the building techniques, patrons, imperial motivations, dedications of churches, and stories that claim and make spaces. Employing archaeological and epigraphical material and hagiographical and historical sources, the book presents a holistic picture of the church architecture of this frontier region, encompassing the cities of Nisibis (Nusaybin), Edessa (Şanlıurfa), Amida (Diyarbakır), Anastasiopolis (Dara/Oğuz), Martyropolis (Silvan), Constantia (Viranşehir), and their surroundings, and the rural Tur Abdin region. The period covered spans the last centuries of Byzantine and the first century and a half of Arab rule, when the region was, on the one hand, a stage of war and riven by religious controversies, and a cultural interspace on the other. The book discusses the different dynamics in this frontier region and the resulting built environment and church architecture in pursuit of providing a regional contribution to the study of the transformation that the Byzantine civilization underwent in the late antique period and understanding the continuities and changes after the Arab conquest.

History, Eschatology, and the Development of the Six Ages of the World

Augustinianum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-206
Author(s):  
John Joseph Gallagher ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Church

The sex aetates mundi constituted the defining framework for understanding biblical and salvation history in the Early Christian and Late Antique worlds. The origins of the idea that history can be divided into six epochs, each lasting roughly a thousand years, are commonly attributed to Augustine of Hippo. Although Augustine’s engagement with this notion significantly influenced its later popularity due to the prolific circulation of his works, he was by no means the sole progenitor of this concept. This bipartite study undertakes the first conspectus in English-speaking scholarship to date of the origins and evolution of the sex aetates mundi. Part I of this study traces the early origins of historiographical periodisation in writings from classical and biblical antiquity, taking account in particular of the role of numerology and notions of historical eras that are present in biblical texts. Expressions of the world ages in the writings of the Church Fathers are then traced in detail. Due consideration is afforded to attendant issues that influenced the six ages, including calendrical debates concerning the age of the world and the evolution of eschatological, apocalyptic, and millenarian thought. Overall, this article surveys the myriad intellectual and exegetical currents that converged in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity to create this sixfold historiographical and theological framework. The first instalment of this study lays the groundwork for understanding Augustine’s engagement with this motif in his writings, which is treated in Part II.

Negative Attributes in the Church Fathers and the Gnostic Basilides

1957 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. A. Wolfson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
The One ◽  
Negative Attributes ◽  
The Church

By the time the Fathers of the Church began to offer negation as a solution of the problem of divine attributes, the theory of negative attributes had already been dealt with by Philo, Albinus, and Plotinus. All three of them, starting with the assumption that God is ineffable, found that one way of describing God was by means of negative attributes. In their treatment of this type of attributes, however, there is a difference between Philo on the one hand and Albinus and Plotinus on the other.

scholarly journals All-Nights Vigil in the Balkan-Carpathian region in the 4th century: St. Nicetas of Remesiana and his treatise “On the Benefit of Psalmody”

Rusin ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 13-33
Author(s):  
V.V. Vasilik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Carpathian Region ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The article presents the first Russian commented translation of St. Niceta of Remesiana’s treatise “On the Benefirt of Psalmody”. St. Nicetas of Remesiana (350–420) was the Apostle of Dacians, Getes, Goths, and, possibly, Early Slavs. His treatese justifies the practice of psalmody in the Early Church and describes an Early Christian vigil in the Balkan-Carpathian region. The translation is preceded by a research on St. Nicetas of Remesiana’s life and oeuvre as well as the particularities of the treatese under study, its historical and liturgical context. According to the treatese, there was an opposition to the practice of All-Night Vigils in the Balkans, while the arguments for the defense of vigils were largely drawn from the writings of Basil of Caesarea. The treatese contains indications of the antiphonic method of Church Chant singing, which spread from Phenicia and Syria throughout the Christian world in the 4th century. The order of the Matins reconstructed in the treatese is similar to the Gallican rite on the one hand (Ode to Jeremiah) and, on the other hand, to the Jerusalem liturgical tradition (the composition and sequence of the other Odes mentioned in the treatese), which can be connected with phenomenon of pilgrimage. In general, the treatese is an important source on the church life of the Balkan-Carpathian region.

„Mein Gott, mein Gott, zu dir erhebe ich mich in der Früh‟ – Zwei Psalmpassagen in Inschriften aus Tyros und in der patristischen Tradition

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-255
Author(s):  
Andreas Victor Walser
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

A revision of several painted inscriptions discovered in a late antique chamber tomb in Tyre shows that they recorded verses from two Psalms (3, 6 and 62, 2-3), both not otherwise attested epigraphically. The article subsequently examines how these verses were received and interpreted in early Christian literature and by the Greek Fathers of the Church: The popular verse 6 of Psalm 3, with its reference to sleep and awakening, was understood by most—but not all—commentators as a reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The less famous first verses of Psalm 62 were usually just read as an expression of the longing for God. The juxtaposition of these two Psalms, which share the liturgical role of Morning Psalms, suggests that the verses from Psalm 62 as well as the one from Psalm 3 were understood as referring to the resurrection and used to express the deceased’s belief in salvation.

scholarly journals Christian insights into Plotinus’ Metaphysics and his Concept of Αptitude (Ἐπιτηδειότης)

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 5-32
Author(s):  
Panagiotis Pavlos
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

Modern scholarship on Late Antique philosophy seems to be more interested than ever before in examining in depth convergences and divergences between Platonism and Early Christian thought. Plotinus is a key figure in such an examination. This paper aims at shedding light to certain aspects of Plotinian metaphysics that bring Plotinus into dialogue with the thought of Church fathers by means either of similarities or differences between Neoplatonist and Christian thought. It proposes a preliminary study of the Plotinian concept of aptitude, as it emerges throughout the Enneads, and seeks to argue that this concept is crucial as it involves the relation between the One and the many, the reality of participation, the relation of the cosmos with, and its dependence on, the superior spheres of being, the bestowal of divine gifts upon beings, and the possibility of the deification of the human being.

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.

What Is Hidden in the Small Box? Narratives of Late Antique Roman Palestine in Dialogue

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Reuven Kiperwasser
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Narrative Tradition ◽  
Judaic Studies ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
The Church ◽  
Shared Narrative

This study is a comparative reading of two distinct narrative traditions with remarkably similar features of plot and content. The first tradition is from the Palestinian midrash Kohelet Rabbah, datable to the fifth to sixth centuries. The second is from John Moschos's Spiritual Meadow (Pratum spirituale), which is very close to Kohelet Rabbah in time and place. Although quite similar, the two narratives differ in certain respects. Pioneers of modern Judaic studies such as Samuel Krauss and Louis Ginzberg had been interested in the question of the relationships between early Christian authors and the rabbis; however, the relationships between John Moschos and Palestinian rabbinic writings have never been systematically treated (aside from one enlightening study by Hillel Newman). Here, in this case study, I ask comparative questions: Did Kohelet Rabbah borrow the tradition from Christian lore; or was the church author impressed by the teachings of Kohelet Rabbah? Alternatively, perhaps, might both have learned the shared story from a common continuum of local narrative tradition? Beyond these questions about literary dependence, I seek to understand the shared narrative in its cultural context.

The Christian Church in the Last Seventy Years

1943 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Kenneth Scott Latourette
Keyword(s):  
Large Volume ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

A strange contrast exists in the status of the Christian Church in the past seventy years. On the one hand the Church has clearly lost some of the ground which once appeared to be safely within its possession. On the other hand it has become more widely spread geographically and, when all mankind is taken into consideration, more influential in shaping human affairs than ever before in its history. In a paper as brief as this must of necessity be, space can be had only for the sketching of the broad outlines of this paradox and for suggesting a reason for it. If details were to be given, a large volume would be required. Perhaps, however, we can hope to do enough to point out one of the most provocative and important set of movements in recent history.

Scatter 2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The One ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques Derrida, by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Part I follows the fate of a line from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that “the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king,” as it is quoted and misquoted, and progressively Christianized, by authors including Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boétie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. Part II begins again, as it were, with Plato and Aristotle, and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly impacts and tends to undermine that sovereignist tradition, and, more especially in detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, develops a notion of “proto-democracy” as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such, and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.

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