John Chrysostom, Homilies on Colossians

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
Keyword(s):  
1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanasios G. Mellissaris
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Morwenna Ludlow

Ancient authors commonly compared writing with painting. The sculpting of the soul was a common philosophical theme. This book takes its starting-point from such figures to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft. The ancient concept of craft (ars, technē) spans ‘high’ or ‘fine’ art and practical or applied arts. It unites the beautiful and the useful. It includes both skills or practices (like medicine and music) and productive arts like painting, sculpting, and the composition of texts. By using craft as a guiding concept for understanding fourth-century Christian authorship, this book recovers a sense of them engaged in a shared practice which is both beautiful and theologically useful, which shapes souls but which is also engaged in the production of texts. It focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) and John Chrysostom, all of whom were trained in rhetoric. Through a detailed examination of their use of two particular literary techniques—ekphrasis and prosōpopoeia—it shows how they adapt and experiment with them, in order to make theological arguments and in order to evoke an active response from their readership.


2008 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson

AbstractThe fourth-century Syriac writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem, and Greek homilies by the Syrian John Chrysostom, warn Christian congregants against joining Jewish festival celebrations such as Passover. In light of the respected age of Judaism's scriptures and traditions, not all of these authors' church attendees were easily convinced by supersessionist claims about Judaism's invalidity. These authors surpass earlier Christian claims that the Temple's destruction revealed God's rejection of the Jews, by arguing that Jewish scripture requires ritual sacrifices that were confined to the Jerusalem Temple. us without the Temple sacrifices, fourth-century Jewish festivals, these authors claimed, defied God's biblical commands, a declaration with sharp implications for Judaizing Christians. Demonstrating the nuances of this argument, which crossed eastern linguistic and political boundaries, contributes to complex discussions regarding these texts' audiences, highlights distinctive elements that their contexts shared, and reveals an unrecognized role that the Temple's destruction played in fourth-century anti-Judaizing discourse.


Traditio ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 79-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dom Anselm Strittmatter

The following Latin version, hitherto unpublished, of the Byzantine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom was generously placed at my disposal by my confrère, the late lamented Dom André Wilmart, O.S.B., who about seventeen years ago discovered and transcribed it from a manuscript purchased at London in 1899 by the Bibliothèque Nationale:Nouv. Acq. lat. 1791Since the manuscript was written in the second half of the twelfth century, this translation is—to put it roughly—at least as old as that of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (= X) made at Constantinople about 1180 by the Pisan interpreter, Leo Tuscus, or that of the Liturgy of St. Basil (= B) made shortly afterward by Nicholas of Otranto. But it is important to note at the outset that the present translation represents a considerably earlier redaction of the Liturgies than do the two aforesaid versions, for we have here, as in the earliest of our manuscripts, theBarberinum S. Marci(=BSM), and several others, the prayers of the celebrant only and a corresponding minimum of rubrics. Of special significance, moreover, are the two following facts: first, the precedence given to B, an arrangement found in comparatively few manuscripts, among them the oldest which we know; and secondly, the occurrence in this same Liturgy of ancient rubrics and of the ancient form of at least one exclamation of the deacon, which point to a very early recension as the original from which the translator worked. On the other hand, over against this ancient form stands a relatively modern text, for not only are certain prayers which appear in the most ancient manuscripts only, missing from this translation, but in those few prayers also in the tradition of which it is possible to distinguish an older from a more recent set of readings, it is the latter which are almost invariably found. Similarly, the indication of certain acclamations by the initial words only (an ancient trait) and the writing out of the ἐκΦωνήσ∊ις in full (a very late practice) constitute another combination of ancient and recent features. But to attempt on the basis of these characteristics to fix the date of either the original or the translation, is to face possibilities only, concerning which it would be useless to speculate.


1947 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 70-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Hussey

John Mauropous, an eleventh-century Metropolitan of Euchaïta, has long been commemorated in the service books of the Orthodox Church. The Synaxarion for the Office of Orthros on 30th January, the day dedicated to the Three Fathers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, tells how the festival was instituted by Mauropous and describes him as ‘the well-known John, a man of great repute and well-versed in the learning of the Hellenes, as his writings show, and moreover one who has attained to the highest virtue’. In western Europe something was known of him certainly as early as the end of the sixteenth century; his iambic poems were published for the first time by an Englishman in 1610, and his ‘Vita S. Dorothei’ in the Acta Sanctorum in 1695. But it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that scholars were really able to form some idea of the character and achievement of this Metropolitan of Euchaïta. Particularly important were two publications: Sathas' edition in 1876 of Michael Psellus' oration on John, and Paul de Lagarde's edition in 1882 of some of John's own writings. This last contained not only the works already printed, but a number of hitherto unpublished sermons and letters, together with the constitution of the Faculty of Law in the University of Constantinople, and a short introduction containing part of an etymological poem. But there remained, and still remains, one significant omission: John's canons have been almost consistently neglected.


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