scholarly journals Sleep of the Soul and Resurrection of the Body: Aphrahat’s Anthropology in Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 433-466
Author(s):  
J. Edward Walters
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Body And Soul

Abstract The fourth-century Syriac corpus known as the Demonstrations, attributed to Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, provides a unique window into the early development of Christianity among Syriac-speaking communities. Occasionally these writings attest to beliefs and practices that were not common among other contemporaneous Christian communities, such as Aphrahat’s apparent belief in the “sleep of the soul” and the implications of that belief for his concept of the soul-body relationship and what happens to the soul and body at the resurrection. Aphrahat addresses this topic in the context of a polemical argument against an unnamed opponent, which provides the occasion to consider whom these arguments might be addressed against. The present article seeks to understand Aphrahat’s views on the body and soul within the broad religious milieu of the eastern Mediterranean world in Late Antiquity. The article concludes with an argument for reading and understanding the Demonstrations as a witness to the contested development of Christian identity in the Syriac-speaking world.

Body and Soul

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella Image
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spiritual Nature ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Century Thought

This chapter discusses Hilary’s dichotomous body–soul anthropology. Although past scholars have tried to categorize Hilary as ‘Platonic’ or ‘Stoic’, these categories do not fully summarize fourth-century thought, not least because two-way as well as three-way expressions of the human person are also found in Scripture. The influence of Origen is demonstrated with particular reference to the commentary on Ps. 118.73, informed by parallels in Ambrose and the Palestinian Catena. As a result, it is possible to ascribe differences between Hilary’s commentaries to the fact that one is more reliant on Origen than the other. Nevertheless, Hilary’s position always seems to be that the body and soul should be at harmony until the body takes on the spiritual nature of the soul.

Body and Soul

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Frances Young
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Body And Soul

This chapter demonstrates how arguments about creation and resurrection in the second century ensured that by the fourth century even those Christian thinkers with the most leanings toward Neoplatonism would espouse the view that the union of soul with body was constitutive of human being as a creature among creatures, and so a necessary aspect of the reconstitution of the human person at the resurrection. Soul-body dualism is often treated as the default anthropological position in antiquity, but the fourth-century anthropological treatise of Nemesius of Emesa shows that, despite huge debts to the legacies of philosophy, creation and resurrection, though barely mentioned, in fact shape his conclusion that the body-soul union is fundamental to what a human being is; the same is true, for example, of the Cappadocian Gregories and Augustine.

The Bishop's Two Bodies: Ambrose and the Basilicas of Milan

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Chin
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Organism ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Embodiment ◽  
Two Bodies

The late ancient body is a historiographical problem. In the combined lights of feminist, Foucaultian, and post-Foucaultian methodologies, much recent scholarship on bodies in late antiquity has focused on bodies as sites on which power relations are enacted and as discourses through which ideologies are materialized. Contemporary concern with definitions and representations of the posthuman, however—for example, in medical technologies that expand the capacities of particular human bodies, in speculative pursuit of the limits of avatars, or in the technological pursuit of artificial intelligence or artificial life—seem both to underline the fundamental lability of the body, and to require a broadening of scholarly focus beyond the traditional visible boundaries of the human organism. At the same time, scholarship on the posthuman emphasizes contemporaneity and futurity to an extent that may seem to preclude engagement with the premodern. I would like to suggest here that doubt about the boundaries of human embodiment is a useful lens through which to reconsider some very traditional questions in the history of Christianity, and that we may begin to think of bodies in Christian premodernity in terms of what we might call their pre-humanity, that is, as fundamentally open to extension, transformation, and multiple instantiation. The figure on whom I focus is Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, who, I argue, defined his own body in such a way that he was able to instantiate physically in dozens of living human bodies, at least two dead human bodies, thousands of angelic bodies, and four church buildings. Ambrose's dynamic conception of his episcopal body was formed within a complex political and theological situation, so questions concerning the political ideology of bodies remain very much at issue. I add to these questions a concern for premodern uncertainty about how to recognize a body, both when it is visible and, perhaps more importantly, when it is not.

Dividing Relics

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-179
Author(s):  
Robert Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Description

It is commonly believed that the practice of dividing corporeal relics had begun as early as the fourth century and that it was initiated in the eastern Mediterranean, to appear in the West at a much later date. This chapter challenges both these views. It demonstrates that there is no early description of dismembering a saint’s physical remains, and the evidence of the veneration of specific body parts is extremely scarce. Testimonies to the deposition of the same saint’s relics in several places can be better explained by transfers of relics, their independent discoveries, or the production of contact relics than by the actual division of relics. If this practice really existed in Late Antiquity, it was probably extremely rare in either part of the empire before the sixth century.

Defending and Defining the Faith

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Christian Apologetics ◽  
Scholarly Projects ◽  
Christian Beliefs

Christian apologetics in the patristic era should be understood broadly as a defense of Christian beliefs and practices against non-Christian beliefs, practices, and policies (religious, social, and political) that were either antithetical to Christian beliefs and practices or openly hostile to Christianity. The advantage of this conceptualization of apologetics is that it enables readers to follow the discussion of Christian responses to Hellenistic culture beyond the context of persecution associated with the pre-Constantinian period, which tends to be where many scholarly projects on apologetics end. The reader is also invited to see the links in the intellectual trajectory from early second-century apologetics through those written in the early fifth century, prompting deeper reflection about the process of Christian self-definition in late antiquity. This book explores Christian apologetic literature from the second through fifth centuries, examining the writers within the intellectual context of their times. The book argues that most apologies were not directed at a pagan readership. In most cases, ancient apologetics had a double object: to instruct the Christian, and persuade less devout Christians or non-Christians who were sympathetic to Christian claims. Taken cumulatively, it finds that apologetic literature was integral to the formation of Christian identity in the Roman world.

Marian Devotion in the Contemporary Eastern Mediterranean

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-230
Author(s):  
Nurit Stadler
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Post Colonialism

This chapter explores the resurgence and growing interest in Mary and her veneration in the contemporary Eastern Mediterranean, a prominently Muslim dominated region. Mary as a figure of devotion is unique in this region for three reasons. First, Mary is an autochthonous figure in the region. Second, Christianity in the region has a unique history, especially under the influences of the Ottoman rule and European imperialism. Third, there are the contemporary impacts of nationalism, post-colonialism, and the Arabization of the Christian communities therein. Against these developments, nowadays Mary’s places of veneration, both old and new, are attracting growing numbers of pilgrims. As I will show from ethnographies conducted in the region and my own work on Mary’s tomb in Jerusalem, Mary serves as a powerful symbol/metaphor/icon that is used by minorities to create and invigorate Christian identity.

scholarly journals Asceticism in Old English and Syriac Soul and Body Narratives

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Katayoun Torabi
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Reform Culture ◽  
Early English ◽  
Vercelli Book

A great deal of scholarship on Old English soul-body poetry centers on whether or not the presence of dualist elements in the poems are unorthodox in their implication that the body, as a material object, is not only wicked but seems to possess more agency in the world than the soul. I argue that the Old English soul-body poetry is not heterodox or dualist, but is best understood, as Allen J. Frantzen suggests, within the “context of penitential practice.” The seemingly unorthodox elements are resolved when read against the backdrop of pre-Conquest English monastic reform culture, which was very much concerned with penance, asceticism, death, and judgment. Focusing especially on two anonymous 10th-century Old English poems, Soul and Body I in the Vercelli Book and Soul and Body II in the Exeter Book, I argue that that both body and soul bear equal responsibility in achieving salvation and that the work of salvation must be performed before death, a position that was reinforced in early English monastic literature that was inspired, at least in part, by Eastern ascetics such as fourth-century Syrian hymnologist and theologian, St. Ephraim.

The end of the ancient Olympics and other contests: why the agonistic circuit collapsed in late antiquity

2015 ◽  
Vol 135 ◽  
pp. 147-164
Author(s):  
Sofie Remijsen
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
The City ◽  
First Offers

Abstract:In the second and third centuries AD, many of the cities in the eastern Mediterranean could boast about having their own athletic games. In the fourth century, however, these games quickly declined. In recent years, the traditional explanations for the end of athletic games, most prominently the supposed ban by Theodosius, have been proven unfounded. This paper proposes an alternative explanation: institutional and financial changes hindered the successful organization of athletic contests by the cities in the fourth and fifth centuries. In order to show the effect of these changes, this paper first offers a detailed analysis of how athletic contests were founded and funded in the early imperial period. It then examines how and to what extent these procedures and funds were affected by changes in late antiquity. The decline was not caused by a general financial crisis - in fact the estates (partially) funding the games remained a stable form of financing. Instead the shift of power to a centralized bureaucracy limited the cities in their administration of the games: they could no longer independently meet deficits in the agonistic budget from the city treasury and had to rely increasingly on elite sponsors, whose ambitions focused mainly on the provincial capitals and who gradually lost their interest in athletics.

Monks at work in Eastern Mediterranean: Ideals and reality

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-342
Author(s):  
Ewa Wipszycka
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Question ◽  
The New Testament

The main question that the present paper tries to answer is as fol- lows: since two discordant precepts concerning work were to be found in the New Testament, how did monks behave? One precept treated work as a duty, the other recommended not to care about one’s maintenance. The monks followed in their behaviour either the first or the second precept. As a result of disputes that took place in the fourth century the opinion prevailed that work was the better choice. It is important for us to find out when and under what circumstances that choice was done by the majority of the monastic movement in the East. It is also important to see what arguments were used by the monks of Late Antiquity in order to settle the conflict between the two discordant precepts. This conflict worried many and caused a renewal of a dispute that seemed to have been closed. Two ways of reasoning in favour of monastic work were generally used: monks might and should pray and work at the same time, satisfying both precepts; monks ought to work in order to be able to give alms, and this conferred to work a meaning that went beyond immediate usefulness. Praying and working at the same time was not always feasible in actual practice, but this did not bother authors of ascetic treatises.

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