scholarly journals Rhapsodomantik, mannakorn og tommelfingervers

2003 ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Anders Klostergaard Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Ritual Studies ◽  
Church Of Sweden ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Point Of Departure

Divination and mantics play a decisive role in ancient as well as modern religiosity. Although the subjects are not an integral part of the current curriculums for theology and the study of religion, they are pivotal for understanding religion and religious practices, especially of the ancient world. In this paper, which is the first part of a larger research project on divination and mantics of early Christianity and ancient Judaism, I explore one particular form of mantics: rhapsodomantics, i.e. divination by means of Sacred Books that are either randomly opened or used in order to provide ‘slips’ upon which verses from the Books in question are written. The randomly chosen textual passage is secondarily interpreted and explained in terms of a divinely inspired guidance. In this manner the lot oracle provides access to the understanding of the divine world. The ritual consultance of lot oracles is simultaneously a way of domesticising the contingency and arbitrariness of life. By means of a ritually staged display of arbitrariness (the random drawing of lots), arbitrariness is mastered. First – based on recent insights from the field of cognitive science (primarily Whitehouse and Boyer), semiotics, the tradition of sociology of knowledge and ritual studies – I discuss imagistic thought in contrast to doctrinaire modes of religiosity. Second, I scrutinize the ritual raison d’être for divination and mantics.The second part of the paper presents an analysis of numerous texts exemplifying rhapsodomantics. In a recent book by the Swedish novelist P.O. Enquist Lewis Rejse, narrating the founding of the Pentecostal Church of Sweden, the ritual practice of using ‘Thumble verses’ and ‘Manna seeds’ plays a decisive role in the founding of the community. As a point of departure relevant excerpts from this book are discussed in order to travel back to the Märchenland of the ancient world. Numerous Greco-Roman, Jewish and Early Christian examples of rhapsodomantics are discussed and related to recent analyses by van der Horst and Potter.

Crucifixion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Granger Cook ◽  
David W. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
The New Testament

Crucifixion and related bodily suspension penalties were widely employed in Antiquity for the punishment of criminals and in times of war. Jesus of Nazareth is the most famous victim of the cross, and many scholars of crucifixion approach the topic with interest in Jesus’ death; however, scholarship on crucifixion also provides insights into (among other fields) ancient warfare, criminal law, political history, and cultural imagery. Invariably, such a subject requires multidisciplinary study. Current areas of discussion include the definition of crucifixion itself, especially in light of the range of use of ancient terminology. Further debates concern the origins of the punishment, the cessation of its practice (at least in the West), the precise means of death, and whether certain cultures (e.g., Second Temple Judaism) endorsed the penalty. A large portion of this article examines the many issues related to crucifixion as a form of execution in Antiquity. The topic of crucifixion in the ancient world includes a variety of issues: Near Eastern suspensions, Greek and Roman extreme penalties and crucifixion, the practice of penal suspension and crucifixion in Second Temple Judaism, the terminology for crucifixion and suspension, crucifixion in the New Testament, the practice of crucifixion in Late Antiquity, crucifixion and law in the ancient world, the question of crucifixion and martyrdom, Greco-Roman imagery of crucifixion and related punishments, Christian iconography of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the later history of the punishment. The last sections of this article then turn to understandings of Jesus’ crucifixion in the New Testament and other early Christian literature.

Clothing

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Batten ◽  
Antonios Finitsis
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Product And Process ◽  
Social Scientific

Clothing refers to skins or garments made from the manipulation of fibers or threads (i.e. woven, knitted, sprang, etc.) that cover the body in some manner. Adornment is another relevant term and refers to the temporary ornamentation of the body for a given occasion or event. It thus calls attention primarily to aesthetic qualities. The terms clothing and adornment almost inevitably introduce personal or social values. Hence, recently, scholars have opted for the broader term Dress. Clothing is more specific than dress, which includes bodily coverings, but also jewelry, cosmetics, hairstyles, tattoos, or other manipulations of the bodily surface such as scarification. Dress is both noun and verb, or, put differently, both product and process. Dress as a noun is what is done to the body, and dress as a verb is how it is done. This article includes studies that address all three areas. The study of clothing has developed considerably in a number of disciplines. For historians, it began as a history of costume but has since evolved to include insights from social scientific fields such as anthropology and sociology. The latter two areas as well as other disciplines now boast a significant number of theoretical approaches to clothing and dress, examining them in light of identity (gender, religious, ethnic, cultural, political), power, embodiment, and how it functions as a communicator of subjective and social values, including notions of the self. Beyond its importance as a material artifact, dress has also been recognized as a reflection of mentifacts (values and beliefs that shape culture) and sociofacts (institutions and norms that direct human behavior). Moreover, the study of fashion and its significance for the study of contemporary culture, especially in light of Western commoditization, has emerged as major area of interdisciplinary research. In Classics, analysis of dress has also witnessed a considerable upsurge in the last decade and deems it important for the study of societies, such as ancient Rome, in which “the gaze” is so important. Given the highly ideological nature of much of the ancient writing about clothing, archaeological studies and examinations of artistic remains are requisite. Such work must also remember, however, that art can be rhetorical, just as texts are. Of fundamental importance is the observation that items of clothing and ornamentation held tremendous material value in the ancient world, whether it is the Ancient Near East or the Greco-Roman context, and thus their economic, technological, trade, and social dimensions must be highlighted. The study of clothing in the Bible, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity is in its early stages. In biblical literature, symbolic and literal references to clothing, and dress in general, abound. Items of clothing take on legal, ritual, technical, and theological meanings in some biblical texts, while in others they serve as literary markers or motifs that underscore larger shifts within various narratives. In the New Testament and other early Christian literature, clothing imagery continues to convey theological and political meanings; it can function as a means of vilifying characters by associating them with luxurious dress, and it can assist in creating and maintaining identity.

What's Divine about Divine Law?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Western Idea ◽  
Jewish Writers ◽  
Divine Law

In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. This book untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. This book shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. The book describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. It shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. The book then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. This book sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.

Sexual Defilement in Early Christian Texts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Family ◽  
Main Target ◽  
Christian Society

Chapter 7 demonstrates that sexual sin became the main target for purity discourse in early Christian texts, and attempts to explain why. Christian imagery of sexual defilement drew from a number of traditions—Greco-Roman sexual ethics, imagery of sexual sin from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple texts, and both Jewish and pagan purity laws, all seen through the lens of Paul’s imagery of sexuality and sexual sin. Two broad currents characterized Christian sexual ethics in the second century: one upheld marriage and the family as the basis for a holy Christian society and church, while the second rejected all sexuality, including in marriage. Writers of both currents made heavy use of defilement imagery. For the first, sexual sin was a dangerous defilement, contaminating the Christian community and severing it from God. For the second, more radical current, sexuality itself was the defilement; virginity or continence alone were pure.

Early Christian Attitudes Towards Dietary Impurity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Normal Order ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Individual

This chapter describes how purity and defilement were practiced and discussed in diverse cults throughout the Hellenistic and Roman Empires and in contemporary Judaism. There were several types of purity and defilement. The first, a “truce” impurity perception, was temporary and mundane, a defilement occurring when there was an obstruction to the normal order or when categories were mixed up. A second type, the “battle” impurity perception, followed exceptional actions, typically deliberate, such as murder or adultery. Here purification required both punishment by the community and ritual actions, such as sacrifice. A third type became more and more significant in the first centuries CE. This was the defilement of the individual by his or her evil actions and dispositions, conceptualized at times as a “defilement of the soul,” and its purification through asceticism, philosophy, or repentance. Though purity and defilement also featured in Greco-Roman religion, it received an unusually central role in Judaism.

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Dietary Laws ◽  
New Religion

This book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing dietary laws, death defilement, sexuality, and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. There are three central arguments. First, purity and defilement were central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those of contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Church Father ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
The Relationship

Between the second and the sixteenth centuries CE, references to the Jewish exegete Philo of Alexandria occur exclusively in texts written by Christians. David T. Runia has described this phenomenon as the adoption of Philo by Christians as an “honorary Church Father.” Drawing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and recent investigations of the “Parting of the Ways” of early Christianity and Judaism, this study argues that early Christian invocations of Philo reveal ongoing efforts to define the relationship between Jewishness and Christianness, their areas of overlap and points of divergence. The introduction situates invocations of Philo within the wider context of early Christian writing about Jews and Jewishness. It considers how Philo and his early Christian readers participated in the larger world of Greco-Roman philosophical schools, text production, and the ethical and intellectual formation (paideia) of elite young men in the Roman Empire.

Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udo Schnelle
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Urban Congregations ◽  
Intellectual Level

Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

Review of: History And Practices Of Meetings In The Early Church Provides Insight. Saint-Petersburg: Saint-Petersburg Christian University Publishing house, 2018. 401 p.; table. (Monographs Saint-Petersburg Christian University). ISBN 978-966-8957-55-0

2020 ◽  
pp. 257-267
Author(s):  
Алексей Волчков
Keyword(s):  
Book History ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian University ◽  
Saint Petersburg ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Early Christian Studies ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Книга Валерия Александровича Аликина «История и практика собраний в Ранней Церкви» посвящена комплексному исследованию практики раннехристианских собраний в контексте общинных трапез античных добровольных сообществ (collegia), распространённых в греко-римском обществе первых веков нашей эры. Данное направление в исследовании раннехристианских экклесий не является чем-то новым в науке. Многие учёные XIX в. обращали внимание на сильное сходство между экклесиями и античными добровольными сообществами в устроении и внутренней жизни1. Возрождение этой парадигмы в раннехристианских штудиях произошло в последнем десятилетии XX в. Valeri Aleksandrovich Alikin's book, History and Practice of Assemblies in the Early Church, is devoted to a comprehensive study of early Christian assembly practices in the context of the communal meals of the ancient voluntary communities (collegia) common in Greco-Roman society in the first centuries AD. This direction in the study of early Christian ecclesiae is not new in scholarship. Many scholars of the nineteenth century drew attention to the strong similarities between ekklesias and ancient voluntary communities in their organisation and inner life1. The revival of this paradigm in early Christian studies took place in the last decade of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL, HIERARCHICAL AND EGALITARIAN: SOCIAL-POLITICAL USES OF THE CONCEPT OF “HOME” IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Strijdom
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
The Family ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The One ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Point Of Departure

The cognitive linguist George Lakoff has argued that in the human brain two concepts of the family are mapped onto two contrasting political concepts, which reveal two kinds of systemic morality: a hierarchical, strict and disciplining father morality of conservatives on the one hand, and an egalitarian, nurturing parent morality of progressives or liberals on the other. Taking Lakoff’s thesis as point of departure, I offer a critical comparison of social-political uses of the concept of “home” in the early Roman Empire and Pauline Christianity. For this case study I engage primarily with the work of John Dominic Crossan, a prominent scholar of early Christianity within its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Although “home” does not constitute the focus of his analysis, a close reading of his oeuvre does allow us to identify and highlight this as a crucial theme in his work. The focus will be on the patriarchal home under Greco-Roman imperial conditions as model of the imperial system, the Pauline egalitarian concept of the Christian home and house churches, and the deutero-Pauline return to the imperial model. By comparing these case studies from another epoch and another culture, thevalidity of Lakoff’s thesis will be tested and our understanding of the concepts “liberal” and “conservative” will be enriched.

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