Jacob's Shipwreck

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Nisse
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Noncanonical Texts

Jewish and Christian authors of the High Middle Ages not infrequently came into dialogue or conflict with each other over traditions drawn from ancient writings outside of the bible. Circulating in Hebrew and Latin translations, these included the two independent versions of the Testament of Naphtali in which the patriarch has a vision of the Diaspora, a shipwreck that scatters the twelve tribes. The Christian narrative is linear and ends in salvation; the Jewish narrative is circular and pessimistic. This book regards this as an emblematic text that illuminates relationships between interpretation, translation, and survival. Such noncanonical texts and their afterlives provided Jews and Christians alike with resources of fiction that they used to reconsider boundaries of doctrine and interpretation. Among the works that the book takes as exemplary of this medieval moment are the Book of Yosippon, a tenth-century Hebrew adaptation of Josephus with a wide circulation and influence in the later middle ages, and the second-century romance of Aseneth about the religious conversion of Joseph's Egyptian wife. Yosippon gave Jews a new discourse of martyrdom in its narrative of the fall of Jerusalem, and at the same time it offered access to the classical historical models being used by their Christian contemporaries. Aseneth provided its new audience of medieval monks with a way to reimagine the troubling consequences of unwilling Jewish converts.

Biblical Apocrypha

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Murdoch
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Noncanonical Texts ◽  
Variable Group ◽  
The Middle Ages

The term “biblical apocrypha” is imprecise. What is not meant is what is commonly known as the Apocrypha, the (variable) group of books placed separately in some post-Reformation Bibles between the two Testaments. Those are works found in the 3rd-century bce Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) but not accepted in the Hebrew canon, which was established later. When Jerome translated the Old Testament into Latin for his Vulgate, he included books (such as Judith), for which he had no Hebrew original, as deuterocanonical, a “second list” of nevertheless biblical books. The word apocrypha (Greek: “hidden things”) can imply simply “noncanonical,” but more specifically the term refers to noncanonical texts involving (or ascribed to) biblical personages, or expanding upon biblical books and events. Alternative terms used include pseudepigrapha (“spuriously attributed writings,” though this too is imprecise), midrash (Hebrew: “story”), generic designations such as apocalypse (many Old and New Testament apocrypha are apocalyptic), or blanket terms such as legend (or legend cycle). Recent studies refer to “the re-written Bible,” the “Bible in progress,” or (in the title of an important Festschrift) “the embroidered Bible.” The word apocryphus in medieval Latin means “uncertain,” “unreliable,” or “anonymous” or “pseudonymous.” Old Testament apocrypha may date from the 2nd century bce to the early Middle Ages, New Testament apocrypha continued to be produced well into the medieval period, and some overlap exists between the two. Some Old Testament apocrypha are extant in Hebrew or Aramaic, but frequently the original is fragmentary or only presumed on philological grounds or external evidence. Surviving versions are often in Greek and were themselves often translated into one or more languages, such as Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, or Latin. The earliest New Testament apocrypha are in Greek or Latin. Relatively recent discoveries have confirmed the antiquity of some, other apocrypha not known in the Middle Ages have been identified, and Christian writers refer to now-lost apocrypha. The manuscript tradition of many Old and New Testament apocrypha, however, is medieval, and, unlike biblical texts, they were not subject to standardization. Many enjoyed wide circulation throughout the Middle Ages and were translated or adapted into vernacular languages. Sometimes the sole known text may be a medieval version in a language such as Slavonic or Irish. The often neglected but continued development of Old and New Testament apocrypha in the Middle Ages is important, as is the knowledge of these texts within different Eastern and Western medieval cultures. It is thus appropriate to consider individual apocryphal works, and then the various cultures in which they are located.

scholarly journals Quem é Digno de Abrir os Selos? O Comentário Bíblico como gênero de escrita na Alta Idade Média * Who is Worthy to Open the Seals? The Bible Commentary as written genres in The High Middle Ages

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 332
Author(s):  
RAQUEL DE FÁTIMA PARMEGIANI
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Seven Principles ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Medieval Christianity ◽  
Social Uses ◽  
The Middle Ages

<p><strong>Resumo:</strong> Neste trabalho, temos como proposta refletir sobre o processo de construção da relação entre texto bíblico e seus comentadores na Alta Idade Média. Nosso objetivo é pensar esta <em>escritura</em> na sua historicidade, ou seja, seus usos sociais e suas possibilidades de leitura. Para tanto, partiremos da análise do Comentário ao Apocalipse do Africano Ticônio (cerca de 328), um dos primeiros autores a analisar este livro, e do seu trabalho <em>Liber Regylarum</em>, no qual propõe sete preceitos a partir dos quais os textos bíblicos deveriam ser interpretados. Embora este autor tenha sido considerado herético pela Igreja Romana, o uso das suas regras ganhou um reconhecido lugar entre os comentaristas bíblicos na Idade Média, o que pode ser percebido na obra de autores cristãos como Santo Agostinho, São Jeronimo, Cesário de Arlés, Beda e Beato de Liébana.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Comentário Bíblico – Práticas de leitura – Cristianismo Medieval.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstract</strong>: In this paper, we will try to reflect how the relationship between the biblical text and its commentators is building in the High Middle Ages. Our aim is to think this scripture in its historicity, that is, its social uses and possibilities of reading. For this, we begin with the analysis of the Tyconius’ Commentary on the Apocalypse (about 328), one of the first authors to analyze this book and your work entitled <em>Liber Regylarum</em>, in which he proposes seven principles according to which the biblical texts should be interpreted. Although this author has been considered heretical by the Roman Church, the use of these rules has gained a recognized place among the bible commentators in the Middle Ages, as we can see in the works of Christian writers such as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Caesarius of Arles, Beda and Beatus of Liebana.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Bible Commentary – Reading practices – Medieval Christianity.</p>

The Peace of God

2021 ◽  
pp. 104346312110657
Author(s):  
Andrew Young
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Clear Delineation ◽  
Residual Claimants

Scholars have argued that the politically fractured landscape of medieval Western Europe was foundational to the evolution of constitutionalism and rule of law. In making this argument, Salter and Young (2019) have recently emphasized that the constellation of political property rights in the High Middle Ages was polycentric and hierarchical; holders of those rights were residual claimants to the returns on their governance and sovereign. The latter characteristics—residual claimancy and sovereignty—imply a clear delineation of jurisdictional boundaries and their integrity. However, historians’ description of the “feudal anarchy” that followed the tenth-century disintegration of the Carolingian Empire does not suggest clearly delineated and stable boundaries. In this paper, I highlight the role of the Peace of God movement in the 11th and 12th centuries in delineating and stabilizing the structure of political property rights. In terms of historical political economy, the Peace of God movement provides an important link between the early medieval era and the constitutional arrangements of the High Middle Ages.

In the Eyes of the Christian Writer al-Hārit ibn Sinān Poetics and Eloquence as a Platform of Inter-Cultural Contacts and Contrasts

Arabica ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Joseph Sadan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Semitic Language ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Writer ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractWhile ostensibly aspects of poetics are best discussed within a purely literary perspective, in fact they can hardly be disconnected from their socio-cultural and religious frameworks. Al-Hārit ibn Sinān was a Christian scholar and writer who lived under Muslim rule towards the end of the ninth and apparently also the beginning of the tenth century, precisely at the time when the first fruits of the idea of the Qur‘ān's stylistic inimitability (i’ğāz) began to ripe. Although this concept played a role also in interfaith polemics throughout the Middle Ages, our author shows his temperance and restraint by praising the style of the Bible (he would appear not to have read the books of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew but demonstrated understanding and a feeling for the text through another Semitic language: Syriac), both because as a Christian living under Muslim rule he was loathe to arouse an overt controversy with the society in which he lived, and also because glorifying the style of Holy Scripture, which he had apparently inherited from the Syriac-Byzantine culture, was an important tendency in and of itself in both Jewish and Christian literature (in England, for example, upsurges of this tendency have occurred even in modern times). Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that our author did compare the poetics of four cultures: that of the Hebrews, that of the Greek (or rather Greek-Byzantine, rūm), that of the Syriac elements and that of the Arabs. He even tries to prove, using somewhat specious arguments, that the Hebrew portions of the Bible contain rhymes. His positions thus deserve to be considered retrospectively also in an interfaith and intercultural context.

PETER LOMBARD, STEPHEN LANGTON, AND THE SCHOOL OF PARIS THE MAKING OF THE TWELFTH-CENTURY SCHOLASTIC BIBLICAL TRADITION

Traditio ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 171-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK J. CLARK
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Logical Theory ◽  
The Bible ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

This study documents the discovery of Peter Lombard's long-thought-to-be-lost lectures on the Old Testament, which were hidden in plain view in the Old Testament lectures of Stephen Langton, who lectured on the Lombard's lectures. The presence in the Lombard's lectures on Genesis of the logical theory of supposition, the single greatest advance in logical theory during the High Middle Ages, means that those lectures not only postdate the Sentences but also represent the beginning of a radical advance in speculative theology that would continue to develop through the end of the High Middle Ages. This means in turn that lectures on the Bible from the 1150s to 1200, and in particular those of the School of Paris, headed by Peter Lombard, play a central role in one of the greatest speculative developments — logical, philosophical, and theological — of the Middle Ages.

“The Truth of Reliable Tradition”: Saadya Gaon, Arabic Rhetoric, and the Challenge to Rhetorical Historiography

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
Brandon Katzir
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Medieval Rhetoric ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Arabic Rhetoric ◽  
Rhetorical Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article explores the rhetoric of medieval rabbi and philosopher Saadya Gaon, arguing that Saadya typifies what LuMing Mao calls the “interconnectivity” of rhetorical cultures (Mao 46). Suggesting that Saadya makes use of argumentative techniques from Greek-inspired, rationalist Islamic theologians, I show how his rhetoric challenges dominant works of rhetorical historiography by participating in three interconnected cultures: Greek, Jewish, and Islamic. Taking into account recent scholarship on Jewish rhetoric, I argue that Saadya's amalgamation of Jewish rhetorical genres alongside Greco-Islamic genres demonstrates how Jewish and Islamic rhetoric were closely connected in the Middle Ages. Specifically, the article analyzes the rhetorical significance of Saadya's most famous treatise on Jewish philosophy, The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, which I argue utilizes Greco-Islamic rhetorical strategies in a polemical defense of rabbinical authority. As a tenth-century writer who worked across multiple rhetorical traditions and genres, Saadya challenges the monocultural, Latin-language histories of medieval rhetoric, demonstrating the importance of investigating Arabic-language and Jewish rhetorics of the Middle Ages.

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