Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ
Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ

Author: John Binns

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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The monasteries of the Jerusalem desert were famous throughout the Byzantine Christian world. Yet whilst much has been written about their counterparts in Egypt and Syria, this book is the first to provide a comprehensive study of the monastic movement in Palestine during the Byzantine period, from the accession of Constantine to the fall of Jerusalem to the Persians in 614. The book is divided into three parts. The first examines the lives of the holy men of the desert, using contemporary source material, and looks at the culture which produced them. The second describes the environment, including chapters on Jerusalem and pilgrimage, living conditions in the desert, and the expansion of monasticism into other urban centres. The third section presents some of the main themes of the saints' lives, with chapters on the historical development, doctrinal debate, and spirituality. This is an important and valuable contribution to the study of ancient spirituality and desert monasticism, and should be of interest both to historians and to scholars of patristics and theology.

Ascetic Eucharists
Ascetic Eucharists

Author: Andrew McGowan

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1999-05-20

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0191544345

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The early Eucharist has usually been seen as sacramental eating of token bread and wine in careful or even slavish imitation of Jesus and his earliest disciples. In fact the evidence suggests great diversity in its conduct, including the use of foods, in the first few hundred years. Eucharistic meals involving cheese, milk, salt, oil, and vegetables are attested, and some have argued that even fish was used. The most significant exception to using bread and wine, however, was a `bread-and-water' Christian meal, an ancient ascetic form of the Eucharist. This tradition also involved rejection of meat from general diet, and reflected the concern of dissident communities to avoid the cuisine - meat and wine - characteristic of pagan sacrifice. This study describes and discusses these practices fully for the first time, and provides important new insights into the liturgical and social history of early Christianity.

Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement
Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement

Author: John Behr

Publisher: Oxford Early Christian Studies

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780198270003

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Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement examines the ways in which Irenaeus and Clement understood what it means to be human. By exploring these writings from within their own theological perspectives, John Behr also offers a theological critique of the prevailing approach to the asceticism of Late Antiquity. Writing before monasticism became the dominant paradigm of Christian asceticism, Irenaeus and Clement afford fascinating glimpses of alternative approaches. For Irenaeus, asceticism is the expression of man living the life of God in all dimensions of the body, that which is most characteristically human and in the image of God. Human existence as a physical being includes sexuality as a permanent part of the framework within which males and females grow towards God. In contrast, Clement depicts asceticism as man's attempt at a godlike life to protect the rational element, that which is distinctively human and in the image of God, from any possible disturbance and threat, or from the vulnerability of dependency, especially of a physical or sexual nature. Here human sexuality is strictly limited by the finality of procreation and abandoned in the resurrection. By paying careful attention to these two writers, Behr offers challenging material for the continuing task of understanding ourselves as human beings.

Asceticism and Christological Controversy in Fifth-Century Palestine
Asceticism and Christological Controversy in Fifth-Century Palestine

Author: Cornelia B. Horn

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2006-03-09

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0191535087

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The Life of Peter the Iberian by John Rufus records the ascetic struggle of a fifth-century anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Mayyuma, Palestine. Cornelia Horn presents a historical-critical study of the only substantial anti-Chalcedonian witness to the history of the conflict in Palestine and analyses the formative period of fifth-century anti-Chalcedonian hierarchy, theology, and its ascetic expression. Important themes are pilgrimage as an ascetic ideal and asceticism as source of theological authority. Archaeological data on many places in the Levant and textual sources in Syriac, Coptic, Greek, Armenian, and Georgian are examined. This book contributes to our understanding of the origins of anti-Chalcedonian theology and the influence of asceticism on its development, the Christian topography of the Levant, and the history of the anti-Chalcedonian movement in Palestine.

Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity
Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-05-17

Total Pages: 579

ISBN-13: 9047444531

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This new volume in the well-established Late Antique Archaeology series draws together recent research by archaeologists and historians to shed new light on the religious world of Late Antiquity. A detailed bibliographic essay provides an overview of relevant literature, while individual articles explore the diversity of late antique religion. Rabbinic and non-rabbinic Judaism is traced in Beth Shearim, Dura Europus and Sepphoris, and the Samaritan community in Israel, while Christian concepts of orthodoxy and heresy are examined with a particular focus on the 'Arian' Controversy. Popular piety receives close attention, through the archaeology of pilgrimage and the stylite 'pillar saints', and so too does the complex relationship between religion and magic and between sacred and secular in Late Antiquity. Contributors are David M. Gwynn, Susanne Bangert, Jodi Magness, Zeev Weiss, Shimon Dar, Michel-Yves Perrin, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Lukas Amadeus Schachner, Arja Karivieri, Carla Sfameni, Claude Lepelley, Mark Humphries, Elizabeth Jeffreys, and Isabella Sandwell.

Exhortation to the Monks by Hyperechios
Exhortation to the Monks by Hyperechios

Author:

Publisher: American University in Cairo Press

Published: 2024-07-23

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1649033699

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Hyperechios's Exhortation to the Monks for the first time in English translation Hyperechios is a little-known monk of the fourth to fifth centuries, who is thought to have lived in Roman Palestine, possibly coastal Sinai. He wrote the Exhortation to the Monks, 160 short sayings, much like the apophthegmata, or sayings of the desert fathers and mothers, but also structurally very different—most of the sayings are two lines of poetry that offer instruction. The Exhortation, and early Christian monastic writings in general, teach that a spiritual life requires a life of training and practice, individually and as a neighbor and friend within one’s community. This volume studies Hyperechios’s Exhortation to better understand the moral and spiritual values in a fourth to fifth-century Christian monastic community, while reflecting also on how these are contemporary with the modern day. Drawing on modern works by scholars and placing the Exhortation in conversation with contemporary writers on the spiritual life, Tim Vivian begins with an introduction about Hyperechios, his location, the text, then a lengthy reflection on spiritual matters. He follows this with an English-language translation of the Exhortation and the Greek text, both accompanied by footnotes that offer biblical and patristic cross-references. Exhortation to the Monks by Hyperechios will be of interest to scholars and general readers of early Christianity, early monasticism, and Christian spirituality, both ancient and contemporary.

Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond
Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond

Author: Arietta Papaconstantinou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1317159721

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The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes, reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing religious change, and the first section of the book examines some of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally, a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.

Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World
Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World

Author: Gary N. Knoppers

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2004-04-01

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13: 9047413695

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Major scholars in North America, Europe, and the Middle East provide a variety of fresh studies on the history, literature, religion, and art of Egypt, Israel, Phoenicia, and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world. The first part of the book features chapters on ancient Egyptian inscriptions, art, history, and religion. The second part deals with biblical studies, the histories of ancient Israel, Canaan, and the relations among societies in the ancient Near East. The periods covered in the volume range from Old Kingdom Egypt to the late antique era. Most of the art historical and archaeological essays on ancient Egypt, Israel, and Canaan deal with previously unpublished finds. Many of the essays dealing with literary and historical issues explore the relations among ancient cultures, explaining the development of and interest in international trade, warfare, and travel. The book is amply illustrated with photos, drawings, graphs, and tables. "Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World is a rich and wide-ranging collection of papers that well honors the distinguished scholar to whom it was dedicated. It also has much to offer all scholars interested in political and cultural interactions in the ancient eastern Mediterranean basin." Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles