Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Author: Dirk Rohmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-07-25

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3110486075

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It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics. In an approach that presents evidence for the role played by Christian institutions, writers and saints, this book analyses a broad range of literary and legal sources, some of which have hitherto been little studied. Paying special attention to the problem of which genres and book types were likely to be targeted, the author argues that in addition to heretical, magical, astrological and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction, censorship or suppression through prohibition of the copying of manuscripts. These include texts from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts which were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. This book examines how Christian authorities, theologians and ideologues suppressed ancient texts and associated ideas at a time of fundamental transformation in the late classical world.

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Author: Dirk Rohmann

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781481307826

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Only a small fraction of ancient literature survives--less than one percent, estimates reveal. While the reasons vary, it is an irony that Christianity, often regarded as responsible for the proliferation and spread of books and book culture, was likewise active in suppressing and destroying books in Late Antiquity. Author Dirk Rohmann assembles the evidence for the role played in book-burning by Christian institutions, writers, and saints during the Roman Empire. Rohmann analyzes a broad range of literary and legal sources, paying special attention to which genres and book types were likely to be targeted. Rohmann concludes that, in addition to heretical, magical, astrological, and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction and censorship through prohibition of manuscript copying. These texts included works from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts that were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. While book-burning functioned as a recognized cultural practice, and Rohmann acknowledges the wide variety of motivations at work in the various practices of censorship, he ultimately asks to what extent Christian book-burning and accompanying practices negatively affected the survival of pagan and pre-Christian literary and philosophical texts. Christianity's rejection, even obliteration, of books--so contrary to its own worldview--testifies both to the perilous nature of texts in transmission as well as to the enduring cultural and ideological power of the written word.

Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity

Author: Dirk Rohmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-07-25

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 3110485559

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It is estimated that only a small fraction, less than 1 per cent, of ancient literature has survived to the present day. The role of Christian authorities in the active suppression and destruction of books in Late Antiquity has received surprisingly little sustained consideration by academics. In an approach that presents evidence for the role played by Christian institutions, writers and saints, this book analyses a broad range of literary and legal sources, some of which have hitherto been little studied. Paying special attention to the problem of which genres and book types were likely to be targeted, the author argues that in addition to heretical, magical, astrological and anti-Christian books, other less obviously subversive categories of literature were also vulnerable to destruction, censorship or suppression through prohibition of the copying of manuscripts. These include texts from materialistic philosophical traditions, texts which were to become the basis for modern philosophy and science. This book examines how Christian authorities, theologians and ideologues suppressed ancient texts and associated ideas at a time of fundamental transformation in the late classical world.

The Art of Veiled Speech
The Art of Veiled Speech

Author: Han Baltussen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-07-27

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0812291638

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Throughout Western history, there have been those who felt compelled to share a dissenting opinion on public matters, while still hoping to avoid the social, political, and even criminal consequences for exercising free speech. In this collection of fourteen original essays, editors Han Baltussen and Peter J. Davis trace the roots of censorship far beyond its supposed origins in early modern history. Beginning with the ancient Greek concept of parrhêsia, and its Roman equivalent libertas, the contributors to The Art of Veiled Speech examine lesser-known texts from historical periods, some famous for setting the benchmark for free speech, such as fifth-century Athens and republican Rome, and others for censorship, such as early imperial and late antique Rome. Medieval attempts to suppress heresy, the Spanish Inquisition, and the writings of Thomas Hobbes during the Reformation are among the examples chosen to illustrate an explicit link of cultural censorship across time, casting new light on a range of issues: Which circumstances and limits on free speech were in play? What did it mean for someone to "speak up" or "speak truth to authority"? Drawing on poetry, history, drama, and moral and political philosophy the volume demonstrates the many ways that writers over the last 2500 years have used wordplay, innuendo, and other forms of veiled speech to conceal their subversive views, anticipating censorship and making efforts to get around it. The Art of Veiled Speech offers new insights into the ingenious methods of self-censorship to express controversial views, revealing that the human voice cannot be easily silenced. Contributors: Pauline Allen, Han Baltussen, Megan Cassidy-Welch, Peter J. Davis, Andrew Hartwig, Gesine Manuwald, Bronwen Neil, Lara O'Sullivan, Jon Parkin, John Penwill, François Soyer, Marcus Wilson, Ioannis Ziogas.

God's Body
God's Body

Author: Christoph Markschies

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 632

ISBN-13: 9781481311724

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God is unbounded. God became flesh. While these two assertions are equally viable parts of Western Christian religious heritage, they stand in tension with one another. Fearful of reducing God's majesty with shallow anthropomorphisms, philosophy and religion affirm that God, as an eternal being, stands wholly apart from creation. Yet the legacy of the incarnation complicates this view of the incorporeal divine, affirming a very different image of God in physical embodiment. While for many today the idea of an embodied God seems simplistic--even pedestrian--Christoph Markschies reveals that in antiquity, the educated and uneducated alike subscribed to this very idea. More surprisingly, the idea that God had a body was held by both polytheists and monotheists. Platonic misgivings about divine corporeality entered the church early on, but it was only with the advent of medieval scholasticism that the idea that God has a body became scandalous, an idea still lingering today. In God's Body Markschies traces the shape of the divine form in late antiquity. This exploration follows the development of ideas of God's corporeality in Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions. In antiquity, gods were often like humans, which proved to be important for philosophical reflection and for worship. Markschies considers how a cultic environment nurtured, and transformed, Jewish and Christian descriptions of the divine, as well as how philosophical debates over the connection of body and soul in humanity provided a conceptual framework for imagining God. Markschies probes the connections between this lively culture of religious practice and philosophical speculation and the christological formulations of the church to discover how the dichotomy of an incarnate God and a fleshless God came to be. By studying the religious and cultural past, Markschies reveals a Jewish and Christian heritage alien to modern sensibilities, as well as a God who is less alien to the human experience than much of Western thought has imagined. Since the almighty God who made all creation has also lived in that creation, the biblical idea of humankind as image of God should be taken seriously and not restricted to the conceptual world but rather applied to the whole person.

Dangerous Ideas
Dangerous Ideas

Author: Eric Berkowitz

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0807036242

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A fascinating examination of how restricting speech has continuously shaped our culture, and how censorship is used as a tool to prop up authorities and maintain class and gender disparities Through compelling narrative, historian Eric Berkowitz reveals how drastically censorship has shaped our modern society. More than just a history of censorship, Dangerous Ideas illuminates the power of restricting speech; how it has defined states, ideas, and culture; and (despite how each of us would like to believe otherwise) how it is something we all participate in. This engaging cultural history of censorship and thought suppression throughout the ages takes readers from the first Chinese emperor’s wholesale elimination of books, to Henry VIII’s decree of death for anyone who “imagined” his demise, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the volatile politics surrounding censorship of social media. Highlighting the base impulses driving many famous acts of suppression, Berkowitz demonstrates the fragility of power and how every individual can act as both the suppressor and the suppressed.

Claiming Exodus
Claiming Exodus

Author: Rhondda Robinson Thomas

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781602585317

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"Shows how writers such as Absalom Jones, Daniel Coker, and W.E.B. Du Bois employed the Exodus metanarrative to ask profound, difficult questions of the African experience in America from the eighteenth century onward."--Jacket flap.

The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd

Author: Jennifer Awes Freeman

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781481315371

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A statuette of Egyptian King Pepi formidably wielding a shepherd's crook stands in stark contrast to a fresco of an unassuming Orpheus-like youth gently hoisting a sheep around his shoulders. Both images, however, occupy an extensive tradition of shepherding motifs. In the transition from ancient Near Eastern depictions of the keeper of flocks as one holding great power to the more "pastoral" scenes of early Christian art, it might appear that connotations of rulership were divested from the image of the shepherd. The reality, however, presents a much more complex tapestry. The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power traces the visual and textual depictions of the Good Shepherd motif from its early iterations as a potent symbol of kingship, through its reimagining in biblical figures, such as the shepherd-king David, and onward to the shepherds of Greco-Roman literature. Jennifer Awes Freeman reveals that the figure of the Good Shepherd never became humble or docile but always carried connotations of empire, divinity, and defensive violence even within varied sociopolitical contexts. The early Christian invocation of the Good Shepherd was not simply anti-imperial but relied on a complex set of associations that included king, priest, pastor, and sacrificial victim--even as it subverted those meanings in the figure of Jesus, both shepherd and sacrificial lamb. The concept of the Good Shepherd continued to prove useful for early medieval rulers, such as Charlemagne, but its imperial references waned in the later Middle Ages as it became more exclusively applied to church leaders. Drawing on a range of sources including literature, theological treatises, and political texts, as well as sculpture, mosaics, and manuscript illuminations, The Good Shepherd offers a significant contribution as the first comprehensive study of the long history of the Good Shepherd motif. It also engages the flexible and multivalent abilities of visual and textual symbols to convey multiple meanings in religious and political contexts.