Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity

Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity

Author: Eduard Iricinschi

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9783161491221

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"The papers collected in this volume shift the focus away from "heretics" and "heresy" to heresiological discourse, by contextualizing the late antique Jewish and Christian groups that produced our extant literature. The contributors to the volume draw from multiple literary corpora and genres, bringing a variety of late antique perspective to explore the discursive construction of the Other. They unravel ethnic identities, and re-create the multiple voices textured in the dialogue between the "orthodox" and "heretical" writers."--BOOK JACKET.


Brothers Estranged

Brothers Estranged

Author: Adiel Schremer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-01-20

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0199726175

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The emergence of formative Judaism has traditionally been examined in light of a theological preoccupation with the two competing religious movements, 'Christianity' and 'Judaism' in the first centuries of the Common Era. In this book Ariel Schremer attempts to shift the scholarly consensus away from this paradigm, instead privileging the rabbinic attitude toward Rome, the destroyer of the temple in 70 C.E., over their concern with the nascent Christian movement. The palpable rabbinic political enmity toward Rome, says Schremer, was determinative in the emerging construction of Jewish self-identity. He asserts that the category of heresy took on a new urgency in the wake of the trauma of the Temple's destruction, which demanded the construction of a new self-identity. Relying on the late 20th-century scholarly depiction of the slow and measured growth of Christianity in the empire up until and even after Constantine's conversion, Schremer minimizes the extent to which the rabbis paid attention to the Christian presence. He goes on, however, to pinpoint the parting of the ways between the rabbis and the Christians in the first third of the second century, when Christians were finally assigned to the category of heretics.


Being Christian in Vandal Africa

Being Christian in Vandal Africa

Author: Robin Whelan

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-05-10

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0520401433

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Being Christian in Vandal Africa investigates conflicts over Christian orthodoxy in the Vandal kingdom, the successor to Roman rule in North Africa, ca. 439 to 533 c.e. Exploiting neglected texts, author Robin Whelan exposes a sophisticated culture of disputation between Nicene (“Catholic”) and Homoian (“Arian”) Christians and explores their rival claims to political and religious legitimacy. These contests—sometimes violent—are key to understanding the wider and much-debated issues of identity and state formation in the post-imperial West.


Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

Author: Maijastina Kahlos

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-11-13

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190067276

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Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity reconsiders the religious history of the late Roman Empire, focusing on the shifting position of dissenting religious groups - conventionally called 'pagans' and 'heretics'. The period from the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth century CE witnessed a significant transformation of late Roman society and a gradual shift from the world of polytheistic religions into the Christian Empire. This book challenges the many straightforward melodramatic narratives of the Christianisation of the Roman Empire, still prevalent both in academic research and in popular non-fiction works. Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity demonstrates that the narrative is much more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world. It looks at everyday life, economic aspects, day-to-day practices, and conflicts of interest in the relations of religious groups. Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity addresses two aspects: rhetoric and realities, and consequently, delves into the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily life found in late antique sources. It is a detailed analysis of selected themes and a close reading of selected texts, tracing key elements and developments in the treatment of dissident religious groups. The book focuses on specific themes, such as the limits of imperial legislation and ecclesiastical control, the end of sacrifices, and the label of magic. Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity examines the ways in which dissident religious groups were construed as religious outsiders, but also explores local rituals and beliefs in late Roman society as creative applications and expressions of the infinite range of human inventiveness.


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: 437

ISBN-13: 131715973X

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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.


Preaching after Easter: Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in Late Antiquity

Preaching after Easter: Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in Late Antiquity

Author: Richard W. Bishop

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-06-21

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 9004315543

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The studies collected in Preaching after Easter examine the festal history and homiletics of Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in the late antique Mediterranean world. Articles on individual sermons or the work of individual preachers such as John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Chrysologus, Leo the Great, and Severus of Antioch exhibit the richness of late antique festal preaching. Questions of authenticity, heresiology, and theological, exegetical, or liturgical history are addressed with methodological rigor. Complementary contributions that deal with ancient Jewish-Christian dialogue, art-historical reception, and contemporary liturgical theology illustrate the wide ramifications of ancient Christian festal practice. Students and scholars of these feasts and the interpretive traditions devoted to them will find this volume to be an indispensable source of information and analysis.


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.


Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of Exodus

Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of Exodus

Author: Matthew A. Kraus

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-04-03

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9004343008

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In Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of Exodus: Translation Technique and the Vulgate, Matthew Kraus offers a layered understanding of Jerome’s translation of biblical narrative, poetry, and law from Hebrew to Latin. Usually seen as a tool for textual criticism, when read as a work of literature, the Vulgate reflects a Late Antique conception of Hebrew grammar, critical use of Greek biblical traditions, rabbinic influence, Christian interpretation, and Classical style and motifs. Instead of typically treating the text of the Vulgate and Jerome himself separately, Matthew Kraus uncovers Late Antiquity in the many facets of the translator at work—grammarian, biblical exegete, Septuagint scholar, Christian intellectual, rabbinic correspondent, and devotee of Classical literature.


The Politics of Heresy in Ambrose of Milan

The Politics of Heresy in Ambrose of Milan

Author: Michael Stuart Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1108508669

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Ambrose of Milan is famous above all for his struggle with, and triumph over, 'Arian' heresy. Yet, almost all of the evidence comes from Ambrose's own writings, and from pious historians of the next generation who represented him as a champion of orthodoxy. This detailed study argues instead that an 'Arian' opposition in Milan was largely conjured up by Ambrose himself, lumping together critics and outsiders in order to secure and justify his own authority. Along with new interpretations of Ambrose's election as bishop, his controversies over the faith, and his clashes with the imperial court, this book provides a new understanding of the nature and significance of heretical communities in Late Antiquity. In place of rival congregations inflexibly committed to doctrinal beliefs, it envisages a world of more fluid allegiances in which heresy - but also consensus - could be a matter of deploying the right rhetorical frame.