Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Ethiopian
Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Ethiopian

Author: Alessandro Bausi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 1351923293

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This volume brings together a set of contributions, many appearing in English for the first time, together with a new introduction, covering the history of the Ethiopian Christian civilization in its formative period (300-1500 AD). Rooted in the late antique kingdom of Aksum (present day Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea), and lying between Byzantium, Africa and the Near East, this civilization is presented in a series of case studies. At a time when philological and linguistic investigations are being challenged by new approaches in Ethiopian studies, this volume emphasizes the necessity of basic research, while avoiding the reduction of cultural questions to matters of fact and detail.

Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Georgian
Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Georgian

Author: Stephen H. Rapp

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-24

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 1351923269

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This volume brings together a set of key studies on the history and culture of Christian Georgia, along with a substantial new introduction. The opening section sets the regional context, in relation to the Byzantine empire in particular, while subsequent parts deal with the conversion and christianization of the country, the making of a 'national' church and the development of a historical identity.

Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Greek
Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Greek

Author: Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 627

ISBN-13: 1351923234

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This volume brings together a set of fundamental contributions, many translated into English for this publication, along with an important introduction. Together these explore the role of Greek among Christian communities in the late antique and Byzantine East (late Roman Oriens), specifically in the areas outside of the immediate sway of Constantinople and imperial Asia Minor. The local identities based around indigenous eastern Christian languages (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, etc.) and post-Chalcedonian doctrinal confessions (Miaphysite, Church of the East, Melkite, Maronite) were solidifying precisely as the Byzantine polity in the East was extinguished by the Arab conquests of the seventh century. In this multilayered cultural environment, Greek was a common social touchstone for all of these Christian communities, not only because of the shared Greek heritage of the early Church, but also because of the continued value of Greek theological, hagiographical, and liturgical writings. However, these interactions were dynamic and living, so that the Greek of the medieval Near East was itself transformed by such engagement with eastern Christian literature, appropriating new ideas and new texts into the Byzantine repertoire in the process.

A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission
A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission

Author: Alexander Kulik

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 559

ISBN-13: 0190863072

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The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts--a body of hypothetical originals--but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.

Pre-Islamic Arabia
Pre-Islamic Arabia

Author: Valentina A. Grasso

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1009252976

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This book delves into the political and cultural developments of pre-Islamic Arabia, focusing on the religious attitudes of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension into the Syrian desert. Between the third and the seventh century, Arabia was on the edge of three great empires (Iran, Rome and Aksūm) and at the centre of a lucrative network of trade routes. Valentina Grasso offers an interpretative framework which contextualizes the choice of Arabian elites to become Jewish sympathisers and/or convert to Christianity and Islam by probing the mobilization of faith in the shaping of Arabian identities. For the first time the Arabians of the period are granted autonomy from marginalizing (mostly Western) narratives framing them as 'barbarians' inhabiting the fringes of Rome and Iran and/or deterministic analyses in which they are depicted retrospectively as exemplified by the Muslims' definition of the period as Jāhilīyah, 'ignorance'.

The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia
The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia

Author: John Binns

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1786730375

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Surrounded by steep escarpments to the north, south and east, Ethiopia has always been geographically and culturally set apart. It has the longest archaeological record of any country in the world. Indeed, this precipitous mountain land was where the human race began. It is also home to an ancient church with a remarkable legacy. The Ethiopian Church forms the southern branch of historic Christianity. It is the only pre-colonial church in sub-Saharan Africa, originating in one of the earliest Christian kingdoms-with its king Ezana (supposedly descended from the biblical Solomon) converting around 340 CE. Since then it has maintained its long Christian witness in a region dominated by Islam; today it has a membership of around forty million and is rapidly growing. Yet despite its importance, there has been no comprehensive study available in English of its theology and history. This is a large gap which this authoritative and engagingly written book seeks to fill. The Church of Ethiopia (or formally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church) has a recognized place in worldwide Christianity as one of five non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches.As Dr Binns shows, it has developed a distinctive approach which makes it different from all other churches. His book explains why this happened and how these special features have shaped the life of the Christian people of Ethiopia. He discusses the famous rock-hewn churches; the Ark of the Covenant (claimed by the Church and housed in Aksum); the medieval monastic tradition; relations with the Coptic Church; co-existence with Islam; missionary activity; and the Church's venerable oral traditions, especially the discipline of qene-a kind of theological reflection couched in a unique style of improvised allegorical poetry. There is also a sustained exploration of how the Church has been forced to re-think its identity and mission as a result of political changes and upheaval following the overthrow of Haile Selassie (who ruled as Regent, 1916-1930, and then as Emperor, 1930-74) and beyond.

Eastern Christianity
Eastern Christianity

Author: J. Edward Walters

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2021-11-18

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 1467462691

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English translations of Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, Coptic, and Ethiopic Christian texts from late antiquity to the early modern period In order to make the writings of Eastern Christianity more widely accessible this volume offers a collection of significant texts from various Eastern Christian traditions, many of which are appearing in English for the first time. The internationally renowned scholars behind these translations begin each section with an informative historical introduction, so that anyone interested in learning more about these understudied groups can more easily traverse their diverse linguistic, cultural, and literary traditions. A boon to scholars, students, and general readers, this ample resource expands the scope of Christian history so that communities beyond Western Christendom can no longer be ignored. Contributors Jesse S. Arlen, Aaron M. Butts, Jeff W. Childers, Mary K. Farag, Philip Michael Forness, John C. Lamoreaux, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, Erin Galgay Walsh, J. Edward Walters, and Jeffrey Wickes.

One-Volume Libraries: Composite and Multiple-Text Manuscripts
One-Volume Libraries: Composite and Multiple-Text Manuscripts

Author: Michael Friedrich

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-11-07

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 3110495597

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Composite and multiple-text manuscripts are traditionally studied for their individual texts, but recent trends in codicology have paved the way for a more comprehensive approach: Manuscripts are unique artefacts which reveal how they were produced and used as physical objects. While multiple-text manuscripts codicologically are to be considered as production units, i.e. they were originally planned and realized in order to carry more than one text, composites consist of formerly independent codicological units and were put together at a later stage with intentions that might be completely different from those of its original parts. Both sub-types of manuscripts are still sometimes called "miscellanies", a term relating to the texts only. The codicological difference is important for reconstructing why and how these manuscripts which in many cases resemble (or contain) a small library were produced and used. Contributions on the manuscript cultures of China, India, Africa, the Islamic world and European traditions lead not only to the conclusion that "one-volume libraries" have been produced in many manuscript cultures, but allow also for the identification of certain types of uses.

Do this in Remembrance of Me
Do this in Remembrance of Me

Author: Bryan D. Spinks

Publisher: SCM Press

Published: 2014-02-10

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0334052025

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Bryan Spinks is one of the world’s leading scholars in the field of liturgy and to have a comprehensive work by him on the Eucharist is a major catch for SCM. Like the author’s previous work on Baptism, this will become a standard work about the Eucharist and Eucharistic theology worldwide. The book, a study of the history and theology of the Eucharist, is the fifth volume in the SCM Studies in Worship and Liturgy series and will help to establish the series as a place for landmark books of liturgical scholarship.

The Ethiopian Homily on the Ark of the Covenant
The Ethiopian Homily on the Ark of the Covenant

Author: Amsalu Tefera

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-08-31

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9004297189

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In The Ethiopian Homily on the Ark of the Covenant, Amsalu Tefera offers an editio princeps of the Ethiopic text of Dǝrsanä Ṣǝyon together with an annotated English translation. This homily, most likely composed in the fifteenth century, links the term Zion with the Ark of the Covenant and recounts at length its wanderings from Sinai to Ethiopia. As a Christian document, many of the events are interpreted as symbolic of Mary and the heavenly New Jerusalem. First edited by the author for his 2011 doctoral dissertation, the critical text and apparatus present a complete collation of the ten known witnesses to this homily. Detailed notes are supplied on significant and difficult terms in the translation.