The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus as Sources of Romanos the Melodist
Author: William Lawrence Petersen
Publisher:
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13:
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Tatian's Diatessaron
Author: William L. Petersen
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2015-12-22
Total Pages: 576
ISBN-13: 9004312927
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA gospel harmony composed c. 172 C.E., the Diatessaron is one of the earliest witnesses to the gospels. Regarded as the first version of the gospels in Latin, Syriac, and Armenian, the Diatessaron was used by Encratites, Judaic-Christians, and “Great Church” Christians alike. This study is the first comprehensive treatment of the Diatessaron in more than a century. After sketching the second-century setting and Tatian's biography, it describes virtually every Diatessaronic witness and provides a scholar-by-scholar summary of research from 546 to the present. Criteria for reconstructing Diatessaronic readings are developed, and numerous examples offer the reader first-hand experience with the witnesses. It contains the first Bibliography of research on the Diatessaron (600+ titles) and the first “Catalogue of Manuscripts of Diatessaronic Witnesses and Related Works” ever published.
Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire
Author: Averil Cameron
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2023-09-01
Total Pages: 284
ISBN-13: 9780520915503
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMany reasons can be given for the rise of Christianity in late antiquity and its flourishing in the medieval world. In asking how Christianity succeeded in becoming the dominant ideology in the unpromising circumstances of the Roman Empire, Averil Cameron turns to the development of Christian discourse over the first to sixth centuries A.D., investigating the discourse's essential characteristics, its effects on existing forms of communication, and its eventual preeminence. Scholars of late antiquity and general readers interested in this crucial historical period will be intrigued by her exploration of these influential changes in modes of communication. The emphasis that Christians placed on language—writing, talking, and preaching—made possible the formation of a powerful and indeed a totalizing discourse, argues the author. Christian discourse was sufficiently flexible to be used as a public and political instrument, yet at the same time to be used to express private feelings and emotion. Embracing the two opposing poles of logic and mystery, it contributed powerfully to the gradual acceptance of Christianity and the faith's transformation from the enthusiasm of a small sect to an institutionalized world religion. Many reasons can be given for the rise of Christianity in late antiquity and its flourishing in the medieval world. In asking how Christianity succeeded in becoming the dominant ideology in the unpromising circumstances of the Roman Empire, Averil Cameron
The Portrayal of Christ in the Syriac Commentary on the Diatessaron
Author: Christian Lange
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13: 9789042915695
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor a long time the Diatessaron has drawn the interest of modern scholars. Some of the problems related to the Syriac Harmony of the Gospels have been solved. Others still remain in dispute. The Syriac Commentary on the Diatessaron, attributed to Ephraem (306-373), is one of the most important witnesses to the wording of the Harmony. Unfortunately, most of the surviving Syriac folios of the text have been discovered only recently. Consequently, no detailed study on the Commentary has been undertaken yet. It is the aim of this study to present this scholarly demand. This Oxford dissertation deals with the questions of the difficult process of the Commentary's transmission and analyses both the Trinitarian and Christological understanding of its author. By way of a comparison with the "genuine" Ephraem, this study argues that the Commentary in its present form is a compilation from the hand of one of his disciples. However, it serves as an important source on the theological discussions in the Edessa of the late fourth and early fifth centuries.
Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium
Author: Andrew Mellas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020-07-09
Total Pages: 219
ISBN-13: 110880067X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia. It reimagines the performance of their hymns during Great Lent and Holy Week in Constantinople. In doing so, it understands compunction as a liturgical emotion, intertwined with paradisal nostalgia, a desire for repentance and a wellspring of tears. For the faithful, liturgical emotions were embodied experiences that were enacted through sacred song and mystagogy. The three hymnographers chosen for this study span a period of nearly four centuries and had an important connection to Constantinople, which forms the topographical and liturgical nexus of the study. Their work also covers three distinct genres of hymnography: kontakion, kanon and sticheron idiomelon. Through these lenses of period, place and genre this study examines the affective performativity hymns and the Byzantine experience of compunction.
The Antenicene Pascha
Author: Karl Gerlach
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 460
ISBN-13: 9789042905702
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBeginning with "spiritual" interpretation and anti-Judaic polemic to secure the Pesach institution narrative (Ex 12) for Christian proclamation, major centers of Asia Minor and Syria, then Upper Egypt and the West, develop distinct rhetorical structures that load first the day, then the date of Pascha, with theological meaning. The emergence of the four-gospel canon at the end of the second century enriches, but does not supplant, a dialogue between Christian rituals and the scriptures inherited from Judaism. The Antenicene Pascha takes a fresh approach to the scattered literary remains of the earliest paschal feast by acknowledging them for what they are: relics of heated disputes about ritual boundaries that had elevated the Pascha, an observance with no explicite reference in first century literature, to an icon of unity and orthodoxy at the Council of Nicaea. Just as these disputes repeat familiar patterns of establishing Christian identity, much modern scholarship employs hermeneutical categories derived from other conflicts (Great Schism, Reformation) that often obscure, rather than reveal, the history of the paschal celebration. This book will be of value not only to students of the liturgy, but also to those interested in the history of biblical hermeneutics, the canon, and the roots of Christian anti-Judaism.
Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica. Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel
Author: Gilles Quispel
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2008-12-31
Total Pages: 864
ISBN-13: 9047441826
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume brings together a rich and varied collection of essays by Gilles Quispel (1916-2006), Professor of the History of the Early Church at Utrecht University from 1951 until his retirement in 1983. During his illustrious career, Professor Quispel was also visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1964/65, and visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1969 until 1974. The fifty essays collected in this volume testify to most of the prominent themes from Professor Quispel’s scholarly career: the writings of the Nag Hammadi library in general and the Gospel of Thomas in particular; Tatian’s Diatessaron and its influences; the Hermetica; Mani and Manichaeism; the Jewish origins of Gnosticism; and Gnosis and the future of Christianity. This volume also makes a number of his less known earlier publications (mainly presented under the heading ‘Catholica’) available to the international community. Until shortly before he died, Professor Quispel remained active in his study of the Gospel of Thomas. He had been one of the first to acquire the Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas, of which he published the first translation in 1959 and his final translation in 2005. He was also active in researching the Diatessaron, and Valentinus ‘the Gnostic’. One of his most recent essays – published for the first time in this volume – is on ‘the Muslim Jesus.’
Patristic and Text-Critical Studies
Author: William Lawrence Petersen
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2011-12-09
Total Pages: 637
ISBN-13: 9004192891
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume brings together thirty-two essays by William L. Petersen (1950-2006), offering an overview of his ground-breaking work on, among other things, Tatian’s Diatessaron and New Testament textual criticism.
Approaches to Genre in the Ancient World
Author: Michelle Borg
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2014-07-18
Total Pages: 181
ISBN-13: 144386420X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNo less than their modern counterparts, ancient genres were contested, hybrid and ambiguous. This volume, the result of a conference at the University of Sydney, is a collection dealing with some of the many issues around ancient understandings of genre. It presents a series of case studies, some concerned with texts that have loomed large in discussions of ancient genre (such as the works of Ovid), and others, in particular late-antique works, that have received less attention. Ranging from Rome and Greece to Gaza and Syria, Approaches to Genre in the Ancient World makes a unique contribution to the study of ancient genre and to the understanding of the specific texts discussed.
Scenting Salvation
Author: Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2015-08-25
Total Pages: 442
ISBN-13: 0520287568
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.
