The book focusses on the origin and transformation of the priestly festival calendar. Since the epoch-making work of Julius Wellhausen at the end of the 19th century the differences between the various ancient Israelite festival calendars have often been explained in terms of a gradual evolution, which shows an increasing historicisation, denaturalisation and ritualisation. The festivals were in Wellhausen's view gradually detached from agricultural conditions and celebrated more and more at fixed points in the year. This study tries to show that the changes in the priestly festival calendar reflect a conscious effort to adapt the ancient Israelite festival calendar to the semi-annual layout of the Babylonian festival year. The ramifications of the change only come to the fore after a careful study of the agricultural conditions of ancient Israel - and Mesopotamia - makes clear that passover and the festival of unleavened bread were originally celebrated in the second month of the year. The first month of the year envisaged by the priestly festival calendar for the celebration of passover and the festival of unleavened bread in turn mirrors the date of one of the two semi-annual Babylonian New Year festivals. The two Babylonian New Year festivals were celebrated exactly six months apart at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. In order to adapt the ancient Israelite festival calendar to the Babylonian scheme with two New Year festivals a year, the date of passover and the festival of unleavened bread had to be moved up by one month. The consequences for the origin of passover, the festival of unleavened bread, the festival of weeks and the festival of huts are charted and the relations between the various ancient Israelite festival calendars are determined anew.
"The Christian year is full of great feasts, such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Beautifully illustrated with colour plates, Festival Icons for the Christian Year introduces the general reader to the most important icons of the Orthodox Church associated with these major festivals, accompanied by words of prayer and liturgy." "Discussion of each festival includes background information, extracts from the associated liturgical texts, detailed analysis of the icon illustrated with information about its development, and comment on the theological and spiritual significance of the festival and its icon."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
THE Festal Epistles of S. Athanasius, as far as they are extant, are now, for the first time, presented to the English reader. In undertaking to superintend the publication of them, the Editor was, to some extent, aware of the difficulty of the task. In carrying it out, he has not hesitated to make numerous and important alterations in the translation as put into his hands, and not a few passages have been entirely re-modelled by him. He must, therefore, be held responsible for the errors contained in the following pages. Aeterna Press
Editing and examining source-critically for the first time the Late Babylonian ritual texts dealing with the New Year Festival, this book proposes an incisive re-interpretation of the most frequently discussed of all Mesopotamian rituals.
This book examines the queer film festival and opens the discussion on social enterprises and sustainable lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisations. With over 220 events worldwide and some of the bigger budgets exceeding $1 million, the queer film festival has grown to become a staple event in all cosmopolitan cities’ arts calendars. While activism was instrumental in establishing these festivals, the pink dollar has been a deciding factor in its financial sustainability. Pretty gay boys with chiselled abs are a staple feature, rather than underground experimental faire. Community arts events, such as these, are now a creative industry. While clearly having a social purpose, they must also concern themselves with the bottom line. For all the contradictory elements of its organisational growth, this conflict makes the queer film festival an integral site for analysis. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach in examining the queer film festival as a representative snapshot of the current state of queer cinema and community based film festivals. The book looks at queer film festivals in San Francisco, Hong Kong and Melbourne to argue for the importance of these institutions remaining as community events.
The Festival Cities of Edinburgh and Adelaide examines how these cities’ world-famous arts events have shaped and been shaped by their long-term interaction with their urban environments. While the Edinburgh International Festival and Adelaide Festival are long-established, prestigious events that champion artistic excellence, they are also accompanied by the two largest open-access fringe festivals in the world. It is this simultaneous staging of multiple events within Edinburgh’s Summer Festivals and Adelaide’s Mad March that generates the visibility and festive atmosphere popularly associated with both places. Drawing on perspectives from theatre studies and cultural geography, this book interrogates how the Festival City, as a place myth, has developed in the very different local contexts of Edinburgh and Adelaide, and how it is challenged by groups competing for the right to use and define public space. Each chapter examines a recent performative event in which festival debates and controversies spilled out beyond the festival space to activate the public sphere by intersecting with broader concerns and audiences. This book forges an interdisciplinary, comparative framework for festival studies to interrogate how festivals are embedded in the social and political fabric of cities and to assess the cultural impact of the festivalisation phenomenon.