Author: Revd Allen Brent Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004313125 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 423
Book Description
Recent studies have re-assessed Emperor worship as a genuinely religious response to the metaphysics of social order. Brent argues that Augustus' revolution represented a genuinely religious reformation of Republican religion that had failed in its metaphysical objectives. Against this backcloth, Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to that metaphysical failure. Callistus and Pseudo-Hippolytus gave different responses to Severan images of imperial power. The early, Monarchian theology of the Trinity was thus to become a reflection of imperial culture and its justification that was later to be articulated both in Neo-Platonism, and in Cyprian's view of episcopal Order. Contra-cultural theory is employed as a sociological model to examine the interaction between developing Pagan and Christian social order.
Author: Xiaochao Wang Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004320008 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
This book is a study of the writings of a group of Chinese Christian apologists in the seventeenth century, focussing on Xu Guangqi. Eleven of his shorter writings are included in Chinese and in translation. The first part of the book is devoted to a study of Latin Christian apologists within the Roman Empire to provide a comparison for the analysis of Xu Guangqi's work. Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Lactantius are shown to have faced, in regard to imperial power and Graeco-Roman culture, a situation comparable to that of Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao and Yang Tinqyun in regard to imperial power and culture in the late Ming period. The final chapters of the book reconsider general issues of confrontation and adaptation in the inculturation of Christianity.
Author: Néstor Medina Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004363092 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
In Christianity, Empire and The Spirit, Néstor Medina uncovers the interwoven cultural processes that influence how people understand reality, express faith, and think about God. Countering Eurocentric theological articulations, he proposes that the Spirit is at work in the cultural.
Author: Lee M. Jefferson Publisher: Fortress Press ISBN: 1506402844 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
In recent years, art historians such as Johannes Deckers (Picturing the Bible, 2009) have argued for a significant transition in fourth- and fifth-century images of Jesus following the conversion of Constantine. Broadly speaking, they perceive the image of a peaceful, benevolent shepherd transformed into a powerful, enthroned Jesus, mimicking and mirroring the dominance and authority of the emperor. The powers of church and state are thus conveniently synthesized in such a potent image. This deeply rooted position assumes that ante-pacem images of Jesus were uniformly humble while post-Constantinian images exuded the grandeur of power and glory. The Art of Empire contends that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity merits a more nuanced understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. The chapters in this collection each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the Empire, and offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background.
Author: Peter Fibiger Bang Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139560956 Category : History Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The claim by certain rulers to universal empire has a long history stretching as far back as the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires. This book traces its various manifestations in classical antiquity, the Islamic world, Asia and Central America as well as considering seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European discussions of international order. As such it is an exercise in comparative world history combining a multiplicity of approaches, from ancient history, to literary and philosophical studies, to the history of art and international relations and historical sociology. The notion of universal, imperial rule is presented as an elusive and much coveted prize among monarchs in history, around which developed forms of kingship and political culture. Different facets of the phenomenon are explored under three, broadly conceived, headings: symbolism, ceremony and diplomatic relations; universal or cosmopolitan literary high-cultures; and, finally, the inclination to present universal imperial rule as an expression of cosmic order.
Author: Judith Perkins Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134152647 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
Through the close study of texts, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era examines the overlapping emphases and themes of two cosmopolitan and multiethnic cultural identities emerging in the early centuries CE – a trans-empire alliance of the Elite and the "Christians." Exploring the cultural representations of these social identities, Judith Perkins shows that they converge around an array of shared themes: violence, the body, prisons, courts, and time. Locating Christian representations within their historical context and in dialogue with other contemporary representations, it asks why do Christian representations share certain emphases? To what do they respond, and to whom might they appeal? For example, does the increasing Christian emphasis on a fully material human resurrection in the early centuries, respond to the evolution of a harsher and more status based judicial system? Judith Perkins argues that Christians were so successful in suppressing their social identity as inhabitants of the Roman Empire, that historical documents and testimony have been sequestered as "Christian" rather than recognized as evidence for the social dynamics enacted during the period, Her discussion offers a stimulating survey of interest to students of ancient narrative, cultural studies and gender.
Author: Jaś Elsner Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780192842015 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
Western culture saw some of the most significant and innovative developments take place during the passage from antiquity to the middle ages. This stimulating new book investigates the role of the visual arts as both reflections and agents of those changes. It tackles two inter-related periodsof internal transformation within the Roman Empire: the phenomenon known as the 'Second Sophistic' (c. ad 100300)two centuries of self-conscious and enthusiastic hellenism, and the era of late antiquity (c. ad 250450) when the empire underwent a religious conversion to Christianity. Vases, murals, statues, and masonry are explored in relation to such issues as power, death, society, acculturation, and religion. By examining questions of reception, viewing, and the culture of spectacle alongside the more traditional art-historical themes of imperial patronage and stylisticchange, Jas Elsner presents a fresh and challenging account of an extraordinarily rich cultural crucible in which many fundamental developments of later European art had their origins. 'a highly individual work . . . wonderful visual and comparative analysis . . . I can think of no other general book on Roman art that deals so elegantly and informatively with the theme of visuality and visual desire.' Professor Natalie Boymel Kampen, Barnard College, New York 'exciting and original . . . a vibrant impression of creative energy and innovation held in constant tension by the persistence of more traditional motifs and techniques. Elsner constantly surprises and intrigues the reader by approaching familiar material in new ways.' Professor Averil Cameron,Keble College, Oxford
Author: Howard Clark Kee Publisher: Pearson ISBN: Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 616
Book Description
Written by contributing scholars who are experts in specific facets of developing Christianity, this survey provides a well-rounded introduction to the history of Christianity and is ideal for anyone interested in the impact of Christianity of world culture down through history. It shows how Christianity emerged from its original Jewish context and developed into a worldwide religion, offering perceptive studies on how its origins and development were influenced by the changing social and cultural contexts in which the founders and leaders of this tradition lived and thought. Provides detailed evidence of the influence of Greco-Roman and Jewish religious concepts and religious movements on the origins of Christianity, considers the structuring of the church conceptually and organizationally in Europe, and discusses Christianity's spread and growth in America and throughout the world. Looks at the profound impact of the culture of the later Roman and medieval world on the development of Christian doctrine and intellectual traditions and helps readers understand the reasons for the divisions between Catholic and Protestant traditions. For theologians.
Author: Jeremy M. Schott Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812203461 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.
Author: Lars Peter Laamann Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134429983 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 221
Book Description
Following the prohibition of missionary activity after 1724, China's Christians were effectively cut off from all foreign theological guidance. The ensuing isolation forced China's Christian communities to become self-reliant in perpetuating the basic principles of their faith. Left to their own devices, the missionary seed developed into a panoply of indigenous traditions, with Christian ancestry as the common denominator. Christianity thus underwent the same process of inculturation as previous religious traditions in China, such as Buddhism and Judaism. As the guardian of orthodox morality, the prosecuting state sought to exercise all-pervading control over popular thoughts and social functions. Filling the gap within the discourse of Christianity in China and also as part of the wider analysis of religion in late Imperial China, this study presents the campaigns against Christians during this period as part and parcel of the campaign against 'heresy' and 'heretical' movements in general.
Author: Revd Allen Brent
Author: Xiaochao Wang
Author: Néstor Medina
Author: Lee M. Jefferson
Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Author: Judith Perkins
Author: Jaś Elsner
Author: Howard Clark Kee
Author: Jeremy M. Schott
Author: Lars Peter Laamann