Religious Stories in Transformation: Conflict, Revision and Reception PDF Download

Author: Alberdina Houtman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004334815
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 498

View

Book Description
In this volume, the editors have brought together a rich multidisciplinary collection of papers on the incorporation and adaptation of existing stories in a new context. It presents a vast array of research in mutual interaction between ancient myths, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and modern secular culture.

Author: Lisa Maurice
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350212849
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

View

Book Description
This volume offers an instructive comparative perspective on the Judaic, Christian, Greek and Roman myths about the creation of humans in relation to each other, as well as a broad overview of their enduring relevance in the modern Western world and its conceptions of gender and identity. Taking the idea that the way in which a society regards humanity, and especially the roots of humanity, is crucial to an understanding of that society, it presents the different models for the creation and nature of mankind, and their changing receptions over a range of periods and places. It thereby demonstrates that the myths reflect fundamental continuities, evolutions and developments across cultures and societies: in no context are these more apparent than with regard to gender. Chapters explore the role of gender in Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian creation myths and their reception traditions, demonstrating how perceptions of 'male' and 'female' dating back to antiquity have become embedded in, and significantly influenced, subsequent perceptions of gender roles. Focusing on the figures of Prometheus, Pandora, Adam and Eve and their instantiations in a broad range of narratives and media from antiquity to the present day, they examine how variations on these myths reflect the concerns of the societies producing them and the malleability of the stories as they are recast to fit different contexts and different audiences.

Author: Marcel Poorthuis
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 152754995X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

View

Book Description
Rituals are back on stage today. Until recently, they were regarded as an obsolete and even incomprehensible part of religions, relegated to the background while ethics and spirituality attracted more focus. However, the realisation is growing that rituals represent the treasure of religious memory. They connect the human being to the past and to the community that surrounds her or him. However, what happens to rituals when different religions meet? This book shows that a great deal can be learned by taking rituals seriously. This holds good for the rich treasure of rituals within religions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. Only by recognizing these treasures can new possibilities for rituals in interreligious encounters be explored.

Author: Riemer Roukema
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110666022
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298

View

Book Description
What happened when the writing of the Old Testament prophet Micah from the 8th century BCE was read and interpreted by Christians in the 1st to 5th century BCE? This research meticulously describes data from patristic commentaries and other ancient Christian works in Greek and Latin, as well as the remains of Gnostic receptions of Micah, and it analyses the interpretative strategies that were adopted. Attention is paid to the partial retrieval of Origen’s Commentary on Micah, which is lost nowadays, but was used by later Christian authors, especially Jerome. This work includes the ancient delimitation of the Septuagint version and patristic observations on the meaning of particular terms. Other aspects are the liturgical readings from Micah’s book up to the Middle Ages, its use in Christ’s complaints about Israel on Good Friday (the Improperia), and a rabbinic tradition about Jesus quoting Micah. It is noted whenever patristic authors implicitly use or explicitly quote Jewish interpretations, many of which are supplied with parallels in contemporaneous or medieval Jewish works. This first comprehensive survey of the ancient Christian reception and interpretation of Micah is a valuable tool for Biblical scholars and historians.

Author: Margaret Mullett
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351358499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

View

Book Description
Byzantinists entered the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. Since then, classicists and western medievalists have developed new ways of understanding how emotional communities work and where the ancients’ concepts of emotion differ from our own, and Byzantinists have begun to consider emotions other than sorrow. It is time to look at what is distinctive about Byzantine emotion. This volume is the first to look at the constellation of Byzantine emotions. Originating at an international colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks, these papers address issues such as power, gender, rhetoric, or asceticism in Byzantine society through the lens of a single emotion or cluster of emotions. Contributors focus not only on the construction of emotions with respect to perception and cognition but also explore how emotions were communicated and exchanged across broad (multi)linguistic, political and social boundaries. Priorities are twofold: to arrive at an understanding of what the Byzantines thought of as emotions and to comprehend how theory shaped their appraisal of reality. Managing Emotion in Byzantium will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in Byzantine perceptions of emotion, Byzantine Culture, and medieval perceptions of emotion.

Author: Marcel Poorthuis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004417524
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 356

View

Book Description
In Parables in Changing Contexts, new venues in the comparative study of parables are addressed by scholars of Judaism, New Testament, Buddhism and Islam. Essays cover parables in the synoptic Gospels, Rabbinic midrash, and parabolic tales and fables in the Babylonian Talmud.

Author: Jason F. Moraff
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567712494
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 205

View

Book Description
Jason F. Moraff challenges the contention that Acts' sharp rhetoric and portrayal of “the Jews” reflects anti-Judaism and supersessionism. He argues that, rather than constructing Christian identity in contrast to Judaism, Acts binds the Way, Paul, and “the Jews” together into a shared identity as Israel, and that together they embark on a journey of repentance with common Jewishness providing the foundation. Acts leverages Jewish kinship, language, cult, and custom to portray the Way, Paul, and “the Jews” as one family debating the direction of their ancestral tradition. Using a historically situated narrative approach, Moraff frames Acts' portrayal of the Way and Paul in relation to the Jewish people as participating in internecine conflict regarding the Jewish tradition-in-crisis, after the destruction of the temple. By exploring ancient ethnicity, Jewish identity and Lukan characterization, images of the Jews, the Way, and Paul, violence in Acts and the theme of blindness in Luke's gospel, the Pauline writings and Acts, Moraff stresses that Acts speaks from “among my own nation,” meaning “the Jews”, and makes it possible to understand Acts' critical characterization of “the Jews” within Second Temple Judaism.

Author: Jordan J. Ryan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567677486
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 293

View

Book Description
Since the early 4th century, Christian pilgrims and visitors to Judea and Galilee have worshipped at and been inspired by monumental churches erected at sites traditionally connected with the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. This book examines the history and archaeology of early Christian holy sites and traditions connected with specific places in order to understand them as interpretations of Jesus and to explore them as instantiations of memories of him. Ryan's overarching aim is to construe these places as instantiations of what historian Pierre Nora has called “lieux de mémoires,” sites where memory crystallizes and, where possible, to track the course and development of the traditions underlying them from their genesis in the Gospel narratives to their eventual solidification in the form of pilgrimage sites. So doing will bring rarely considered evidence to the study of early Christian memory, which in turn helps to illuminate the person of Jesus himself in both history and reception.

Author: Craig A. Evans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 056770324X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

View

Book Description
The nine essays that make up this volume provide cutting-edge studies of how sacred tradition is given new expression through vision and interpretation. The first four essays focus on the expansion of the sacred tradition primarily through vision. The evolution of the Solomon legacy, from wise king to healer and exorcist, is explored, as well as its contribution to the demonology of the desert fathers, especially as it concerns eroticism and sexual temptation. The varied receptions of the Revelation of the Magi and Shepherd of Hermas are also considered. The remaining five essays address important questions relating to polemic and violence in the Pseudepigrapha. How does the author of the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum justify God's alternating judgment and favor? How does Enoch's Animal Apocalypse make use of the Exodus tradition in its expression of deliverance? On what basis can the author of Qumran's War Scroll confidently predict Israel's vindication? And finally, what accounts for the appearance of the tradition of Gehenna, in which the wicked will meet their fiery end?

Author: Susan Niditch
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506486835
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

View

Book Description
In the new Hermeneia volume, the Jonah translation and commentary, renowned biblical scholar Susan Niditch encourages the reader to investigate challenging questions about ancient conceptions of personal religious identity. Jonah's story is treated as a complex reflection upon the heavy matters of life and death, good and evil, and human and divine relations. The narrative probes an individual's relationship with a demanding deity, considers vexing cultural issues of "us versus them," and examines the role of Israel's god in a universal and international context. The author examines the ways in which Jonah prods readers to contemplate these fundamental issues concerning group- and self-definition. In her technical study of Jonah's language, style, structure, content, and context, Niditch examines the text through the comparative lens of international folklore. The thread of appropriations of Jonah by post-biblical writers and artists is explored, and special attention is paid to rabbinic midrash, medieval Jewish manuscript illuminations, and Christian art of late antiquity. And in the tradition of Hermeneia volumes, the commentary evaluates and incorporates the insights of a long legacy of scholars who have explored this venerable text from varied perspectives.