Evagrius's Kephalaia Gnostika

Evagrius's Kephalaia Gnostika
Author: Ilaria L.E. Ramelli
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2015-10-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1628370408

A new English translation for scholars and students of church history Evagrius exerted a striking impact on the development of spirituality, of Origenism, and of the spiritual interpretation of the Bible in Greek, Syriac, and Latin Christianity. This English translation of the most complete Syriac version of Kephalaia Gnostika makes Evagrius Ponticus's thoughts concerning reality, God, protology, eschatology, anthropology, and allegorical exegesis of Scripture widely available. Features: English translation of the longer Syriac version discovered by Antoine Guillaumont Commentary provides an integrated analysis of Evagrius's ascetic and philosophical writings Extensive introduction on the importance of Evagrius and the context of his writings

Evagrius's Kephalaia Gnostika

Evagrius's Kephalaia Gnostika
Author: Ilaria L.E. Ramelli
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-10-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781628370416

A new English translation for scholars and students of church history Evagrius exerted a striking impact on the development of spirituality, of Origenism, and of the spiritual interpretation of the Bible in Greek, Syriac, and Latin Christianity. This English translation of the most complete Syriac version of Kephalaia Gnostika makes Evagrius Ponticus's thoughts concerning reality, God, protology, eschatology, anthropology, and allegorical exegesis of Scripture widely available. Features: English translation of the longer Syriac version discovered by Antoine Guillaumont Commentary provides an integrated analysis of Evagrius's ascetic and philosophical writings Extensive introduction on the importance of Evagrius and the context of his writings

Isaac of Nineveh's Ascetical Eschatology

Isaac of Nineveh's Ascetical Eschatology
Author: Jason Scully
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017-11-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192525476

Isaac of Nineveh's Ascetical Eschatology demonstrates that Isaac's eschatology is an original synthesis based on ideas garnered from a distinctively Syriac cultural milieu. Jason Scully investigates six sources relevant to the study of Isaac's Syriac source material and cultural heritage. These include ideas adapted from Syriac authors like Ephrem, John the Solitary, and Narsai, but also adapted from the Syriac versions of texts originally written in Greek, like Evagrius's Gnostic Chapters, Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology, and the Pseudo-Macarian homilies. Isaac's eschatological synthesis of this material is a sophisticated discourse on the psychological transformation that occurs when the mind has an experience of God. It begins with the premise that asceticism was part of God's original plan for creation. Isaac says that God created human beings with infantile knowledge and that God intended from the beginning for Adam and Eve to leave the Garden of Eden. Once outside the garden, human beings would have to pursue mature knowledge through bodily asceticism. Although perfect knowledge is promised in the future world, Isaac also believes that human beings can experience a proleptic taste of this future perfection. Isaac employs the concepts of wonder and astonishment in order to explain how an ecstatic experience of the future world is possible within the material structures of this world. According to Isaac, astonishment describes the moment when a person arrives at the threshold of eschatological perfection but is still unable to comprehend the heavenly mysteries, while wonder describes spiritual comprehension of heavenly knowledge through the intervention of divine grace.

Heirs of the Apostles

Heirs of the Apostles
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2019-01-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004383867

Heirs of the Apostles offers a panoramic survey of Arabic-speaking Christians—descendants of the Christian communities established in the Middle East by the apostles—and their history, religion, and culture in the early Islamic and medieval periods. The subjects range from Arabic translations of the Bible, to the status of Christians in the Muslim-governed lands, Muslim-Christian polemic, and Christian-Muslim and Christian-Jewish relations. The volume is offered as a Festschrift to Sidney H. Griffith, the doyen of Christian Arabic Studies in North America, on his eightieth birthday. Contributors are: David Bertaina, Elie Dannaoui, Stephen Davis, Nathan P. Gibson, Cornelia Horn, Sandra Toenies Keating, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Andrew Platt, Thomas W. Ricks, Barbara Roggema, Harald Suermann, Mark N. Swanson, Shawqi Talia, Jack Tannous, David Thomas, Jennifer Tobkin, Alexander Treiger, Ronny Vollandt, Clare Wilde, and Jason Zaborowski.

Evagrius and His Legacy

Evagrius and His Legacy
Author: Joel Kalvesmaki
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2016-02-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0268084742

Evagrius of Pontus (ca. 345-399) was a Greek-speaking monastic thinker and Christian theologian whose works formed the basis for much later reflection on monastic practice and thought in the Christian Near East, in Byzantium, and in the Latin West. His innovative collections of short chapters meant for meditation, scriptural commentaries in the form of scholia, extended discourses, and letters were widely translated and copied. Condemned posthumously by two ecumenical councils as a heretic along with Origen and Didymus of Alexandria, he was revered among Christians to the east of the Byzantine Empire, in Syria and Armenia, while only some of his writings endured in the Latin and Greek churches. A student of the famed bishop-theologians Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea, Evagrius left the service of the urban church and settled in an Egyptian monastic compound. His teachers were veteran monks schooled in the tradition of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Anthony, and he enriched their legacy with the experience of the desert and with insight drawn from the entire Greek philosophical tradition, from Plato and Aristotle through Iamblichus. Evagrius and His Legacy brings together essays by eminent scholars who explore selected aspects of Evagrius's life and times and address his far-flung and controversial but long-lasting influence on Latin, Byzantine, and Syriac cultures in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Touching on points relevant to theology, philosophy, history, patristics, literary studies, and manuscript studies, Evagrius and His Legacy is also intended to catalyze further study of Evagrius within as large a context as possible.

The Gnostic Chapters

The Gnostic Chapters
Author: Stephen J. Davis
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2023
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004539719

In the late fourth century, the early Christian monk and author Evagrius Ponticus wrote his magnum opus in Greek--entitled Kephalaia Gnostika ("Gnostic Chapters")--a spiritual treatise on ascetic contemplation and unity with God. After Evagrius' death, however, his theology attracted controversy, and many of his writings were suppressed or destroyed. As a result, complete copies of this important work principally survived only in Syriac translations and an Armenian adaptation, until the recent discovery of two Arabic copies at the so-called Monastery of the Syrians in Egypt. The present volume represents the first-ever critical edition and translation of the Kephalaia Gnostika in that language.

Evagrius of Pontus

Evagrius of Pontus
Author: Robin Darling Young
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2023-12-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199997675

"This tripartite book is the best-known and most important book by the ascetic philosopher and teacher Evagrius of Pontus. Among the writers of his age, Evagrius stands out for his short, puzzling, and absorbing aphorisms, which provide sharp insight into philosophy, Scripture, and observation of the natural world. The first part of the trilogy, the Praktikos (The Practiced One), provides a diagnosis and treatment of the eight temptations. The second, Gnostikos (The Knower), explains how someone who has mastered the body and mental delusions should teach others. The third, longest, and most controversial part, the Kephalaia gnostika (Gnostic Chapters), ranges broadly over the origin of the universe, the nature of rational beings, and the hidden symbols of Scripture. The Trilogy, arguably the magnum opus of Evagrius, is highly significant. The Praktikos was a foundational text for monastic asceticism, and was the basis for the later Seven Deadly Sins tradition. The Kephalaia gnostika was responsible for Evagrius's condemnation as a heretic in the sixth century. As a result, the writing does not survive intact in the original Greek, and must be restored from ancient translations. The present work, the first time since antiquity that the Trilogy has been presented as a complete whole, provides a fresh comprehensive English translation of all three works, in all their known ancient versions, both Greek and Syriac. Detailed explanatory notes provide the reader with the resources needed to think about the ancient text, which is often intentionally puzzling. Cross-references are provided to Scripture, to ancient literature, and to Evagrius's other writings. Comments on the translation techniques of the Syriac translators provide insight into the versions that were read by Eastern Christians"--

Origen, the Philosophical Theologian

Origen, the Philosophical Theologian
Author: Ilaria L. E. Ramelli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 848
Release: 2024-11-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3111373495

How did Origen, one of the major Patristic thinkers, construct his philosophical theology? What are his main innovations in metaphysics, protology, Trinitarian Theology and Christology? How did he view the relation between philosophy and theology? This is a collection of over twenty essays, mostly from world-leading journals and books from outstanding publishers, besides two new ones, from Professor Ilaria L.E. Ramelli’s life-long, and always continuing, research on Origen. This coherent set of studies is grouped around Origen’s metaphysics, protology, Trinitarian theology and Christology, and the relation between theology and philosophy, with reception aspects. The essays address Origen’s towering figure in Patristic philosophy, Christian Platonism, and the Platonic tradition, facets of his reception of Platonism, reflections concerning the Christianization of Hellenism (vs. the Hellenization of Christianity) and the relation between philosophy and theology and between ‘pagan’ and Christian Platonism; Origen’s philosophical theology and connections to Platonism; the question of Origen's conversion and his lexicon of epistrophē; a comparison between the imperial Platonist Atticus’ and Origen’s theories on the soul of God the Creator; Alexander of Aphrodisias as a source of Origen’s philosophy and the birth of the eternity formula in reference to the Son; the problem of Origen’s "subordinationism", which must be nuanced; Origen’s major contribution to Trinitarian theology in the notion of hypostasis and its foundation in Scripture and philosophy; the reciprocal indwelling of the Father in the Son and its implications against Origen’s "subordinationism"; Origen’s influence on Augustine as paradoxical and a Christological case study; the divine as inaccessible object of knowledge in ancient and Patristic Platonism; the reception of Origen’s ideas in the West; the notion of divine power in Origen: sources and aftermath; Platonist exemplarism in Origen and Plotinus; Paul’s notion of nous in Origen and Evagrius; the reception of Origen in Ps.Dionysius, and Origen’s heritage in the concept of matter in the Dialogue of Adamantius. The volume is rounded off by theoretical reflections on philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. This book is very relevant to the study of Origen, the foundations of Christian thought, and ancient and late antique philosophy, theology and culture.

Exploring Gregory of Nyssa

Exploring Gregory of Nyssa
Author: Anna Marmodoro
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2018
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0198826427

"The essays that comprise this volume were first presented ... at a seminar on Gregory of Nyssa that we convened in Oxford in 2016"--Page v.

Invitation to Syriac Christianity

Invitation to Syriac Christianity
Author: Michael Philip Penn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520299191

Introduction -- Origin stories -- Poetry -- Doctrine and disputation -- Liturgy -- Asceticism -- Mysticism and prayer -- Biblical interpretation -- Hagiography -- Books, knowledge, and translation -- Judaism -- Islam -- Religions of the Silk Road -- Appendix 1 : translations and editions -- Appendix 2 : biographies of named authors -- Appendix 3 : glossary.