Saint Basil of Caesarea and Armenian Cosmology

Saint Basil of Caesarea and Armenian Cosmology
Author: Robert W. Thomson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2012
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9789042926288

"Preliminary versions of parts of the following book have been presented at conferences or lectures in Oxford, London, Paris and Geneva"--P. ix.

Armenia between Byzantium and the Orient

Armenia between Byzantium and the Orient
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 736
Release: 2019-12-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004397744

This volume commemorating the late Armenian scholar Karen Yuzbashyan comprises studies of mediaeval Armenian culture, including the reception of biblical and parabiblical texts, theological literature, liturgy, hagiography, manuscript studies, Church history and secular history, and Christian art and material culture. Special attention is paid to early Christian and late Jewish texts and traditions preserved in documents written in Armenian. Several contributions focus on the interactions of Armenia with other cultures both within and outside the Byzantine Commonwealth: Greek, Georgian, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Iranian. Select contributions may serve as initial reference works for their respective topics (the catalogue of Armenian khachkars in the diaspora and the list of Armenian Catholicoi in Tzovk’).

Nersēs of Lambron: Commentary on the Dormition of Saint John

Nersēs of Lambron: Commentary on the Dormition of Saint John
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2017-05-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004343210

This is the first translation of the twelfth century Armenian commentary on the death of John the Evangelist as found in the Acts of John. The last section of the apocryphal life of the Evangelist became detached from the whole, and circulated widely in the churches of east and west. The Armenian version was included in service books, Bibles, and collections of saints’ lives. Yet no medieval commentary on that brief text is known in any other language. Nersēs of Lambron [1153-1198], Archbishop of Tarsus, was a prolific author and an influential player in the ecclesiastical politics of his era. He used this work as a medium for spiritual reflection, and for an exposition of the Armenian tradition as opposed to the theologies of the Greek and Syrian churches.

Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations

Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2019-10-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004415041

Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations explores the Arabic translations of the Greek and Syriac Church Fathers, focusing on those produced in the Palestinian monasteries and at Sinai in the 8th–10th centuries and in Antioch during Byzantine rule (969–1084). These Arabic translations preserve patristic texts lost in the original languages. They offer crucial information about the diffusion and influence of patristic heritage among Middle Eastern Christians from the 8th century to the present. A systematic examination of Arabic patristic translations sheds light on the development of Muslim and Jewish theological thought. Contributors are Aaron Michael Butts, Joe Glynias, Habib Ibrahim, Jonas Karlsson, Sergey Kim, Joshua Mugler, Tamara Pataridze, Alexandre Roberts, Barbara Roggema, Alexander Treiger.

Meanings and Functions of the Ruler's Image in the Mediterranean World (11th – 15th Centuries)

Meanings and Functions of the Ruler's Image in the Mediterranean World (11th – 15th Centuries)
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 574
Release: 2022-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 900451158X

(The open access version of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.) The book proposes a reassessment of royal portraiture and its function in the Middle Ages via a comparative analysis of works from different areas of the Mediterranean world, where images are seen as only one outcome of wider and multifarious strategies for the public mise-en-scène of the rulers’ bodies. Its emphasis is on the ways in which medieval monarchs in different areas of the Mediterranean constructed their outward appearance and communicated it by means of a variety of rituals, object-types, and media. Contributors are Michele Bacci, Nicolas Bock, Gerardo Boto Varela, Branislav Cvetković, Sofia Fernández Pozzo, Gohar Grigoryan Savary, Elodie Leschot, Vinni Lucherini, Ioanna Rapti, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Marta Serrano-Coll, Lucinia Speciale, Manuela Studer-Karlen, Mirko Vagnoni, and Edda Vardanyan.

Moralia Et Ascetica Armeniaca

Moralia Et Ascetica Armeniaca
Author:
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-12-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0813234794

The twenty-three discourses presented in this volume have a long textual history that ascribes them to St. Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia (d. 328), a prevalent view that lasted through the nineteenth century. Armenian scholarship through the last century has tended to ascribe them to St. Mashtots‘, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet (d. 440). In his critical introduction to this first-ever English translation of the discourses, Terian presents them as an ascetic text by an anonymous abbot writing near the end of the sixth century. The very title in Armenian, Yačaxapatum Čaŕk‘, literally, “Oft-Repeated Discourses,” further validates their ascetic environment, where they were repeatedly related to novices. For want of answers to introductory questions regarding authorship and date, and because of the pervasive grammatical difficulties of the text, the document has remained largely unknown in scholarship. The discourses include many of the Eastern Fathers’ favorite theological themes. They are heavily punctuated with biblical quotations and laced with recurring biblical images and phraseology; the doctrinal and functional centrality of the Scriptures is emphasized throughout. They are replete with traditional Christian moral teachings that have acquired elements of moral philosophy transmitted through Late Antiquity. Echoes of St. Basil’s thought are heard in several of them, and some evidence of the author’s dependence on the Armenian version of the saint’s Rules, translated around the turn of the sixth century, is apparent. On the whole they show how Christians were driven by the Johannine love-command and the Pauline Spirit-guided practice of virtuous living, ever maturing in the ethos of an in-group solidarity culminating in monasticism.

Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity

Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity
Author: Peter Van Nuffelen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2019-08-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108481280

The later Roman Empire was shrinking on the map, but still shaped the way historians represented the space around them.

Eastern Christianity in Its Texts

Eastern Christianity in Its Texts
Author: Cyril Hovorun
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 896
Release: 2022-08-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567682927

Surveying theological literature produced in the Christian East from the first through the 20th century, Eastern Christianity in its Texts explores different theological themes (analytical and mystical), genres (epistles, treatises, and poetry), and milieux (Greek, Armenian, Western and Eastern Syriac, Russian and Romanian). The book illustrates the evolution of the Orthodox thought, how it influenced and was influenced by intellectual, social, and political environments. It demonstrates a theology in context, and yet displays consistency in the traditions spread through different epochs and countries. The book is divided in five parts, each standing for an epoch with distinct features: formation of the Christian identity in the era before Constantine, golden age of theology in the period of Late Antiquity, the pinnacle of erudism and mysticism in the eastern Middle Ages, wrestling with the Modernity imported from the West in the 18th-19th centuries, and finally theological polyphony in the 20th century.

Nonnus of Nisibis, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John

Nonnus of Nisibis, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John
Author: Robert W. Thomson
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2014-08-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1589839889

A new English translation of the first text translated from Arabic to Armenian for research and classroom use Robert W. Thomson translates this ninth-century commentary defending the miaphysite theological position of the Armenian church against the chalcedonian position of the Greek Byzantine church. Nonnus’s exegesis of the gospel falls in the context of trends in Eastern Christian biblical exposition, primarily the Syrian tradition. Therefore, Thomson emphasizes the parallels in Syriac commentaries on the book of John, noting also earlier Greek writers whose works were influential in Syria. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Armenian church and church history. Features: Introductory material on the text’s history, manuscript traditions, and theological importance Translation of the Armenian text and commentary Bibliography covering the Armenian, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic texts as well as secondary sources

Reason and Revelation in Byzantine Antioch

Reason and Revelation in Byzantine Antioch
Author: Alexandre M. Roberts
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520343492

What happened to ancient Greek thought after Antiquity? What impact did Abrahamic religions have on medieval Byzantine and Islamic scholars who adapted and reinvigorated this ancient philosophical heritage? Reason and Revelation in Byzantine Antioch tackles these questions by examining the work of the eleventh-century Christian theologian Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, who undertook an ambitious program of translating Greek texts, ancient and contemporary, into Arabic. Poised between the Byzantine Empire that controlled his home city of Antioch and the Arabic-speaking cultural universe of Syria-Palestine, Egypt, Aleppo, and Iraq, Ibn al-Fadl engaged intensely with both Greek and Arabic philosophy, science, and literary culture. Challenging the common narrative that treats Christian and Muslim scholars in almost total isolation from each other in the Middle Ages, Alexandre M. Roberts reveals a shared culture of robust intellectual curiosity in the service of tradition that has had a lasting role in Eurasian intellectual history.