Scenting Salvation

Scenting Salvation
Author: Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520287568

This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.

Before Belief

Before Belief
Author: Bruce A. Stevens
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2020-01-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1793607222

First things are spiritually and theologically important. Before Belief explores the precognitive human experience of transcendence, illuminating how such foundational experiences are formative of attachment relationships with people and ultimately with God. The book proposes an implicit learning model rather than rely on Freud’s or Jung’s understanding of the unconscious, with a goal of recovering unconscious spiritual learning. Once discovered and put into language, early learning needs to be tested and integrated into life experience and expressed in committed living. The theories examined and advanced in the work are also carried through in practical case studies that demonstrate the pastoral and clinical salience of understanding and connecting people to those grounding experiences.

Sensing the Past

Sensing the Past
Author: Mark Michael Smith
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520254954

"Smith's history of the sensate is destined to precipitate a revolution in our understanding of the sensibilities that underpinned the mentalities of past epochs."--David Howes, author of Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory "Mark M. Smith presents a far-ranging essay on the history of the senses that serves simultaneously as a good introduction to the historiography. If one feels in danger of sensory overload from this growing body of scholarship, Smith's piece is a useful preventive."--Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality "This is a masterful overview. The history of the senses has been a frontier field for a while now. Mark Smith draws together what we know, with an impressive sensory range, and encourages further work. A really exciting survey."--Peter N. Stearns, author of American Fear: The Causes and Consequences of High Anxiety "Who would ever have guessed that a book on the history of the senses--seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling--could be informative, thought-provoking, and, at the same time, most entertaining? Ranging in both time and locale, Mark Smith's Sensing the Past makes even the philosophy about the senses from ancient times to now both learned and exciting. This work will draw scholars into under-recognized subjects and lay readers into a world we simply but unwisely take for granted."--Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South "Mark M. Smith has a good record of communicating his research to a broad constituency within and beyond the academy . . . This will be required reading for anyone addressing sensory history."--Penelope Gouk, author of Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth Century England "This is a fine cultural history of the body, which takes Western and Eastern traditions and their texts quite seriously. Smith views a history of the senses not only from 'below' but places it squarely in the historical imagination. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers."--Sander L. Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology

The Final Pagan Generation

The Final Pagan Generation
Author: Edward J. Watts
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2015-02-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520283708

The Final Pagan Generation recounts the fascinating story of the lives and fortunes of the last Romans born before the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Edward J. Watts traces their experiences of living through the fourth centuryÕs dramatic religious and political changes, when heated confrontations saw the Christian establishment legislate against pagan practices as mobs attacked pagan holy sites and temples. The emperors who issued these laws, the imperial officials charged with implementing them, and the Christian perpetrators of religious violence were almost exclusively young men whose attitudes and actions contrasted markedly with those of the earlier generation, who shared neither their juniorsÕ interest in creating sharply defined religious identities nor their propensity for violent conflict. Watts examines why the "final pagan generation"Ñborn to the old ways and the old world in which it seemed to everyone that religious practices would continue as they had for the past two thousand yearsÑproved both unable to anticipate the changes that imperially sponsored Christianity produced and unwilling to resist them. A compelling and provocative read, suitable for the general reader as well as students and scholars of the ancient world.

The Vocation of Theology Today

The Vocation of Theology Today
Author: Tom Greggs
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2013-02-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621895408

What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians called to contribute to society, the churches, and the academy? Can theology be both fully faithful to Christian tradition and Scripture, and fully open to the challenges of the twenty-first century? In this book, an international team of contributors, including some of the best-known names in the field, respond to these questions in programmatic essays that set the direction for future debates about the vocation of theology. David Ford, in whose honor the collection is produced, has been for many years a key figure in articulating and shaping the role of contemporary theology. The contributors are his colleagues, collaborators, and former students, and their essays engage in dialogue with his work. The main unifying feature of this exciting collection is not Ford's work per se, however, but a shared engagement with the pressing question of theology's vocation today.

A New Introduction to Theology

A New Introduction to Theology
Author: Richard Bourne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567666700

Encountering theology for the first time is exciting, but it can also be daunting. Some struggle to connect with doctrinal discussion they perceive to be abstract or abstruse. Others may find the scope of theology, and the connections between different theological issues, dizzying. In order to address these difficulties and keep the initial excitement alive, A New Introduction to Theology offers a range of accessible, practical, experiential and interactive encounters with the major elements of academic Christian theology. The guiding motif of this book is the claim that theology is full-bodied thought. The phrase 'full-bodied' shows both the richness of the experience of theology and its nature as a thoroughly embodied encounter with ways of knowing God and God's ways with the world. This motif allows the authors to bring together topics ranging from theology through the arts, sexuality and the body and the nature of the church's everyday life, to mystical theology, spirituality, political action and ecology. Working imaginatively with the five senses and the notions of loving and resting, each chapter provides a range of activities, guided discussions and reflections on key theological texts, authors and issues. This is a unique introduction to the key innovative and interdisciplinary elements from contemporary theology, ideal for individual reflection, classroom work, or flexible and distributed learning.

Syriac Hagiography

Syriac Hagiography
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004445293

The collective volume Syriac Hagiography: Texts and Beyond explores several late-antique and medieval Syriac hagiographical works from the complementary perspectives of literature and cult.

The Garb of Being

The Garb of Being
Author: Georgia Frank
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0823287033

This collection explores how the body became a touchstone for late antique religious practice and imagination. When we read the stories and testimonies of late ancient Christians, what different types of bodies stand before us? How do we understand the range of bodily experiences—solitary and social, private and public—that clothed ancient Christians? How can bodily experience help us explore matters of gender, religious identity, class, and ethnicity? The Garb of Being investigates these questions through stories from the Eastern Christian world of antiquity: monks and martyrs, families and congregations, and textual bodies. Contributors include S. Abrams Rebillard, T. Arentzen, S. P. Brock, R. S. Falcasantos , C. M. Furey, S. H. Griffith, R. Krawiec, B. McNary-Zak, J.-N. Mellon Saint-Laurent, C. T. Schroeder, A. P. Urbano, F. M. Young

Melania

Melania
Author: Catherine Michael Chin
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520379217

Melania the Elder and her granddaughter Melania the Younger were major figures in early Christian history, using their wealth, status, and forceful personalities to shape the development of nearly every aspect of the religion we now know as Christianity. This volume examines their influence on late antique Christianity and provides an insightful portrait of their legacies in the modern world. Departing from the traditionally patriarchal view, Melania gives a poignant and sometimes surprising account of how the rise of Christian institutions in the Roman Empire shaped our understanding of women’s roles in the larger world.

Out of the East

Out of the East
Author: Paul Freedman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2008-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300211317

How medieval Europe’s infatuation with expensive, fragrant, exotic spices led to an era of colonial expansion and discovery: “A consummate delight.” —Marion Nestle, James Beard Award–winning author of Unsavory Truth The demand for spices in medieval Europe was extravagant—and was reflected in the pursuit of fashion, the formation of taste, and the growth of luxury trade. It inspired geographical and commercial exploration, as traders pursued such common spices as pepper and cinnamon and rarer aromatic products, including ambergris and musk. Ultimately, the spice quest led to imperial missions that were to change world history. This engaging book explores the demand for spices: Why were they so popular, and why so expensive? Paul Freedman surveys the history, geography, economics, and culinary tastes of the Middle Ages to uncover the surprisingly varied ways that spices were put to use—in elaborate medieval cuisine, in the treatment of disease, for the promotion of well-being, and to perfume important ceremonies of the Church. Spices became symbols of beauty, affluence, taste, and grace, Freedman shows, and their expense and fragrance drove the engines of commerce and conquest at the dawn of the modern era. “A magnificent, very well written, and often entertaining book that is also a major contribution to European economic and social history, and indeed one with a truly global perspective.” —American Historical Review