Preaching after Easter: Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in Late Antiquity

Preaching after Easter: Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in Late Antiquity
Author: Richard W. Bishop
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2016-06-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004315543

The studies collected in Preaching after Easter examine the festal history and homiletics of Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in the late antique Mediterranean world. Articles on individual sermons or the work of individual preachers such as John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Chrysologus, Leo the Great, and Severus of Antioch exhibit the richness of late antique festal preaching. Questions of authenticity, heresiology, and theological, exegetical, or liturgical history are addressed with methodological rigor. Complementary contributions that deal with ancient Jewish-Christian dialogue, art-historical reception, and contemporary liturgical theology illustrate the wide ramifications of ancient Christian festal practice. Students and scholars of these feasts and the interpretive traditions devoted to them will find this volume to be an indispensable source of information and analysis.

Conceptual Blending in Early Christian Discourse

Conceptual Blending in Early Christian Discourse
Author: Aleksander Gomola
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2018-03-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 311058297X

Cognitive linguists and biblical and patristic scholars have recently given more attention to the presence of conceptual blends in early Christian texts, yet there has been so far no comprehensive study of the general role of conceptual blending as a generator of novel meanings in early Christianity as a religious system with its own identity. This monograph points in that direction and is a cognitive linguistic exploration of pastoral metaphors in a wide range of patristic texts, presenting them as variants of THE CHURCH IS A FLOCK network. Such metaphors or blends, rooted in the Bible, were used by Patristic writers to conceptualize a great number of particular notions that were constitutive for the early church, including the responsibilities of the clergy and the laity, morality and penance, church unity, baptism and soteriology. This study shows how these blends became indispensable building blocks of a new religious system and explains the role of conceptual blending in this process. The book is addressed to biblical and patristic scholars interested in a new, unifying perspective for various strands of early Christian thought and to cognitive linguists interested in the role of conceptual integration in religious language. Produced with the support of the Faculty of Philology, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

Liturgical Hermeneutics of Sacred Scripture

Liturgical Hermeneutics of Sacred Scripture
Author: Marco Benini
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2023
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 081323719X

The purpose of this book is to explore what a liturgical approach to the Bible looks like and what hermeneutical implications this might have: How does the liturgy celebrate, understand, and communicate Scripture? The starting point is Pope Benedict's affirmation that "a faith-filled understanding of sacred Scripture must always refer back to the liturgy" (Verbum Domini 52). The first part of the book (based on SC 24) provides significant examples to demonstrate: The liturgical order of readings intertextually combines Old Testament and New Testament readings using manifold hermeneutical principles, specifically how the psalms show the wide range of interpretations the liturgy employs. Prayers are biblically inspired and help to appropriate Scripture personally. The hymns convey Scripture in a poetic way. Signs and actions such as foot-washing or the Ephphetha rite enact Scripture. The study considers the Mass, the sacraments and the Liturgy of the Hours. In the second part, Benini systematically focuses on the various dimensions of liturgical hermeneutics of the Bible, which emerge from the first part. The study reflects the approaches the liturgy offers to Scripture and its liturgical reception. It explores theological aspects such as the unity of the two Testaments in Christ's paschal mystery or the anamnesis as a central category in both Scripture and liturgy. The liturgy does not understand Scripture primarily as a document of the past, but celebrates it as a current and living "Word of the Lord," as a medium of encounter with God: Scripture is sacramental. Liturgical Hermeneutics of Sacred Scripture seeks to contribute not only to the comparison of the Roman, Ambrosian, and Byzantine Rite regarding the Word of God, but most of all to the overall "liturgical approach" to Scripture. As such, it promotes an interdisciplinary dialogue of liturgical and biblical studies.

Matthew’s Account of the Massacre of the Innocents in Light of its Reception History

Matthew’s Account of the Massacre of the Innocents in Light of its Reception History
Author: Sung J. Cho
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-10-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567699560

Sung Cho addresses the seeming contradiction of Herod the Great's massacre in Matthew 2:16-18, questioning why such a tragedy had to occur, why it was included in the good news of Jesus, and what connection it has to ancient prophecies. In creating a reception history of the Massacre of the Innocents, Cho progresses through two millennia worth of interpretation and depiction to highlight key works for discussion. Beginning with a close reading of Matthew 2:16-18, Cho moves to analyse depictions of the tragedy in the Early Patristic Tradition, from the sixth century to the early modern period, and thus to the present day; complete with an examination of visual interpretations of the massacre. Cho's examination provides a positive step to understanding the depths of human suffering with the help of many diverse perspectives.

To Cast the First Stone

To Cast the First Stone
Author: Jennifer Knust
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691169888

The story of the woman taken in adultery features a dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees over whether the adulteress should be stoned as the law commands. In response, Jesus famously states, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” To Cast the First Stone traces the history of this provocative story from its first appearance to its enduring presence today. Likely added to the Gospel of John in the third century, the passage is often held up by modern critics as an example of textual corruption by early Christian scribes and editors, yet a judgment of corruption obscures the warm embrace the story actually received. Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman trace the story’s incorporation into Gospel books, liturgical practices, storytelling, and art, overturning the mistaken perception that it was either peripheral or suppressed, even in the Greek East. The authors also explore the story’s many different meanings. Taken as an illustration of the expansiveness of Christ’s mercy, the purported superiority of Christians over Jews, the necessity of penance, and more, this vivid episode has invited any number of creative receptions. This history reveals as much about the changing priorities of audiences, scribes, editors, and scholars as it does about an “original” text of John. To Cast the First Stone calls attention to significant shifts in Christian book cultures and the enduring impact of oral tradition on the preservation—and destabilization—of scripture.

Interruptions and Transitions: Essays on the Senses in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture

Interruptions and Transitions: Essays on the Senses in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture
Author: Barbara Baert
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2019-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004390529

Interruptions and Transitions: Essays on the Senses in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture is an anthology of the most recent works by Barbara Baert, discussing the connection between the experiences of the senses in the medieval and early modern visual culture, the hermeneutics of imagery, and the limits and possibilities of contemporary Art Sciences. The six chapters include Pentecost, Noli me tangere, the woman with an issue of blood, the Johannesschüssel, the dancing Salome, and the role of the wind. The reader is shown a medieval and early modern visual culture as a history of artistic solutions, as the fascinating approach between biblical texts, plastic imagination, and the art-scientific métier. This makes him a privileged guest in a unique in-between space where humans and their artistic expression can meet existentially.

Theological Foundations of Worship (Worship Foundations)

Theological Foundations of Worship (Worship Foundations)
Author: Khalia J. Williams
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-07-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493431080

This volume brings together an ecumenical team of scholars to present key theological concepts related to worship to help readers articulate their own theology of worship. Contributors explore the history of theology's impact on worship practices across the Christian tradition, highlighting themes such as creation, pneumatology, sanctification, and mission. The book includes introductions by N. T. Wright and Nicholas Wolterstorff. A forthcoming volume will address the historical foundations of worship.

Preaching in the Patristic Era

Preaching in the Patristic Era
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2018-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004363564

Preaching in the Patristic Era. Sermons, Preachers, Audiences in the Latin West offers a state of the art of the study of the sermons of Latin Patristic authors. Parts I and II of the volume cover general topics, from the transmission of early Christian Latin sermons to iconography, from rhetoric to reflections on the impact of Latin preaching. Part III offers fourteen chapters devoted to Latin preachers such as Augustine, Gregory the Great, Maximus of Turin, and to collections of sermons, such as Arian sermons, preaching in 4th-century Spain, or sermons translated from Greek. By outlining the relevant sources, methodologies, and issues, this volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the field of Latin patristic preaching. Contributors are Pauline Allen, Lisa Bailey, Andrea Bizzozzero, Shari Boodts, Andrew Cain, Nicolas De Maeyer, François Dolbeau, Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Geoffrey Dunn, Anthony Dupont, Camille Gerzaguet, Bruno Judic, Rémi Gounelle, Johan Leemans, Wendy Mayer, Robert McEachnie, Bronwen Neil, Gert Partoens, Adam Ployd, Eric Rebillard, Maureen Tilley, Sever Voicu, Clemens Weidmann and Liuwe Westra.

Gregory of Nyssa's Doctrinal Works

Gregory of Nyssa's Doctrinal Works
Author: Andrew Radde-Gallwitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2018
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199668973

Gregory of Nyssa is firmly established in today's theological curriculum and is a major figure in the study of late antiquity. Students encounter him in anthologies of primary sources, in surveys of Christian history and perhaps in specialized courses on the doctrine of the Trinity, eschatology, asceticism, or the like. Gregory of Nyssa's Doctrinal Works presents a reading of the works in Gregory's corpus devoted to the dogmatic controversies of his day. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz focuses as much on Gregory the writer as on Gregory the dogmatic theologian. He sets both elements not only within the context of imperial legislation and church councils of Gregory's day, but also within their proper religious context-that is, within the temporal rhythms of ritual and sacramental practice. Gregory himself roots what we call Trinitarian theology within the church's practice of baptism. In his dogmatic treatises, where textbook accounts might lead one to expect much more on the metaphysics of substance or relation, one finds a great deal on baptismal grace; in his sermons, reflecting on the occasion of baptism tends to prompt Trinitarian questions.