The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition
Author: Kevork B. Bardakjian
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
Total Pages: 797
Release: 2014-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9789004270244

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective comprises an unprecedented collection of essays on apocalyptic literature in the Armenian tradition.

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition
Author: Kevork Bardakjian
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 817
Release: 2014-05-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004270264

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective comprises a collection of essays on apocalyptic literature in the Armenian tradition. This collection is unprecedented in its subject and scope and employs a comparative approach that situates the Armenian apocalyptic tradition within a broader context. The topics in this volume include the role of apocalyptic literature and apocalypticism in the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity, apocalyptic ideology and holy war, the significance of the Book of Daniel in Armenian thought, the reception of the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius in Armenian, the role of apocalyptic literature in political ideologies, and the expression of apocalypticism in the visual arts.

Eschatology in Antiquity

Eschatology in Antiquity
Author: Hilary Marlow
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 979
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315459477

This collection of essays explores the rhetoric and practices surrounding views on life after death and the end of the world, including the fate of the individual, apocalyptic speculation and hope for cosmological renewal, in a wide range of societies from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Byzantine era. The 42 essays by leading scholars in each field explore the rich spectrum of ways in which eschatological understanding can be expressed, and for which purposes it can be used. Readers will gain new insight into the historical contexts, details, functions and impact of eschatological ideas and imagery in ancient texts and material culture from the twenty-fifth century BCE to the ninth century CE. Traditionally, the study of “eschatology” (and related concepts) has been pursued mainly by scholars of Jewish and Christian scripture. By broadening the disciplinary scope but remaining within the clearly defined geographical milieu of the Mediterranean, this volume enables its readers to note comparisons and contrasts, as well as exchanges of thought and transmission of eschatological ideas across Antiquity. Cross-referencing, high quality illustrations and extensive indexing contribute to a rich resource on a topic of contemporary interest and relevance. Eschatology in Antiquity is aimed at readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, as well as non-specialists including seminary students and religious leaders. The primary audience will comprise researchers in relevant fields including Biblical Studies, Classics and Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Art History, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies and Cultural Studies. Care has been taken to ensure that the essays are accessible to undergraduates and those without specialist knowledge of particular subject areas.

The Armenian Imaginary in the West, 1100-1900

The Armenian Imaginary in the West, 1100-1900
Author: Carolyn P. Collette
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2024-11-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1843847043

Examines how Armenia has been represented and "imagined" in texts from two periods in its history: the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century. Today most people who think of Armenia associate it with the genocide of 1915, the struggle Armenians waged after the First World War to reclaim their ancient lands in Anatolia, a struggle complicated by centuries of subordination to the Ottomans, by persistent Russian efforts to exert influence and claim territory, and by Western indecision manifested in plentiful words but few deeds. This book, however, tells a different story: one of geo-political importance, strength, struggle, and diminishment, narrated in texts largely created by and for Europeans and Americans. It asks how the West imagined, described, and presented Armenia over time in historical and fictional accounts during two periods of close Armenian-Western contact. The first period spans the twelfth to fourteenth centuries; it examines a variety of texts, including the travel narratives of Marco Polo and John Mandeville, William of Tyre's Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, and romances such as King of Tars, Bevis of Hampton and Le Roman de Mélusine. The second period is rooted in events during the nineteenth-century American missionary movement. It engages with a variety of popular and widely disseminated texts - books, pamphlets, newspapers - written and published in the United States from 1830 to the mid-1890s, detailing the encounters between the missionaries and the Armenians, frequently in the voices of women.

Peoples of the Apocalypse

Peoples of the Apocalypse
Author: Wolfram Brandes
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2016-05-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110472635

This volume addresses Jewish, Christian and Muslim future visions on the end of the world, focusing on the respective allies and antagonists for each religious society. Spanning late Antiquity to the early modern period, the collected papers examine distinctive aspects represented by each religion’s approach as well as shared concepts.

The Embroidered Bible: Studies in Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Honour of Michael E. Stone

The Embroidered Bible: Studies in Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Honour of Michael E. Stone
Author: Lorenzo DiTommaso
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1100
Release: 2017-11-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004357211

This Festschrift contains forty-one original essays and six tribute papers in honour of Michael E. Stone, Gail Levin de Nur Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and Professor Emeritus of Armenian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The volume’s main theme is Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, envisioned in its broadest sense: apocryphal texts, traditions, and themes from the Second-Temple period to the High Middle Ages, in Judaism, Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Islam. Most essays present new or understudied texts based on fresh manuscript evidence; the others are thematic in approach. The volume’s scope and focus reflect those of Professor Stone’s scholarship, without a special emphasis on Armenian studies.

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I
Author: John C. Reeves
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192540203

Across the ancient and medieval literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, one finds references to the antediluvian sage Enoch. Both the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book were long known from their Ethiopic versions, which are preserved as part of Mashafa Henok Nabiy ('Book of Enoch the Prophet')--an Enochic compendium known in the West as 1 Enoch. Since the discovery of Aramaic fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, these books have attracted renewed attention as important sources for ancient Judaism. Among the results has been the recognition of the surprisingly long and varied tradition surrounding Enoch. Within 1 Enoch alone, for instance, we find evidence for intensive literary creativity. This volume provides a comprehensive set of core references for easy and accessible consultation. It shows that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions. Specialists in the Second Temple period-the era in which Enochic literature first appears-will be able to trace (or discount) the survival of Enochic motifs and mythemes within Jewish literary circles from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, thereby shedding light on the trajectories of Jewish apocalypticism and its possible intersections with Jewish mysticism. Students of Near Eastern esotericism and Hellenistic philosophies will have further data for exploring the origins of 'gnosticism' and its possible impact upon sectarian currents in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those interested in the intellectual symbiosis among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages-and especially in the transmission of the ancient sciences associated with Hermeticism (e.g., astrology, theurgy, divinatory techniques, alchemy, angelology, demonology)-will be able to view a chain of tradition reconstructed in its entirety for the first time in textual form. In the process, we hope to provide historians of religion with a new tool for assessing the intertextual relationships between different religious corpora and for understanding the intertwined histories of the major religious communities of the ancient and medieval Near East.

The Chronographia of George the Synkellos and Theophanes

The Chronographia of George the Synkellos and Theophanes
Author: Jesse W. Torgerson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2022-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004516859

The ninth-century Chronographia of George the Synkellos and Theophanes is the most influential historical text ever written in medieval Constantinople. Yet modern historians have never explained its popularity and power. This interdisciplinary study draws on new manuscript evidence to finally animate the Chronographia’s promise to show attentive readers the present meaning of the past. Begun by one of the Roman emperor’s most trusted and powerful officials in order to justify a failed revolt, the project became a shockingly ambitious re-writing of time itself—a synthesis of contemporary history, philosophy, and religious practice into a politicized retelling of the human story. Even through radical upheavals of the Byzantine political landscape, the Chronographia’s unique historical vision again and again compelled new readers to chase after the elusive Ends of Time.

Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel

Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2020-11-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004443282

The four kingdoms motif enabled writers of various cultures, times, and places, to periodize history as the staged succession of empires barrelling towards an utopian age. The motif provided order to lived experiences under empire (the present), in view of ancestral traditions and cultural heritage (the past), and inspired outlooks assuring hope, deliverance, and restoration (the future). Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel includes thirteen essays that explore the reach and redeployment of the motif in classical and ancient Near Eastern writings, Jewish and Christian scriptures, texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, depictions in European architecture and cartography, as well as patristic, rabbinic, Islamic, and African writings from antiquity through the Mediaeval eras.