JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES最新文献

{"title":"Seeing Sanctity: John Chrysostom's Use of Optics in His Homilies on the Saints","authors":"M. Freeman","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899413","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article analyzes John Chrysostom's discursive use of ancient medicophilosophical theories of optics in his homilies on the saints. In his homilies on Saints Meletius, Babylas, Julian, Drosis, Ignatius, and the Maccabean Martyrs, inter alia, Chrysostom uses technical optical terminology and concepts to describe the psycho-somatic effects of the saints' relics upon those who merely look at them. By drawing on cultural assumptions about how bodies and visual perception function, Chrysostom attempts to convince his listeners that going to the shrines and viewing the relics will bring them physical and emotional benefits. Using the optical theories of Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen, Chrysostom describes the material transfer of the relics' power through the visual process. Chrysostom describes the bodies of the saints as containers of undiminishing power, which is transferred across space to strike the eyes of viewers, enter their minds, and form impressions on their souls, much as optic theorists described the physiological process by which the colors and qualities of visible objects acted upon those who looked at them. These material interactions result in demonstrable emotional, bodily, and behavioral alterations that render a person more visibly Christian within their religious landscape. Thus, Chrysostom uses optics to construct the embodied sanctity of people, places, and communities in the midst of Antiochene and Constantinopolitan religious competition. Rather than considering the power of the saints' relics a matter of belief, Chrysostom appeals to sensory perception as a vehicle for religious experience, thus assuring his audience that they can know with their bodies God's power working through the relics.","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"171 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43245843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past by Victoria Leonard (review)","authors":"Jamie Wood","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899418","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past by Victoria Leonard Jamie Wood Victoria Leonard In Defiance of History: Orosius and the Unimproved Past New York: Routledge, 2022 Pp. xxii + 199. $136.00; £120.00. Having worked on another of the less celebrated historians of late antiquity, Isidore of Seville, I have much sympathy with Victoria Leonard's approach to the Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans, written by the priest Orosius. Challenging what has until recently been the fairly widespread scholarly condemnation of the universal historian's abilities, Leonard deftly demonstrates that he was in fact an original author who deployed historical production to intervene actively in the religious changes of the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Of course, such shifts did not occur in a vacuum, and Orosius's intervention was at least in part intended to help members of his Christian audience make sense of their religion's place within the late Roman politico-military complex. Rather than judging Orosius in terms of his failure to live up to the standard of classical historiography (or its late antique standard-bearers) or on the basis of Augustine's apparent unease with elements of the Seven Books of Histories, Leonard seeks to understand the author on his own terms. In this sense, the book builds on recent work by Peter van Nuffelen (Orosius and the Rhetoric of History [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012]), which demonstrated how Orosius's \"Christian\" vision of history was grounded in a thoroughly ancient [End Page 257] education. Without denying his classical formation, Leonard's historiographical analysis seeks to contextualize Orosius in relation to the efforts of Christian intellectuals in the decades around 400 in order to comprehend what Christian imperial rule meant for their faith and, more specifically, in order to respond to the charge that Christianity had brought about the fall of Rome (9). This campaign reached its zenith, in the Latin West at least, with Augustine's City of God, the intellectual heft of which did much to overshadow Orosius's work, if not the enthusiasm of medieval copyists (over 275 manuscripts of the Seven Books of Histories survive) (2). After an introduction that surveys previous historiography and articulates the monograph's rehabilitative intent, Leonard proceeds to unpack Orosius's approach to writing history (Chapter One), beginning with the important question: \"What is the Historiae?\" This is particularly pertinent because the text does not fit neatly into any pre-existing historiographical genre, whether ancient (e.g., classical history) or more recent (e.g., late antique epitome). Nor does Orosius provide a programmatic statement of intent at the beginning of the work or reveal much about himself that can enable us to figure out what he was trying do to. This is not to say that the Spanish priest was an unreflective practitioner of the historian's craft, for the vast sc","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135887901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem: Inventing a Patron Martyr by Hugo Méndez (review)","authors":"Kyle Smith","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899420","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"261 - 262"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47272904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Images in Late Antiquity by Robin Jensen (review)","authors":"Katherine Marsengill","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899417","url":null,"abstract":"of Abba Moses the Ethiopian (184–85) to the reportedly lavish treatment of the Nubian king in Constantinople (174–75). Indeed, some of the concluding phrases in this chapter are particularly hard-hitting in light of the priorities I believe animate the study: “The image of the Ethiopian eunuch requires that we confront the fact that, despite having inherited a long history of racial invective, the Byzantines repeatedly turned racist stereotypes on their heads” or “The Byzantines were not white” (203). While Chapters One, Two, and Four offer compelling and methodologically innovative readings of relatively well-known materials, the book’s most lasting intervention will likely prove to be Chapters Three and Five. In my estimation, these two chapters are the most important contribution to the intersectional treatment of Roman transgender, nonbinary, and racialized identities so far penned by any scholar. Luis Josué Salés, Scripps College","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"255 - 257"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66250942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Terminum figat: Remarks on a Difficult Phrase in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Traditio Apostolica","authors":"Predrag Bukovec","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899411","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The former communis opinio, according to which the Traditio Apostolica (TA) was a church order written by Hippolytus of Rome and representing valuable insights into third-century Roman liturgy and church discipline, has been radically questioned in recent research. The similarities between the eucharistic liturgies in TA and oriental anaphoras no longer seem to support the theory of a transregional genre in the late antique Christian West and East, but probably indicate an eastern provenance of TA itself. In addition to many currently discussed problems regarding structure and literary unity, the famous eucharistic prayer in TA 4 also bears difficulties in textual understanding: e.g., it states that Jesus Christ terminum figat during his descent into the realm of death. The motif of Christ's descent, which fortunately is quite frequently attested in the early sources, emerged in the second century. Therefore, the diachronic development of the descensus Christi can be reconstructed in its different arrangements. This is helpful in defining the \"border\" that Christ \"established\" while he visited the underworld. Some accounts of Syrian provenance seem to be the closest parallels to TA 4: here, a dramatic version of this narrative predominates, in which Death quarrels with Christ because he fears losing his inhabitants (the souls of the dead). The story culminates in a ceasefire, the end of which will be the second coming of Christ.","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"115 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42939835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages by Roland Betancourt (review)","authors":"Luis Josu� Sal�s","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899416","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49536089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Phrenitis in Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio","authors":"L. Alexopoulos","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.a899412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.a899412","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this paper, I examine Gregory of Nyssa's concept of phrenitis, as posited in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of his De hominis opificio. Using as a starting point an episode where Gregory depicts himself taking care of a phrenitis patient, I compare the symptoms and the causes of phrenitis, as described by Gregory, with systematic discussions of the disease found in the extant medical sources of antiquity. The paper also investigates Gregory's causal explanation of the disease, posited in the twelfth chapter of his anthropological treatise, and demonstrates that Gregory considered as the seat of phrenitis the anatomical entity that is responsible for pleuritis. The paper concludes that Gregory most probably conflated and modified the explanations of two similar diseases in order to defend his views about the seat of the hegemonikon.","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"85 S2","pages":"143 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41259485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Augustine and the Origins of North African Anthropomorphism","authors":"Brendan A. Harris","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article offers a reconstruction and analysis of the anthropomorphite beliefs of Augustine’s North African contemporaries through a close reading of Augustine’s writings and through comparison with other cases of anthropomorphism within early Christianity. I argue that the anthropomorphite faith of Augustine’s contemporaries in the North African church was more sophisticated than scholars have previously recognized. My argument is twofold. First, I show that, in the North African church, the belief that God has a human bodily form comprised part of a broader nexus of theological beliefs that grounded the belief that God has a human bodily form in anthropomorphic conceptions of the visio dei and imago dei. Second, drawing upon the work of Alexander Golitzin, I show that the anthropomorphite beliefs of Augustine’s North African contemporaries closely resemble the forms of anthropomorphism found in a diverse range of geographical locales, including Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Following Golitzin, I suggest that this resemblance can best be accounted for if we regard the anthropomorphite tendencies of the North African church as reflecting the ongoing influence of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic traditions regarding God’s bodily form.","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"57 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44913108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Beginning of the Cult of Relics by Robert Wiśniewski (review)","authors":"Adrien Palladino","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.0005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"105 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47601513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reading (in) a Quadriform Cosmos: Gospel Books in the Early Christian Bibliographic Imagination","authors":"J. Coogan","doi":"10.1353/earl.2023.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Early Christian thinkers developed the widespread linguistic cosmology of the Roman Mediterranean in a novel way in order to advance a specific bibliographic project: aligning the emergent fourfold Gospel with the structure of the physical cosmos. Employing interlocking concepts from the disciplines of meteorology, geography, music, mathematics, and astronomy, a number of figures—including Irenaeus, Origen, Ephrem, Eusebius, Fortunatianus, Augustine, and Maximus—imagined a Gospel corpus consisting of precisely four texts. Number provided a way to articulate the coherence of the fourfold Gospel—both with itself and with the rest of the world. By situating both familiar and neglected evidence in the context of ancient cosmology, I argue that early Christians theorized a divinely ordained correspondence between fourfold Gospel and quadriform cosmos.","PeriodicalId":44662,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES","volume":"31 1","pages":"103 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48757792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}