You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom offers a new history of the field of Egyptian monastic archaeology. It is the first study in English to trace how scholars identified a space or site as monastic within the Egyptian landscape and how such identifications impacted perceptions of monasticism. Brooks Hedstrom then provides an ecohistory of Egypt's tripartite landscape to offer a reorientation of the perception of the physical landscape. She analyzes late-antique documentary evidence, early monastic literature, and ecclesiastical history before turning to the extensive archaeological evidence of Christian monastic settlements. In doing so, she illustrates the stark differences between idealized monastic landscape and the actual monastic landscape that was urbanized through monastic constructions. Drawing upon critical theories in landscape studies, materiality and phenomenology, Brooks Hedstrom looks at domestic settlements of non-monastic and monastic settlements to posit what features makes monastic settlements unique, thus offering a new history of monasticism in Egypt.
This volume covers the transition period stretching from the reign of Justinian I to the end of the 8th century, focusing on the experience of individuals who lived through the last decades of Byzantine rule in Egypt before the arrival of the new Arab rulers. The contributions drawing from the wealth of sources we have for Egypt, explore phenomena of stability and disruption during the transition from the classical to the postclassical world.
Whether he is asking about the role of New Testament exegesis among other academic disciplines, the suppression of anger in Pauline writings, or at what point came to designate a written "Gospel," James A. Kelhoffer's patient and careful exegesis provides an intriguing lens through which to view early Christianity. Many struggles of early Christ believers, he finds, reflect intra-ecclesial struggles to establish the legitimacy of a view or a religious leader vis-a-vis competing ideologies or leaders. Those already familiar with Kelhoffer's Miracle and Mission (2000), The Diet of John the Baptist (2005) and Persecution, Persuasion and Power (2010) will find in this volume refreshing insights suggested but not developed in his other books.
This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from different periods and areas of the Muslim world, the book examines the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies. From examinations of the conceptual status of legal documents to comparative studies of the development of legal formulae and the socio-economic or political historical information documents contain, the aim is to approach legal documents as specialised texts belonging to a specific social domain, while simultaneously connecting them to other historical sources. It discusses the daily functioning of legal institutions, the reflections of regime changes on legal documentation, daily life, and the materiality of legal documents. Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Maurits H. van den Boogert, Léon Buskens, Khaled Fahmy, Aharon Layish, Sergio Carro Martín, Brinkley Messick, Toru Miura, Christian Müller, Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Mathieu Tillier, and Amalia Zomeño.
The nature of the typkia, discussed by John Thomas in the introduction, was one of flexible and personal documents, which differed considerably in form, length, and content. Not all of them were foundation documents in the strict sense, since they could be issued at any time in the history of an institution. Some were wills; others were reform decrees and rules; yet others were primarily liturgical in character.
This study applies sociological and philological analysis to the extraordinary thirteenth-century Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijōit. Zaborowski's research explains the identity-shaping function behind this text's portrayal of an Egyptian Christian's conversion to Islam and subsequent struggle to publicly reconvert to Christianity. The heart of this book is its edition and facing English translation of the only extant manuscript of the martyrdom. Interpretive chapters include: 1) a sociological inquiry into the narrative's depiction of Muslims; 2) a philological analysis of the Coptic language of the manuscript; and 3) an historical contextualization of the manuscript within the wider conflict between the Ayyū bids and Western Crusaders. This book makes John of Phanijōit accessible to all scholars interested in the sociology of conversion, offering new evidence for understanding Christian-Muslim relations in Medieval Egypt.
Brings to life the women of Jeme, a thriving Christian community in ancient Egypt
In these studies Gary Vikan has opened new perspectives on the daily life and material culture of Late Antiquity - more specifically, on icons and relics, and on objects revealing of the world of pilgrimage, the early cult of saints, and marriage. He contextualizes these familiar categories of object in the patterns of belief and ritual extracted from contemporary texts and the objects themselves, in order to understand their meaning within the everyday lives of those by whom and for whom they were made. The studies give a nuanced delineation of the inherently ambiguous boundary between conventional religion and magic, noting repeatedly those instances wherein the two are invoked in the same breath (and by way of the same art object), toward the same end. From this historically constructed matrix of art, belief, and ritual, the author derives an anthropologically defined paradigm of charisma and pilgrimage (applied in one essay, as an intriguing parallel, to deconstructing the world of a contemporary secular "saint," Elvis Presley).
This study examines the acts of ancient church councils as the objects of textual practices, in their editorial shaping, and in their material conditions.