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This book revolutionizes our understanding of the life and thought of the great anchorite father of the Egyptian desert. It is a signal contribution to our knowledge of Egyptian Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.—Birger Pearson, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Samuel Rubenson, by means of a fresh analysis of the letters of St. Antony, exposes the distortion of the picture of early Christian monks as unlettered and primitive. Rubenson describes the desert monasteries as centers of theological reflection in Egypt, showing how they combined the speculative philosophy of the Greeks and the biblical tradition. Included in this volume is a new translation of the letters themselves, which are shown to be authentic and an important source for the study of the desert fathers and the early monastic tradition. The later image of Antony is demonstrated to be influenced by church politics of the latter part of the fourth century. Samuel Rubenson is Associate Professor at Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
A wide-ranging exploration of the daily lives of ordinary Coptic Christians, from late Antiquity until today This volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to examine aspects of the daily lived experiences of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority from late Antiquity to the present. In doing so, it serves as a supplement and a corrective to institutional or theological narratives, which are generally rooted in studying the wielders of historical power and control. Coptic Culture and Community reveals the humanity of the Coptic tradition, giving granular depth to how Copts have lived their lives through and because of their faith for two thousand years. The first three s...
In this finely written study of demonology and Christian spirituality in fourth- and fifth-century Egypt, David Brakke examines how the conception of the monk as a holy and virtuous being was shaped by the combative encounter with demons. Drawing on biographies of exceptional monks, collections of monastic sayings and stories, letters from ascetic teachers to their disciples, sermons, and community rules, Brakke crafts a compelling picture of the embattled religious celibate.
Translation Classics in Context carefully considers the relationship between translation and the classics. It presents readers with revelatory and insightful case studies that investigate translations produced as part of nexuses of colonial resistance and liberation across Africa and in Ireland; translations of novels and folklore collections that influence not just other fictions, but stage productions and entire historical disciplines; struggles over Ukrainian and Russian literature and how it is shaped and transferred; and the role of the academy and the curriculum in creating notions of classic translations. Along the way it covers oral poetry, saints, scholars, Walter Scott and Jules Verne, not to mention Leo Tolstoy and the Corpse Bride making her way from folklore to Frankenstein and into the world of Disney animation. Contributors are all leading scholars, and the book is accessible and engaging, assuming no specialist knowledge.
Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education approaches fundamental questions about the role and function of education in late antiquity through a detailed study of the thought of Dorotheus of Gaza, a sixth-century Palestinian monk. It illumines the thought of a significant figure in Palestinian monasticism, clarifies relationships between ascetic and classical education, and contributes to debates about how different educational projects related to late-antique cultural change. Dorotheus appropriates and reconfigures classical discourses of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine and builds on earlier ascetic traditions. Education is a powerful site for the reconfiguration and reproduction of culture...
How classical narrative models were adapted as early Christian culture took shape and developed.
Asceticism deploys abstention, self-control, and self-denial, to order oneself or a community in relation to the divine. Both its practices and the cultural ideals they expressed were important to pagans, Jews, Christians of different kinds, and Manichees. Richard Finn presents for the first time a combined study of the major ascetic traditions, which have been previously misunderstood by being studied separately. He examines how people abstained from food, drink, sexual relations, sleep, and wealth; what they meant by their behaviour; and how they influenced others in the Graeco-Roman world. Against this background, the book charts the rise of monasticism in Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, and North Africa, assessing the crucial role played by the third-century exegete, Origen, and asks why monasticism developed so variously in different regions.
Barsauma was a fifth-century Syrian ascetic, archimandrite, and leader of monks, notorious for his extreme asceticism and violent anti-Jewish campaigns across the Holy Land. Although Barsauma was a powerful and revered figure in the Eastern church, modern scholarship has widely dismissed him as a thug of peripheral interest. Until now, only the most salacious bits of the Life of Barsauma—a fascinating collection of miracles that Barsauma undertook across the Near East—had been translated. This pioneering study includes the first full translation of the Life and a series of studies by scholars employing a range of methods to illuminate the text from different angles and contexts. This is the authoritative source on this influential figure in the history of the church and his life, travels, and relations with other religious groups.
Redefines the role assigned education in the history of monasticism, by re-situating monasticism in the history of education.