Author: Nanno MarinatosPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epiphanies in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
Divine Epiphanies in the Ancient World
Author: Nanno MarinatosPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epiphanies in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture
Author: Georgia PetridouPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191035858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
In ancient Greece, epiphanies were embedded in cultural production, and employed by the socio-political elite in both perpetuating pre-existing power-structures and constructing new ones. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of the history of divine epiphany as presented in the literary and epigraphic narratives of the Greek-speaking world. It demonstrates that divine epiphanies not only reveal what the Greeks thought about their gods; they tell us just as much about the preoccupations, the preconceptions, and the assumptions of ancient Greek religion and culture. In doing so, it explores the deities who were prone to epiphany and the contexts in which they manifested themselves, as well as the functions (narratives and situational) they served, addressing the cultural specificity of divine morphology and mortal-immortal interaction. Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture re-establishes epiphany as a crucial mode in Greek religious thought and practice, underlines its centrality in Greek cultural production, and foregrounds its impact on both the political and the societal organization of the ancient Greeks.
Facing the Gods
Author: Verity Jane PlattPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521861713
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 501
Book Description
This book explores divine manifestations and their representations not only in art, but also in literature, histories and inscriptions. The cultural analysis of epiphany is set within a historical framework that examines its development from the archaic period through the Hellenistic world and into the Roman Empire.
Epiphanies and Dreams in Greek Polytheism
Author: Michael LipkaPublisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110639165
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
While modern students of Greek religion are alert to the occasion-boundedness of epiphanies and divinatory dreams in Greek polytheism, they are curiously indifferent to the generic parameters of the relevant textual representations on which they build their argument. Instead, generic questions are normally left to the literary critic, who in turn is less interested in religion. To evaluate the relation of epiphanies and divinatory dreams to Greek polytheism, the book investigates relevant representations through all major textual genres in pagan antiquity. The evidence of the investigated genres suggests that the ‘epiphany-mindedness’ of the Greeks, postulated by most modern critics, is largely an academic chimaera, a late-comer of Christianizing 19th-century-scholarship. It is primarily founded on a misinterpretation of Homer’s notorious anthropomorphism (in the Iliad and Odyssey but also in the Homeric Hymns). This anthropomorphism, which is keenly absorbed by Greek drama and figural art, has very little to do with the religious lifeworld experience of the ancient Greeks, as it appears in other genres. By contrast, throughout all textual genres investigated here, divinatory dreams are represented as an ordinary and real part of the ancient Greeks' lifeworld experience.
The Cult of Castor and Pollux in Ancient Rome
Author: Amber GartrellPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108800254
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 424
Book Description
The Dioscuri first appeared at the Battle of Lake Regillus in 496 BC to save the new Republic. Receiving a temple in the Forum in gratitude, the gods continued to play an important role in Roman life for centuries and took on new responsibilities as the needs of the society evolved. Protectors of elite horsemen, boxers and sailors, they also served as guarantors of the Republic's continuation and, eventually, as models for potential future emperors. Over the course of centuries, the cult and its temples underwent many changes. In this book, Amber Gartrell explores the evolution of the cult. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches and a wide range of ancient evidence, she focuses on four key aspects: the gods' two temples in Rome, their epiphanies, their protection of varied groups, and their role as divine parallels for imperial heirs, revealing how religion, politics and society interacted and influenced each other.
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Author: Roland DeinesPublisher:
ISBN: 9783161562709
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
This volume, the latest contribution to the international Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJH), investigates New Testament and Septuagint descriptions of theophanic interactions with the world. The CJH project aims to improve the understanding of the individual New Testament writings as part of the culture of Hellenistic Judaism. This final volume complements studies on Philo, Josephus, non-textual evidence, and non-canonical pseudepigraphal writings, and focuses on the development of linguistic and theological concepts within and between the LXX and the New Testament. Thematically, the volume considers the possible impact of religious experiences on biblical texts: according to the biblical authors Israel experienced God as speaking and acting on its behalf, occasionally in visible, audible, and tangible ways. Indeed, scripture presents itself as beginning with epiphanies of the divine. Contributors: Andy Angel, Richard H. Bell, Eberhard Bons, Roland Deines, Susan Docherty, Jan Dochhorn, Jorg Frey, Volker Gackle, Jens Herzer, Brian Howell, Stefan Krauter, Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, Martin Meiser, Steve Moyise, Thomas O'Loughlin, Alison Salvesen, Joachim Schaper, Edmund Stewart, Mark Wreford
Gods of Ancient Greece
Author: Jan N. BremmerPublisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748642897
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 552
Book Description
This collection offers a fresh look at the nature and development of the Greek gods in the period from Homer until Late Antiquity The Greek gods are still very much present in modern consciousness. Although Apollo and Dionysos, Artemis and Aphrodite, Zeus and Hermes are household names, it is much less clear what these divinities meant and stood for in ancient Greece. In fact, they have been very much neglected in modern scholarship. Bremmer and Erskine bring together a team of international scholars with the aim of remedying this situation and generating new approaches to the nature and development of the Greek gods in the period from Homer until Late Antiquity. The Gods of Ancient Greece looks at individual gods, but also asks to what extent cult, myth and literary genre determine the nature of a divinity and presents a synchronic and diachronic view of the gods as they functioned in Greek culture until the triumph of Christianity.
Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and the Ancient Near East
Author: Jan N. BremmerPublisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004164731
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 445
Book Description
This book greatly enhances our knowledge of the interrelationship of Greek religion & culture and the Ancient Near East by offering important analyses of Greek myths, divinities and terms like a ~magica (TM) and 'paradise', but also of the Greek contribution to the Christian notion of atonement.
Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East
Author: Jan BremmerPublisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047432711
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between Greek religion & culture and the Ancient Near East. This challenging book contributes greatly to this interest by studying the Near Eastern background of important Greek myths, such as those of the creation of the world and the first woman, the Flood, the Golden Fleece, the Titans and travelling seers, but also of the births of Attis and Asclepius as well as the origins of the terms ‘paradise’ and ‘magic’. It also shows that, in turn, Greek literature influenced Jewish stories of divine epiphanies and that the Greek scapegoat myths and rituals contributed to the central Christian notion of atonement.
Divination and Human Nature
Author: Peter T. StruckPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691183457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Divination and Human Nature casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination—the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams. Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as signs from the gods while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions. In this book, Peter Struck reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers. These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact—that humans could sometimes have uncanny insights—and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition. Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, Struck demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality. Given the wide differences among these ancient thinkers, Struck notes that they converged on seeing this surplus insight as an artifact of human nature, projections produced under specific conditions by our physiology. For the philosophers, such unexplained insights invited a speculative search for an alternative and more naturalistic system of cognition. Recovering a lost piece of an ancient tradition, Divination and Human Nature illustrates how philosophers of the classical era interpreted the phenomena of divination as a practice closer to intuition and instinct than magic.