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Author: David Dawson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520910389
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
Allegorical readings of literary or religious texts always begin as counterreadings, starting with denial or negation, challenging the literal sense: "You have read the text this way, but I will read it differently." David Dawson insists that ancient allegory is best understood not simply as a way of reading texts, but as a way of using non-literal readings to reinterpret culture and society. Here he describes how some ancient pagan, Jewish, and Christian interpreters used allegory to endorse, revise, and subvert competing Christian and pagan world views. This reassessment of allegorical reading emphasizes socio-cultural contexts rather than purely formal literary features, opening with an analysis of the pagan use of etymology and allegory in the Hellenistic world and pagan opposition to both techniques. The remainder of the book presents three Hellenistic religious writers who each typify distinctive models of allegorical interpretation: the Jewish exegete Philo, the Christian Gnostic Valentinus, and the Christian Platonist Clement. The study engages issues in the fields of classics, history of Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism, literary criticism and theory, and more broadly, critical theory and cultural criticism.
Author: David Dawson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520910389
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358
Get Book Here
Book Description
Allegorical readings of literary or religious texts always begin as counterreadings, starting with denial or negation, challenging the literal sense: "You have read the text this way, but I will read it differently." David Dawson insists that ancient allegory is best understood not simply as a way of reading texts, but as a way of using non-literal readings to reinterpret culture and society. Here he describes how some ancient pagan, Jewish, and Christian interpreters used allegory to endorse, revise, and subvert competing Christian and pagan world views. This reassessment of allegorical reading emphasizes socio-cultural contexts rather than purely formal literary features, opening with an analysis of the pagan use of etymology and allegory in the Hellenistic world and pagan opposition to both techniques. The remainder of the book presents three Hellenistic religious writers who each typify distinctive models of allegorical interpretation: the Jewish exegete Philo, the Christian Gnostic Valentinus, and the Christian Platonist Clement. The study engages issues in the fields of classics, history of Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism, literary criticism and theory, and more broadly, critical theory and cultural criticism.
Author: James Callahan
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725283654
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
IS SCRIPTURE CLEAR? IF IT IS, WHY DO PORTIONS OF IT SEEM SO OBSCURE? IF IT ISN’T, WHY HAVE THEOLOGIANS SPENT SO MUCH TIME DEFENDING THE NOTION OF ITS CLARITY? AND MORE IMPORTANT, ARE CHRISTIANS ENGAGED IN A FUTILE EFFORT IN TRYING TO READ AND UNDERSTAND IT? JAMES CALLAHAN OFFERS VALUABLE INSIGHT INTO THE COMPLEX NOTION of biblical perspicuity. He sets the issues within the history of the church and traces how the Bible's clarity has been understood practically and theologically over time. With precision and care he clarifies the role of historical context, authorial intent and reader response in a constructive articulation of how we come to understand Scripture's meaning. Contemporary literary studies inform his discussion and suggest the importance of intertextuality and intratextuality in the reading of Scripture. Ultimately, Callahan argues, Scripture must be viewed as a privileged text within a privileged community. Nevertheless, it must be read, not arrogantly, but with humility under the searching glance of the God who caused it to be written.
Author: Jennifer Otto
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198820720
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings investigates portrayals of the first-century philosopher and exegete Philo of Alexandria, in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius. It argues that early Christian invocations of Philo are best understood not as attempts simply to claim an illustrious Jew for the Christian fold, but as examples of ongoing efforts to define the continuities and distinctive features of Christian beliefs and practices in relation to those of the Jews. This study takes as its starting point the curious fact that none of the first three Christians to mention Philo refer to him unambiguously as a Jew. Clement, the first in the Christian tradition to openly cite Philo's works, refers to him twice as a Pythagorean. Origen, who mentions Philo by name only three times, makes far more frequent reference to him in the guise of an anonymous "one who came before us." Eusebius, who invokes Philo on many more occasions than does Clement or Origen, most often refers to Philo as a Hebrew. These epithets construct Philo as an alternative "near-other" to both Christians and Jews, through whom ideas and practices may be imported to the former from the latter, all the while establishing boundaries between the "Christian" and "Jewish" ways of life. The portraits of Philo offered by each author reveal ongoing processes of difference-making and difference-effacing that constituted not only the construction of the Jewish "other," but also the Christian "self."
Author:
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134635575
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
Author: Whitman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004453598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529
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Book Description
Western literary, philosophical, and religious traditions from Plato and Paul to Augustine and Avicenna have utilized, exploited, or been subjected to allegorical interpretation. Naturally developing a composite picture of interpretive allegory from such a large landscape faces numerous difficulties. As the editor puts it, “to imagine a ‘definitive’ account of the theory and practice of allegorical interpretation in the West would require something of an allegorical vision in its own right.” With that caveat in mind, however, the international team of contributors—from a variety of disciplines—offers a “historical and conceptual framework” for understanding interpretive allegory in the West, from antiquity through the early and late medieval and renaissance periods, and from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.
Author: David Edward Aune
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004268243
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
Neotestamentica et Philonica is a collection of eighteen essays by an international group of scholars in honor of Peder Borgen. They treat aspects of the study of the historical Jesus, Paul and his Letters, the Gospel of John and Philo of Alexandria. These essays represent the cutting edge of New Testament and Philonic scholarship and will be important resources for students of these subject areas.
Author: Jeremy M. Schott
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812240928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.
Author: S. Daniel Breslauer
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791497445
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
The Seductiveness of Jewish Myth offers a panorama of diverse definitions of myth, understandings of Judaism, and competing evaluations of the "mythic" element in religion. The contributors focus on the problem of defining myth as a category in religious studies, examine modern religion and the role of myth in a "secularized" world, and look at specific cases of Jewish myth from biblical through modern times.
Author: Kimberley Stratton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004334491
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
This volume celebrates the scholarship of Alan Segal. During his prolific career, Alan published ground-breaking studies that shifted scholarly conversations about Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, Hellenism and Gnosticism. Like the subjects of his research, Alan crossed many boundaries. He understood that religions do not operate in academically defined silos, but in complex societies populated by complicated human beings. Alan’s work engaged with a variety of social-scientific theories that illuminated ancient sources and enabled him to reveal new angles on familiar material. This interdisciplinary approach enabled Alan to propose often controversial theories about Jewish and Christian origins. A new generation of scholars has been nurtured on this approach and the fields of early Judaism and Christianity emerge radically redefined as a result.
Author: Craig A. Evans
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567341003
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An in-depth analysis of intertextuality within early Christian literature, compiled with the aim of improving interpreters understading of the function of older scripture in later scripture.
