Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity PDF Download
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Author: Nienke Vos
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004208054
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This collection of essays analyzes the role of demons and the devil in ancient and medieval Christianity. Proceeding from a variety of scholarly perspectives—historical, philosophical and theological, as well as philological, liturgical and theoretical—the volume’s diverse approach matches the complexity of its chosen theme.
Author: Nienke Vos
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004208054
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This collection of essays analyzes the role of demons and the devil in ancient and medieval Christianity. Proceeding from a variety of scholarly perspectives—historical, philosophical and theological, as well as philological, liturgical and theoretical—the volume’s diverse approach matches the complexity of its chosen theme.
Author: Siam Bhayro
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004338543
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period explores the relationship between demons and illness from the ancient world to the early modern period. Its twenty chapters range from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to seventeenth-century England and Spain, and include studies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Author: Darren Oldridge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199580995
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
The Devil has fascinated writers and theologians since the time of the New Testament, and inspired many dramatic and haunting works of art. Today he remains a potent image in popular culture. The Devil: A Very Short Introduction presents an introduction to the Christian Devil through the history of ideas and the lives of real people.
Author: Gábor Klaniczay
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9637326766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
This is the second volume of a series of three, containing seventeen essays of altogether forty-three articles based on the topics of the interdisciplinary conference held on "Demons, spirits, and witches" in Budapest. Recognized historians, ethnologists, folklorists coming from four continents present the latest research findings on the relationship, coexistence and conflicts of popular belief systems, Judeo-Christian mythology and demonology in medieval and modern Europe. After a first volume, published in 2005, on "Communicating with the Spirits", the studies in the present volume examine the manifold interchanges between learned and popular culture, and its repercussions on magical belief-system and the changing figure of the witch. Book jacket.
Author: Elaine Pagels
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679731180
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition. "Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." —The Boston Globe With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan’s story into an audacious exploration of Christianity’s shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.
Author: Charles Stewart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140088439X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
In present-day Greece many people still speak of exotikNB--mermaids, dog-form creatures, and other monstrous beings similar to those pictured on medieval maps. Challenging the conventional notion that these often malevolent demons belong exclusively to a realm of folklore or superstition separate from Christianity, Charles Stewart looks at beliefs about the exotikNB and the Orthodox Devil to demonstrate the interdependency of doctrinal and local religion. He argues persuasively that students who cling to the timeworn folk/official distinction will find it impossible to appreciate the breadth and coherence of contemporary Greek cosmology. Like the medieval cartographers' fantasies, which were placed on the "edges" of the physical world, Greek demons cluster in marginal locations--outlying streams, wells, and caves. The demons are near enough to the community, however, to attack humans--causing illness or death, according to Stewart's informants. Drawing on an unusual range of sources, from the author's fieldwork on the Cycladic island of Naxos to Orthodox liturgical texts, this book pictures the exotikNB as elements of a Greek cognitive map: figures that enable individuals to navigate the traumas and ambiguities of life. Stewart also examines the social forces that have by turns disposed the Greek people to embrace these demons as indicative of links with the classical past or to eschew them as signs of backwardness and ignorance.
Author: H.A. Kelly
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725209659
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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Book Description
Belief in the devil and other evil spirits of the Christian tradition is a topic that has been widely discussed in recent years. Since the release of movies such as 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Exorcist', more people are wondering, Is Satan really dead? Is there such a phenomenon as obsession or possession? In 'The Devil, Demonology, and Witchcraft', Henry Ansgar Kelly postulates his belief that the existence of evil spirits is not probable and suggests that Christians would be better off acting on the assumption that they do not exist. To prove his claim, the author sets forth a history and analysis of the impact of demonological traditions developed within Judaism and Christianity over the centuries. He then considers the incorporation of these notions into early Christian teaching with the resulting demonological dotrines of witchcraft, possession, and temptation. Kelly's conclusion is that Satan is dead, and demonology should be eliminated from Christian dogma since, according to his thesis, these manifestations in the Bible reflect the beliefs of local cultures and not divine revelation. The present edition has been substantially revised and updated by the author to include an evaluation and critique of 'The Exorcist', wherein Kelly challenges William Peter Blatty's facts of the alleged possession in 1949 on which 'The Exorcist' is based.
Author: Norman Cohn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226113074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Europe's Inner Demons is a fascinating history of the irrational need to imagine witches and an investigation of how those fantasies made the persecutions of the middle ages possible. In addition, Norman Cohn's discovery that some influential sources on European witch trials were forgeries has revolutionized the field of witchcraft, making this one of the most essential books ever written on the subject.
Author: Philip C. Almond
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471869
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
"Although the Devil still 'lives' in modern popular culture, for the past 250 years he has become marginal to the dominant concerns of Western intellectual thought. That life could not be thought or imagined without him, that he was a part of the everyday, continually present in nature and history, and active at the depths of our selves, has been all but forgotten. It is the aim of this work to bring modern readers to a deeper appreciation of how, from the early centuries of the Christian period through to the recent beginnings of the modern world, the human story could not be told and human life could not be lived apart from the 'life' of the Devil. With that comes the deeper recognition that, for the better part of the last two thousand years, the battle between good and evil in the hearts and minds of men and women was but the reflection of a cosmic battle between God and Satan, the divine and the diabolic, that was at the heart of history itself."—from The Devil Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub; Ha-Satan or the Adversary; Iblis or Shaitan: no matter what name he travels under, the Devil has throughout the ages and across civilizations been a compelling and charismatic presence. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the supposed reign of God has long been challenged by the fiery malice of his opponent, as contending forces of good and evil have between them weighed human souls in the balance. In The Devil, Philip C. Almond explores the figure of evil incarnate from the first centuries of the Christian era. Along the way, he describes the rise of demonology as an intellectual and theological pursuit, the persecution as witches of women believed to consort with the Devil and his minions, and the decline in the belief in Hell and in angels and demons as corporeal beings as a result of the Enlightenment. Almond shows that the Prince of Darkness remains an irresistible subject in history, religion, art, literature, and culture. Almond brilliantly locates the "life" of the Devil within the broader Christian story of which it is inextricably a part; the "demonic paradox" of the Devil as both God's enforcer and his enemy is at the heart of Christianity. Woven throughout the account of the Christian history of the Devil is another complex and complicated history: that of the idea of the Devil in Western thought. Sorcery, witchcraft, possession, even melancholy, have all been laid at the Devil's doorstep. Until the Enlightenment enforced a "disenchantment" with the old archetypes, even rational figures such as Thomas Aquinas were obsessed with the nature of the Devil and the specific characteristics of the orders of demons and angels. It was a significant moment both in the history of demonology and in theology when Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) denied the Devil's existence; almost four hundred years later, popular fascination with the idea of the Devil has not yet dimmed.
Author: Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192591029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Demonic possession was a spiritual state that often had physical symptoms; however, in Demonic Possession and Lived Religion in Later Medieval Europe, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa argues that demonic possession was a social phenomenon which should be understood with regard to the community and culture. She focuses on significant case studies from canonization processes (c. 1240-1450) which show how each set of sources formed its own specific context, in which demonic presence derived from different motivations, reasonings, and methods of categorization. The chosen perspective is that of lived religion, which is both a thematic approach and a methodology: a focus on rituals, symbols, and gestures, as well as sensitivity to nuances and careful contextualizing of the cases are constitutive elements of the argumentation. The analysis contests the hierarchy between the 'learned' and the 'popular' within religion, as well as the existence of a strict polarity between individual and collective religious participation. Demonic presence disclosed negotiations over authority and agency; it shows how the personal affected the communal, and vice versa, and how they were eventually transformed into discourses and institutions of the Church; that is, definitions of the miraculous and the diabolical. Geographically, the volume covers Western Europe, comparing Northern and Southern material and customs. The structure follows the logic of the phenomenon, beginning with the background reasons offered as a cause of demonic possession, continuing with communities' responses and emotions, including construction of sacred caregiving methods. Finally, the ways in which demonic presence contributed to wider societal debates in the fields of politics and spirituality are discussed. Alterity and inversion of identity, gender, and various forms of corporeality and the interplay between the sacred and diabolical are themes that run all through the volume.
