Literature or Liturgy?: Early Christian Hymns and Prayers in Their Literary and Liturgical Context in Antiquity

ISBN-13: 9783161532184 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 222 str.

Clemens Leonhard; Hermut Lohr

Opis

Information about Ancient Christianity is preserved in literary texts. These sources contain passages that became liturgical texts during their history of reception while the context or form of some of them could suggest their ritualized use in the churches of New Testament times. The essays in this volume elaborate on the question of how ancient pieces of liturgy might be found in the extant literature. It also asks how readers of these literary texts can avert the risk of anachronistic reconstructions of ancient liturgies. The topics of this collection range from Jewish Early Medieval poetry to Ancient Greek hymns. The papers discuss the physical appearance of prayer texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the performative aspects of texts as they are visible in the Old Testament Suspected Adulteress ritual, as well as prayer texts in the Psalms of Solomon and in the Acts of Thomas. All those lines of research in texts and methods intersect in the conceptual center of the volume: the question of liturgy in the literature of the New Testament which is also debated in detail.

O autorze

Born 1967; studied theology, Near Eastern languages and Jewish; 1999 PhD; 2005 habilitation; since 2006 professor for liturgical studies at the faculty for catholic theology of the University of Münster; since 2008 also a member of the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics". Born 1963; studied protestant theology and history; 1993 PhD; 2001 habilitation; 2004-07 professor for New Testament in Jena; since 2007 professor for New Testament and history and literature of early christianity at the University of Münster.