Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE
<p>In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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2013
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| Subjects: |
| _version_ | 1797086358434480128 |
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| author | Schwartzman, L Lauren J. Schwartzman |
| author2 | Morgan, T |
| author_facet | Morgan, T Schwartzman, L Lauren J. Schwartzman |
| author_sort | Schwartzman, L |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during the second to the fifth centuries CE. This contribution was to articulate ‘the way’ to be a Christian in a world which was not isolated from the secular, and not insulated from the reality of the Roman empire. First, I demonstrate that a tradition of texts which feature magic contests exists within the broader scope of non-canonical Christian literature (looking at this literature across communities, regions and time periods). Second, I identify what the major features of the traditions are, e.g. what form the narratives take, what the form for a magic contest is, and what the principles used to build the magic contests are, and how these principles feature in the texts. The principles I identify are power, authority, ritual, and conversion, as well as their use as historical exempla. Third, I discuss what the texts did in the context of the time period, and for the communities that produced and read them: in other words, how did the this tradition work? I show that they served multiple purposes: as tests of faith, religious truth and ways to proclaim such; as constructors and markers of group identity (and the perilous task of identifying the insiders and those who should be outsiders); as calls to unity within the overarching diversity of the times and places, and a unified front for the ‘battle’ against evil. I suggest that the texts present a model for how one could decide what the ‘true faith’ was and how one could practice it in the turbulent environment that early Christians faced both before and after Constantine.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:20:53Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oxford-uuid:a3de02f7-18a9-4363-8bbf-cea5a73eb223 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:20:53Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:a3de02f7-18a9-4363-8bbf-cea5a73eb2232022-03-27T02:30:03ZContest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CEThesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:a3de02f7-18a9-4363-8bbf-cea5a73eb223Religions of antiquityLatinIntellectual HistoryChristianity and Christian spiritualityChurch historyLate antiquity and the Middle AgesHistory of the ancient worldClassical GreekCognitive anthropologyEnglishOxford University Research Archive - Valet2013Schwartzman, LLauren J. SchwartzmanMorgan, T<p>In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during the second to the fifth centuries CE. This contribution was to articulate ‘the way’ to be a Christian in a world which was not isolated from the secular, and not insulated from the reality of the Roman empire. First, I demonstrate that a tradition of texts which feature magic contests exists within the broader scope of non-canonical Christian literature (looking at this literature across communities, regions and time periods). Second, I identify what the major features of the traditions are, e.g. what form the narratives take, what the form for a magic contest is, and what the principles used to build the magic contests are, and how these principles feature in the texts. The principles I identify are power, authority, ritual, and conversion, as well as their use as historical exempla. Third, I discuss what the texts did in the context of the time period, and for the communities that produced and read them: in other words, how did the this tradition work? I show that they served multiple purposes: as tests of faith, religious truth and ways to proclaim such; as constructors and markers of group identity (and the perilous task of identifying the insiders and those who should be outsiders); as calls to unity within the overarching diversity of the times and places, and a unified front for the ‘battle’ against evil. I suggest that the texts present a model for how one could decide what the ‘true faith’ was and how one could practice it in the turbulent environment that early Christians faced both before and after Constantine.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Religions of antiquity Latin Intellectual History Christianity and Christian spirituality Church history Late antiquity and the Middle Ages History of the ancient world Classical Greek Cognitive anthropology Schwartzman, L Lauren J. Schwartzman Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE |
| title | Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE |
| title_full | Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE |
| title_fullStr | Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE |
| title_full_unstemmed | Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE |
| title_short | Contest and community: wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE |
| title_sort | contest and community wonder working in christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries ce |
| topic | Religions of antiquity Latin Intellectual History Christianity and Christian spirituality Church history Late antiquity and the Middle Ages History of the ancient world Classical Greek Cognitive anthropology |
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