Between Pagan and Christian - Christopher Jones

Between Pagan and Christian
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Autor: Christopher Jones

 Wydawnictwo: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674725201
EAN:
Format: ...
Oprawa: twarda
Stron: 224
Data wydania: 2014-03-01
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For the early Christians, "pagan" referred to a multitude of unbelievers: Greek and Roman devotees of the Olympian gods, and "barbarians" such as Arabs and Germans with their own array of deities. But while these groups were clearly outsiders or idolaters, who and what was pagan depended on the outlook of the observer, as Christopher Jones shows in this fresh and penetrating analysis. Treating paganism as a historical construct rather than a fixed entity, Between Pagan and Christian" uncovers the ideas, rituals, and beliefs that Christians and pagans shared in Late Antiquity. While the emperor Constantine's conversion in 312 was a momentous event in the history of Christianity, the new religion had been gradually forming in the Roman Empire for centuries, as it moved away from its Jewish origins and adapted to the dominant pagan culture. Early Christians drew on pagan practices and claimed important pagans as their harbingers--asserting that Plato, Virgil, and others had glimpsed Christian truths. At the same time, Greeks and Romans had encountered in Judaism observances and beliefs shared by Christians such as the Sabbath and the idea of a single, creator God. Polytheism was the most obvious feature separating paganism and Christianity, but pagans could be monotheists, and Christians could be accused of polytheism and branded as pagans. In the diverse religious communities of the Roman Empire, as Jones makes clear, concepts of divinity, conversion, sacrifice, and prayer were much more fluid than traditional accounts of early Christianity have led us to believe. Standard accounts of the meteoric rise of Christianity after Constantine s conversion in 312 are familiar. Belief in Jesus Christ became the established state religion and a requirement for holders of public office in the Roman Empire. Pagan practices like idol worship and animal sacrifice were outlawed. Christian orthodoxy had no serious spiritual or political competitors. Distilling a life s scholarship, Christopher Jones unveils a more complex reality in Between Pagan and Christian" Jones powerfully establishes his main argument: that paganism, in a multiplicity of forms, persisted and was tolerated much later than the reign of Constantine.--David Grumett"Times Literary Supplement" (05/30/2014)".

Książka "Between Pagan and Christian"
Christopher Jones