Placing Ancient Texts
Subtitle: The Ritual and Rhetorical Use of Space
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Company KG
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 263
ISBN-13: 9783161563768
Subjects: Judaism
Description: "In this volume, scholars of Judaism, Christianity, and late antique religion demonstrate how special attention to the ritual and rhetorical functions of space can improve modern interpretations of ancient literary, liturgical, and ritual texts. Each chapter is concerned with reconstructing the dynamic interaction between space and text. Demonstrating the pliability of the idea of space, the contributions in this volume span from Second Temple debates over Eden to Byzantine Christian hymnography. In so doing, they offer a number of answers to the seemingly simple question: What difference does space make for how modern scholars interpret ancient texts? The nine contributions in this volume are divided into the three interrelated topics of the rhetorical construction of places both earthly and cosmic, the positioning of people in religious space, and the performance of ritual texts in place."--