Search results for ""author christopher rowland""
JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck) "By an Immediate Revelation": Studies in Apocalypticism, its Origins and Effects
This volume of essays by Christopher Rowland, written during the last forty years, concerns the nature of apocalypticism and its reception history. His reading of apocalyptic texts is thereby colored not by immersion into the study of "apocalyptic" in biblical scholarship, but by acquaintance with early Jewish mysticism. One of the Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of "mystic" is one which helps to understand not only the mystical but also apocalyptic: a mystic is "one who believes in the possibility of the spiritual apprehension of truths that are inaccessible to the understanding." This definition and the importance of the opening word of Revelation as an apocalypse - in other words, a writing whose form is revelatory -, are explored in these essays. As this understanding of apocalypticism contrasts with the eschatological character predominant in modern biblical scholarship, a theme of this collection therefore is that the eschatological elements in apocalyptic texts are not the determining feature of what constitutes "apocalyptic," which must especially attend to the revelatory form of apocalyptic texts such as Revelation. The pervasiveness of apocalyptic and mystical elements in the New Testament is a consistent thread throughout the volume, which also includes consideration of the apocalyptic and eschatological thought of Joachim of Fiore and his disciples, the early modern appeal to visions and revelation, and culminates in the texts and images of William Blake (1757-1827). The collection's concern with the history of the reception of such ideas contributes to the vindication of Ernst Käsemann's view of apocalyptic being the "mother of Christian theology".
£217.70
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co KG Approaches to the Visual in Religion
The authors of this volume investigate the analysis of visual sources and their indispensable role for understanding and interpreting religions, their symbol systems, and the wider traditions of which they are a part. A particular interest in this study is the focus on the methodological challenge of images from a comparative perspective. The common concern that ranges over all the contributions is the search for a methodological perspective where images may be analysed in a comprehensive way, with particular regard for the social, and wider intellectual settings, as well as the religious, in which the images are embedded. Accordingly, we seek to show that visual sources need to be interpreted from different angles. In the last decades, a broad range of publications has contributed to highlight the significance of images, and visual media in general, for understanding religious traditions, communities and discourses in both historical and contemporary perspective. In more recent research streams, focussing on visual media in religious traditions and symbol systems, various avenues have opened up and been explored focussing on the status of images and of the gaze of the viewer as central aspects. Furthermore, there are illuminating contributions dealing with the theoretical premises and settings with which to approach the visual as a central component of religion, on the one hand giving an overview of essential definitions and implications, on the other hand concentrating on specific techniques and/or media.
£84.99