• Home
  • Search
  • Browse Collections
  • My Account
  • About
  • DC Network Digital Commons Network™
Skip to main content
Scholarly Commons University of the Pacific
  • Home
  • About
  • FAQ
  • My Account

Home > College of the Pacific > Department of Religious Studies > Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Department of Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

 
Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.

Follow

Switch View to Grid View Slideshow
 
  • Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel by Alan Lenzi

    Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel

    Alan Lenzi

    Secrecy and the Gods is a comparative mythological study of the human reception and treatment of divine secret knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia and biblical Israel.

    The human royal council was the social model for ancient ideas about divine knowledge being secret – just as human kings had secrets so too did the gods. Diviners who received this knowledge from the gods in an on-going, ad hoc manner were an essential link between the divine assembly and the human royal council for whom such knowledge was intended.

    Scribes eventually adapted the ad hoc divinatory means of receiving divine communications to their culturally significant texts. By discursively asserting a historical connection between themselves and unique mediators with a close divine affiliation (the apkallus and Moses), the scribes constructed myths that legitimated their texts as divine revelation and claimed these were received in history through normal scribal channels. In this manner, scribes fixed the secret of the gods permanently among humans in textualized form that valorized their own position within society.

    Although the origin of divine secret knowledge was rooted in a common mythological idea of the divine assembly, its treatment was quite distinct. The Mesopotamians guarded divine secret knowledge through various scribal means, including the attachment of a Geheimwissen colophon to certain tablets (treated exhaustively), whereas biblical Israel published it openly. The contrast in treatment of divine secret knowledge was directly related to different mytho-political self-understandings: Mesopotamia's imperial aspirations versus biblical Israel's vassaldom. As vassals to Yahweh, the divine imperial king, the kings of Judah and Israel as presented in the biblical material were not to formulate secret orders; they were only to obey them.

  • Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe by Caroline T. Schroeder

    Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe

    Caroline T. Schroeder

    Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoute's letters, sermons, and treatises—one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery—provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism.

    In Monastic Bodies, Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoute's arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk.

    Shenoute's ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius.

  • Impressions of Ancient Mesopotamia by Alan Lenzi

    Impressions of Ancient Mesopotamia

    Alan Lenzi

    Impressions of Ancient Mesopotamia introduces children to ancient Mesopotamian culture through cylinder seals: their production, use, and art. Written for sixth grade readers, this book provides a historical introduction to Mesopotamia, discusses several ancient technologies, introduces Mesopotamian myths, and gives insight into distinctively Mesopotamian cultural characteristics, ideas, and institutions. Over fifty illustrations, a craft, several sidebars, and a section on further investigation complement the text.

  • The Erotic Asceticism of the Passion of Andrew: the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, the Greek Novel, and Platonic Philosophy by Caroline T. Schroeder

    The Erotic Asceticism of the Passion of Andrew: the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, the Greek Novel, and Platonic Philosophy

    Caroline T. Schroeder

  • Embracing the Erotic in the Passion of Andrew: the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, the Greek Novel, and Platonic Philosophy by Caroline T. Schroeder

    Embracing the Erotic in the Passion of Andrew: the Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, the Greek Novel, and Platonic Philosophy

    Caroline T. Schroeder

  • Purity and Pollution in the Asceticism of Shenute of Atripe by Caroline T. Schroeder

    Purity and Pollution in the Asceticism of Shenute of Atripe

    Caroline T. Schroeder

 
  • 1
  • 2
 
 

Search

Advanced Search

  • Notify me via email or RSS

Browse

  • Collections
  • Disciplines
  • Authors

Author Corner

  • Author FAQ

Links

  • Department of Religious Studies website
University of the Pacific
 
Elsevier - Digital Commons

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright