By looking at liturgy, performance, prayer, poetry, and the material culture of worship, this book forges a new conversation about the diversity of Christianities in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, centered on the history of practice. It studies prayer and worship in the variety of Christian communities that thrived from late antiquity to the middle ages: Byzantine Orthodoxy, Syrian Orthodoxy, and the Church of the East. Rather than focusing on doctrinal differences and analyzing divergent patterns of thought, the essays address common patterns of worship, individual and collective prayer, hymnography and liturgy, as well as the indigenous theories that undergirded Christian practices.
Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony is Associate Professor and Martin Buber Chair in Comparative Religion, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Derek Krueger is the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA.
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
List of Contributors
Introduction - Prayer, Worship, and Ritual Practice
Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Derek Krueger
Chapter 1 - Theories of Prayer in Late Antiquity: Doubts and Practices from Maximos of Tyre to Isaac of Nineveh
Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony
Chapter 2 - Prayer and the Body according to Isaac of Nineveh
Sabino Chialà
Chapter 3 - Psalms and Prayer in Syriac Monasticism: Clues from Psalter Prefaces and their Greek Sources
Columba Stewart
Chapter 4 - Expressions of Prayer in Late Antique Inscriptions in the Provinces of Palaestina and Arabia
Leah Di Segni
Chapter 5 - Renovation and the Early Byzantine Church: Staging Past and Prayer
Ann Marie Yasin
Chapter 6 - The Power of the Eucharist in Early Medieval Syria: Grant for Salvation or Magical Medication?
Volker Menze
Chapter 7 - The Transmission of Liturgical Joy in Byzantine Hymns for Easter
Derek Krueger
Chapter 8 - Greek Kanons and the Syrian Orthodox Liturgy
Jack Tannous
Chapter 9 - Various Orthodoxies: Feasts of the Incarnation of Christ in Jerusalem during the First Christian Millennium
Daniel Galadza
Chapter 10 - The Therapy for Grief and the Practice of Incubation in Early Medieval Palestine: The Evidence of the Syriac Story of a Woman from Jerusalem
Sergey Minov
Chapter 11 - Apocalyptic Poems in Christian and Jewish Liturgy in Late Antiquity
Hillel I. Newman
Bibliography
Index