The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings
The Praying Self in Late Antique East Syrian Christianity
By (author) B. Bitton-Ashkelony
Doubts about sacrifices, prayers, fate, and providence in the second- to fifth-century Mediterranean world produced new concepts of individual prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike. The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings explores the discourse on the praying self as an ascetic way of life, as an aspect of interiority, and as a path to the divine in Late Antique Eastern Christianity. It deals with the transposition of Greek ascetic literaturemainly the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, Abba Isaiah, Mark the Monk, and the Apophthegmata patruminto East Syrian thought, and its assimilation with indigenous features.
Doubts about sacrifices, prayers, fate, and providence in the second- to fifth-century Mediterranean world produced new concepts of individual prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike. The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings explores the discourse on the praying self as an ascetic way of life, as an aspect of interiority, and as a path to the divine in Late Antique Eastern Christianity. It deals with the transposition of Greek ascetic literature – mainly the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, Abba Isaiah, Mark the Monk, and the Apophthegmata patrum – into East Syrian thought, and its assimilation with indigenous features. Specifically, the book probes the emergence of different sorts of prayer as a pivotal part of the profound religious shifts and cultural developments that unfolded in Late Antique Eastern Christianities. The chronological scope of this study ranges from the second-to fifth-century cultural world of sophists and philosophers, Iamblicus, Porphyry and Proclus, up to the East Syrian mystical authors in the fifth-eighth centuries, among them John of Apamea, Isaac of Nineveh, Dadisho’ Qatraya, Shem’on d-Taybutheh, John of Dalyatha, and Joseph Hazzaya. The book presents how these figures incorporated this literary legacy into their teachings and melded it with indigenous Syriac spirituality.
- By (author) B. Bitton-Ashkelony
Other Titles in this Series
Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 2
The Ascetic Letters 12-18
Volume 14
Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 1
The Episcopal Letters 1-11
Volume 2
New Themes, New Styles in the Eastern Mediterranean
Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Encounters, 5th-8th Centuries
Volume 16
Inside and Out
Interactions between Rome and the Peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian Frontiers in Late Antiquity
Volume 8
Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity
Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries
Volume 17
L’ecriture de l’histoire en syriaque
Transmissions interculturelles et constructions identitaires entre hellenisme et islam. Avec des repertoires des textes historiographiques en annexe
Volume 12
Empire, Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East
Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens (Collected Studies, 2004-14)
Volume 10
En Route to the Confessions
The Roots and Development of Augustine's Philosophical Anthropology
Volume 6
New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris
With Indices on Helga Köhler, C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius: BriefeBuch I
Volume 7
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