Literature or Liturgy?: Early Christian Hymns and Prayers in their Literary and Liturgical Context in Antiquity

Description

Information about Ancient Christianity is preserved in literary texts. These sources contain passages that became liturgical texts during their history of reception while the context or form of some of them could suggest their ritualized use in the churches of New Testament times. The essays in this volume elaborate on the question of how ancient pieces of liturgy might be found in the extant literature. It also asks how readers of these literary texts can avert the risk of anachronistic reconstructions of ancient liturgies. The topics of this collection range from Jewish Early Medieval poetry to Ancient Greek hymns. The papers discuss the physical appearance of prayer texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the performative aspects of texts as they are visible in the Old Testament Suspected Adulteress ritual, as well as prayer texts in the Psalms of Solomon and in the Acts of Thomas. All those lines of research in texts and methods intersect in the conceptual center of the volume: the question of liturgy in the literature of the New Testament which is also debated in detail. Cover Preface Table of Contents Ralph Brucker: “Songs”, “Hymns”, and “Encomia” in the New Testament? Bibliography Naomi Janowitz: Water, Word, and Name: The Shifting Pragmatics of the Sotah/ Suspected Adulteress Ritual The Biblical Version of the Suspected Adulteress Rite The Suspected Adulteress Revisited: A Medieval Version Bibliography Daniel K. Falk: Material Aspects of Prayer Manuscripts at Qumran Material Culture of Prayer in the Greco-Roman World Evaluation of KLINGHARDT’s Argument Liturgical Manuscripts From Qumran Writing Material Opisthographs Scroll Dimensions Excursus: The Tefillin Conclusions Bibliography Stefan Schreiber: Can Wisdom Be Prayer? Form and Function of the Psalms of Solomon 1. A Liturgical Use of PsSol? 2. Superscripts in the PsSol 3. The literary forms of the PsSol 4. The Structure of the Collection 5. Conclusions: The Sitz im Leben of PsSol Bibliography Michael Rand: Fundamentals of the Study of Piyyut 1. Definition 2. Jewish Liturgy 3. Typological Dating 4. Pre-Classical Piyyut: Liturgical, Formal and Literary Characteristics 5. The Relationship between Classical Piyyut and the Liturgy 6. The Major Poetic Innovation of Classical Piyyut 7. The Performance of Classical Piyyut Bibliography Didier Pralon: Les hymnes grecs païens de l’époque hellénistique et romaine 1. L’hymne d’Antagoras à Éros 2. Le péan érythréen, égyptien de Ptolémaïs, athénien, macédonien de Dion, à Asclépios 3. Le péan érythréen à Apollon Conclusion Résumé Bibliographie Hermut Löhr: What can we know about the Beginnings of Christian Hymnody? 1. Introduction 2. Methodology I: Literature and Oral Tradition 3. Methodology II: What is a Hymn? 4. Early Christian Terminology 5. Hymnodic Practice 6. Texts and Structures Results Bibliography Clemens Leonhard: Which Hymns were sung in Ancient Christian Liturgies? 1. Christian Meetings and the Rejection of Certain Greco-Roman Customs 2. Dangerous Hymns and Early Christian Hymnography 3. Sympotic Singing in Ancient Christianity 4. Sympotic Praying Instead of Singing 5. Conclusions Bibliography Gerard Rouwhorst: Hymns and Prayers in the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas 1. Greek Hymns and Syriac Teaching-Songs 2. Greek, Jewish, and Christian Prayers 3. The composition of the Acts of Thomas 4. Two Syriac “hymns” 5. Prayers and Epicleses A Prayer for the Daughter of King Gundaphoros The Baptismal Epiclesis of Chapter 27 A Prayer in Praise of Jesus The Role Played by Repetition and Redundancy Bibliography Index of Modern Authors Index of Subjects and Sources