Christian Language and the Frankish ‘Minor’ Annals: Narrative, History and Theology in the Late Eighth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-183
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Narrative History

Brahmi legends on Umayyad Fulus: Interrogating local minting practices and numismatic transculturation in Gandhara (ca. 750 CE)

Afghanistan ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-165
Author(s):  
Waleed Ziad
Keyword(s):  
Base Metal ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Unusual Feature ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
Derivatives Of

This paper concerns a historically significant find of copper derivatives of Umayyad post-reform fulus from Gandhara, probably minted in the mid-eighth century under Turk Shahi sovereignty (c. 667–875). The coins share an unusual feature: two Brahmi aksharas on an Umayyad AE prototype, inversely oriented to a partially-corrupted Arabic legend. These base metal coins represent perhaps the only known caliphal imitative varieties issued by moneyers beyond the eastern limits of Umayyad and Abbasid sovereignty. They have the potential to inform our understanding of the complex relationship between political authority, confessional identity, and coin typology in late antiquity – particularly within early “Hindu”– “Muslim” contact zones. Moreover, they provide invaluable clues into the circulatory regimes of Umayyad coinage.

From Missionary Translation to Local Theological Inquiry: A Narrative History of the Lisu Bible

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-219
Author(s):  
Aminta Arrington
Keyword(s):  
Minority Group ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Village Elders ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Bible Reading

The Lisu are a largely Christian minority group in south-west China who, as an oral culture, express their faith more through a set of Christian practices done as a group and less through bible reading as individuals. Even so, the Lisu practice of Christianity specifically, and Lisu culture more generally, was profoundly impacted by the written scriptures. During the initial evangelisation of the Lisu by the China Inland Mission, missionaries created a written script for the Lisu language. Churches were constructed and organised, which led to the creation of bible schools and the work of bible translation. In the waves of government persecution after 1949, Lisu New Testaments were hidden away up in the mountains by Lisu Christians. After 1980, the Lisu reclaimed their faith by listening to the village elders tell the Old Story around the fires and reopening the churches that had been closed for twenty-two years. And they reclaimed their bible by retrieving the scriptures from the hills and copying them in the evening by the light of a torch. The Lisu bible has its own narrative history, consisting of script creating, translating, migrating, and copying by hand. At times it was largely influenced by the mission narrative, but at other times, the Lisu bible itself was the lead character in the story. Ultimately, the story of the Lisu bible reflects the Lisu Christian story of moving from missionary beginnings to local leadership and, ultimately, to local theological inquiry.

The Beginnings of Islam in Afghanistan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arezou Azad
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Political System ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Conversion ◽  
The Way

Covering the period from 709 to 871, this chapter traces the initial conversion of Afghanistan from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism to Islam. Highlighting the differential developments in four regions of Afghanistan, it discusses the very earliest history of Afghan Islam both as a religion and as a political system in the form of a caliphate.  The chapter draws on under-utilized sources, such as fourth to eighth century Bactrian documents from Tukharistan and medieval Arabic and Persian histories of Balkh, Herat and Sistan. In so doing, it offers a paradigm shift in the way early Islam is understood by arguing that it did not arrive in Afghanistan as a finished product, but instead grew out of Afghanistan’s multi-religious context. Through fusions with Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, early Abrahamic traditions, and local cult practices, the Islam that resulted was less an Arab Islam that was imported wholesale than a patchwork of various cultural practices.

Goddess on the Frontier

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Frontier Region ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender ◽  
Shifting Identities

This book follows the transformations of the goddess Baijie, a deity worshiped in the Dali region of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, to understand how local identities developed in a Chinese frontier region from the twelfth century to the twenty-first. Dali, a region where the cultures of China, India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia converge, has long served as a nexus of religious interaction even as its status has changed. Once the center of independent kingdoms, it was absorbed into the Chinese imperial sphere with the Mongol conquest and remained there ever since. Goddess on the Frontier examines how people in Dali developed regional religious identities through the lens of the local goddess Baijie, whose shifting identities over this span of time reflect shifting identities in Dali. She first appears as a Buddhist figure in the twelfth century, then becomes known as the mother of a regional ruler, next takes on the role of an eighth-century widow martyr, and finally is worshiped as a tutelary village deity. Each of her forms illustrates how people in Dali represented local identities through gendered religious symbols. Taken together, they demonstrate how regional religious identities in Dali developed as a gendered process as well as an ethno-cultural process. This book applies interdisciplinary methodology to a wide variety of newly discovered and unstudied materials to show how religion, ethnicity, and gender intersect in a frontier region.

AI Narratives

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imaginative Thinking ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.

After Chalcedon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Daley, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
Perceived Impact ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Severus Of Antioch

The Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the terms in which Nicene orthodoxy should conceive of Christ’s person remained controversial. Leontius of Byzantium argued for the correctness of the Council’s formulation, especially against the arguments of Severus of Antioch, but suggested that more than academic issues were at stake: the debate concerned the lived, permanently dialectical unity between God and humanity. In the mid-seventh century, imperially sponsored efforts to lessen the perceived impact of Chalcedonian language by stressing that Christ’s two natures were activated by “a single, theandric energy,” also remained without effect: largely because of the monk Maximus “the Confessor”, who argued that two complete spheres of activity and two wills remained evident in Christ’s life. Maximus’s position was ratified at the Lateran Synod and at the Third Council of Constantinople. The eighth-century Palestinian monk John of Damascus incorporated these arguments into his own influential synthesis of orthodox theology.

Merovingian Meditations on Jesus

2020 ◽  
pp. 1070-1105
Author(s):  
Lynda Coon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
External Influences ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Biblical Texts

The final chapter of this volume explores the conversation on Jesus held between material and textual sources, where monumental works of sculpture extend salvific themes found in the lives of saints and the verses of poets. Merovingian meditations on Jesus are multivocal, reflecting the cross-cultural rhythms of a world open to and receptive of external influences, whether originating in classical or biblical texts or hailing from Mediterranean or Northern lands. In order to prove this hypothesis on the Merovingian body and the embodied savior, three works of sculpture produced during the early Middle Ages serve as sounding boards for Jesus’ earthly ministry as enacted by human players: the crucified savior featured on the seventh-century Moselkern Stele; the eighth-century Hypogée des Dunes’s sculpted relief of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus; and the so-called Niederdollendorf “Christ,” carved most likely in the seventh century. Saintly actors, such as Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587), animate three themes expressed in the sculpted sources respectively: (1) absence, (2) torture, and (3) light. The three subjects—light, torture, and absence—all point to strategies of integrating the realm of humanity within the celestial spheres, and each motif tracks different styles of meditating on Merovingian Jesus.

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