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Article

ghosts, Mesopotamia  

Adrian Cornelius Heinrich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
20 November 2024
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Near East

The Old Babylonian Atrahasīs epic details the creation of man from clay mixed with the flesh and blood of an immortal god. Accordingly, in ancient Mesopotamia, humans were thought to have a part that survived death. This surviving part was called “ghost” (eṭemmu in Akkadian/gedim in Sumerian). After a proper burial, the ghosts of the dead dwelled in the netherworld, a distant part of the cosmos governed by the goddess Ereshkigal and her spouse Nergal. Since ghosts not only preserved part of their former human identity but also hunger, thirst, and the need for attention, their peaceful rest depended on the care offered by their living kin in the form of the offerings and commemorative rites that constituted the core of Mesopotamian family religion. If these funerary rituals were neglected or a corpse was not buried properly, ghosts turned into restlessly roaming or evil ghosts that plagued the living, akin to demons, and caused all kinds of distress.

Article

eschatology, Jewish  

Martha Himmelfarb

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 May 2024
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Jewish Studies
During the Hellenistic period Jewish texts began to discuss new ideas about the fate of the individual after death, including the immortality of the soul, bodily resurrection, and post-mortem reward and punishment. At about the same time Jews also developed a picture of history as leading to the end of the world as we know it, to be followed by an age of peace, prosperity, and sovereignty for the people of Israel. Both developments played an important role in the emergence of Christianity.The term eschatology is a modern coinage, derived from the Greek eschatos, “last,” which figures prominently in early Christian discussion of the end of days. The term usually refers to beliefs about the end of the world, but scholars also use it for beliefs about life after death, the end of the individual. The two types of eschatology can be distinguished by labelling the former “collective eschatology” and the latter, “individual eschatology.”.

Article

Arbela  

John MacGinnis and David Michelmore

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
27 February 2024
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Greek History and Historiography
  3. Jewish Studies
  4. Late Antiquity
  5. Near East
  6. Roman History and Historiography
The history of Arbela (cuneiform Urbilum/Urbel/Arbail, modern Erbil) is documented in archaeological and textual sources. From the point when it first entered history in the middle of the 3rd millennium, the city’s fortunes alternated between periods of independence and incorporation within the super-regional states of Mesopotamia, including the Ur III kingdom and, more briefly, the Upper Mesopotamian empire of Shamshi-Adad I. In the later 2nd millennium the city was incorporated within the Assyrian Empire, rising to become a regional capital of major importance. Following the fall of Assyria, the city was incorporated within the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Arsacid, and Sasanian empires. A period of independence as an emirate in the early mediaeval period was a golden age. This came to an end with the city’s submission to the Mongols, after which it came under the control of the Black Sheep and White Sheep Turcomans and the Safavid and Ottoman empires.Arbela—modern Erbil—is a city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq with a documented history going back more than four thousand years. It is situated in the trans-Tigris region at the interface of the Zagros Mountains and the fertile plains of .

Article

Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, c. 386–450/1 CE  

Susan Wessel

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 November 2021
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Late Antiquity
Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople, was deposed and sent into exile in Egypt for opposing the Christological views of Cyril of Alexandria. The theological and ecclesiastical controversy was set in motion soon after Nestorius began to serve as bishop of Constantinople. Interested in eliminating heresy, he proposed to align himself with the emperor Theodosius II. Soon thereafter, Nestorius learned that debates were taking place concerning the appropriate title of devotion for the Virgin Mary. In the use of the title Theotokos that some had proposed, he sensed a deeper Christological question, namely, “Was Mary the bearer of the Godhead”? He reasoned that if Mary was indeed the Theotokos, as some suggested, then God, or rather the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, was born from her. For Nestorius, however, while Mary was the mother of Jesus, she was not the mother of the Logos, and for that reason could not be called Theotokos.

Article

Kalends of January  

Lucy Grig

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
28 June 2021
Subjects:
  1. Christianity

The Kalends of January was a festival that involved both official and private celebrations and rituals; its durability as a new year festival into Late Antiquity and beyond is striking.

January 1 was the beginning of the consular year (from the mid-2nd century onwards, codified in the reform of the calendar under Julius Caesar),1 and marked by the public consultation of the auguries and the procession of the new consuls to the Capitol for the customary vows and sacrifices.2 During the imperial period vows of loyalty to the emperor were made by the senate,3 the army,4 and provincials on this date.5 As part of the extension of the period of Kalends celebration, the making of yearly vota publica, originally on January 1, became fixed on January 3.6 Strenae (“good luck presents”) were given both to and by the emperor, as well as being shared by individuals more broadly.

Article

Pseudo-Zachariah  

Geoffrey Greatrex

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 May 2021
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
Not much can be said of the shadowy Syriac compiler who expanded Zachariah’s Ecclesiastical History around the year 569ce. There is even some dispute as to whether his compilation should be termed a chronicle or an Ecclesiastical History; it is perhaps best to refer to it simply as a “Miscellaneous History,” as Witold Witakowski has proposed.1 The author was probably a monk based at Amida, a city that features extensively in Books vii—xii, and able to draw on both written and oral sources for his work; at xii.7l, for instance, he cites John of Resaina for his account of the Huns, while at vii.5b he implies familiarity with a certain Gadana at Amida. In the latter case, given that the siege described took place in 502–503ce, he may be drawing on an earlier source. He claims familiarity also with “a certain Dominic,” a refugee from Italy in Constantinople before Justinian’s reconquest (ix.18a). He had access to dossiers of correspondence, some of which may have been held in the library of Mara, bishop of Amid (viii.5b), and to some conciliar records (ii.3). It has recently been suggested that Pseudo-Zachariah may have been an archiatros or official doctor, perhaps before becoming a monk; there are, at any rate, several references to such officials in the work, for example, at ix.

Article

Symeon the Stylite the Younger  

Dina Boero and Charles Kuper

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 May 2021
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Late Antiquity
  3. Near East

Symeon the Stylite the Younger (521–592 ce), a pillar-saint or “stylite,” practised his mode of Christian asceticism for more than sixty years on a mountain southwest of Antioch. Symeon’s lifetime, spanning most of the 6th century, coincides with a drastic time of transition in the history of Antioch, which began with the devastating earthquake of 526 ce and includes events such as the sack of Antioch in 540 ce and the Plague of Justinian in the following years. Symeon also happens to be one of the best-documented holy men from this period. The remains of his monastery have been preserved and studied extensively. A number of pilgrimage objects, most notably clay tokens, have also received much scholarly attention. The extant literary evidence is also vast, though understudied in comparison. It includes homilies, letters, and short hymns penned by the saint himself, as well as two hagiographies composed by members of his monastic community shortly after his death. Symeon, therefore, is a critical figure for understanding many issues relevant to the study of the Eastern Roman Empire during this period: political, social, and theological history; the development of cult sites and pilgrimage; the literary self-representation of a stylite and his community; and the construction of monumental architecture and water management in remote locations in Syria, among many others.

Article

Zacharias, bishop of Mytilene, c. 465–c. 536 CE  

Geoffrey Greatrex

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 May 2021
Subjects:
  1. Christianity

Zachariah rhetor or scholasticus, following an education at Gaza and Alexandria, trained as a lawyer in Beirut (Berytus). A close friend of the future patriarch Severus of Antioch, he wrote a detailed biography of his life until his nomination as patriarch in 512; he also composed biographies of three other anti-Chalcedonian holy men and an Ecclesiastical History. The one biography that survives and the latter work exist only in a Syriac translation because of their anti-Chalcedonian line. Zachariah spent much of his life in Constantinople practising as a lawyer, where he composed two works refuting Manichaeanism and a philosophical dialogue, set in Alexandria, rebutting pagan views. He appears to have accepted the pro-Chalcedonian policies of Justin I and Justinian, becoming metropolitan bishop of Mytilene at some point before 536, the year in which he attended the Council of Constantinople. At this gathering he was absent for the session that condemned Severus and other leading opponents of Chalcedon.

Article

demons in Christian thought  

Gregory D. Wiebe

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 June 2020
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Late Antiquity
  3. Philosophy
The background of early Christian demonology was in both Hebrew and Greek culture. Jews associated the Greek word daimōn with the false gods of the surrounding nations. This was in many ways an intuitive application of the Greek term. It carried the sense of ambivalent divine or semi-divine power, which significant philosophical traditions understood to mediate between humans and gods. The New Testament carries this theme, though its focus is more on Christ’s exorcisms of demons, and his gift of that power to his disciples, with the early church tying the two together in the theological literature, as well as baptismal exorcisms and renunciations of the devil and idolatry.Demons were widely thought to have aerial bodies, which allowed them to perform various marvels, like foretelling the future. They were ultimately taken to be fallen angels with Satan as their leader, though this was not a given early in the tradition. While the Christian understanding was that Christ had defeated them on the cross, this was not taken to preclude the ongoing influence of demons in human affairs prior to the final judgement. Indeed, they constituted a significant moral problem for the Christian life, which absolutely opposed them. For Christians, Christ and the demons were the two sides of the fundamental dilemma of every human soul. The problem of demons manifested differently depending on the context, whether in its encounter with false religion, from idolatry to the persecutions the gods inspired; or in the innumerable tempting thoughts encountered in the pursuit of ascetic discipline.

Article

Didymus the Blind  

Blossom Stefaniw

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 June 2020
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
  2. Late Antiquity
Didymus the Blind (c. 313—c. 398) was a textual scholar and ascetic practitioner. He is not associated with any of the major ascetic settlements around Alexandria and appears to have spent his entire life in or near the city. He is most known for his treatises On the Holy Spirit and On the Trinity (although the authorship of the latter is disputed) and for his biblical commentaries.Although the Council of Nicaea in 325 took place when Didymus was still a schoolboy, controversy and competition by the parties involved continued through Didymus’ lifetime. Didymus himself supported the decision of the Council, which the Alexandrian bishop, Athanasius, had promoted. After Didymus’ death, however, he was no longer associated with the orthodoxy of the day and, because of his reception of Origen of Alexandria, was condemned, along with Origen and Evagrius Ponticus, in connection with the 2nd Council of Constantinople in 553.