Religion

A thorough look at the meaning of administering and receiving communion away from the place of a true celebration of the eucharist. Well-based theological reflections give rise to some very awkward questions for the rite and its practitioners.

The records of the Savoy Conference come from seventeenth century sources, and they were edited and reproduced in two nineteenth century volumes: E.Cardwell's A History of Conferences and Other Proceedings connected with the Revision of The Book of Common Prayer; from the year 1558 to the year 1690 (1841, and 2nd ed. 1849) and G.Gould, Documents relating to the Settlement of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity of 1662 (London, 1862). Both present the Presbyterians' 'Exceptions' tabled at the Savoy Conference in 1661, and the Bishops' (somewhat unyielding) Answers to the Exceptions - but neither editor brings the texts together. This Joint Study presents the General Exceptions in parallel column with their respective Answers.

In the Anglican Communion, the medieval practice, which certainly had some earlier roots, continued—that ordination came to any one individual in this 'sequence': deacon, presbyter, bishop. The Anglican ordinal was so committed to this pattern at the Reformation that Cranmer's text prayed that deacons 'may so well use themselves in this inferior office, that they may be found worthy to be called unto higher ministries in thy Church.' Latterly, however, Anglicans have not only sought to develop the calling of a deacon in his or her own right, but have in some places and cases promoted the idea that the true calling of a deacon and of a presbyter would be best clarified by a separate 'direct' ordination. John Gibaut, a liturgical theologian of the Anglican Church of Canada, presents the case for 'direct' ordination—rooting it in the patristic era, and spelling out its implications in the present day.

The communion of infants is different from the admission of children at, say, seven or eight. Both practices traditionally require baptism, and either may require confimation/chrysmation as well. But infant communion never requires a measure of 'understanding', whereas child communion does. As yet there is no comprehensive history of infant communion. Several learned attempts were made during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but there were major gaps in their treatment and much that today needs amending. Thanks to the work of JDC Fisher and DR Holeton, many of these gaps have now been filled. I have drawn significantly on their work, as well as on an article of my own in CQR in 1966, but I have also sought to fill in more of the gaps.

The liturgy of the Church of England is primarily located in The Book of Common Prayer (1662), but from the mid-20th century it has been enriched and supplemented by a range of authorized alternative services. Most of these were initially collected in The Alternative Service Book 1980 (ASB). From 1986 to 2005 there was a comprehensive revision and enlargement in the scope of alternative services. These, combined with the main elements of the 1662 tradition, are now published in Common Worship. The planning, drafting and processing of this work lay with the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England, and JLS 57 charts the separate but interlocking processes which this involved from the perspective of the Commission's Secretary and chronicler throughout the period 1984-2002.

This Liturgical Study is dedicated to the memory of Michael Vasey, liturgy tutor at St John's College, Durham (1975-1998), and a member of the Church of England's Liturgical Commission (1985-1998), who died in June 1998. It reproduces the text which he originally drafted for the Commission in the early 1990s, as amended both by the Commission and by the House of Bishops, on which discussion was effectively suspended in 1995. At that stage the Commission propsed to further the discussion on penitence and reconciliation in the church by publishing its proposed text together with some background essays, but the project, which Michael was to have edited, was halted by his untimely death.

An intellectual exploration of language and liturgy and how both of them participate in the articulation of meaning.

This volume includes an introduction, translation, commentary, and notes.

Liturgy is a subject which very quickly throws up a barrage of unfamiliar words to defeat the student, the lay enquirer—and even a good many clergy. The basis of this glossary was a simple word list compiled for students in the Cambridge Federation of Theological Colleges, but it has been expanded and rewritten by students at Ridley Hall.

The liturgies of the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church and the Lusitanian Church are presented here and introduced by a bishop of the Anglican communion.

The origins, methodologies, and uses of the Anaphoras of Sts. Basil and James are explored, along with examples.

Liturgical allegory has often flourished in the history of Christianity, despite persistent pruning by sceptical theologians through the ages. The full fruits of this growth ripened during the Middle Ages, as preserved in the pages of Latin and Byzantine liturgical commentaries.

A. L. Frothingham, one of the founding fathers of Art History as a discipline, answers the question “What is Art?”

Moslem Women is built around six main chapters; half are devoted to the place and experiences of Moslem women, and half consider the Christian mission to these women. The Zwemers acknowledge some of the great women of Islamic history, such as Rabia, the famous early mystic, and Nurah Mahal, wife of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. They speak in glowing terms about advances in the women’s situation in post-Ottoman Turkey. Their work is dedicated to serving Muslims and to seeing them as people rather than as faceless numbers; it is an excellent model for today’s Christians who feel called to engagement with Islam.

Based on lectures delivered in Chichester Cathedral, this book mirrors typical nineteenth century English attitudes toward the non-European space. This needed Christianity and European political oversight, or its people would remain backward and spiritually lost. The book shows how someone whose inclinations were liberal could look at Islam and dislike what he saw. On the other hand, the book also shows that a non-specialist scholar in the second half of the nineteenth century could write seriously if not impartially about Islam using material available in European languages. This suggests that Islam was a subject of increasing interest in Victorian England.

Earnest DeWald traces the development of the iconography of the Ascension from its earliest type through to the Gothic form, showing the manner in which the Eastern influence modified the types current in western art.

The Martyrdom, and the later History, of Simeon bar Sabba’e narrate the death of the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon who was killed around the year 340 C.E. at the beginning of King Shapur II’s “Great Persecution” of Christians in Sasanian Persia.

The papers in this anthology represent the proceedings of the Anthropology and the Bible session from the European Association of Biblical Studies Annual Meeting held in Lincoln, UK (July 2009). The main aim of the session is to foster critical uses of social anthropology for reading biblical scholarship and ancient Near Eastern studies related to the Bible. The papers of this volume reflect all these perspectives and stand as a critical renewal of the uses of anthropology and sociology in biblical scholarship in distinction to social-science approaches.

Authors of the Hebrew Bible had at least 17 different verbs which they could use to represent “leading” or “guiding” in the Hebrew Bible. What are these “verbs of leading” and how are they related to one another? Why did an author choose the particular “leading” verb he chose in a particular context? Every occurrence of a verb of leading in the Hebrew Bible is examined through the lens of semantic-role theory by assigning roles to each of the phrases typically used with the verbs. This study resolves some problem passages and supplements traditional lexicographical research.

This book explores the role of the biblical patriarch Abraham in the formation and use of authoritative texts in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. It reflects a conference session in 2009 focusing on Abraham as a figure of cultural memory in the literature of these periods. Cultural memory is the shared reproduction and recalling of what has been learned and retained. It also involves transformation and innovation. As a figure of memory, stories of Abraham served as guidelines for identity-formation and authoritative illustration of behaviour for the emerging Jewish communities.

Maurice Bloomfield discusses a variety of then-current issues in the study of Sanskrit literature and Indian culture.

The Yezidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority who practice a highly syncretistic religion based exclusively on oral tradition. Their myths and motifs, besides showing the influence of both Sufism and a pre-Zoroastrian Western Iranian mythology, are related to the religious movements of Late Antiquity, and reveal the vestiges of a common cultural substratum once shared by the people of the region.

Sutphen's list of Latin proverbs from the Classical era through the Middle Ages, arranged aphabetically.

Paul Haupt's introduction, translation, and commentary on the controversial book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible.

The Teaching of Addai is a Syriac document convincingly dated by some scholars in the fourth or fifth century AD. I agree with this dating, but I think that there may be some points containing possible historical traces that go back even to the first century AD, such as the letters exchanged by king Abgar and Tiberius. Some elements in them point to the real historical context of the reign of Abgar ‘the Black’ in the first century. The author of the Doctrina might have known the tradition of some historical letters written by Abgar and Tiberius.