The Folk Bible of Central-Eastern Europe

This is the first Polish ethnological monograph to present how biblical themes function in folk culture in the context of rituals, customs and iconographic records and is based on ethnographic sources collected in Polish rural communities from central Poland to diasporas in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine in 1989-96. It shows how biblical plots used to undergo interpretation, at the same time, infiltrating common sense knowledge. The novelty here is the joint analysis of themes from both Testaments, presenting the narrations in accordance to the way the local community perceived its identity. The biblical typology, influencing culture through tradition and liturgy, inspired a symbolic order adjusted to cyclic conceptions of time and space, characteristic of rural culture

List of contents

Biblical history - Merging with local legends - The vegetation and Human life cycles - Affinity with Christian and Jewish Apocrypha - Expression of identity on the religious borderland

About the author

Magdalena Zowczak is an ethnographer and anthropologist. She is professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. Her area of interest includes anthropology of religion,¿the Apocrypha and sacred art, contemporary religious expression and its connections to identity in various milieus and social groups

Product details

• Authors: Magdalena Zowczak
• Assisted by: Bartosz Adamczewski (Editor)
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2019
• EAN: 9783631787496
• ISBN: 978-3-631-78749-6
• No. of pages: 456
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 34 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 653 g
• Illustrations: 50 Abb.
• Series: European Studies in Theology, Philosophy and History of Religions
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; Christentum, Persönliche religiöse Zeugnisse und inspirierende Populärwerke, Religiöse Institutionen und Organisationen, Adamczewski; Apocrypha; Bartosz; Biblicaltradition; borderland; Central; Commonsense; Eastern; FOLKLORE; Galecki; Identity; Lukasz