Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses - Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice

"Ancient Christians lived in a world of "magic." They and others-particularly those of low status-used curses as ritual objects to seek justice from gods and other beings. These curses, and invective against them, reveal the complexity of ancient Mediterranean religions and their aesthetics: their use of materiality, poetics, song, and incantation"--

List of contents

Introduction: Curses, Religion, Aesthetics; 1. Making justice: curses, Justin Martyr, and the nailing of documents; 2. Substance and story: a greengrocer and the drowned Pharaoh at Antioch; Interlude; 3. Tongues, breath, stutter: 1 Corinthians and a Corinthian curse; 4. Incantation: sound and song as curse, cure, and gospel; Conclusions.

About the author

Laura Salah Nasrallah, the Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University, is author of An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity (2003); Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (2010), and Archaeology and the Letters of Paul (2019).

Product details

• Authors: Laura Salah Nasrallah, Laura Salah (Yale University Nasrallah, Nasrallah Laura Salah
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.11.2023
• EAN: 9781009405737
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0940573-7
• No. of pages: 358
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Christianity; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; RELIGION / Christianity / History, RELIGION / Christianity / General, BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Magick Studies, Christianity, History of Religion, Magic, spells and alchemy, Magic, spells & alchemy, Mediterranean countries, c 1000 BCE to start of CE period, Relating to Christian people and groups, BCE to c 500 CE, For higher / tertiary / university education