Religious Studies

Prayer and the Ancient City

Influences of Urban Space
Edited by Maik Patzelt, Jörg Rüpke, and Annette Weissenrieder

[Das Gebet und die antike Stadt. Einflüsse des urbanen Raums.]

2021. IX, 384 pages.

Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Greco-Roman World 5

169,00 €
including VAT
cloth
ISBN 978-3-16-160740-0
available
Also Available As:
Published in English.
What impact did urban space have on prayer and related religious thought and belief in ancient religions from the first to the sixth century CE? This volume attempts to replace the hitherto customary focus on the forms and semantics of prayer with an urban-spatial model, which understands prayers as performances embedded and embodied in urban space as well as texts producing and inspired by imaginations of space.
This volume is a first attempt to investigate the impact of urban space on prayers and related religious thought and belief in ancient religions from the first to the sixth century CE. Taking its lead from the spatial turn in scholarship, methodologically it is an attempt to replace the hitherto customary focus on the forms and semantics of prayer with an urban-spatial model. This model understands prayers as performances that are embedded and embodied in urban space as well as texts producing and inspired by imaginations of space. To allow for a broader comparison, this volume covers prayers and spaces of various religions all over the ancient Mediterranean, from Roman and North African polytheisms through early Christianity to Byzantine Christianity and early Islam.
Survey of contents
Maik Patzelt/Annette Weissenrieder: Prayer and the ancient city: influences of urban space. An introduction

I. Urban theoretical framework
 Emiliano R. Urciuoli/Jörg Rüpke: Religion and the urban: historical developments

II. The intrinsic logic of the city: the mutuality of urban space and prayer
 Yair Lipshitz: Ancient legacies, modern reactivations: urban space and the praying body in artistic performance in Jerusalem – Catherine Hezser: Caesarea Maritima, Greek prayer, and rabbinic Judaism – Gerard Rouwhorst: The formation of a Christian liturgical prayer tradition in the fourth and fifth centuries in a predominantly urban environment – Maik Patzelt: The creative potential of urban space: an urban approach to the prayers of the marginalised urban dwellers of Rome – Alexander Sokolicek: Toward a topography of the sacred in urban space: places of religious performance at Ephesos – Valentino Gasparini: Urban religion and risk-management at Simitthus (Chemtou, Tunisia)

III. The power of imagined spaces: challenging and producing spatial routines of prayer
 Ute Hüsken: The urban life of South Indian gods – Jan R. Stenger: Re-educating spatial habits: John Chrysostom on the production and transformation of urban space – Florian Wöller: The city as 'colonnades' and 'monastery': Libanius and John Chrysostom on Antiochene street processions – Harry O. Maier: The prayer of 1 Clement, mutual urban formations, and the urban aspirations of Roman Christ believers – Hekmat Dirbas: Communal prayer in an early Muslim city: Medina during the prophet's time – Annette Weissenrieder: Pater Sancte: the father appellation and the imaginaires of Jerusalem in the Vetus Latina Luke 11:2

IV. The representation of the city in the discourses about prayer
 Barbara Schmitz: Urban spaces and prayer in the book of Judith – Nadine Ueberschaer: The transcending of the temple city to the kingdom of god and its consequences for the practice of prayer – Stefan Schorch: Praying in the countryside: Samaritanism as an anti-urban religion – Cornelia B. Horn: Prayer at the threshold of the city in the Lives of Rabbula and Barsauma: placing a late antique bishop and a monk in spiritual and spatial perspectives
Authors/Editors

Maik Patzelt Born 1987; lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany.

Jörg Rüpke Born 1962; permanent fellow in Religious Studies at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt and co-director of the International research group »Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations.«
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4173-9587

Annette Weissenrieder Born 1967; Professor of Exegesis and Theology of New Testament at the Faculty of Theology at the Martin-Luther-University and director of the Institute »Corpus Hellenisticum«, University of Halle-Wittenberg.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1574-7030

Reviews

The following reviews are known:

In: Antigüedad, Religions y Sociedades (ARYS) — 21 (2023), pp. 588–595 (Jakob Engberg)
In: Old Testament Abstracts — 45 (2022), p. 930 (Christopher T. Begg)
In: Review of Biblical Literature — https://www.sblcentral.org/ (5/2023) (Rosemary Canavan)
More From Author / Editor
More About Subject
More About Series / Multi-volume Works