Appearing in the final pages of the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem is one of Christianity's most recognizable images. This volume contains fifteen essays on how the image was interpreted, deployed, and developed in a variety of literary, artistic, and theological contexts throughout the first millennium.
The contributions in this volume explore the intricate Late Antique reception of the New Jerusalem image from the New Testament's oft-contested book of Revelation. They delve into the image's historical origins in Hebrew and Classical texts, its reception spanning the first millennium and beyond, and its development in literature and art. Encompassing disciplines like historical biblical exegesis, art history, and the history of ideas, the studies traverse diverse literary and artistic genres in which the image was contemplated throughout Late Antiquity from Asia Minor to Alexandria, Rome, North Africa, Mesopotamia, Ireland, and beyond. The collection serves as an indispensable starting point for comprehending early and subsequent theological, political, and artistic receptions of this universally recognized biblical image.
Survey of contents
Nathan Betz/Anthony Dupont/Johan Leemans: Introduction: The New Jerusalem − More Than the World to Come
Part 1: Studies on Specific Authors, Works, and Corpora
Nathan Betz: Not Just Millennialists: Some Second-Century Greek Christian Interpretations of Revelation's Holy City −
Martina Vercesi: Tracking the New Jerusalem in North African Christianity through the Fourth Century −
Konrad Huber: In hoc regno: On the Geographical Localization of the New Jerusalem in Victorinus of Petovium −
Antti Laato: The Heavenly Jerusalem and the Jewish Remnant in the Book of Isaiah: The Changing Interpretation of Eusebius of Caesarea −
Alessandro Capone: Revelation 20 and 21 and the New Jerusalem according to Ambrosiaster and Jerome −
Anni Maria Laato: The Heavenly Jerusalem according to Two Fourth-Century Female Pilgrims −
Tobias Nicklas: From the Heavenly Jerusalem to the City of Christ: Revelation and the Visio Pauli −
Mark W. Elliott: New Jerusalem as the »Flipside« to the Last Judgment in Primasius, Bede, and Beatus −
Francis X. Gumerlock: Two Early Medieval Hiberno-Latin Texts on the New Jerusalem: Introduction, Transcription, and Translation −
Ian Boxall: Imagining the Celestial City: Visual Reception of Patristic Exegetical Traditions in the Carolingian, Beatus, and Anglo-Norman Apocalypses
Part 2: Topical Studies
Joseph Verheyden/Mathieu Cuijpers: Heaven on Earth: Some Noteworthy Greek and Roman Parallels to Revelation 21:2 −
T. C. Schmidt: Stones of Stumbling: The Petrographic Scandal of the New Jerusalem in Origen and His Eastern Inheritors −
Mateusz Kusio: The Walls of the New Jerusalem: Jewish Context and Patristic Reception −
Armin F. Bergmeier: Representing the Heavenly Jerusalem: Encounters with the Divine in Images and Spaces in Late Antiquity −
Mark Edwards: Where Is the New Jerusalem?