(Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha; 19), Postface par Jean-Pierre Mahé, Postscript by George Hewitt. Review by Stephen H. Rapp, in Church History. Studies, in: Christianity and Culture 92 (2023), 413-15., 2022
This volume is one of the few collections of studies that look at the South Caucasus—from the Bla... more This volume is one of the few collections of studies that look at the South Caucasus—from the Black Sea in the west to the Caspian Sea in the east—as a shared cultural space. Twelve studies explore contacts between Armenians, Georgians, Kurds and Muslims of the former Caucasian Albania (in the present-day Azerbaijan), as expressed in texts, figurative arts and rituals. While focusing on the ancient Christian civilisations of Armenia and Georgia, the book also investigates the interactions of Christianity with the ancestral religions of the South Caucasians, with Zoroastrianism, Islam and Yazidism. Apocryphal traditions represent a particularly convenient lens through which to observe cultural exchanges and blending.
The first two chapters analyse the perception of sacred objects and sanctuaries in Armenia and Georgia and the representation of fabulous animals in the iconography of both countries. The next six investigate the contacts between Armenians and Georgians in the transmission of hagiographic texts relating to Christ's Nativity, the early Christian saints and their images, as well as the Evangelisation of the Armenian and Georgian kingdoms. The penultimate two chapters study places of worship shared by diverse religions, the role of religious syncretism in the Islamisation of the southeastern Caucasus and the function of apocrypha in the resistance to Islam. The final chapter examines the contextualisation of Islamic legends of Biblical origin in the topography of the Caucasus. The volume ends with a detailed index.
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Over millennia, numerous peoples that have inhabited the South Caucasus have preserved, or have gradually acquired, profound cultural affinities. Attempts to account for this shared repository, and for its numberless regional and national shades, have seldom been undertaken. This region is thus regarded in this volume as an organic cultural space. For the sake of transcending formal religious and denominational boundaries dividing the South Caucasian nations, as our starting point we have chosen apocryphal and mythological themes in texts, in worship and in visual arts.
ISBN: 9789042947146
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Papers by George Hewitt
The first two chapters analyse the perception of sacred objects and sanctuaries in Armenia and Georgia and the representation of fabulous animals in the iconography of both countries. The next six investigate the contacts between Armenians and Georgians in the transmission of hagiographic texts relating to Christ's Nativity, the early Christian saints and their images, as well as the Evangelisation of the Armenian and Georgian kingdoms. The penultimate two chapters study places of worship shared by diverse religions, the role of religious syncretism in the Islamisation of the southeastern Caucasus and the function of apocrypha in the resistance to Islam. The final chapter examines the contextualisation of Islamic legends of Biblical origin in the topography of the Caucasus. The volume ends with a detailed index.
***
Over millennia, numerous peoples that have inhabited the South Caucasus have preserved, or have gradually acquired, profound cultural affinities. Attempts to account for this shared repository, and for its numberless regional and national shades, have seldom been undertaken. This region is thus regarded in this volume as an organic cultural space. For the sake of transcending formal religious and denominational boundaries dividing the South Caucasian nations, as our starting point we have chosen apocryphal and mythological themes in texts, in worship and in visual arts.
ISBN: 9789042947146