The materiality of divine agency / edited by Beate Pongratz-Leisten and Karen Sonik ; with contributions from Kim Benzel [and five others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pongratz-Leisten, Beate, editor.

Sonik, Karen, editor.

Benzel, Kim, contributor.

Series:

Studies in ancient Near Eastern records ; Volume 8.

Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records ; Volume 8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion and culture.

Materialism--Religious aspects.

Materialism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 pages) : illustrations, photographs

Place of Publication:

Boston, [Massachusetts] ; Berlin, Germany : De Gruyter, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Two topics of current critical interest, agency and materiality, are here explored in the context of their intersection with the divine. Specific case studies, emphasizing the ancient Near East but including treatments also of the European Middle Ages and ancient Greece, elucidate the nature and implications of this intersection: What is the relationship between the divine and the particular matter or physical form in which it is materially represented or mentally visualized? How do sacral or divine "things" act, and what is the source and nature of their agency? How might we productively define and think about anthropomorphism in relation to the divine? What is the relationship between the mental and the material image, and between the categories of object and image, image and likeness, and likeness and representation? Drawing on a broad range of written and pictorial sources, this volume is a novel contribution to the contemporary discourse on the functioning and communicative potential of the material and materialized divine as it is developing in the fields of anthropology, art history, and the history and cognitive science of religion.

Contents:

Front matter

Acknowledgments

Preface

Contents

Abbreviations

List of Illustrations

Contributors

Between Cognition and Culture: Theorizing the Materiality of Divine Agency in Cross- Cultural Perspective

The Animation and Agency of Holy Food: Bread and Wine as Material Divine in the European Middle Ages

“What Goes In Is What Comes Out” – But What Was Already There? Divine Materials and Materiality in Ancient Mesopotamia

Imperial Allegories: Divine Agency and Monstrous Bodies in Mesopotamia’s Body Description Texts

Divine (Re-)Presentation: Authoritative Images and a Pictorial Stream of Tradition in Mesopotamia

Seeing and Socializing with Dagan at Emar’s zukru Festival

The Voice of Mighty Copper in a

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501502262

1501502263

9781501502309

1501502301

OCLC:

923337053