Before forgiveness : the origins of a moral idea / David Konstan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Konstan, David, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Forgiveness.

Forgiveness--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Forgiveness of sin.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 192 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this book, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome. Even more startlingly, it is not fully present in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the New Testament or in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. It would still be centuries - many centuries - before the idea of interpersonal forgiveness, with its accompanying ideas of apology, remorse, and a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoer, would emerge. For all its vast importance today in religion, law, politics and psychotherapy, interpersonal forgiveness is a creation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the Christian concept of divine forgiveness was fully secularized. Forgiveness was God's province and it took a revolution in thought to bring it to earth and make it a human trait.

Contents:

What is forgiveness

Before forgiveness: Greeks and Romans on guilt and innocence

Did they forgive? Greek and Roman narratives of reconciliation

Divine absolution: the Hebrew and Christian bibles

Humility and repentance: the church fathers

Enter forgiveness: the self transformed.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-20563-8

1-139-03589-4

9786613051998

1-283-05199-0

1-139-03821-4

1-139-04212-2

1-139-04135-5

1-139-04475-3

1-139-04058-8

0-511-76285-2