Jerusalem and Babylon : a study into Augustine's City of God and the sources of his doctrine of the two cities /
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Although many studies have been devoted to Augustine's City of God and its most important theme, viz. the antithesis between the civitas Dei and the terrena civitas ,until now no consensus has been reached concerning the sources of this doctrine. Was Augustine decisively influenced by Manichaeism, by (Neo)Platonism, the Stoa or Philo, by the Donatist Tyconius? Or should we look in another direction and refer to preceding Christian, Jewish, and especially to archaic Jewish-Christian traditions? This lucidly written books opens with a survey of the research carried out so far on the aim, structure and central theme of the City of God . Chapter 2 analyzes the essentials of Augustine's life, of his City of God , and of his doctrine of the two cities. Making use of one of the recently discovered letters of Augustine in Chapter 3 the author describes the City of God as an apology and as a catechetical work. Chapter 4 provides an investigation into the possible sources of Augustine's doctrine of the two cities in Manichaeism, in (Neo)Platonism, the Stoa and Philo, and in the works of Tyconius. The idea of two antithetical cities proves to be present most clearly in writings in which, closely related to Jewish thinking, archaic Christian concepts occupy an important place. In a final chapter some pertinent remarks are made on Jewish and Jewish-Christian influences on pre-Augustinian Christianity in Africa.
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"English version of my doctoral thesis, which was originally submitted to the Theological Faculty of the University of Utrecht in September 1986 and published in Dutch"--Preface. :
1 online resource (ix, 427 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 375-405) and indexes. :
9789004253346 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Euripides' Bacchae : the play and its audience /
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The purpose of this book is to investigate what it was Euripides intended to convey to the theatre-going public of his day when he wrote his most exciting and most gruesome play, the Bacchae . The meanings which are to be attached to the action of a play are woven by an audience, both during and after the performance, into a single dramatic experience, labelled in this book as 'audience response'. After some introductory chapters dealing with the history of the interpretation of the Bacchae and with the theory of audience response, the main part of the book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the action of the play (chapters 4 and 5), and to a study of Dionysus in his various apects in Athenian life and in his appearances in earlier literature and on the tragic stage. The discussion of the choruses concentrates on the choruses' repeated utterances about cleverness and wisdom, which form the core of the Dionysian propaganda of the play. The most immediate results of this new interpretation of the Bacchae are that the widely-accepted view of Pentheus as a dark puritan, a man possessed by the Dionysian qualities of his divine opponent, proves to be untenable, and that that which in the past has been rightly called the overriding theme of the play - the god's epiphany - also contains the poet's most serious and ironical discussion of divinity and of man's treatment of it. The problems of the Greek text are given full discussion, mainly in the nots and appendices. In many cases new solutions are proposed; some new problems are however added.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Free University of Amsterdam. :
1 online resource (200 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-198) and index. :
9789004328051 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.