Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion | Reprint Edition

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Author: Sizgorich, Thomas
ISBN:0812223055
ISBN-13: 9780812223057
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Details about Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion:

In Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity, Thomas Sizgorich seeks to understand why and how violent expressions of religious devotion became central to the self-understandings of both Christian and Muslim communities between the fourth and ninth centuries. Sizgorich argues that the cultivation of violent martyrdom as a path to holiness was in no way particular to Islam; rather, it emerged from a matrix put into place by the Christians of late antiquity. Paying close attention to the role of memory and narrative in the formation of individual and communal selves, Sizgorich identifies a common pool of late ancient narrative forms upon which both Christian and Muslim communities drew.

In the process of recollecting the past, Sizgorich explains, Christian and Muslim communities alike elaborated iterations of Christianity or Islam that demanded of each believer a willingness to endure or inflict violence on God's behalf and thereby created militant local pieties that claimed to represent the one "real" Christianity or the only "pure" form of Islam. These militant communities used a shared system of signs, symbols, and stories, stories in which the faithful manifested their purity in conflict with the imperial powers of the world.

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I first tutored over 25 years ago, helping my friend pass the math exam required to graduate from Maryland public high schools. A few years ago, he told me (with some exaggeration, I assume!) that the day he learned that he passed the exam was the happiest day of his life. I began tutoring regularly in college, and have since tutored close to twenty students in English (including ESL), reading, phonics, spelling, Hebrew, American and world history, geography, and arithmetic. I've only tutored a few students in history and geography. But I enjoyed sharing with them my interest in the actions and consequences that shape the continuous narrative of history behind the names and dates, and my fascination with where things are in relation to one another. I would also enjoy sharing my interest in the operation of government and the democratic process in the United States. Read more

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