medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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PHILADELPHIA SEMINAR ON CHRISTIAN ORIGINS
in its 43rd year
an Interdisciplinary Humanities Seminar
under the auspices of the
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Department of Religious Studies
201 Logan Hall
with support from
the Penn Humanities Forum
TOPIC FOR 2005-2006: Redescribing the Holy Man: Theoretical Frameworks and
Specific Applications
Co-Chairs:
T.J. Wellman (University of Pennsylvania) [log in to unmask]
Harry Tolley (Univ. of Pennsylvania) [log in to unmask]
Secretary:
Douglas Finkbeiner (University of Pennsylvania)
Webmaster:
Jay C. Treat (University of Pennsylvania) [log in to unmask]
The second meeting of the PSCO will be held in conjunction with the SBL/AAR
Conference in Philadelphia on Friday, 18 November 2005 from
7:30pm-9:00pm in Regency B at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel (1200 Market).
To take advantage of the presence of persons who cannot normally attend PSCO
meetings, the Co-Chairs would like to suggest the following topics for a
roundtable discussion (open to all):
1) The question of social models continuing across time: how do we make sense of
the oft-cited (but problematic) decline of Egyptian temples in many communities,
the resulting itinerancy of Egyptian ritual expertise (either textual or in
terms of actual personnel), and the rise of (relatively or symbolic) stationary
Holy Man figures (of varying traditions) in administrative positions in the
Eastern Roman Empire?
2) The importance of social networks between Ritual Experts as Ritual Experts
(such as the linkages within the post-Iamblichean Neoplatonic communities) and
the generation of distinct cultural identities out of those networks.
3) How might David Frankfurter's Ritual Expertise model impact the way that we
conceptualize Religion in general (as, for instance, a technology vs. a
worldview, or reimagining worldview formation and maintenance as a social
technology of sorts)?
4) The parameters of expertise (this grows out of the extremely lively
discussion at our first meeting this year) and how to apply the term to raw
data.
The topic of the 43rd year of the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins is
"Redescribing the Holy Man: Theoretical Frameworks and Specific Applications."
We envision this topic as providing a focus for an ongoing discussion about the
analytical and explanatory possibilities of recent reassessments or developments
of Peter Brown's Holy Man typology. When Peter Brown published his seminal
essay, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity" (1971), he
introduced an analytical concept immediately lauded by specialists in a number
of academic subfields. In the decades since then this concept has been deployed
to make sense of various figures and events in Late Antiquity and beyond across
the range of religious traditions of the ancient Mediterranean basin. Whether
Neoplatonic diadochai, Christian saints, Jewish rabbis, or the priests, healers,
and prophets of the diverse local religious cultures of Late Antiquity, the
methods and descriptions employed by modern scholars all speak of this shared
imaginaire.
Recently, however, Anitra Bingham Kolenkow and David Frankfurter have each
independently suggested developments or refinements of the heuristic concept to
focus more closely on the various social roles performed by ritual experts in
their communities, grounding the general type in more specific sub-types and
social dynamics, and thereby pushing the academic community to a new stage of
theoretical reflection and critique. In order to generate a conversation
throughout the year's sessions, it is our hope that each presenter will engage
to some degree with David Frankfurter's essay, "Dynamics of Ritual Expertise In
Antiquity and Beyond: Towards a New Taxonomy of 'Magicians.'" [in Mirecki, Paul
and Marvin Meyer, eds. Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World. Brill, 2002. Pages
159-178.] as a starting point for the presentation. By doing so, we can take a
second look at the Holy Persons who populated various areas of focus and examine
the possibilities and constraints offered by this development from Peter Brown's
typology. The question is whether the utility of the comparative taxon "Holy
Man" to elucidate data can be increased by refining the concept and, in some
cases, employing a more thoroughly comparative method (between traditions,
between individuals, between time periods, and between cultures).
Robert Kraft, coordinator
PSCO website = http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/psco/
--
Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
227 Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
[log in to unmask]
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html
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