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 third meeting of the PSCO will be held on 02 February, 2006 from 7:00 pm to
9:00 pm in the 2nd Floor Lounge of Logan Hall on the University of Pennsylvania
campus. Those wishing to dine together before the meeting should convene in the
Logan Hall Lounge at 6 pm, or go directly to the Food Court in the basement of
nearby Houston Hall.
The presentation this evening will be by Dr. Naomi Koltun-Fromm of
Haverford College on "Constructing Rabbinic Authority and Holiness."
Dr. Koltun-Fromm suggests that if anyone would like to prepare beforehand, they
consult Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists (Oxford, 2004), especially
chapter 3, "Qedusha and Perishut: The Language of Rabbinic Asceticism."
The remaining Spring 2006 meetings will be:
01 March (at Princeton): Moshe Simon (University of Pennsylvania), TBA
27 April: Hindi Najman (University of Toronto), TBA
04 May: Vasiliki Limberis (Temple University), TBA
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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