Scenting Salvation

Scenting Salvation
Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Total Pages : 442
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780520287563
ISBN-13 : 0520287568
Rating : 4/5 (63 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Scenting Salvation by : Susan Ashbrook Harvey

Download or read book Scenting Salvation written by Susan Ashbrook Harvey and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity. Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.


Scenting Salvation Related Books

Scenting Salvation
Language: en
Pages: 442
Authors: Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-08-25 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancie
Scenting Salvation
Language: en
Pages: 442
Authors: Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2006-06-07 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Publisher Description
Sensing the Past
Language: en
Pages: 198
Authors: Mark Michael Smith
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Smith's history of the sensate is destined to precipitate a revolution in our understanding of the sensibilities that underpinned the mentalities of past epoch
Past Scents
Language: en
Pages: 297
Authors: Jonathan Reinarz
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-03-30 - Publisher: University of Illinois Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this comprehensive and engaging volume, medical historian Jonathan Reinarz offers a historiography of smell from ancient to modern times. Synthesizing existi
Before Belief
Language: en
Pages: 157
Authors: Bruce A. Stevens
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-01-15 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

First things are spiritually and theologically important. Before Belief explores the precognitive human experience of transcendence, illuminating how such found