عنوان

Holy spit and magic spells: Religion, magic and the body in late ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

TL48275

انگلیسی

Holy spit and magic spells: Religion, magic and the body in late ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

[Thesis]

Adam Collins Bursi

Haines-Eitzen, Kim

Cornell University

2015

308

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-86355-0

Ph.D.

Near Eastern Studies

Cornell University

2015

This dissertation examines the ways that bodies are used in defining the boundaries between pious 'religion' and illicit 'magic' in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literatures of the fifth to ninth centuries of the Common Era. Drawing upon narratives and legal discussions both of exceptional bodies (of martyrs, saints, rabbis, and prophets) and of average laypeople's bodies, this dissertation suggests that ritual usage of the body functions in these literatures as a site for the rhetorical construction of religious identity through the differentiation of acceptable bodily practices from those defined as unacceptably sectarian or 'magical.' By reading discussions of 'magical' bodies and bodily rituals, we see that late ancient ideas of the body's inherent power simultaneously enforced and violated the constructed boundaries between religious communities.

Religious history; Near Eastern Studies; Comparative

Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Early islam;Late ancient christianity;Late antiquity;Magic in religion;Religion and body;Sira and hadith

Ralston, Joshua B.

Haines-Eitzen, Kim

Near Eastern Studies

Cornell University

1696753147; 3710472

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y