new release: Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith. Edited by Gabriela Signori
10. February 2012
Old-Testament Faith-Warriors (1 and 2 Maccabees) in Historical Perspective, Leiden: Brill, 2012.
reference
The message of the old testamentary Maccabees is martial and pernicious as well as already pointed out by Erasmus of Rotterdam. The circumstances in which the Maccabeean literature emerged are complex and have not yet been explored by scholars in all their details; even more complex is the history of its influence, the Wirkungsgeschichte in the sense Hans-Georg Gadamer has given to the term, a history which was to large extent a purely Christian one. The early Christians saw the Maccabees as prototypical martyrs. Later they discovered warrior heroes whose courage was the measure of whoever fought in the name of God or freedom: Saxons, Scots, or citizens of Cologne who rose up against their rulers.
This history of influence is the focus of the essays collected in this book, which extend thematically and chronologically from the cult of martyrs in late antiquity to the time of the modern wars of liberation. (editor)
With contributions from Gabriela Signori, Jan Assmann, Kai Trampedach, Johannes Hahn, Albrecht Berger, Daniel Joslyn Siemiatkoski, Elizabeth Lapina, Oliver Münsch, Henrike Lähnemann, Pavlina Rychterova, Pavel Soukup, David Collins, Andreas Pečar, Daniel Weidner, and Gabriel Stoukalov-Pogodin
Gabriela Signori is Professor of Medieval History in the Department of History and Sociology at the University of Konstanz and principal investigator of the Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Social Integration”.