Chapter 4 begins with a detailed description of the four-day festival of Saint Efisio – the patron saint of Sardinia. The early May festival draws thousands of participants from all parts of Sardinia, and the procession keeps the promise made in response to the saint’s miraculous salvation of Cagliari from the bubonic plague. The procession takes the image of Efisio from Cagliari to Nora, where the martyrdom took place, and back to the Stampace Church. The chapter argues that the festival is not just a religious votive, but it creates a single system out of what is a diverse and internally split and conflicted island of Sardinia. This includes the tensions between the mountain pastoral economy and the farming economy of the Campidano valley.

When God tells Moses at the burning bush that His preferred name is I am that I am, does He encapsulate the ontological argument? Goodman considers, in the light of the reasoning of Philo, Avicenna, Anselm, al-Ghazali, Maimonides, Gödel, and the critiques of Hume, Kant and others.

The Conclusion reaffirms the importance of understanding the eleventh-century monastic affective piety for scholars of the Anglo-Norman world, of monasticism, of medieval devotion, and of medieval Christianity more generally. This study proves that the eleventh century was in fact a period of innovation – one that came before the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century – a time when monks were not just interested in reforming rules and customs, but also their interior, emotional selves. In this conclusion, I state that by examining the work and context of one medieval individual – John of Fécamp – scholars can move from heretofore accepted generalisations about medieval ‘affective’ spiritual practice to a more vibrant understanding of the enigmatic, lived, emotional experiences of medieval Christian monks.

Does it make sense to call God both infinite and absolutely simple. Goodman explores God’s biblical boundlessness, in dialogue with Plato, Philo, Plotinus, Maimonides, Spinoza, William Blake, Georg Cantor, and the Kabbalah?

The introductory chapter compares two systems: the cosmological system of the Cherokee Nation and the Ogallala aquifer in Kansas. Ontological and epistemological systems are used to illustrate a new method of comparing phenomena across distinct cultural systems. Comparison is not based on the similarity between cultural or religious phenomena but on the analogy or homology of element function within distinct systems.

This chapter develops the theoretical framework of this study. It addresses the definition of “ethnic group” and delves into recent studies of stereotyping, demonstrating that empirical work on social cognition generates useful insights for the study of ancient literature in general and for the interpretation of Pauline texts in particular.

Chapter 1 discusses three distinct types of systems: mechanical, living, and sociocultural. The systems are analyzed based on their primary proprietary features, but all are neg-entropic in seeking to maintain order and resist chaos. Four features of complex systems are emphasized: openness, purposefulness, emergent property, and multidimensionality, and examples are provided from the realm of religious ritual life. Systems are subject to internal conflicts or dissonance, with the most basic being the tension between too much control and too much chaos. The chapter concludes with a discussion of such dissonance in religious systems and the nature of mitigation as a human response to the signal generated by the dissonance.

The essay explores pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Dodona, in Epirus, through a phenomenological lens, aiming to reconstruct the experience of ancient pilgrims. The study highlights the significance of landscape, movement, and motivation, on the basis that Dodona’s natural features and architectural layout deeply influenced pilgrims’ perceptions. The phenomenological approach draws on landscape archaeology, analyzing human interaction with sacred spaces. The analysis examines not only motivations behind oracular activity, but also other purposes, such as attending the Naia festival, and emphasizes the interplay of visibility and movement as pilgrims approached the sanctuary. Although reconstructing individual experiences is challenging, common patterns in collective behavior, such as rituals, processions, and religious practices, offer insights into the ancient pilgrimage experience. In short, the study uses literary, epigraphic, and material evidence to discuss how Dodona’s sacred landscape shaped its visitors’ religious and emotional experiences, contributing to a broader understanding of Greek pilgrimage traditions.

Homoeroticism played an important role in the daily life of middle Byzantine monasteries. It brought monks into community with other men, but it also presented a specter of forbidden desire and activity that was greatly feared. Sermons, monastic rules, and the passages read out during meals from the Desert Fathers and John Klimax’s Ladder of Divine Ascent warned against sex between monks and the crushes and friendly attachments that might lead to it. At the same time, tales of monastic companionship valorized life-long friendships between monks, sending mixed signals. Earlier scholarship has seen concern with male-male relationships as “lurking in the background,” but homoeroticism was a constant and primary concern for medieval Orthodox monks, and monasteries served as queer spaces, attracting and disciplining men who had opted out of traditional heteronormative forms of life.

Paul has often been cast as someone who sought to abolish or transcend ethnic identities based on his adamantly held view that Gentiles (i.e., non-Jews) could become adherents of the God of Israel. This chapter examines Paul’s statements about Gentiles, argues that it is apt to think of these statements in terms of stereotyping, and establishes that Paul was capable of thinking in generalizing and essentializing ways about this large swath of the human population.

This essay pursues an ontological understanding of consultations at Dodona. The premise of this investigation is that if we are to understand a divinatory consultation as the Greeks themselves did, then we need to put aside our own Western Post-Enlightenment (largely secular) ontological assumptions concerning the existence of supernatural beings and view the world through the ontological assumptions of the Greeks themselves. This is a much more radical suggestion than the traditional injunction of putting on the cultural filters of the ancient Greeks, in as much as that step is then invariably followed by an act of cultural translation (which all too often is a ‘mistranslation’). The practice of divination, therefore, should be analysed in emic terms and then described in those terms as well, rather than being re-described in our own terms. Nevertheless, the emic understanding of a consultation can be enhanced by the application of Actor-Network Theory and an Object-Oriented Ontology, since they reveal the implicit social dynamics involved in consulting and interpreting oracles.