The agonistic character of the Apocryphal Acts literature has been well documented. The vast majority of these traditions revolve around the apostolic figure battling both demonic and human adversaries. The Acts of Thomas is no exception, showing the protagonist as Christian hero par-excellence, navigating both cosmological and theological adversaries, always emerging triumphant. Beyond the narration of these competitions themselves, however, the reader also witnesses Thomas navigating different places and spaces in his journeys. The dichotomies of deserted/inhabited, public/private, sacred/profane, domestic/communal are all encountered and their meanings adjudicated through the apostolic competitions. This paper will use spatiality theory to interrogate the use of these narrative topoi. In so doing, the role of space will not only be explored in these imagined places of the Acts of Thomas, but implications for the lived experience of the community will be investigated.
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Bulliet Richard W. Hunters, Herders and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships 2005 New York Columbia University Press
Charlesworth James H. The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol became Christianized. 2010 New Haven Yale University Press
Clark Gillian “Translating Relics: Victricius of Rouen and Fourth-Century Debate” Early Medieval Europe 2001 10 2 161 176
Griffith Mark “Horsepower and Donkeywork: Equids and the Ancient Greek Imagination” CP 2006 101 185 246 307 358
Huxley George Leonard “Geography in the Acts of Thomas” GRBS 1983 24 71 80
Johnson Scott Fitzgerald “Apostolic Geography: The Origins and Continuity of a Hagiographic Habit” DOP 2010 64 5 25
Lefebvre Henri The Production of Space 1991 Oxford Blackwell
MacCormack Sabine “Change and Continuity in Late Antiquity: The Ceremony of ‘Adventus’” Historia 1972 21 4 721 752
Mango C. “Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics” ByzZ 2009 83 1 51 62
Matthews Christopher R. “Articulate Animals: A Multivalent Motif in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.” The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies 205 232 (ed. Francois Bovon, et al. eds.; Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1999)
McGrath James F. “History and Fiction in the Acts of Thomas: The State of the Question” JSP 2008 17 4 297 311
Perkins Judith Burrus Virginia “Fictional Narratives and Social Critique.” A People’s History of Christianity Volume 2: Late Antique Christianity 2005 Minneapolis Fortress 46 69
Schneemelcher Wilhelm Wilson R. McL. New Testament Apocrypha II 1992 Louisville, KY Westminster/John Knox Press
Smith Jonathan Z. Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. Chicago University of Chicago Press
Soja Edward Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places 1996 Cambridge, Mass. Blackwell
Tally Robert Spatiality 2013 New York Routledge
Tweed Thomas Crossing and Dwelling 1996 Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press
Westphal Bertrand Tally R. Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces 2011 New York Palgrave Macmillan
See both Jonathan Z. Smith, “Map is Not Territory” in Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 289–309 and “Birth Upside Down or Right Side Up?” in Map is not Territory, 147–171. Each of these articles emphasizes spatiality in myth as a representation of congruity and incongruity in human cultural productions.
Judith Perkins, “Fictional Narratives and Social Critique” in A People’s History of Christianity Volume 2: Late Antique Christianity (ed. Virginia Burrus; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 59.
Christopher R. Matthews, “Articulate Animals: A Multivalent Motif in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles” in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies (eds. Francois Bovon, et al.; Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1999), 205.
C. Mango, “Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics,” ByzZ 83.1 (2009): 51–62; Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, “Apostolic Geography: The Origins and Continuity of a Hagiographic Habit,” DOP 64 (2010): 5–25; Gillian Clark, “Translating relics: Victricius of Rouen and fourth-century debate,” Early Medieval Europe 10.2 (2001): 161–176.
Sabine MacCormack, “Change and Continuity in Late Antiquity: The Ceremony of ‘Adventus’,” Historia 21.4 (1972): 721–752.
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The agonistic character of the Apocryphal Acts literature has been well documented. The vast majority of these traditions revolve around the apostolic figure battling both demonic and human adversaries. The Acts of Thomas is no exception, showing the protagonist as Christian hero par-excellence, navigating both cosmological and theological adversaries, always emerging triumphant. Beyond the narration of these competitions themselves, however, the reader also witnesses Thomas navigating different places and spaces in his journeys. The dichotomies of deserted/inhabited, public/private, sacred/profane, domestic/communal are all encountered and their meanings adjudicated through the apostolic competitions. This paper will use spatiality theory to interrogate the use of these narrative topoi. In so doing, the role of space will not only be explored in these imagined places of the Acts of Thomas, but implications for the lived experience of the community will be investigated.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 261 | 84 | 17 |
Full Text Views | 63 | 2 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 50 | 5 | 0 |