Reading with an "I" to the Heavens

Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-11-025180-7
Verlag: De Gruyter

Buch, Englisch, Band 3, 324 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 656 g

Reihe: Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

This book examines the collection of prayers known as the Qumran Hodayot (= Thanksgiving Hymns) in light of ancient visionary traditions, new developments in neuropsychology, and post-structuralist understandings of the embodied subject. The thesis of this book is that the ritualized reading of reports describing visionary experiences written in the first person "I" had the potential to create within the ancient reader the subjectivity of a visionary which can then predispose him to have a religious experience. This study examines how references to the body and the strategic arousal of emotions could have functioned within a practice of performative reading to engender a religious experience of ascent. In so doing, this book offers new interdisciplinary insights into meditative ritual reading as a religious practice for transformation in antiquity.

Zielgruppe

Academics, Libraries, Institutes

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harkins, Angela Kim

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Heilige & Traditionelle Texte, Mythologie, Vergleichende Mythologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik

Über Autor(innen)

Angela Kim Harkins, Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, University of Birmingham, UK.