New Books in Christian Studies
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
When will I die? What is the sex of my unborn child? Which of two rivals will win a duel? As today, people in the later Middle Ages approached their uncertainties about the future, from the serious to the mundane, in a variety of ways. One of the most commonly surviving prognostic methods in medieval manuscripts is onomancy: the branch of divination that predicts the future from calculations based on the numbers that correlate to the letters of personal names. However, despite its ubiquity, it has been relatively little studied.
Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death (York Medieval Press, 2024) by Dr. Joanne Edge analyses the intellectual and physical contexts of onomantic texts in some 65 manuscripts of British provenance between around 1150 and 1500, focusing on its two main varieties It demonstrates that onomancies were copied, owned and used by a people from a wide range of literate society in late medieval England: medical practitioners; the gentry and aristocracy; university scholars; and monks. And it seeks to answer the question of why a divinatory device, condemned in canon law as "Pythagorean necromancy", enjoyed such popularity in mainstream books of religion, medicine, and scholasticism.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Master Craftsman, Broken Tools (with Fr. Chris Alar, MIC)
Francis L. Sampson, "Look Out Below!: A Story of the Airborne by a Paratrooper Padre" (Catholic U of America Press, 2023)
The Future of the Sacred Nation: A Discussion with Anna M. Grzymała-Busse
Robert Mills, "Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages" (U Chicago Press, 2015)
Daniel J. Soars and Nadya Pohran, "Hindu-Christian Dual Belonging" (Routledge, 2022)
David Tavárez, "Rethinking Zapotec Time: Cosmology, Ritual, and Resistance in Colonial Mexico" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Eric Vanden Eykel, "The Magi: Who They Were, How They've Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate" (Fortress Press, 2022)
John H. Walton, "Wisdom for Faithful Reading: Principles and Practices for Old Testament Interpretation" (InterVarsity Press, 2023)
Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin, "Stereotyping Religion II: Critiquing Clichés" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Greg A. Salazar, "Calvinist Conformity in Post-Reformation England: The Theology and Career of Daniel Featley" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Barry G. Webb, "Job: Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary" (Lexham Academic, 2023)
Queer Mysticism
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, "The Great Western Schism, 1378-1417: Performing Legitimacy, Performing Unity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Miri Rubin, "The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2014)
David Wenham, "Jesus in Context: Making Sense of the Historical Figure" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Christoph Heilig, "The Apostle and the Empire: Paul's Implicit and Explicit Criticism of Rome" (Eerdmans, 2022)
Thomas Arentzen, et al., "Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality" (Fordham UP, 2022)
Marcus A. Mininger, "Uncovering the Theme of Revelation in Romans 1:16-3:26: Discovering a New Approach to Paul's Argument" (Mohr Siebeck, 2017)
Joshua D. A. Bloor, "Purifying the Consciousness in Hebrews: Cult, Defilement, and the Perpetual Heavenly Blood of Jesus" (T&T Clark, 2023)
Sofia Samatar, "The White Mosque: A Memoir" (Catapult, 2022)
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