BOB2024MIOT

This collection of essays aims to offer a multi-disciplinary approach to nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship on Jesus and early Christianity, which illustrates the width and depth of the questions that critical reflections on the historical Jesus raised in and beyond the field of liberal theology. More precisely, it focuses on Jesus scholarship as practiced in various disciplines and fields that engaged with the academic study of religion. On the other hand, this volume aims for a comprehensive, multi-perspectivist historicization of this scholarship, considering the full range of religious, cultural, racial, political, and national dynamics that hosted the many controversies over the historical Jesus.Divided into five sections, the eleven essays in this book are organized according to guiding themes and a loose chronological structure. The first section revisits the roots of the Forschung in Liberal-Protestant Germany, and especially focuses on the maturation of historical-critical consciousness in the work of Reimarus (and his predecessors), Schleiermacher and Strauss. The second section is concerned with the rise of the “oriental Jesus” against the background of the making of the academic, non-theological study of religion as a scientific discipline. The third section explores how themes related to the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity were treated among different academic disciplines from the early second half of the nineteenth century onwards. The fourth section explores how the historical Jesus was at the same time further explored by the biblical scholars and theologians who integrated new comparative methods in their research. The fifth section, finally, highlights the cultural-political appropriations that were made of scholarly writings on Jesus, which not rarely constituted the bricks with which radical political movements built their houses.

Although little is known of the process surrounding early modern childbirth, the lack of written testimonials and technical descriptions does not preclude the possibility of reconstructing the reality of this elusive space: drawing on the evidence of clothing, food, rites and customs, this collection of essays seeks to give tangible form to the experience of childbirth through the analysis of physical objects and rituals.

An important addition to the literature of material culture and ‘wordly goods’, this collection of twenty-three essays from international scholars offers a novel approach to the study of pre- and early modern birth by extending its reach beyond the birthing event to include issues concerning the management of pregnancy and post-partum healing.

Grouped into five broad areas, the essays explore the material advantages and disadvantages of motherhood, the food and objects present in the birthing room, the evidence and memorialization of death in childbirth, attitudes towards the pregnant body, the material culture of healing and the ritual items used during childbirth.