Claire Hall – författare

Origen is frequently hailed as the most important Christian writer of his period (c.185-c.255 AD), and the first systematic theologian. Origen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture examines whether there was a system to Origen's thinking about prophecy. How were all of these quite different topics - future-telling, moral leadership, mystical revelation - contained in the single word 'prophecy'? Origen and Prophecy presents a new account of Origen's concept of prophecy which takes its cue from the structure of Origen's thinking about scripture. He claims that scripture can be read in three different senses: the straightforward, or 'somatic' (bodily) sense; the moral, or 'psychic' (soul-ish) sense; and the mystical, or 'pneumatic' (spiritual) sense. This threefold structure, says Origen, underpins all of scripture and is intimately linked through Christ with the structure of the Holy Trinity. This book illustrates how Origen thought about prophecy using the same threefold structure, with somatic (future-telling), psychic (moral), and pneumatic (mystical revelatory) senses. The chapters weave through several centuries of Greek pagan, Jewish, and Christian thinking about prophecy, divination, time, human nature, autonomy and freedom, allegory and metaphor, and the role of the divine in the order and structure of the cosmos.

The period from the Late Roman Republic to the end of antiquity was marked by a wide interest in divination, and more broadly by an intense belief in the possibility of establishing close and personal connections with the gods. Divinatory practices underwent profound changes, accompanied by new trends in religious belief and philosophical reflection. Different religious, ethnic and cultural groups resorted to prophecy to define their respective identities and traditions, to articulate their peaceful or polemical interactions, and more broadly to construct their own worldview, the effects of which are still visible today. This wide-ranging volume creates a holistic picture of divination in antiquity, with perspectives from scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds. They argue that a greater focus on transcendent knowledge of the divine and cosmos influenced theories of divination among pagans, Jews, and Christians during the later part of the period.

The period from the Late Roman Republic to the end of antiquity was marked by a wide interest in divination, and more broadly by an intense belief in the possibility of establishing close and personal connections with the gods. Divinatory practices underwent profound changes, accompanied by new trends in religious belief and philosophical reflection. Different religious, ethnic and cultural groups resorted to prophecy to define their respective identities and traditions, to articulate their peaceful or polemical interactions, and more broadly to construct their own worldview, the effects of which are still visible today. This wide-ranging volume creates a holistic picture of divination in antiquity, with perspectives from scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds. They argue that a greater focus on transcendent knowledge of the divine and cosmos influenced theories of divination among pagans, Jews, and Christians during the later part of the period.