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Documenting – and Rethinking – Liturgy in Early Christianity

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The Christian liturgical papyri. An introduction. By Ágnes T.Mihálykó. (Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity, 114.) Pp. xvi + 453 incl. 36 figs. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. €89. 978 3 16 155786 6; 1436 3003

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2020

DAVID FRANKFURTER*
Affiliation:
Department of Religion, Boston University, 145 Bay State Road, Boston, MA02215, USA
*
E-mail: dtmf@bu.edu

Extract

Much current work on early Christianity depends, implicitly or explicitly, on the assumption that lay people actually attended church services (and, hence, listened to and considered sermons by major Church Fathers) more than a few times a year. Whether they attended as ‘Christians’, or simply to engage in various types of material devotion, or out of interest in the religious content to be found in a church, the assumption is that they came.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

1 MacMullen, Ramsay, The second Church: popular Christianity A.D. 200–400, Atlanta, Ga 2009Google Scholar.

2 Sanzo, Joseph E., Scriptural incipits on amulets from late antique Egypt, Tübingen 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Brice, New Testament texts on Greek amulets from late antiquity, London 2016Google Scholar.

3 On these categories see Watts, James W. (ed.), Iconic books and texts, Sheffield 2013Google Scholar.

4 Preisendanz, Karl, Papyri graecae magicae: die Griechischen Zauberpapyri, ed. Henrichs, Albert, Stuttgart 1973, ii. 209–32Google Scholar; Bruyn, Theodore de and Dijkstra, Jitse H. F., ‘Greek amulets and formularies from Egypt containing Christian elements: a checklist of papyri, parchments, ostraka, and tablets’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists xlviii (2011), 163216Google Scholar; de Bruyn, Theodore, Making amulets Christian: artefacts, scribes, and contexts, Oxford 2017, ch. viCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 De Bruyn, Making amulets Christian.

7 Richter, Siegfried G., ‘Bemerkungen zu magischen Elementen koptischer Zaubertexte’, in Kramer, Bärbel (ed.) Akten des 21. internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Stuttgart 1997, 835–46Google Scholar; Van der Vliet, Jacques, ‘Literature, liturgy, magic: a dynamic continuum’, in Buzi, Paula and Camplani, Alberto (eds), Christianity in Egypt: literary production and intellectual trends in late antiquity, Rome 2011, 555–74Google Scholar, and ‘Christian spells and manuals from Egypt’, in David Frankfurter (ed.), Guide to the study of ancient magic, Leiden 2019, 322–50.

8 Meyer, Marvin W. and Smith, Richard (eds), Ancient Christian magic: Coptic texts of ritual power, San Francisco, Ca 1994, no. 62Google Scholar.

9 Ibid. no. 93.

10 For example, London Hay 10391 and Heidelberg Kopt. 686, ibid. nos 127, 135; Choat, Malcolm and Gardner, Iain (eds), A Coptic handbook of ritual power (P. Macq. I 1), Brepols 2013Google Scholar.

11 Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian magic, no. 63.

12 Ibid. no. 135.

13 On this feature of ritual speech see Wheelock, Wade T., ‘The problem of ritual language: from information to situation’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion l (1982), 4971CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Frange, O. 190, ed. Boud'hors, Anne and Heurtel, Chantal in Les Ostraca coptes de la TT 29: autour du moine Frangé, Brussels 2010, i. 158Google Scholar.

15 See, for example, Mirecki, ‘Seventh-century Coptic limestone’. In general see Frankfurter, David, ‘Charismatic textuality and the mediation of Christianity in late antique Egypt’, in Feldt, Laura and Bremmer, Jan N. (eds), Marginality, media, and mutations of religious authority in the history of Christianity, Leuven 2019, 4767Google Scholar.