In Corruption: Severus of Antioch on the Body of ChristSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/IHBBB4XV/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.YonatanMossIn Corruption: Severus of Antioch on the Body of Christhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/IHBBB4XVhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/IHBBB4XVhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/IHBBB4XV2013In the 520's CE a major dispute about Jesus' body erupted throughout the Christian east. The question was whether it was to be considered incorruptible, that is, essentially immune from suffering and decay. The dispute originated between Severus of Antioch and Julian of Halicarnassus, two anti-Chalcedonian bishops who had been exiled to Egypt by the Chalcedonian emperor Justin. It ultimately resulted in the institutional split, still in effect today, between the Byzantine Orthodox and the Syrian and Coptic Orthodox Churches.
I seek to explain why the controversy about the body of Christ first broke out precisely among the two exiled dissidents Severus and Julian and how it came to catalyze the formation of a new ecclesiastical identity in secession from the long-venerated imperial church. I explore the ways in which Severus and his opponents within the anti-Chalcedonian party variously used notions of bodily incorruptibility to consolidate communal identity and to assert new forms of authority in an environment of political and ideological upheaval.
The theological debate about the incorruptibility of the body of Christ is examined in correlation with four other contemporary discourses and debates about 'bodies:' 1) The nature of human corporal physicality and its relation to human agency; 2) The political and ecclesiological dilemmas concerning the social body of Christ (i.e., the church); 3) Liturgical disagreements concerning the workings of the eucharistic body; 4) Conflicting hermeneutical constructions of an emerging corpus of authoritative church fathers. I show that whereas the anti-Chalcedonian church that ultimately separated from the Roman imperial church claimed Severus as a founding father, in significant ways it perpetuated the legacy of Julian. In the process the figure of Severus himself became transformed in anti-Chalcedonian memory.
Moss, Yonatan. “In Corruption: Severus of Antioch on the Body of Christ.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2013.
Yonatan Moss, In Corruption: Severus of Antioch on the Body of Christ (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2013).ChristologyDiptychsEucharistIV-VII CEJacobitesJohn of TellaJulian of HalicarnassusMonophysitismSeverus of AntiochVI CEanti-Chalcedonianecclesiologyliturgicspolemicpoliticsprimary sources [Syriac] + English translationsacramentstranslations from Greektranslations into Syriac