72 names
A01=Valentina Izmirlieva
abagar
apostle
Author_Valentina Izmirlieva
authorship
balkans
bible
Category=QRAB1
Category=QRM
Category=QRVG
christianity
dionysius the areopagite
divinity
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
exegesis
god
hierarchy
history
judaism
kabbalah
magic
metaphysics
miscellany for travelers
mysticism
myth
nameless
naming
nonfiction
palestine
printing
provence
religion
scripture
septuagint
spirituality
tower of babel
Product details
- ISBN 9780226388700
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jul 2008
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Christians face a conundrum when it comes to naming God, for if God is unnameable, as theologians maintain, he can also be called by every name. His proper name is thus an open-ended, all-encompassing list, a mystery the Church embraces in its rhetoric, but which many Christians have found difficult to accept. To explore this conflict, Valentina Izmirlieva examines two lists of God's names: one from "The Divine Names", the classic treatise by Pseudo-Dionysius, and the other from "The 72 Names of the Lord", an amulet whose history binds together Kabbalah and Christianity, Jews and Slavs, Palestine, Provence, and the Balkans.This unexpected juxtaposition of a theological treatise and a magical amulet allows Izmirlieva to reveal lists' rhetorical potential to create order and to function as both tools of knowledge and of power. Despite the two different visions of order represented by each list, Izmirlieva finds that their uses in Christian practice point to a complementary relationship between the existential need for God's protection and the metaphysical desire to submit to his infinite majesty - a compelling claim sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.
Valentina Izmirlieva is associate professor in the Slavic department at Columbia University.
