Wednesday, June 13, 2012
In Praise of the One Who Contained the One Who Cannot Be Contained
The posts on this blog were written by the undergraduate and graduate students in Prof. Rachel Fulton Brown's course on "Mary and Mariology," taught at the University of Chicago in Spring 2012. The posts were assigned as reflections on the discussions that we had
over the course of the quarter in class, but the posts themselves
regularly took on a depth and rigor far beyond that which we had been
able to explore in class. The assigned readings for our discussions are
listed in the syllabus;
the blog posts themselves are labeled according to the theme of the
discussion in response to which they were written. There is undoubtedly much more that could be said both about our readings and our discussions. We offer these reflections simply as a glimpse at the beauty of the Virgin Mother of God and of the devotion that has been offered to her by Christians over the centuries. We hope very much that you will enjoy reading our reflections.
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The Darkest Icon
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"The Darkest Icon: the Virgin Mary in her own time" is unique and exhaustive anthropological treatment of the cultural predicament of the mother of Jesus in her own lifetime and in the earliest and most formative years of Christianity. The author places Mary in the context of the honor and shame patriarchies from the ancient Near East to the modern Mediterranean world, and explores the profound social consequences of her untimely conception of a mamzer child who would become a prolific public figure. Old testament and Talmudic sources are compared to New Testament, patristic and pagan texts with an eye more toward the effects of historical and religious memory on community formation than on theological development or textual hermeneutics. The book considers how the Marian "scandal" played a critical role in Jesus' mission, the Church's formation, the division of Church and Synagogue, the trial of Jesus, and the development of the gospels.