`We have no king but Christ': Christian Political Thought in Greater Syria on the Eve of the Arab Conquest (c.400-585)

by Philip Wood

Overview

Drawing on little-used sources in Syriac, once the lingua franca of the Middle East, Philip Wood examines how, at the close of the Roman Empire, Christianity carried with it new foundation myths for the peoples of the Near East that transformed their self-identity and their relationships with their rulers. This cultural independence was followed by a more radical political philosophy that dared to criticize the emperor and laid the seeds for the blending of religious and ethnic identity that we see in the Middle East today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199588497
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/29/2011
Series:	Oxford Studies in Byzantium
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Philip Wood is British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Classification in a Christian Empire2. Controlling the Barbarians: The First Syrian Hagiographic Collection3. Theories of Nations and the World of Late Antiquity4. Edessa and Beyond: The Reception of the Doctrina Addai in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries5. The Julian Romance6. Creating Boundaries in the Miaphysite Movement7. A Miaphysite CommonwealthConclusions

Editorial Reviews

"Philip Wood's book is a remarkable debut. It is broad in focus, sparing in its use of footnotes, and stimulating in the picture it presents of the Roman East in the fifth and sixth centuries." —Bryn Mawr Classical Review

From the Publisher