György Geréby, Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU has traveled to Yerevan during 26 November – 4 December 2011 where he was hosted by Professor Erna Shirinyan, Faculty of Theology, Yerevan State University and participant of our CEU HESP project.
While there he gave two lectures on: "Early Christian Political Theology at the Faculty of Theology," Yerevan State University on Tuesday 29 November and "In the Workshop of an Orthodox Apocryphon: The Protoevangelium Jacobi" at the Matenadaran - Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts on Thursday 1 December. He also organised, with the help of two of our colleagues there - Professor Erna Shirinyan and Doctoral student Satenik Chookaszian - a consultation with local graduates interested in studying at the Department of Medieval Studies or at CEU in general.
"Early Christian political theology"
29 November, Tuesday, 11.05 at the Yerevan State University, Faculty of Theology; audit. 225 (2nd floor)
Carl Schmitt’s “Political Theology” (1922) is one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Its basic claim is that “All significant concept of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts”. His main idea was that theology (or metaphysics), even if in a secular garb, offer the legitimating structures behind a given political order. Schmitt’s ideas influenced theory, terminology and methodology of the social sciences and historiography on a truly global way. His much less known great opponent, the theologian and church historian Erik Peterson published his refutation of Schmitt in 1935. Peterson pointed out that Schmitt’s problem, that is, the legitimacy of power was a natural concern addressed also by the Church Fathers. They were embedded in the Hellenistic context, however, where Roman thinkers such as Varro, Cicero, and Seneca insisted on the necessity of political theology to maintain public order (political theology being in antiquity a part of the Hellenistic tripartite theology), while Polybius and Panaitios defined it as a type of theology that serves the interest of politicians. Judaism, and especially Christianity (for example Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Augustine) refuted the political theology of the empire (represented by the Pythagorean treatises, and e.g. by Celsus) and contrasted it with their new concept of a Christian “kingdom of God”, which is a special, Christological version of Jewish (Old Testament) theocracy. This radical opposition of politics and truth, however, was not shared by all theologians of the time. Even before, but especially after Constantine an imperial theology emerged (in the wake of Origen, chiefly by Eusebius of Caesarea, or Lactantius), which became an intellectual pillar of the Byzantine Empire. Following the work of Erik Peterson, the lecture will address the basic question whether a political theology can legitimately be based on the Christian creed, and it will investigate some key concepts of this basic issue (Trinitarian analogies, oikumene, nationhood, peace, eschatology). The lecture will be illustrated by a number of iconographic representations.
"In the workshop of an orthodox apocryphon: the Protevangelium Jacobi"
1 December, Thursday, 15.00 at the Matenadaran, room 322 (2nd floor)
One of the most influential early apocrypha of the New Testament is certainly the Protevangelium Jacobi. Its many versions constitute a large and diffuse tradition with enormous influence on the liturgical, iconographic and theological tradition (mainly in the East, but also in the West) about the Nativity and that of the events immediately surrounding it. Attested in more than a hundred manuscripts including a 4th century papyrus, it was translated into Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic and Old Slavonic. There is a general agreement in dating the text to the 180s, with interpolations from a somewhat later period. While it has been usually classified as a naive “childhood apocryphon”, I argue that the Protevangelium is much more than that. I consider it as a piece of Alexandrian writing with a double program. A surface program offers a miraculous history, with many implausible elements. A deeper program, however, offers a powerful theology of the Incarnation. In my new reading I will try to show the secondary meaning of the 1. Annunciation, and the spinning of the threads for the veil of the Temple, 2. the vision of Joseph, 3. the Cave of the Nativity, and finally 4. the Virgin Birth. During the investigations (which will offer a fair selection of the earliest known iconographic materials) I will try to show that the Protevangelium relied on the popular philosophical language and conceptual framework of the period. The deeper message can easily deciphered with the help of some basic philosophical knowledge. Again, it advocates a very interesting relation to the Old Testament (and thereby to Jews), which points to an anti-gnostic program and context for its authorship.