The Armenian Church Synaxarion is a collection of saints' lives according to the day of the year on which each saint is celebrated. Part of the great and varied Armenian liturgical tradition from the turn of the first millennium, the first Armenian Church Synaxarion represented the logical culmination of a long and steady development of what is today called the cult of the saints. This volume, the first Armenian-English edition, is the eighth of a twelve-volume series - one for each month of the year - and is ideal for personal devotional use or as a valuable resource for anyone interested in saints.

This 1840 Book of Mormon was carefully revised by Joseph Smith Jr., and is the last edition he worked on. It is the Third Edition and was published in Nauvoo, Illinois. It was published without an Index or Preface, but does contain the testimony of the Three and Eight Witnesses.

Art and the Artist in the Contemporary Israeli Novel presents studies of eight contemporary works of Israeli fiction by eight major Israeli novelists. It deals with a society where drama, lived in reality but also in the mind, is a central moving force. What this book shows is the ways these texts deal with the themes of creativity and the creation of a work of art and with the way art and artists are portrayed in a culture that is often perceived as being otherwise preoccupied. The book involves close and painstaking readings of these novels and travels along a broad spectrum of themes. It also shows how these texts engage in dialogue with texts of the Jewish tradition, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with each other. Two major points of the book are its emphasis on the work as literary art and the way the same themes often find their way into the varied works created by this literary generation. The book notes two tendencies among Israeli writers: that there is a great "urge to tell" their story and the story of Israel; and that to make clear not only what is "happening" in these novels but also what is "going on" in their works of art, the novelist take the leisurely route of "literary emerging"- slowly but surely leading the reader to see how art emerges from the most prosaic of events. Despite its easygoing tone, the book still claims to be a serious book, dealing with serious issues, both ethical and metaphysical. One of the cases this book endeavors to make is that one of the main goals of contemporary Israeli writers is to insert their works of art-via a midrashic mode of writing in which previous texts are constantly being re-written and being made modern-as links in the great chain of the Jewish textual tradition. These novels often refer back to biblical tales and to rabbinic ways of reading them. But they also demonstrate how the writers themselves and their books and are also a part of that tradition. Most of all, however, these writers are supremely aware that they are artists and that they have a particular responsibility to their art.

The book of Revelation has been a source of continual fascination for nearly two thousand years. Concepts such as the Lamb of God, the Four Horsemen, the Seventh Seal, the Beasts and Antichrist, the Whore of Babylon, Armageddon, the Millennium, the Last Judgement, the New Jerusalem, and the ubiquitous angels of the Apocalypse have captured the popular imagination. One can hardly open a newspaper or click on a news site without reading about impending financial or climate-change Armageddon, while the concept of the Four Horsemen pervades popular music, gaming, and satire. Yet few people know much about either the basic meaning or original context of these concepts or the multiplicity of different ways in which they have been interpreted by visual artists in particular. The visual history of this most widely illustrated of all the biblical books deserves greater attention. This book fills these gaps in a striking and original way by means of ten concise thematic chapters which explain the origins of these concepts from the book of Revelation in an accessible way. These explanations are augmented and developed via a carefully selected sample of the ways in which the concepts have been treated by artists through the centuries. The 120 visual examples are drawn from a wide range of time periods and media including the ninth-century Trier Apocalypse, thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman Apocalypse Manuscripts such as the Lambeth and Trinity Apocalypses, the fourteenth-century Angers Apocalypse Tapestry, fifteenth-century Apocalypse altarpieces by Van Eyck and Memling, Durer and Cranach's sixteenth-century Apocalypse woodcuts, and more recently a range of works by William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, Max Beckmann, as well as film posters and film stills, cartoons, and children's book illustrations. The final chapter demonstrates the continuing resonance of all the themes in contemporary religious, political, and popular thinking, while throughout the book a contrast will be drawn between those readers of Revelation who have seen it in terms of earthly revolutions in the here and now, and those who have adopted a more spiritual, other-worldly approach.

Music as Prayer explores the spiritual and theological character of church music. Author Thomas H. Troeger-a theologian, preacher, poet and flutist-traces how making and listening to music can be an act of prayer, a way of sensing the irrepressible resilience of the divine vitalities, in down-to-earth language that everyone can enjoy. The book employs a wide range of perspectives: from scientific observations about the affect of music on the brain, to the insights of early church fathers about the place of music in worship, to the compositions of great composers and their reflections upon their art, to the Bible and theologians, to organists, choir directors and instrumentalists, to hymnists and poets. Listening to the wisdom of these varied tribes, Troeger finds them to be a cloud of witnesses, a choir giving testimony to how music puts the human heart in touch with the spirit in times of sorrow and seeking, in times of joy and gratitude. The book is addressed to listeners and performers alike, instrumentalists and singers, clergy and seminarians, worship committees and congregation members, scholars and teachers of liturgy and sacred music. It helps musicians and clergy to develop a mutual understanding of the theological and spiritual dimensions of their collaborative work. As a whole, the book celebrates the ministry of making music that awakens people to those gifts of the spirit that sustain hope, promote healing, and enliven a visionary faith in the possibility of a transformed world.

This book is a unique study which offers new perspectives on contemporary Islamic iconography and the use of imageries in ritual contexts. The representation of prophets and saints in Islam is erroneously considered nonexistent by many scholars of Islam, Muslims, and the general public. The issue is often dealt with superficially without attention to its deep roots in piety and religiosity. "Visualizing Belief and Piety in Iranian Shiism" offers new understanding of Islamic iconography and Muslim perspectives on the use of imageries in ritual contexts and devotional life. Combining iconographic and ethnographic approaches, Ingvild Flaskerud introduces and analyzes imageries (tile-paintings, posters and wall-hangings), ritual contexts and interviews with male and female local viewers to discuss the representation, reception and function of imageries in contemporary Iranian Shia environments. This book presents the argument that images and decorative programmes have stimulating qualities to mentally evoke the saints in the minds of devotees and inspire their recollection, transforming emotions and stimulating cultic behaviours. Visualization and seeing are significant to the dissemination of religious knowledge, the understanding of spiritual and ethical values, the promotion of personal piety, and functions as modes of venerating God and the saints.

Emotions, Art, and Christianity in the Transatlantic World, 1450-1800 is a collection of studies variously exploring the role of visual and material culture in shaping early modern emotional experiences. The volume's transatlantic framework moves from The Netherlands, Spain, and Italy to Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and the Philippines, and centers on visual culture as a means to explore how emotions differ in their local and global "contexts" amidst the many shifts occurring c. 1450-1800. These themes are examined through the lens of art informed by religious ideas, especially Catholicism, with each essay probing how religiously inflected art stimulated, molded, and encoded emotions. Contributors: Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, Alison C. Fleming, Natalia Keller, Walter S. Melion, Olaya Sanfuentes, Patricia Simons, Dario Velandia Onofre, and Charles M. Rosenberg.

Natasha O'Hear considers seven different visualisations of all or part of the Book of Revelation across a range of different media, from illuminated manuscripts, to tapestries, to altarpieces to paintings woodcut prints. Artists featured include the Van Eycks, Memling, Botticelli, Durer and Cranach the Elder. This study is a contribution to the history of interpretation of the Book of Revelation in the Late Medieval and Early Modern period in the form of seven visual case studies ranging from 1250-1522.
It is also is an attempt to understand the different ways in which images exhibit hermeneutical strategies akin to what is found in textual exegesis, but with the peculiar properties of synchronicity of both subject-matter and effect that distinguish them from reading a text. The book explores the multi-faceted scope of visual exegesis as a way of exploring the content and the character of a biblical text such as The Book of Revelation, as well as the complementary relationship between textual and visual exegesis.

Explore the rich history and influence of Christian art from Antiquity to the present day. Michelle Brown traces the rich history of Christian art, crossing boundaries to explore how art has reflected and stimulated a response to the teachings of Christ, and to Christian thought and experience across the ages. Embracing much of the history of art in the West and parts of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia, Michelle considers art of the earliest Christians to the modern day. Featuring articles by invited contributors on subjects including Icons; Renaissance Florence; Rubens and the Counter-Reformation; Religious Folk Art; Jewish Artists; Christian Themes; Making the St John's Bible, and Christianity and Contemporary Art in North America, Christian Art is an ideal survey of the subject for all those interested in the world's artistic heritage. * Comprehensive and authoritative text from the Early Christian period to the modern day * Wide international coverage * Feature articles on special subjects by a team of experts from around the world

'ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art' explores some of underlying methodological assumptions in the field of art history by examining the suitability and success, as well as the incompatibility and failure, of varying art historical methodologies when applied to works of art which distinctly manifest Christian narratives, themes, motifs, and symbols.