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Our Divine Double
-
Charles M. Stang
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2016
About this book
What if you were to discover that you were only one half of a whole—that you had a divine double? In the second and third centuries CE, Charles Stang shows, this idea gripped the religious imagination of the Eastern Mediterranean, offering a distinctive understanding of the self that has survived in various forms down to the present.
Author / Editor information
Stang Charles M. :
Charles M. Stang is Professor of Early Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School.
Reviews
Our Divine Double is intellectually rich and historically detailed. Stang asks readers to contemplate a theological and philosophical ‘road not taken,’ one that might challenge various Christian orthodoxies of the self and the divine. The book is a triumph; Stang has uncovered an unacknowledged but vital strain of thinking about God and the cosmos that generated centuries of productive thinking about the ‘I’ and the ‘Other.’
-- Andrew Jacobs, Scripps College
-- Andrew Jacobs, Scripps College
In this lively, insightful book, Stang tackles a major problem in the history of ancient religion, and sheds much light on a forgotten chapter in the archaeology of the person. Major instances, such as Thomas, Jesus’s twin brother, and Mani’s heavenly twin, are studied in the context of a Platonic tradition going from Socrates’s daimon to Plotinus.
-- Guy Stroumsa, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Oxford
-- Guy Stroumsa, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Oxford
Stang breathes life into scholarship and provides a new understanding of traditions about which we thought there was nothing new to learn…There is something wild, infectious, even mad in this book. Stang embraces cognitive and existential impossibilities under the rubric of ‘our divine double,’ and yet, through his careful and cadenced presentation of these paradoxes, Stang tames the madness and leads his readers in; he offers us a taste of bi-unity; he allows us to feel the touch of Plato’s heaven-sent madness.
-- Gregory Shaw Bryn Mawr Classical Review
-- Gregory Shaw Bryn Mawr Classical Review
This work is a top-class piece of scholarship and Stang is to be commended for his hands-on approach to primary materials—Coptic, Syriac, and Middle Persian are just a few of the languages he employed to bring this study to fruition…Our Divine Double can truly be called an original contribution to scholarship and it is a most captivating read.
-- Daniel J. Tolan Reading Religion
-- Daniel J. Tolan Reading Religion
Stang’s book is compelling in its devotion to an ancient search for a way to ‘our higher self’…Opening his own creative process in formulating Our Divine Double has proven a distinctive and valuable achievement, partly because it also lays open philological disintegrations, and significant reorientations in the house of intellect.
-- Karl F. Morrison Medieval Review
-- Karl F. Morrison Medieval Review
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Introduction: Narcissus and His Double
1 -
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1. Reading Plato’s Many Doubles
20 -
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2. Thomas, Who Is Called “Twin”
64 -
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3. Syzygies, Twins, and Mirrors
107 -
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4. Mani and His Twin - Companion
145 -
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5. Plotinus and the Doubled Intellect
185 -
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6. Whither the Divine Double?
231 -
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Conclusion
249 -
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Notes
259 -
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Acknowledgments
299 -
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Index
303
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 7, 2016
eBook ISBN:
9780674970168
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
320
Other:
1 line illustration
eBook ISBN:
9780674970168
Audience(s) for this book
General/trade;
