Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, developed by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.

This book considers the early history of Jewish-Christian relations focussing on the fallen angels.

Late antiquity saw a proliferation of Christian texts dwelling on the emotions and physical sensations of dying, not as a heroic martyr in a public square or a judge's court, but as an individual, at home in a bed or in a private room. In sermons, letters, and ascetic traditions, late ancient Christians imagined the last minutes of life and the events that followed death in elaborate detail. The majority of these imagined scenarios linked the quality of the experience to the moral state of the person who died. Death was no longer the "happy ending," in Judith Perkins's words, it had been to Christians of the first three centuries, an escape from the difficult and painful world. Instead, death was most often imagined as a terrifying, desperate experience. This book is the first to trace how, in late ancient Christianity, death came to be thought of as a moment of reckoning: a physical ordeal whose pain is followed by an immediate judgment of one's actions by angels and demons and, after that, fitting punishment. Because late ancient Christian culture valued the use of the imagination as a religious tool and because Christian teachers encouraged Christians to revisit the prospect of their deaths often, this novel description of death was more than an abstract idea. Rather, its appearance ushered in a new ethical sensibility among Christians, in which one's death was to be imagined frequently and anticipated in detail. This was, at first glance, meant as a tool for individuals: preachers counted on the fact that becoming aware of a judgment arriving at the end of one's life tends to sharpen one's scruples. But, as this book argues, the change in Christian sensibility toward death did not just affect individuals. Once established, it shifted the ethics of Christianity as a tradition. This is because death repeatedly and frequently imagined as the moment of reckoning created a fund of images and ideas about what constituted a human being and how variances in human morality should be treated. This had significant effects on the Christian assumption of power in late antiquity, especially in the case of the capacity to authorize violence against others. The thinking about death traced here thus contributed to the seemingly paradoxical situation in which Christians proclaimed their identity with a crucified person, yet were willing to use force against their ideological opponents.

Ancient Angels brings together inscriptional, literary, and archaeological evidence for angels (angeloi) in Roman-era religions. The book examines Roman conceptions of angels, angel veneration, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion.

Introduction : angelic greetings or Shalom Aleichem -- At home with the angels : Babylonian ritual sources -- Out and about with the angels : Palestinian ritual sources -- No angels? early rabbinic sources -- In the image of God, not angels : rabbinic sources -- In the image of the angels : liturgical sources -- Israel among the angels : Late rabbinic sources -- Jewish mystics and the angelic realms : early mystical sources -- Conclusion : angels in Judaism and the religions of late antiquity -- Appendix A : table -- Appendix B : description of table.

Early Christians sought miracles from Michael the Archangel and this enigmatic ecumenical figure was the subject of hagiography, liturgical texts, and relics across Western Europe. Entering contemporary debates about angelology, this fascinating study explores the formation and diffusion of the cult of Saint Michael from c. 300-c.800.

"A collection of essays examining medieval and early modern texts aimed at performing magic or receiving illumination via the mediation of angels. Includes discussion of Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts"--Provided by publisher.

Darrell D. Hannah engages the debate over 'angelomorphic Christology'. He shows that more than one form of angel or angelomorphic Christology was current in early Christianity and that Michael traditions in particular provided a conceptual framework in which Christ's heavenly significance was understood.

Angels and creation -- Angelic community -- Angels in salvation history -- Augustine and spiritual warfare

"Late Ancient Knowing explores how people in late antiquity went about knowing their world and how this knowing shaped late ancient lives. Each essay is dedicated to a single concept--'Animal,' 'Demon,' 'Countryside,' 'Christianization,' 'God'--studying the ways in which individuals and societies in this period created and interacted with visible and invisible realities. Rather than narrating late ancient history based on facts defensible in modern historical terms, these essays attempt to create histories based on what are now considered late ancient fictions, the now-discarded paradigms of late ancient thought"--Provided by publisher.