Clemens Leonhard Boeken

Information about Ancient Christianity is preserved in literary texts. These sources contain passages that became liturgical texts during their history of reception while the context or form of some of them could suggest their ritualized use in the churches of New Testament times. The essays in this volume elaborate on the question of how ancient pieces of liturgy might be found in the extant literature. It also asks how readers of these literary texts can avert the risk of anachronistic reconstructions of ancient liturgies. The topics of this collection range from Jewish Early Medieval poetry to Ancient Greek hymns. The papers discuss the physical appearance of prayer texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the performative aspects of texts as they are visible in the Old Testament Suspected Adulteress ritual, as well as prayer texts in the Psalms of Solomon and in the Acts of Thomas. All those lines of research in texts and methods intersect in the conceptual center of the volume: the question of liturgy in the literature of the New Testament which is also debated in detail.

The study assesses the main issues in the current debate about the early history of Pesach and Easter and provides new insights into the development of these two festivals. The author argues that the prescriptions of Exodus 12 provide the celebration of the Pesach in Jerusalem with an etiological background in order to connect the pilgrim festival with the story of the Exodus. The thesis that the Christian Easter evolved as a festival against a Jewish form of celebrating Pesach in the second century and that the development of Easter Sunday is dependent upon this custom is endorsed by the author’s close study of relevant texts such as the Haggada of Pesach; the “Poem of the four nights” in the Palestinian Targum Tradition; the structure of the Easter vigil.

Das Buch bietet eine aktuelle Handreichung für die Profanierung sowie für teilweise oder vollständige Umwandlung von Kirchen-gebäuden in Urnengräber, kommentiert Beispiele und gibt konkrete juridische Hinweise für den Kontext der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland. Bei Umwidmungen stellt sich außerdem die Frage der gottesdienstlichen Gestaltung des Ab-schlusses der liturgischen Nutzung. Solche Feiern beschließen oft konfliktreiche und schmerzliche Prozesse der Entscheidungsfindung. Beispiele aus Geschichte und Gegenwart unterstützen die Gestaltung und Bewertung von Abschieds- und Profanierungsfeiern.