Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe
Lecture
REMIO Guest Lecture: Jews in the Eastern Christian Narratives about Conversions: Myth or Reality?
CERES Palais, room "Ruhrpott" (4.13)
REMIO Guest Lecture by Irma Karaulashvili (Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia & Georgian Programme Fellow, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, Oxford University)
The lecture intends to give a brief overview of the major (Byzantine and Syriac) and minor (Georgian, Armenian, and information preserved about Albanian) Eastern Christian narrative sources related to the first conversion of the kings to Christianity. The main characteristics of the Byzantine- and Syriac-oriented hagiorgaphical discourses about the image of the ‘ruler, chosen by God’, as well as the role of the ecclesiastical figures and Jews/Judaeo-Christians in the process of the formation of Christian ethno-religious identity will be discussed; an attempt at explaining the leading role of the Jews in what can be call the Syriac-based narratives about Christianization would be provided as well.
The lecture series is sponsored by the RUB Research School and CERES.
