Garth Fowden
Biographic Data
| ID | 309205 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Garth Fowden |
| GIVEN NAMES | Garth |
| FAMILY NAME | Fowden |
| SIGNATURE | FOWDEN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Hellenic Research Foundation |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7432-2318 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Personal name Index
Islam and Its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qurʾan. Edited by Carol Bakhos and Michael Cook
Islam and Its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qurʾan. Edited by Carol Bakhos and Michael Cook. Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions. Oxford: oxford University Press, 2017 . Pp. ix + 267. $85, £65
Alexandria between Antiquity and Islam: Commerce and Concepts in First Millennium Afro-Eurasia
Late antique Alexandria is much better known than the early Islamic city. To be fully appreciated, the transition must be contextualized against the full range of Afro-Eurasiatic commercial and intellectual life. The Alexandrian schools ‘harmonized’ Hippocrates and Galen, Plato and Aristotle. They also catalyzed Christian theology especially during the controversies before and after the Council of Chalcedon (451) that tore the Church apart and se…
Gibbon on Islam
A strand in current scholarship examines early Islam and the Caliphate against a late antique backdrop of Sasanid–Roman tension, dogmatic strife in the Church, and the maturation of rabbinic Judaism. Gibbon long ago insisted that there had been more than one road out of Antiquity, leading not just to the formation of Latin Christendom— the Papacy, German Empire and Italian Renaissance—but also to Greek Christendom and the rise of Islam. Yet this …
Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions: An Inaugural Lecture by the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths Given in the University of Cambridge, 4 December 2013
Judaism, Christianity and Islam - the three scriptural monotheisms, still often studied separately - are here intertwined within a historical frame. The approach outlined in this lecture pivots around the Qur'an as it emerged in seventh-century Arabia on the peripheries of the two world-empires of Iran and Rome, and variously refracts rabbinic Judaism and patristic - especially Syriac - Christianity. The formation and exegesis of scriptural canon…
Space: An Eastward Shift
This chapter contextualizes Islam's early history by proposing an eastward shift of emphasis. It revises the geographical framework; the Mediterranean world of the Greeks and Romans is replaced by the “Eurasian Hinge,” a triptych of regions with the Iranian plateau and the Eastern Mediterranean as its wings, and the “Mountain Arena” as its centerpiece. This geographical framework adopts the Eurasian perspective in its widest sense, from Japan or …
Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused
Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite intensive study of late antiquity over the last fifty years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. This book suggests a new way of thinking about the historica…
Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused
Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite intensive study of late Antiquity over the last fifty years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. Before and After Muhammad suggests a new way of thinking abo…
Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History
The claim by certain rulers to universal empire has a long history stretching as far back as the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires. This book traces its various manifestations in classical antiquity, the Islamic world, Asia and Central America as well as considering seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European discussions of international order. As such it is an exercise in comparative world history combining a multiplicity of approaches, from anci…
German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship, by Suzanne L. Marchand * German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945, by Ursula Wokoeck
Edward Said taught readers of French and English scholarship and literature to appreciate numerous assumptions about the East they had previously made unthinkingly. Said's notorious neglect of German Orientalism—as insufficiently determined by colonialism—has unintentionally fertilised research in this area too. Marchand deals with scholarly debates at an often quite technical level; Wokoeck looks at academic institutions and careers. Theology is…
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian
Journal Article The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian Get access The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Edited by MICHAEL MAAS (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2005; pp. xxxvi + 626. £45). Garth Fowden Garth Fowden National Research Foundation, Athens Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CXXI, Issue 492, June 2006, Pages 823–825, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/c…
The world-view
The only late polytheist thinker considered worthy of serious study by historians of philosophy was Plotinus. Since Plotinus' attitude to conventional religion was misunderstood no less by his contemporaries than by modern scholars, it must be emphasized that he was recognized to be a focus of holiness, a holy man. In polytheism, the pursuit of virtue and the spiritual life were primarily the domain of the philosophers. The effect on the broad po…
The individual and the gods
The late polytheist world-view affords the historian a first orientation amidst an exceptionally complex body of evidence. But daily contact with the Gods came to most people not through philosophy or theurgy, nor even the occult sciences, but through public and domestic cult, dreams, the rites of the dead, and so on. The building of temples was among the most fundamental human social acts. During the major festivals of Artemis, the emperor too w…
Public religion
The Severan dynasty's attitude to religion was well exemplified by Caracalla. It was in the nature of things that an emperor's personal piety could not remain a private matter. The significance even of well-known gods varied widely from place to place. Roma, the emperor, the Capitoline Triad and the 'Twelve Gods' were revered throughout the empire, but in a way that varied according to the degree of their assimilation to local tradition, and of t…
The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity: Essays in honour of Peter Brown
Late-antique art in Syria and its Umayyad evolutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Polytheist religion and philosophy
This chapter talks about the hand of the state and about its role, whether active or passive, in the foundering of public polytheism. The reign of Constantius is peculiarly elusive for the historian of religion. Julian was a polytheist who believed firmly in individual gods who inhabited particular parts of the earth. Though there was some anti-polydieist reaction immediately after Julian's death, his successor Jovian (363-4) espoused a 'Constant…
Constantine, Silvester and the Church of S. Polyeuctus in Constantinople
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and their Influence
The earliest surviving account of Constantine's last days, April to May 337, was written by Eusebius of Caesarea as instant history, since Eusebius died in May 338 or 339. Parts of this concluding section of the Vita Constantini , for example the paragraphs about the first Christian emperor's baptism and mausoleum, have attracted scholarly curiosity, others less so. Here I would like to investigate systematically, for the first time, the versions…
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Empire and Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Journal Article Empire and Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, by Garth Fowden. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, 205 pp. $17.95 Get access Thomas Robbins Thomas Robbins Rochester, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 55, Issue 2, Summer 1994, Pages 211–212, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711859 Published: 01 July 1994
The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Constantine's Porphyry Column: The Earliest Literary Allusion
The purpose of this article is to draw attention to what I believe to be the earliest surviving allusion to Constantine's porphyry column in Constantinople. Although the proposition that the Life of Elagabalus in the Historia Augusta alludes to the porphyry column is incapable of strict proof, it has, at the very least, considerable heuristic value. By focusing our attention on, for example, the column's Theban origin or the fact that it is not a…
Between Pagans and Christians
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and their Influence
The earliest surviving account of Constantine's last days, April to May 337, was written by Eusebius of Caesarea as instant history, since Eusebius died in May 338 or 339. Parts of this concluding section of the Vita Constantini , for example the paragraphs about the first Christian emperor's baptism and mausoleum, have attracted scholarly curiosity, others less so. Here I would like to investigate systematically, for the first time, the versions…
Constantine's Porphyry Column: The Earliest Literary Allusion
The purpose of this article is to draw attention to what I believe to be the earliest surviving allusion to Constantine's porphyry column in Constantinople. Although the proposition that the Life of Elagabalus in the Historia Augusta alludes to the porphyry column is incapable of strict proof, it has, at the very least, considerable heuristic value. By focusing our attention on, for example, the column's Theban origin or the fact that it is not a…
Late-antique art in Syria and its Umayyad evolutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Gibbon on Islam
A strand in current scholarship examines early Islam and the Caliphate against a late antique backdrop of Sasanid–Roman tension, dogmatic strife in the Church, and the maturation of rabbinic Judaism. Gibbon long ago insisted that there had been more than one road out of Antiquity, leading not just to the formation of Latin Christendom— the Papacy, German Empire and Italian Renaissance—but also to Greek Christendom and the rise of Islam. Yet this …
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian
Journal Article The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian Get access The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Edited by MICHAEL MAAS (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2005; pp. xxxvi + 626. £45). Garth Fowden Garth Fowden National Research Foundation, Athens Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CXXI, Issue 492, June 2006, Pages 823–825, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/c…
The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity: Essays in honour of Peter Brown
Late Antique Paganism Reasoned and Revealed
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
W. H. C. Frend, Town and Country in the early Christian Centuries (Collected studies series). London: Variorum Reprints, 1980. Pp. 372, frontispiece
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Between Pagans and Christians
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Constantine's Porphyry Column: The Earliest Literary Allusion
The purpose of this article is to draw attention to what I believe to be the earliest surviving allusion to Constantine's porphyry column in Constantinople. Although the proposition that the Life of Elagabalus in the Historia Augusta alludes to the porphyry column is incapable of strict proof, it has, at the very least, considerable heuristic value. By focusing our attention on, for example, the column's Theban origin or the fact that it is not a…
The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Constantine, Silvester and the Church of S. Polyeuctus in Constantinople
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and their Influence
The earliest surviving account of Constantine's last days, April to May 337, was written by Eusebius of Caesarea as instant history, since Eusebius died in May 338 or 339. Parts of this concluding section of the Vita Constantini , for example the paragraphs about the first Christian emperor's baptism and mausoleum, have attracted scholarly curiosity, others less so. Here I would like to investigate systematically, for the first time, the versions…
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Empire and Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
Journal Article Empire and Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, by Garth Fowden. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, 205 pp. $17.95 Get access Thomas Robbins Thomas Robbins Rochester, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 55, Issue 2, Summer 1994, Pages 211–212, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711859 Published: 01 July 1994
Polytheist religion and philosophy
This chapter talks about the hand of the state and about its role, whether active or passive, in the foundering of public polytheism. The reign of Constantius is peculiarly elusive for the historian of religion. Julian was a polytheist who believed firmly in individual gods who inhabited particular parts of the earth. Though there was some anti-polydieist reaction immediately after Julian's death, his successor Jovian (363-4) espoused a 'Constant…
Late-antique art in Syria and its Umayyad evolutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The world-view
The only late polytheist thinker considered worthy of serious study by historians of philosophy was Plotinus. Since Plotinus' attitude to conventional religion was misunderstood no less by his contemporaries than by modern scholars, it must be emphasized that he was recognized to be a focus of holiness, a holy man. In polytheism, the pursuit of virtue and the spiritual life were primarily the domain of the philosophers. The effect on the broad po…
The individual and the gods
The late polytheist world-view affords the historian a first orientation amidst an exceptionally complex body of evidence. But daily contact with the Gods came to most people not through philosophy or theurgy, nor even the occult sciences, but through public and domestic cult, dreams, the rites of the dead, and so on. The building of temples was among the most fundamental human social acts. During the major festivals of Artemis, the emperor too w…
Public religion
The Severan dynasty's attitude to religion was well exemplified by Caracalla. It was in the nature of things that an emperor's personal piety could not remain a private matter. The significance even of well-known gods varied widely from place to place. Roma, the emperor, the Capitoline Triad and the 'Twelve Gods' were revered throughout the empire, but in a way that varied according to the degree of their assimilation to local tradition, and of t…
The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity: Essays in honour of Peter Brown
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian
Journal Article The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian Get access The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Edited by MICHAEL MAAS (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2005; pp. xxxvi + 626. £45). Garth Fowden Garth Fowden National Research Foundation, Athens Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume CXXI, Issue 492, June 2006, Pages 823–825, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/c…
German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship, by Suzanne L. Marchand * German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945, by Ursula Wokoeck
Edward Said taught readers of French and English scholarship and literature to appreciate numerous assumptions about the East they had previously made unthinkingly. Said's notorious neglect of German Orientalism—as insufficiently determined by colonialism—has unintentionally fertilised research in this area too. Marchand deals with scholarly debates at an often quite technical level; Wokoeck looks at academic institutions and careers. Theology is…
Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History
The claim by certain rulers to universal empire has a long history stretching as far back as the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires. This book traces its various manifestations in classical antiquity, the Islamic world, Asia and Central America as well as considering seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European discussions of international order. As such it is an exercise in comparative world history combining a multiplicity of approaches, from anci…
Space: An Eastward Shift
This chapter contextualizes Islam's early history by proposing an eastward shift of emphasis. It revises the geographical framework; the Mediterranean world of the Greeks and Romans is replaced by the “Eurasian Hinge,” a triptych of regions with the Iranian plateau and the Eastern Mediterranean as its wings, and the “Mountain Arena” as its centerpiece. This geographical framework adopts the Eurasian perspective in its widest sense, from Japan or …
Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused
Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite intensive study of late antiquity over the last fifty years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. This book suggests a new way of thinking about the historica…
Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused
Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite intensive study of late Antiquity over the last fifty years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. Before and After Muhammad suggests a new way of thinking abo…
Abraham or Aristotle? First Millennium Empires and Exegetical Traditions: An Inaugural Lecture by the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths Given in the University of Cambridge, 4 December 2013
Judaism, Christianity and Islam - the three scriptural monotheisms, still often studied separately - are here intertwined within a historical frame. The approach outlined in this lecture pivots around the Qur'an as it emerged in seventh-century Arabia on the peripheries of the two world-empires of Iran and Rome, and variously refracts rabbinic Judaism and patristic - especially Syriac - Christianity. The formation and exegesis of scriptural canon…
Gibbon on Islam
A strand in current scholarship examines early Islam and the Caliphate against a late antique backdrop of Sasanid–Roman tension, dogmatic strife in the Church, and the maturation of rabbinic Judaism. Gibbon long ago insisted that there had been more than one road out of Antiquity, leading not just to the formation of Latin Christendom— the Papacy, German Empire and Italian Renaissance—but also to Greek Christendom and the rise of Islam. Yet this …
Alexandria between Antiquity and Islam: Commerce and Concepts in First Millennium Afro-Eurasia
Late antique Alexandria is much better known than the early Islamic city. To be fully appreciated, the transition must be contextualized against the full range of Afro-Eurasiatic commercial and intellectual life. The Alexandrian schools ‘harmonized’ Hippocrates and Galen, Plato and Aristotle. They also catalyzed Christian theology especially during the controversies before and after the Council of Chalcedon (451) that tore the Church apart and se…
History (22 works) · Ancient history (19 works) · Classics (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Archaeology (12 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (10 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (9 works) · History (9 works) · Islam (9 works)