The origins of Christian veneration of body-parts
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4089321 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Wortley (University of Manitoba, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-28 |
| Publication date | 2006-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Revue de l histoire des religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0035-1423 • E-ISSN: 2105-2573 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/rhr.4620 |
| OpenAlex | W1499768774 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Why did Christians chose to retain human corpses unburied and to dismember them, when most other people felt obliged to dispose of the dead, usually by burial or incineration? Three possible reasons are discussed. First, the marked emphasis on physical contact in all the biblical cases of healing (a buried body cannot be touched). Secondly, incinerated remains could be legally retained unburied and may have provided the earliest objects of Christian relic devotion. Thirdly, the Egyptian Christians, (we learn from Athanasius) adopted the long-standing pagan practice of embalming the corpses of martyrs and exposing them in private houses, ready prey for unscrupulous men who, realizing the popularity of such relics, were not slow to appreciate the advantages of trafficking in them
Chose · Dispose pattern · Political science · Popularity · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Engineering · History · Law
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2022 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |