Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice

This book shows how Ancient Christians both used curses and criticized them in ancient Mediterranean religion and society.

Laura Salah Nasrallah (Author)

9781009405737, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 June 2024

358 pages
23.6 x 15.7 x 2.4 cm, 0.63 kg

Ancient Christians and their non-Christian contemporaries lived in a world of 'magic.' Sometimes, they used curses as ritual objects to seek justice from gods and other beings; sometimes, they argued against them. Curses, and the writings of those who polemicized against curses, reveal the complexity of ancient Mediterranean religions, in which materiality, poetics, song, incantation, and glossolalia were used as technologies of power. Laura Nasrallah's study reframes the field of religion, the study of the Roman imperial period, and the investigation of the New Testament and ancient Christianity. Her approach eschews disciplinary aesthetics that privilege the literature and archaeological remains of elites, and that defines curses as magical materials, separable from religious ritual. Moreover, Nasrallah's imaginative use of art and 'research creations' of contemporary Black painters, sculptors, and poets offer insights for understanding how ancient ritual materials embedded into art work intervene into the present moment and critique injustice.

Introduction: Curses, Religion, Aesthetics
1. Making justice: curses, Justin Martyr, and the nailing of documents
2. Substance and story: a greengrocer and the drowned Pharaoh at Antioch
Interlude
3. Tongues, breath, stutter: 1 Corinthians and a Corinthian curse
4. Incantation: sound and song as curse, cure, and gospel
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX]