On an upper floor of the Tridentine Diocesan Museum in a series of darkened rooms the walls are lined with glass cases. Inside them are vestments. It is yet one more measure of our great distance from William Durand. Chasubles, copes, surplices, and dalmatics are displayed as fragile matter: behind glass in cases controlled for temperature, moisture, and light. Chasubles are arranged in chronological order along one wall; copes, surplices, and dalmatics, fewer in number, are in other cases. It is not merely that all are separated from the persons who, Durand’s word, used them – as they would have been when those persons were not celebrating a Mass. Nor is it that they are fixed in place and separated from one another. We come closer when we recognize that all have been removed from their place, the place of worship, but that, too, still is only part of their transformation. All are kept permanently physically and spatially isolated both from those persons and also from the place with which they had so complexly participated in the meaning of the Mass. They have become objects, their intricate embroidery now the focus of our gaze.

Atonement is a critical component of the cultic system described in Leviticus 1–7 and 16. Purification of sin and thanksgiving offerings shape the worship of Israel. This chapter describes the theology of sacrifice and atonement in Leviticus, the specific offerings, and how atonement has been interpreted by later commentators.

Chapter 4 is in part an examination of a Mycenaean divine Potnia, one affiliated with the “labyrinth,” the Potnia of the dabúrinthos (δαβύρινθος). The labyrinthine space with which she is associated is an Asian cult notion introduced from Anatolia to Balkan Hellas. This chapter also examines the Rājasūya, a Vedic rite of consecration by which a warrior is made a king and a likely cult counterpart to the Mycenaean initiation of the wanaks.

Chapter 2 examines the Vedic sacrificial post called the yūpa and its role in ritual performances. A Mycenaean Greek cognate term and comparable ritual implement lies behind the Linear B form spelled u-po – that is, hûpos (ὗπος). Among other topics treated in this chapter are the Mycenaean deity called the po-ti-ni-ja, a-si-wi-ja, the Asian Potnia, and the u-po-jo po-ti-ni-ja, the Potnia of the u-po (that is, húpoio Pótnia [ὕποιο Πότνια]), a term matched exactly by Sanskrit patnī-yūpá-.

Chapter 6 examines Iranian cult and myth as evidenced in the Nart sagas of Transcaucasia, but also among Scythians as well as in Zoroastrian tradition, including the psychotropic cult substances Haoma (Iranian) and Soma (Indic). The Greek polis of Dioscurias in the Caucasus is explored as a place where Hellenic and Indo-Iranian divine-twin myth and cult affiliation meet, as indeed they do in the Pontic polis of Sinope. Aeolian connections are conspicuous at both locales.

Chapter 7 examines the sheep’s fleece filter used in the preparation of Soma. A cult ideology in which such an implement played an important role was preserved for some time in Iranian tradition in the Caucuses, ultimately giving expression to Greek ideas about the presence of fleecy filters impinged with gold in the vicinity of Dioscurias – rationalizing accounts of the Golden Fleece of Aeolian Argonautic tradition. Particular elements of the Golden Fleece myth find parallels in Indic poetic accounts of the performance of Soma cult. The common Hellenic and Indic elements constitute a shared nexus of ideas that earliest took shape in Bronze-Age communities of admixed Mycenaean and Luvian populations into which Mitanni Soma ideas had spread via Kizzuwatna. The Golden Fleece mythic tradition, with its geographic localization in Transcaucasia, is a Mycenaean Asianism that took shape in Asia Minor under Indic and Iranian influences and that continued to evolve among the Iron-Age Asian Greeks.

Chapter 5 considers the Indic divine twins, the Aśvins (Aśvínā), or Nāsatyas (Nā́satyā), their association with the Indic Dawn goddess Uṣas, and their place in the Indic Soma cult. Discussion then shifts to the kingdom of Mitanni in Syro-Mesopotamia, a place into which Indic culture was introduced as Indo-Iranian peoples migrated southward through Asia, as also at Nuzi. There is good lexical evidence for the presence of a Soma cult in Mitanni, and Soma-cult ideas appear to have spread out of Mitanni, through Kizzuwatna, into the Luvian milieu of western Asia Minor, where such ideas would almost certainly have been encountered by resident Mycenaean Greeks, intermingled biologically, socially, culturally, and linguistically with Luvian populations. With that spread certain elements of Soma-cult ideology were mapped onto Anatolian cult structures.

Chapter 1 examines Pylos tablet Tn 316 in depth, giving particular attention to the Linear B forms spelled po-re-na, po-re-si, and po-re-no-, and related Sanskrit forms, and to the especial closeness of post-Mycenaean Aeolic to ancestral Helleno-Indo-Iranian in regard to this matter.

Chapter 3 examines the Mycenaean wanaks and lāwāgetās, figures responsible for leading Mycenaean society in specific ways and who correspond notionally to figures implicit in Indic and Iranian social structures – figures who descend from still more ancient Indo-European antecedents charged with the task of leading society through the spaces of the Eurasian Steppes and in migrations southward out of the Steppes.

This chapter shows how the Laudians conceived the history of the church as a succession of sacrifices and altars stretching from Adam or Abel through the actual sacrifices of the Jews, under first natural, and then Mosaic law, and then through the spiritual sacrifices offered up by and in Christian churches. Where there were sacrifices there also altars and priests, and so the history of the church was conceived as a succession of consecrated persons and spaces, centred on altars, and then on episcopal chairs, stretching from the apostles to the present. The chapter shows the Laudians attempting to trace the presence in the primitive church, and then in the church of England, of the basic triad of priest, sacrifice and altar. They encountered some issues in so doing in the post-reformation church of England and the chapter shows some of their critics, most notably Bishop Williams, pointing that out and the Laudians responding with difficulty to those criticisms.

This chapter considers Hegel's treatment of the laws of thought from traditional logic: identity, noncontradiction, excluded middle, even perhaps the principle of sufficient reason (ground). It argues that these laws, which are uncritically presupposed by the tradition, are systematically derived by Hegel. Hegel is able to conduct this derivation because he grasps the deeper ontological import of these laws, that is the way in which the subject matter of logic (negation, affirmation, proposition and so on) can be traced back to a more primordial ontological foundation (nothingness, being, essence). I join others, like Priest, who consider Hegel a dialetheist, but supplement this view. I do so with an account of Hegel as responding to a different paradoxes than the ones that concern contemporary dialetheists. The paradox concerns the notion of identity, which can only relate what is already different. It was one noted by Russell and Wittgenstein after Hegel but not resolved by them in the same way he proposes.

Chapter 7, “Matters of Faith: Catholic Intelligentsia and the Church,” asks how Catholics behaved in Warsaw and why. Roman Catholicism was the religion of the majority of Varsovians and had played an important role in the development of the Polish national project. In the absence of a Polish government, the Church provided a potential locus of authority for Poles. Warsaw’s priests drew particular negative attention from the Nazi occupation for their potential influence and they were viciously persecuted, imprisoned, and often sent to the concentration camp at Dachau. Nevertheless, leaders of the Church, from the pope in Rome to local bishops, were hesitant to provide guidance, support Nazi occupation, or encourage opposition to it. Despite the lack of a top-down Catholic policy, this chapter argues that individual priests and lay Catholic leaders were motivated by their religious faith to form everything from charities to a postwar clerical state. Crucial among Catholics was the question of the developing Holocaust and the role of Polish Jews in Polish Catholic society, which sharply divided them.

This chapter proposes that the author uses an ancient exegetical technique known as “prosopological exegesis.” This method was common in early Christianity, but is not often traced as far back as the NT. After establishing the author’s use, the chapter shows how this method developed out of Greco-Roman rhetorical training as well as literary criticism and also has resonances with Jewish reading strategies as well. Since this method was used by early Christian writers, such as Tertullian, to support a doctrine of the Trinity, this chapter also discusses the extent to which this is true of Hebrews. Finally, the chapter surveys previous literature on speech, or “the word of God,” in Hebrews.

This chapter examines passages in Hebrews where the Father or God is portrayed as the speaker of Scripture quotations (Heb 1:5–13; 5:1–10; 7:1–28; 8:1–13). In Hebrews 1, the Father speaks 7 quotations to the Son or to/about the angels. These quotations show the Son’s superiority. In Hebrews 5, the quotations show how the Son is called to be a priest and how that is linked to his Sonship. In Hebrews 7, the author’s important quotation of Ps 110:4 establishes Jesus as a high priest in the likeness of Melchizedek. Finally, in Hebrews 8, the Father speaks and establishes a “new covenant.” In most instances, a pattern emerges where the Father speaks to the Son and confers authority upon him. These speeches are then “overheard” by the addressees.

How does the Bible represent violence? How does its literary nature shape these representations? How is violence central within biblical theologies? This chapter provides an analytical overview of biblical representations of violence and theorises ‘sanctification’ of violence. Biblical stories feature the range of violence common throughout ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean societies: war, ritual violence and violence between individuals, both ‘criminal’ and normalised. Socio-narrative context determines the legitimacy or illegitimacy of violence attributed to patriarchs, prophets, priests, Israelites, Judeans, ‘foreigners’ and royals. Some violence follows purported divine directive, but much is mundane. Yhwh’s (or divine subordinates’) violence is typically rendered legitimate. The ‘justness’ of divine violence rhetorically impacts explanations of misfortune: suffering of direct and symbolic violence indicates godly punishment. Within the Hebrew Bible and New Testament the notion that divinely decreed violence accomplishes theistic plans enables misrecognition of ritualised violence. Since antiquity, people have employed biblical themes to claim divine approval of violence. Theorisation of ‘religious violence’ facilitates distinguishing between assertions of biblically ‘justified’ violence versus how the biblical anthology represents violence. Investigating portrayals of violence, especially who benefits and who suffers from each portrayal, is key for examining social impacts of ancient ‘biblical violence’ and modern ‘Bible-based violence’.

Chapter 3 follows a clerical chronicler through a typical service at the twelfth-century Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, from the moment he hears the call to prayer to the priest’s final blessing from the ambo. Over the course of the narrative, I name and describe every church book that the chronicler takes up in his hands, and every sort of hymn, prayer, and reading that leaves his lips. In so doing, I attempt to provide a modern academic audience with a glimpse into how the liturgy was lived and experienced, day after day, by the men responsible for writing history in early Rus. I further argue that church books were not simply texts or sources like any other. I suggest, rather, they are the surviving artefacts of a Roman storytelling technology that enveloped its participants in a very special kind of narrative world. In my view, the worship of God, and the ritual retelling of his saving acts, was also a covert form of Byzantine political indoctrination. The liturgical rites inculcated an explicitly eastern Roman social arrangement between ruler and ruled, and they embedded this construct in a series of sacred narratives about the conversion and salvation of the Byzantine Empire.

The chronicle entry for the year 1015 recounts the murder of two of Vladimir’s sons, Princes Boris and Gleb. Once more, a series of close readings reveals a deep liturgical subtext underlying the chronicle text, only this time that subtext is Eucharistic: Prince Boris prepares for death in the exact way that an eastern Christian priest prepares for the Eucharistic sacrifice during the celebration of the divine liturgy. And just as the sacrifice offered in the Eucharist is Christ Himself, so the sacrifice that Boris offers in the chronicle is his own life, and the life of his brother Gleb. A second level of liturgical subtext is also discussed in the chapter, and it is connected to the Byzantine rite for consecrating a new church. The chroniclers in Rus were clearly familiar with this rite and it may have guided their large-scale conception of the founding of Christianity in Rus. Indeed, when we consider what a bishop says and does during the consecration rites—what he prays about and what he asks for—it reveals a crucial theological link between Vladimir’s role as bishop and the martyrdom of his sons Boris and Gleb.