Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyry of Gaza: Translated with Introduction and Notes, with a Translation of the Georgian Life (Translated Texts for Historians, 89)

Childers, Jeff,Rapp, Claudia,Whitby, Michael

ISBN 10: 1836243340 / ISBN 13: 9781836243342

Published by Liverpool University Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0003878851

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyry of Gaza: Translated with Introduction and Notes, with a Translation of the Georgian Life (Translated Texts for Historians, 89)
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1836243340
• ISBN 13: 9781836243342
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

In Late Antiquity Gaza was an exceptionally prosperous city, with wealth derived from a flourishing wine trade across the Mediterranean, as well as an intellectual centre whose leading lights combined traditional classical and Christian learning. Bishop Porphyry is famous for effecting the transformation in the early fourth century AD of this thriving community from a bastion of pagan beliefs into a Christian city, primarily through the destruction of the main temple to the god Marnas and other pagan sanctuaries and the working of miracles for the benefit of the local population. Conversion was neither easy nor guaranteed, since the leaders of local society at the time were solidly pagan and prepared to mobilize violence to defend their traditional ways. His success required missions to the empire’s capital, Constantinople, where he interacted with the Patriarch John Chrysostom and imperial authorities. On one occasion he managed with the help of Empress Eudoxia to outmanoeuvre Emperor Arcadius into acceding to his request for imperial authority and physical backing to secure the closure and demolition of temples. The two key versions of Porphyry’s biography are here presented together in new translations for the first time.

About the Authors

Jeff Childers is Professor of Early Christianity at Abilene Christian University. He specializes in eastern Christianity, manuscript studies, patristics, New Testament textual criticism, early Christian spirituality, and the history of Bible interpretation

Claudia Rapp is Professor of Byzantine Studies, University of Vienna; Director, Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences. She specializes in the social and cultural history of Late Antiquity and Byzantium.

Michael Whitby is Emeritus Professor at the University of Birmingham. His many publications include The Cambridge Ancient History XIV, Late Antiquity, Empire and Successors A.D. 425-600 (Cambridge University Press 2000) co-edited with Averil Cameron and Bryan Ward-Perkins; Theodore Syncellus: The Homilies 'On the Robe and 'On the Siege' (TTH 86, Liverpool Unuversity Press 2024); and (with Richard Price), Theodore of Sykeon: The Life by George and the Encomium by Nicephorus the Treasurer (TTH 87, Liverpool University Press 2024) and with Jeff Childers and Claudia Rapp, Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyry of Gaza (Translated Texts for Historians 89, LUP 2025).