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This article explores the cultural background and doctrinal formation of Jesus at the First Council of Nicaea within the broader discourse on the holy man in late antiquity. In the Roman Empire, the figure of the charismatic miracle worker emerged as a popular religious folk hero, a pattern evident in monastic, ecclesiastical, and rabbinic literature. The paper investigates the conditions that enabled the emergence and spread of such a figure within Jewish and Christian communities after the destruction of the Second Temple. It argues that the terminology adopted at Nicaea to define the divine nature of the Holy Son was shaped, in part, by the need to distinguish Jesus from the broader phenomenon of the charismatic holy man. By examining traditions of rainmaking asceticism and comparing Honi the Circle Maker and Simeon the Stylites in canonized fifth-century texts, this study analyzes how the holy man was appropriated into both rabbinic and ecclesiastical discourses.

Examining the filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s engagements with religious questions with reference to his films Devi (The Goddess), Mahapurush (The Holy Man), Ashani Sanket (Distant Thunder), Sadgati (Deliverance) and Ganashatru (A Public Enemy), this essay assesses the influence of Ray’s Brahmo inheritance, his personal atheism/agnosticism and his cultural fascination with Hinduism in his representations of women’s status and caste discrimination. It concludes that although Ray’s approach to Hinduism was far from one-dimensional or sectarian, its negative social consequences were emphasized more in his work than any positive role it might play in society and culture.

Monasticism played a significant role in the Late Antique economy of the Holy Land, as it did in neighboring regions, a role that can be traced both in hagiography and in archaeology. Though holy men settled in secluded monasteries in the desert of the Holy City, most of the monks of Palestine were living in and near villages throughout the land. The rural monastery housed presses that produced wine and oil in quantities exceeding the needs of the local monastic community. It seems that the monasteries, in addition to their obvious spiritual and religious functions, served as part of the region's economy, thus creating substantial relations with their lay neighbors.

In 1969, young Kirin Narayan’s older brother, Rahoul, announced that he was quitting school and leaving home to seek enlightenment with a guru. From boyhood, his restless creativity had continually surprised his family, but his departure shook up everyone— especially Kirin, who adored her high-spirited, charismatic brother.

En el presente artículo nos aproximamos a la investigación de la figura del hombre divino —θεῖος ἀνήρ— en la Antigüedad Tardía con el objeto de aportar un nuevo marco definitorio del mismo. En primer lugar, justificamos la necesidad de llevar a cabo un estudio sobre nuevos presupuestos y sobre la base de la historia crítica acerca del concepto de hombre divino en los respectivos contextos histórico-religioso, teótico y el metodológico. De esta forma disponemos el campo de trabajo para, finalmente, establecer una noción del concepto de hombre divino tardoantiguo que redefinimos en base a una serie de categorías —mística, ascética, mágica, social y política—, las cuales consideramos que circunscriben los ámbitos de actuación más relevantes de la vida y obra del hombre santo que nos ofrecen las fuentes antiguas. A partir de este marco y esta redefinición del concepto, nos proponemos abrir nuevas vías de investigación en este ámbito de estudio.The aim of this paper is to put forward a new definitional frame of the concept of divine man —θεῖος ἀνήρ— in Late Antiquity. Firstly, we justify the necessity of conducting a new research upon new hypothesis and upon the base of the previous criticism on the concept of divine man in the historical-religious, theoretical and methodological context. Thus we display our fieldwork to, finally, set forth our definition which we redefine upon the basis of five categories —mystical, ascetical, magical, social and political— which we consider refer to the most relevant areas interest in the life and deeds of a holy man —as they appear on the ancient sources. With this proposal, and redefining this very concept, we aim to open new paths of research on pagan and Christian holy men.

This innovative study sheds new light on one of the most spectacular changes to occur in late antiquity—the rise of pilgrimage all over the Christian world—by setting the phenomenon against the wide background of the political and theological debates of the time. Asking how the emerging notion of a sacred geography challenged the leading intellectuals and ecclesiastical authorities, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony deftly reshapes our understanding of early Christian mentalities by unraveling the process by which a territory of grace became a territory of power. Examining ancient writers' responses to the rising practice of pilgrimage, Bitton-Ashkelony offers a nuanced reading of their thinking on the merits and the demerits of pilgrimage, revealing theological and ecclesiastical motivations that have been overlooked, and questioning the long-held assumption of scholars that pilgrimage was only a popular, not an elite, religious practice. In addition to Greek and Latin sources, she includes Syriac material, which allows her to build a rich picture of the emerging theology of landscape that took shape over the fourth to sixth centuries.

The study of holy men active in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries has associated them primarily with millenarian movements. In the twenty-first century, the Thailand–Myanmar border has seen the emergence of a holy man to whom the concept of millenarianism is, in the current changing religious environment, not applicable. Khruba Bunchum, a contemporary Thai monk with a significant ethnic minority following in Myanmar, rose to fame in Thailand after being forced to leave Myanmar and spending three years meditating in an isolated cave. He has gained followers among wealthy and middle-class Thais. His case illustrates the effect of mobile media technology in transforming the practice of venerating holy men. It suggests the need for a new approach to studying religious movements, one that draws on religious, political and media sources.

In this essay I set out to offer a new interpretation of rural monasticism in Late Antiquity. The commonsensical understanding of the monk is of a holy man who played a key role in shaping the rural landscapes of Late Antique Levant. I want to suggest a distinction between the holy man, usually presented as a living saint in hagiographic literature, and the monk, who was a product of rural society and an integral part of the human landscape in the countryside. As a result, I offer a fresh look at monasticism as an organic component of the rural landscape and at the rural monk as a domestic villager rather than a revered role model for society.

This article examines the Xi’an stele, set in place in 781 in China’s capital of Chang’an (modern-day Xi’an), by the East Syrian Christian community resident in China officially since 635. The Xi’an stele indicates that an elite within the East Syrian Church presented “an image” (xiang 像) to the Chinese emperor in the church’s first year of official residence in order to solidify relations between the church and the still recently established Tang Empire (617–907). The essay raises the question of what kind of image, precisely, this might have been, by exploring the possibility that this image was a Byzantine Christian icon with Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhist influences. The article makes three basic arguments in support of this assertion. One is that though the exact nature of the image cannot be determined, there is enough access available to the thinking that surrounded the gift a century and a half after it was given, to suggest that enough Buddhist (one argument) and Christian elements (the second argument) were present in this milieu making the suggestion plausible, that this was a Buddhist-Christian icon. A third argument is that an early form of interimperial and inter-monastic debate about the role of images in religious worship was taking place in and around this gift of images. This was not the formal debate one normally thinks of in which two sides write, or speak, back and forth to one another, presenting their views and reasoning on a particular issue, and examining (or attacking) the views of the opposing side. But the Christians of Tang dynasty China were imperial representatives, and their gift of images gave expression to dialogue and debate. This debate culture is recoverable through an examination of the flourishing of Esoteric Buddhism that occurred across the empires of the Silk Road starting in the sixth century, and that gave rise gradually to a new type of monastic and charismatic holy man, one present among both Buddhists and Christians.

This article proposes a reading of the Panarion, a fourth-century heresiology, as a collective biography, a genre that compiled shortened biographical snapshots of prominent individuals who together embodied an idealized way of life. Epiphanius, the defender and model of orthodoxy, augmented his power and authority through his writing and heresy-hunting activities. The Panarion included miniature biographies of heresiarchs in many of the entries, and together these biographies constructed the composite image and character of the heresiarch and collectively portrayed the unholy life.