There is more material available on Herakles than any other Greek god or hero. His story has many more episodes than those of other heroes; concerning his life and death as well as his battles with myriad monsters and other opponents. In literature; he appears in our earliest Greek epic and lyric poetry; is reinvented for the tragic and comic stage; and later finds his way into such unlikely areas as philosophical writing and love poetry. In art; his exploits are amongst the earliest identifiable mythological scenes; and his easily-recognisable figure with lionskin and club was a familiar sight throughout antiquity in sculpture; vase-painting and other media. He was held up as an ancestor and role-model for both Greek and Roman rulers; and widely worshipped as a god; his unusual status as a hero-god being reinforced by the story of his apotheosis. Often referred to by his Roman name Hercules; he has continued to fascinate writers and artists right up to the present day. In Herakles; Emma Stafford has successfully tackled the ‘Herculean task’ of surveying both the ancient sources and the extensive modern scholarship in order to present a hugely accessible account of this important mythical figure. Covering both Greek and Roman material; the book highlights areas of consensus and dissent; indicating avenues for further study on both details and broader issues. Easy to read; Herakles is perfectly suited to students of classics and related disciplines; and of interest to anyone looking for an insight into ancient Greece’s most popular hero.
#789371 in Books 2000-11-08 2000-09-28Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.50 x .53 x 5.43l; .74 #File Name: 0415199042240 pages
Review
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM; by EDWARD YARNOLD s.jBy monk chanan mattisonFor the English world; a great interest in the Fathers of the Church wasrevived coincident with the very beginnings of the Oxford movement. R.W.Church at Oxford; eventually Dean of St Paul’s; began the seminal translation ofthe works of St Cyril of Jerusalem. John Henry Newman’s great interest andstudies of the fathers supplemented this interest. He praised the initial translationand added to it. Not long after; Dr Edwin Hamilton Gifford tidied all of thisprevious work with his own; meeting with worldwide appeal up until the 1950’swhen it was rightly felt that the archaic Victorian prepositions called for a moremodern English version; undertaken by Fr Andrew Stephenson at Exeter andedited and prepared for submission by Fr Leo McCauley s.j. to a new series onthe Fathers published by the Catholic University of America. 12Thus Fr Yarnold s.j. follows a distinguished pedigree; although he does not inthe text of Cyril of Jerusalem mention this earlier American achievement by hisJesuit brother. Perhaps this is because the bulk of the work was done byStephenson whom he does mention in passing. It is clear however that FrYarnold’s scholarship is very extensive. He eventually became the first honoraryDoctor of Divinity at Oxford since the Reformation and one-time Head of theTheology Department of the University.During or slightly after this achievement; Fr Yarnold worked as co-editor withmy own Oxford tutor; Rev Cheslyn Jones (Principal of Pusey House); on theseminal; A Study of the Liturgy (1976) and the later equally valued A Study ofSpirituality. Both men have now passed on; I trust; to their reward in the Kingdomof Heaven. Cheslyn was; like Pusey before him (and C.S. Lewis); a hold-out (thenat least!) in the Church of England and not a modernist. The pressures of theuniversity modernist persuasion; I have good reason to believe; were very greatupon both men; but especially one in Fr Yarnold’s case; who was Head of theTheology Department. I think this is; to a degree; detectible in this book.The book is; I take it; not the greatest work of Fr Yarnold’s; having other titlesmore award-noticing. It is the work of a distinguished scholar who is no longerhaving to worry about his status and is free to rome (if you’ll excuse the pun).And roam he does; for he gathers research notes that are pertaining toJerusalem’s geographical; historic; architectural; anthropological and generallymetropolitan status at the time of St Cyril; but it doesn’t serve well as any idealintroduction to the particular father of Holy Church. In addition; he spends alot ofthe first sizable segment of the book on these amalgamated topics and it isn’t hardto imagine too many satisfied with the approach; neither the novice student northe specialist patrologist. Because what he gains in breadth he loses incommunication. What he gains in research; he loses in pedagogical strength.It is remarkable how one gets the feeling that from the time of Gifford to thepublishing of this volume there was a decade by decade decline in the spiritualsignificance of their esteemed conclusions. Irrespective of the archaic languageemployed by Gifford; his insights consistently seem more noteworthy. However;archaic language IS a detriment to the reading of the text. This is the strongestaspect of Fr Yarnold’s work here. It is fluid and readily comprehensible to anyundergraduate; but I suppose that; even at the graduate level; his prior ‘roaming’before one actually gets to the text takes on somewhat of a challenging mystery. Ifyou own the volume; you can read once again; making cross-references to justthese readily available works that I consulted to get a handle on things. I madesome notes; but I think we must in the interest of the reader pass on to what ismost interesting; and that is the work here of St Cyril himself.The catechetical lectures of St Cyril are stirring material; as they were meantto be to the candidates for baptism in the latter half of the fourth century A.D. FrYarnold; because he spent so much time with the mentioned ‘desiderata;’ or ‘data’(take your pick) had to leave out a number of the few lectures (xviii) themselves.This is disappointing; so I took the time to read them from these theologicalpredecessors in translation; where I found no small degree of significance. TheLecture on Repentance at the outset is missing; and such crucial later lectures onthe Holy Spirit which one would have thought very important to NOT leave outsince the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit was soon to be worked out at the Councilof Constantinople in 381; with perhaps St Cyril’s theological work playing a role.St Jerome; which was typical of the mercurial saint; accused Cyril of being anArian; which when you read his lectures you realise that it was a preposterousaccusation. They are fully complete with the doctrine of the eternal divinity ofJesus Christ as the Word; the Logos which preceded creation. He makes firm thatthere is nothing between God as eternal Father and creation; no mediumcreaturely role but the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; consisting incomplete union with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He apparently does not yetuse the Greek word for ‘consubstantial’ but he came to accept it fully as thedecided conciliar doctrine of the Church.If tears are an indication of the power of St Cyril’s depth of inspiration gettingthrough to me and his thus being a fit vessel of these lectures; then they weremore of an oracle for me than the philosophical tendency I have previouslysampled in much of St Augustine’s writings. St Cyril is a biblical theologian; it isclear. He states that the theologian’s primary duty; in fact; is to ‘mouth no articlewhich cannot be ultimately derived from the Holy Scriptures.’ He does this in acreative manner; yet he is no simpler an intelligence at work than many otherfathers of a more philosophizing tendency. Thus Cyril is a favorite of theOrthodox Church; and if memory serves correct (plus it stands to reason) he is afavorite of the classical; non-modernist Protestant scholar as well.Is St Cyril correct that the Catholic theologian should derive his ‘cardinaldoctrines’ from the Holy Scriptures? Of course the Orthodox would argue thatone is free to develop theology from an Holy Tradition which includes the HolyScriptures; though not subsisting in them. The Catholic theologian argues that hehas the blessing of Holy Tradition; Holy Scriptures and the Magisterium (theharmony of all three being a crucial topic in itself; with Pope Benedict XVI arguingfor the Popes needing to constantly have their Petrine ears glued to the HolyScriptures). What I think makes Cyril popular with the Orthodox is his decidedabsence of philosophical syllogisms. His doctrine of the Holy Trinity is what wewould now associate with the preference of “the Greeks†(a tradition whichincludes that of the Slavs). That is to say; he starts from the personal Threenessand then argues for their unity (whereas the ‘West’ has taught the unity; the‘consubstantiality’ first and then teach of the Three Persons). The Orthodox thusfault the Western theological consciousness of being too philosophical andsyllogistic. They view this as having ramifications to the formation of Christiandiscipleship; which also seems related to the Pauline cautions against ‘vainphilosophy’ that the Apostle spells out in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. To StPaul and to the older tradition of Orthodoxy; philosophy lends a worldly elementto theology; and as such will have negative repercussions upon the spiritualformation of the Christian. There is a correlative stream of the ‘West’ in monastictheologians; where one has to ‘live’ one’s theology; it must come from theexperience of living the Christian life and not from scholastic speculation. It alsooccurred in the Protestant Reformers that faulted especially the later scholastics;whom they viewed; like some of the Orthodox to this day; as being out of touchwith theology-as-lived in and under the Spirit of God; who ‘resists the proud’ andwho ‘confounds the worldly.’And yet I was also struck that St Cyril in many ways is a Catholic theologian. Hemanages this spending some sentences in asserting the leadership of St Peter; whohe states not only as the rock foundation ‘on which the Church is built’ but alsosingles him out as the exclusive ‘keeper of the keys’ as well. In addition; his doctrineof the Holy Eucharist is surprisingly Catholic; even down-right Thomistic; for hebrings home to his hearers that the sacrificed bread has become the Body ofChrist; the wine of the challice becomes the precious Blood of Christ and evenstates that they are no longer bread and no longer wine; but only ‘appear that theyare.’ This teaching of only the ‘appearances’ of bread and wine could have beensent back in time travel from the pages of St Thomas Aquinas. In a correlativemanner; St Cyril touches upon the Holy Spirit as ‘proceeding from the Father andfrom the Son.’ He spends a good while showing that the Holy Spirit is the ‘Spiritof Christ;’ the ‘Spirit of the Son of God’ as well as proceeding from the Father.Thus we see that the Filioque was no ‘additive’ and ‘heterodox;’ let alone‘heretical’ innovation of a ‘schismatic pope;’ as Photios and later Orthodox opinionmakers held - some; sadly and erroneously; even to this day (in spite of an historicagreement as to first their misunderstanding their prospective sides and thenagreeing on a entirely satisfactory solution to both sides; which occurred at theCouncil of Orange).In conclusion; irrespective of the great esteem in which Fr Edward Yarnold s.j.was held by ecumenical Catholics and Anglicans of his day; I found this book to bewhat the teacher in me would term just ‘a Pass.’ It is not an especially greatadvertisement for this new series on the fathers; for the only real pedagogicalstrength is a new and acceptable translation of only a sampling of the Lectures ofSt Cyril of Jerusalem; not the whole corpus. That is better accomplished by theseries of the Catholic University of America; ironically put together forsubmission by a fellow Jesuit that Fr Yarnold doesn’t seem much to mention. Butthe translation is equally modern; sometimes more prescient; and is of thecomplete works of this great and inspiring Servant of God; St Cyril of Jerusalem.- Shane Mattison (Stanford University)1. S. CYRIL; ARCHBISHOP OF JERUSALEM; by Edwin Hamilton Gifford D.D.; Nicene And PostNicene Fathers; editor Philip Schaff (WM. B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids; Mich.: Christian Classics EtherealLibrary 1893)2. THE WORKS OF ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM; by Leo P. McCauley s.j. Anthony A. Stephenson; TheFathers of the Church; editor: Bernard M. Peebles (Catholic University of America: Washington D.C.;ISBN 0-8132-1026-7; 1970)
