ABSTRACT
The editors contend that debates surrounding the concept of personhood in Byzantine theology have often been rather narrow. Rather than dwell exclusively on terminological markers (such as the Greek words hypostasis and prosopon) and their meaning in the sources, they argue that such an approach needs to be combined with a broader and more widely focused enterprise, one that is not limited to dogmatic formulas and their conceptual content, but includes reflections on the human person arising from other sources, whether liturgical, hagiographic, iconographic, homiletic, ascetic, and so on. This is the gap that the current volume seeks to fill. By offering focused treatments of different aspects of the question of personhood in specific yet diverse figures, texts, and contexts across early, medieval, and modern Byzantine Christianity, this collection opens up distinct new avenues of research into the theological and anthropological concepts of personhood, thereby contributing not simply to the historical study of personhood in the Byzantine Christian past, but likewise to broader live discussions of personhood and its meaning.
