Sacred Marriages by Martti Nissinen

Sacred Marriages by Martti Nissinen

The title of this volume, Sacred Marriages, consciously plays with the traditional concept of sacred marriage, but the plural form, “sacred marriages,” gives the reader an idea that something more is at stake here than a monomaniacal idea of manifestations deriving from a single prototype. Following the guidelines of one of the contributors, Ruben Zimmermann, the editors tentatively define “sacred marriage” as a “real or symbolic union of two complementary entities, imagined as gendered, in a religious context.” “Sacred marriages” (plural), then, refers to various expressions of this kind of union in different cultures that seek to overcome, to cite Zimmermann again, “the great dualism of human and cosmic existence.” The subtitle indicates that the contributors are primarily interested in different aspects of the divine-human sexual metaphor—that is, the imagining and reenactment of a gendered relationship between the human and divine worlds. This metaphor, which is essentially about relationship rather than sexual acts, can find textual, ritual, mythical, and social expressions in different times and places. Indeed, the sacred marriage ritual itself should be considered not a manifestation of the “sacralized power of sexuality experienced in sexual intercourse” but one way of objectifying the divine-human sexual metaphor.

Istvan Czachesz is Adjunct Professor of Protestant Theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and Kate Hamburger Kolleg Visiting Research Fellow at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Risto Uro is Professor in Biblical Exegesis at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781575061184
ISBN 10	157506118X
Title	Sacred Marriages
Author	Martti Nissinen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Pennsylvania State University Press
Year published	2008-06-30
Number of pages	560
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.