Dr. Jeremiah Mutie has been contracted to write a book titled Death and Afterlife in Medieval Christian Thought with the prestigious United Kingdom publisher Routledge.
Abstract:
“The argument of this book is that, while medieval Christian thought continued the methodological adoption and modification of existing cultural views of death and the afterlife that had been in existence since Christianity’s earliest days in order to provide a distinctively Christian view of death, evidently, what started in the Old Testament as a paradoxical approach to the dead by the living, gradually became significantly sophisticated. Thus, what Martin-Achard observes concerning mourning rituals in the Old Testament can legitimately be expanded to the majority of similar situations in medieval times. ‘Old Testament mourning ritual is to be explained in terms of the paradoxical attitude that man in general,’ he writes, ‘and the Israelite in particular, adopts in the face of death; the dead are endowed with higher knowledge, they possess a quasi-divine power; they must be honored, and at the same time all contact with them must be shunned and all possibility of return to the land of the living must be forbidden them.’ Although not many medieval historians of the subject make this connection, all are aware that, to the medievalist, ‘the dead are always with us.’ Indeed, as scholars have observed, their presence was governed by the changing religious cultures (especially Christianity).”
The expected date for publishing is August, 2024