An edition of Mapping paradise (2006)

Mapping paradise

a history of heaven on earth

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Last edited by MARC Bot
August 16, 2024 | History
An edition of Mapping paradise (2006)

Mapping paradise

a history of heaven on earth

  • 1 Want to read

"Throughout history, humans have searched for paradise. When early Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible, and with it the story of Genesis, the Garden of Eden became an idyllic habitat for all mankind. Medieval Christians believed this paradise was a place on earth, different from this world and yet part of it, situated in real geography and indicated on maps. From the Renaissance through the Enlightenment, the mapping of paradise validated the authority of holy scripture and supported Christian faith. But from the early nineteenth century onwards, the question of the exact location of paradise was left not to theologians but to the layman. And at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is still no end to the stream of theories on the location of the former Garden of Eden. Mapping Paradise is a history of the cartography of paradise that journeys from the beginning of Christianity to the present day.

Instead of dismissing the medieval belief in a paradise on earth as a picturesque legend and the cartography of paradise as an example of the period's many superstitions, Alessandro Scafi explores the intellectual conditions that made the medieval mapping of paradise possible. The challenge for mapmakers, Scafi argues, was to make visible a place that was geographically inaccessible and yet real, remote in time and yet still the scene of an essential episode of the history of salvation. Mapping Paradise also accounts for the transformations, in both theological doctrine and cartographical practice, that brought about the decline of the belief in a terrestrial paradise and the emergence of the new historical and regional mapping of the Garden of Eden that began at the time of the Reformation and still continues today.

The first book to show how paradise has been expressed in cartographic form throughout two millennia, Mapping Paradise reveals how the most deeply reflective thoughts about the ultimate destiny of all human life have been molded and remolded, generation by generation."--Book jacket.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
398

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Mapping paradise
Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth
2006, University of Chicago
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Changing views on paradise on maps
Paradise in the Bible
Locating paradise in space
Locating paradise in time
Mapping paradise in space and time
The heyday of paradise on maps
Where is nowhere?
The twilight of paradise on maps
Paradise lost and found
The afterlife of paradise on maps
The eclipse of the theological Eden.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

Published in
Chicago

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
202/.3
Library of Congress
BL540 .S23 2006, BL540.S23 2006

The Physical Object

Pagination
p. cm.
Number of pages
398

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL3430666M
ISBN 10
0226735591
LCCN
2005055973
OCLC/WorldCat
62533947
Library Thing
2083485
Goodreads
141606

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Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
August 16, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 30, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
June 17, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 11, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record