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The Greek orator Dio Chrysostom is a colorful figure, and along with Plutarch one of the major sources of information about Greek civilization during the early Roman Empire. C.P. Jones offers here the first full-length portrait of Dio in English and, at the same time, a view of life in cities such as Alexandria, Tarsus, and Rhodes in the first centuries of our era. Skillfully combining literary and historical evidence, Mr. Jones describes Dio's birthplace, education, and early career. He examines the civic speeches for what they reveal about Dio's life and art, as well as the life, thought, and language of Greek cities in this period. From these and other works he reinterprets Dio's attitude toward the emperors and Rome. The account is as lucid and pleasantly written as it is carefully documented.
In this study of the political uses of perceived kinship from the Homeric age to Byzantium, Jones provides an unparalleled view of mythic belief in action and addresses fundamental questions about communal and national identity.
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The ancient Middle East was the theater of passionate interaction between Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, and Romans. At the crossroads of the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian peninsula, the area dominated by what the Romans called Syria was at times a scene of violent confrontation, but more often one of peaceful interaction, of prosperous cultivation, energetic production, and commerce--a crucible of cultural, religious, and artistic innovations that profoundly determined the course of world history. Maurice Sartre has written a long overdue and comprehensive history of the Semitic Near East (modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel) from the eve of the Roman conqu...
The study assesses the main issues in the current debate about the early history of Pesach and Easter and provides new insights into the development of these two festivals. The author argues that the prescriptions of Exodus 12 provide the celebration of the Pesach in Jerusalem with an etiological background in order to connect the pilgrim festival with the story of the Exodus. The thesis that the Christian Easter evolved as a festival against a Jewish form of celebrating Pesach in the second century and that the development of Easter Sunday is dependent upon this custom is endorsed by the author’s close study of relevant texts such as the Haggada of Pesach; the “Poem of the four nights” in the Palestinian Targum Tradition; the structure of the Easter vigil.
Ben Jonson has often been accused of needless erudition and of a morose refusal to join in the festive spirit. Further aggravation has come from the application of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, especially in its posthumous form as a political allegory portraying the clash of high and low cultures. In an attempt to turn the tables on this tradition, Jonson Versus Bakhtin goes back to the sources, arguing that Jonson’s theatre allows for an original interpretation of the grotesque as a formal culture of antithesis and opposition that includes carnival. A robust observer of popular myths of festive liberation by way of a uniquely compendious adaptation of his sources, Jonson’s grotesque u...
The fifteen essays in this volume, rooted in the work of the Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity Section of the SBL, examine the works of Philodemus and how they illuminate the cultural context of early Christianity. Born in Gadara in Syria, Philodemus (ca. 110-40 BCE) was active in Italy as an Epicurean philosopher and poet. This volume comprises three parts; the first deals with Philodemus' works in their own terms, the second situates his thought within its larger Greco-Roman context, and the third explores the implications of his work for understanding the earliest Christians, especially Paul. It will be useful to all readers interested in Hellenistic philosophy and rhetoric as well as Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.
Although Roman centurions appear at crucial stages in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, the significance of the centurion’s office for the development of Luke’s story has not been adequately researched. To fill in that void, this study engages the relevant Greco-Roman and Jewish sources that reflect on the image of the Roman military and applies the findings to the analysis of the role of the Roman centurion in the narrative of Luke-Acts. It argues that contemporary evidence reveals a common perception of the Roman centurion as a principal representative of the Roman imperial power, and that Luke-Acts employs centurions in the role of prototypical Gentile believers in anti...
This book examines what 'republicanism' meant to the Americans who drafted and ratified the United States Constitution, guaranteeing a 'republican form of government' to every state in the Union. M.N.S.Sellers compares the writings and speeches of the founders with the authors they read and imitated to identify the central tenets of American republicanism, and to demonstrate that American republican though directly reflected classical models, rather than a mediating tradition of English or continental political theory.