Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!

You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.

Sign up

Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 180

Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era

While many ancient Jewish and Christian leaders voiced opposition to Greek and Roman theater, this volume demonstrates that by the time the public performance of classical drama ceased at the end of antiquity the ideals of Jews and Christians had already been shaped by it in profound and lasting ways. Readers are invited to explore how gods and heroes famous from Greek drama animated the imaginations of ancient individuals and communities as they articulated and reinvented their religious visions for a new era. In this study, Friesen demonstrates that Greek theater’s influence is evident within Jewish and Christian intellectual formulations, narrative constructions, and practices of ritual...

Envisioning God in the Humanities
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 367

Envisioning God in the Humanities

The humanities offer insights into the highest (and lowest) capabilities of our own natures and, at their best, they function as prophetic champions of human dignity and as inspired celebrants of beauty. Envisioning God in the Humanities pays tribute to the career of Melissa Harl Sellew, a scholar and teacher who embodies the ideals of these academic disciplines. The collaboration of these essays attests to the potentialities for transcendence that emerge from rigorous and collective reflection on the texts, images, and ideas produced in ancient societies. Taking its cue from Professor Sellew's own distinguished scholarship, this collection of studies begins with analyses of the New Testament Gospels, then moves more broadly toward the religious life of the ancient world as attested both in literature and materiality, among Jews and Christians, Greeks and Romans. Just as Sellew has done throughout her career, so this volume invites us into to the joy of exploring distant societies and, in so doing, into the fuller discovery of one's own self.

Reading Dionysus
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 352

Reading Dionysus

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2015-07-17
  • -
  • Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Courtney J. P. Friesen explores shifting boundaries of ancient religions by way of the reception of a popular tragedy, Euripides' Bacchae. As a play staging political crises provoked by the arrival of the foreign god Dionysus and his ecstatic cult, audiences and readers found resonances with their own cultural moments. This dramatic deity became emblematic of exuberant and liberating spirituality and, at the same time, a symbol of imperial conquest. Thus, readings of the Bacchae frequently foreground conflicts between religious autonomy and political authority, and between ethnic diversity and social cohesion. This cross-disciplinary study traces appropriations and evocations of this drama ranging from the fifth century BCE through Byzantium not only among pagans but also Jews and Christians. Writers variously articulated their religious visions over against Dionysus, often while paradoxically adopting the god's language and symbols. Consequently, imitation and emulati on are at times indistinguishable from polemics and subversion.

Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 362

Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2019-02-26
  • -
  • Publisher: BRILL

In Greek Writers and Philosophers in Philo and Josephus Erkki Koskenniemi investigates how two Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, quoted, mentioned and referred to Greek writers and philosophers.

Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 184

Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era

While many ancient Jewish and Christian leaders voiced opposition to Greek and Roman theater, this volume demonstrates that by the time the public performance of classical drama ceased at the end of antiquity the ideals of Jews and Christians had already been shaped by it in profound and lasting ways. Readers are invited to explore how gods and heroes famous from Greek drama animated the imaginations of ancient individuals and communities as they articulated and reinvented their religious visions for a new era. In this study, Friesen demonstrates that Greek theater’s influence is evident within Jewish and Christian intellectual formulations, narrative constructions, and practices of ritual...

Pauline Baptism among the Mysteries
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 442

Pauline Baptism among the Mysteries

This monograph provides an alternative model for looking at the old question about Paul and the mysteries in a new light. Specifically, this study compares rituals—baptism in the Pauline communities and the initiation rituals of the mysteries—through the lens of cultural anthropology and the sociology of religion. Three research questions lead the project: What benefits does each initiation ritual promise its participants? What are the underlying messages or structures that guarantee the efficacy of those rituals? How and to what extent is the initiation ritual connected to the participants’ cognition and ethics beyond initiation itself? Taking those questions as the analytical framewo...

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, Volume 16
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 228

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, Volume 16

Volume 16 2020 This is the sixteenth volume of the hard-copy edition of a journal that has been published online (www.jgrchj.net) since 2000. As they appear, the hard-copy editions replace the online materials. The scope of JGRChJ is the texts, language and cultures of the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity and Judaism. The papers published in JGRChJ are designed to pay special attention to the larger picture of politics, culture, religion and language, engaging as well with modern theoretical approaches.

Revelation and Material Religion in the Roman East
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 357

Revelation and Material Religion in the Roman East

This collection of essays from a diverse group of internationally recognized scholars builds on the work of Steven J. Friesen to analyze the material and ideological dimensions of John’s Apocalypse and the religious landscape of the Roman East. Readers will gain new perspectives on the interpretation of John’s Apocalypse, the religion of Hellenistic cities in the Roman Empire, and the political and economic forces that shaped life in the Eastern Mediterranean. The chapters in this volume examine texts and material culture through carefully localized analysis that attends to ideological and socioeconomic contexts, expanding upon aspects of Friesen’s research and methodology while also f...

The Studia Philonica Annual XXXV, 2023
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 391

The Studia Philonica Annual XXXV, 2023

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2023-11-17
  • -
  • Publisher: SBL Press

The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria (circa 15 BCE to circa 50 CE).

Philo of Alexandria and Greek Myth
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 307

Philo of Alexandria and Greek Myth

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2019-10-07
  • -
  • Publisher: BRILL

In Philo of Alexandria and Greek Myth: Narratives, Allegories, and Arguments, a fresh and more complete image of Philo of Alexandria as a careful reader, interpreter, and critic of Greek literature is offered. Greek mythology plays a significant role in Philo of Alexandria’s exegetical oeuvre. Philo explicitly adopts or subtly evokes narratives, episodes and figures from Greek mythology as symbols whose didactic function we need to unravel, exactly as the hidden teaching of Moses’ narration has to be revealed by interpreters of Bible. By analyzing specific mythologems and narrative cycles, the contributions to this volume pave the way to a better understanding of Philo’s different attitudes towards literary and philosophical mythology.