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In The Institution of the Hasmonean High Priesthood, Vasile Babota offers an interdisciplinary study of the establishment of the Hasmonean priests as high priests in Jerusalem, from their revolt in 167 down to 140. The Hasmonean high priests exercised both religious and civil powers until 37 B.C.E. and some acted also as kings. Previous studies looked at them mainly from a biblical /Jewish perspective. Vasile Babota persuasively argues that the first high priests Jonathan and Simon acted as Hellenistic high priestly rulers. This conclusion is based on an analysis of the activity of the high priests Jonathan and Simon on internal and external levels, a comparison with earlier Jewish high priests, and a comparison with Hellenistic (Seleucid and Ptolemaic) high priests.
This volume is written in the context of trauma hermeneutics of ancient Jewish communities and their tenacity in the face of adversity (i.e. as recorded in the MT, LXX, Pseudepigrapha, the Deuterocanonical books and even Cognate literature. In this regard, its thirteen chapters, are concerned with the most recent outputs of trauma studies. They are written by a selection of leading scholars, associated to some degree with the Hungaro-South African Study Group. Here, trauma is employed as a useful hermeneutical lens, not only for interpreting biblical texts and the contexts in which they were originally produced and functioned but also for providing a useful frame of reference. As a consequence, these various research outputs, each in their own way, confirm that an historical and theological appreciation of these early accounts and interpretations of collective trauma and its implications, (perceived or otherwise), is critical for understanding the essential substance of Jewish cultural identity. As such, these essays are ideal for scholars in the fields of Biblical Studies—particularly those interested in the Pseudepigrapha, the Deuterocanonical books and Cognate literature.
In this publication Fleur Kemmers gives an overview of 21st century scholarship on Roman coinage for students and scholars in the fields of ancient history and Roman archaeology. First, it addresses the study of numismatics as a discipline and the theoretical and methodological advances of the last decades. Secondly, it provides guidelines on how to consult numismatic reference works, including those available online. Recent scholarly approaches and insights in the functions of Roman coins as both vehicles of political communication and instruments for state payments are critically assessed. Furthermore, the publication reviews the evidence for a conscious monetary policy on the part of the Roman authorities. Finally, the impact of Roman expansion and imperialism on monetisation and coin use in Rome ́s Empire is discussed.
Attilio Mastrocinque explains the mysteries of Mithras in a new way, as a transformation of Mazdean elements into an ideological and religious reading of Augustus' story. The author shows that the character of Mithras played the role of Apollo in favoring Augustus' victory and the birth of the Roman Empire.
Cultural identity in the classical world is explored from a variety of angles.
In the period from the close of the Napoleonic Wars up through the immediate post-World-War II era the image of Martin Luther was transposed in Germany from a religious reformer and advocate of freedom to a symbol of völkisch nationalist identity, such that with the seizure of power by the Nazis, Luther was used to portray a symbiosis between the new regime and the tradition of Protestant religiosity. The Luther Myth traces the evolution of this image within the environment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German nationalist sentiment, looking particularly at how Protestant Germans styled Luther to affirm the essentialist racial identity politics of the Nazis, the cult of authoritarian ...
The essays in this volume originate from the Third Qumran Institute Symposium held at the University of Groningen, December 2013. Taking the flexible concept of “cultural encounter” as a starting point, the essays in this volume bring together a panoply of approaches to the study of various cultural interactions between the people of ancient Israel, Judea, and Palestine and people from other parts of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. In order to study how cultural encounters shaped historical development, literary traditions, religious practice and political systems, the contributors employ a broad spectrum of theoretical positions (e.g., hybridity, métissage, frontier studies, postcolonialism, entangled histories and multilingualism), to interpret a diverse set of literary, documentary, archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, and iconographic sources.
Examines how people in the Roman past thought about even earlier ruins and material remains-it examines incidents that could be described as 'archaeology in antiquity'.
Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men who would be King focuses on ideas of kingship and power in the Seleukid empire, the largest of the successor states of Alexander the Great. Exploring the question of how a man becomes a king, it specifically examines the role of usurpers in this particular kingdom--those who attempted to become king, and who were labelled as rebels by ancient authors after their demise--by placing these individuals in their appropriate historical contexts through careful analysis of the literary, numismatic, and epigraphic material. By writing about kings and rebels, literary accounts make a clear statement about who had the right to rule and who did not, a...
The first book to illustrate and integrate coinage comprehensively as historical evidence for the Athenian empire.