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Josephus And Jewish History in Flavian Rome And Beyond
This volume focuses on the interplay between Josephus' Judean identity and his Roman context. After treating historiographical and literary issues, it addresses Josephus' presentation of Judaism and of historical "facts." A final section deals with the transmission of his works.
Boundaries, Borders and Frontiers in Archaeology
Until fairly recently, archaeological research has been directed primarily toward the centers of societies rather than their perimeters. Yet frontiers and borders, precisely because they are peripheral, promote interaction between people of different polities and cultures, with a wide range of potential outcomes. Much work has begun to redress this disparity of focus. Drawing on contemporary and ethnographic accounts, historical data and archaeological evidence, this book covers more than 30 years of research on boundaries, borders and frontiers, beginning with The Northern Mycenaean Border in Thessaly in 1983. The author discusses various theoretical and methodological issues concerning peripheries as they apply to the archaeological record. Political, economic, social and cultural processes in border and frontier zones are described in detail. Three case study societies are examined--China, Rome and Mycenaean Greece.
Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond
The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caug...
Pageants and Processions
Nowadays pageants often take the form of parades of effervescent young women competing for popular recognition in hyped up media events. However, these “beauty pageants” are a mere pastiche of the elaborate historical parades of the medieval period that took significant, social, religious, or civic events and their protagonists, as subjects. Pageants were historically characterized by resplendent costuming and elaborate processions that were often given to much pomp and ceremony. Pageantry has formed an important part of the civic life of most societies, both ancient and modern, serving a variety of cultural and political purposes. The use of drama and public spectacle as an instrument of civic, social, and religious activism has recently become the focus of renewed academic inquiry. The essays in this interdisciplinary anthology provide carefully researched insights into the phenomenon of pageantry over the centuries and across broad cultural boundaries.
Saving God's Reputation
Scholars generally see the aspiration of the Roman Empire and the imperial cult in Asia Minor as the great villain in "Revelation," treating the depiction of a cosmic conflict in the book mostly as metaphors that hold little or no explanatory power in the story. This book pursues the conviction that the cosmic conflict imagery is the primary and controlling element in the account. Such a reading puts the war-in-heaven theme in the foreground and calls on interpreters to pay more attention to the heavenly being whose attempt to subvert the truth about the divine government is the unremitting concern in "Revelation." This book redresses the distortion that results from leaving the larger conflict theme underexposed. Having first developed the story line, it aims is to show that the phrase 'Pistis Iesou' in "Revelation" is best understood when "Revelation" is read as a theodicy of God's handling of the reality of evil.
The Childhood of Jesus
The mid-second-century apocryphal infancy gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, which deals with the childhood of Jesus from age five to age twelve, has attained only limited interest from scholars. Much research into the story has also been seriously misguided - especially study of the story's origin, character, and setting. This book gives a fresh interpretation of the infancy gospel, not least by applying a variety of new approaches, including orality studies, narrative studies, gender studies, and social-scientific approaches. The book comes to a number of radically new conclusions: The Gospel of Thomas is dependent on oral storytelling and has far more narrative qualities than has been previous...
The God of This Age
How did Paul depict Satan as an apocalyptic opponent? Derek R. Brown demonstrates the significance of Paul's references to Satan and demonstrates the history of Satan in the Bible and nature of Satan's inimical work.
If Sons, Then Heirs
Christianity is widely understood to be a "universal" religion that transcends the particularities of history and culture, including differences related to kinship and ethnicity. In traditional Pauline scholarship, this portrait of Christianity has been justified by the letters of Paul. Interpreters claim that Paul eliminates ethnicity, or at least separates it from what is important about Christianity.This study challenges that perception. Through a detailed examination of kinship and ethnic language in Paul's letters, Johnson Hodge argues that notions of peoplehood and lineage are not rejected or downplayed by Paul; instead they are central to his gospel.Paul's chief concern is the status ...
The Evil Creator
The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea moves beyond previous Judaist readings to argue that the evil creator is a distinctly Christian idea in biblical interpretations. Through Gnostic and Marcionite readings, Litwa connects ancient analyses of God's wicked actions with analysis in modern theology.
Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis
Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis comprises 41 chapters that push for a new way of conducting the study of religion, thereby, transforming the discipline into a genuine science of religion. The recent resurgence of evolutionary approaches on culture and the increasing acknowledgement in the natural and social sciences of culture’s and religion’s evolutionary importance calls for a novel epistemological and theoretical framework for studying these two areas. The chapters explore how a new scholarly synthesis, founded on the triadic space constituted by evolution, cognition, cultural and ecological environment, may develop. Different perspectives and themes relating to this overarching topic are taken up with a main focus on either evolution, cognition, and/or the history of religion.
