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In this volume, Dr Gordon examines the way in which images contributed to the creation of religious meanings in the Graeco-Roman world. Special attention is paid to Mithraism's notion of sacred space, its use of metaphors taken from the natural world, and its ideals of social action.
The gods were the true heroes of Rome. In this major new contribution to our understanding of ancient history, Jörg Rüpke guides the reader through the fascinating world of Roman religion, describing its unique characteristics and bringing its peculiarities into stark relief. Rüpke gives a thorough and engaging account of the multiplicity of cults worshipped by peasant and aristocrat alike, the many varied rites and rituals daily observed, and the sacrifices and offerings regularly brought to these immortals by the population of Ancient Rome and its imperial colonies. This important study provides the perfect introduction to Roman religion for students of Ancient Rome and Classical Civilization.
First in the popular series featuring Lindsay Gordon, a self-proclaimed 'cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist' with a penchant for hanging around police interrogation rooms under suspicion of some crime or other.
The relative sophistication of the three major 'Oriental cults' of the Roman Empire, combining unfamiliar myth with distinctive ritual, enabled them, like Early Christianity, to offer a properly ethical salvation in the Weberian sense.
"This volume is the product of the inaugural conference of the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies which took place on May 11-12, 2008"--Preface.
When one thinks of inscriptions produced under the Roman Empire, public inscribed monuments are likely to come to mind. Hundreds of thousands of such inscriptions are known from across the breadth of the Roman Empire, preserved because they were created of durable material or were reused in subsequent building. This volume looks at another aspect of epigraphic creation – from handwritten messages scratched on wall-plaster to domestic sculptures labeled with texts to displays of official patronage posted in homes: a range of inscriptions appear within the private sphere in the Greco-Roman world. Rarely scrutinized as a discrete epigraphic phenomenon, the incised texts studied in this volume reveal that writing in private spaces was very much a part of the epigraphic culture of the Roman Empire.
Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoretical) exploration of the process, taking Eurasian societies from roughly the first millennium BCE (Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Roman) as case studies. It focuses on canonisation as a form of cultural formation, asking why and how canonisation works in this particular way and explaining the importance of the first millennium BCE for these question and vice versa. As a result of this focus, notions like anchoring, cultural memory, embedding and innovation play an important role throughout the book.
Alexandria was the epicenter of Hellenic learning in the ancient Mediterranean world, yet little is known about how Christianity arrived and developed in the city during the late first and early second century CE. In this volume, M. David Litwa employs underused data from the Nag Hammadi codices and early Christian writings to open up new vistas on the creative theologians who invented Christianities in Alexandria prior to Origen and the catechetical school of the third century. With clarity and precision, he traces the surprising theological continuities that connect Philo and later figures, including Basilides, Carpocrates, Prodicus, and Julius Cassianus, among others. Litwa demonstrates how the earliest followers of Jesus navigated Jewish theology and tradition, while simultaneously rejecting many Jewish customs and identity markers before and after the Diaspora Revolt. His book shows how Christianity in Alexandria developed distinctive traits and seeded the world with ideas that still resonate today.
In early modern Europe precious and semiprecious stones were valued not only for their beauty and rarity but also for their medical and magical properties. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Philip II of Spain, and Popes Leo X and Clement VII were all treated with expensive potions incorporating ground gems such as rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Medical and magical/astrological lapidaries, texts describing the stones’ occult and medical qualities as well as their abilities to ward off demons and incantations, were essential resources for their use. First published in Venice in 1502, Camillo Leonardi’s Speculum Lapidum is an encyclopedic summary of all classical and medieval sources of lithotherapy. ...