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Jaime Alvar Ezquerra
Jaime Alvar Ezquerra (born April 20, 1955) is a Spanish historian, author and professor at the Charles III University of Madrid, specializing in ancient history.He was born in Granada, studied Geography and History at the Complutense University of Madrid, and later continued his studies at the University of Cologne (1980-1981). He taught at the Complutense University between 1977 and 1996, the year in which he became professor in Huelva. He was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge in 1999-2000. He has been a professor at the Charles III University of Madrid since 2000. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Tor Vergata (Rome, Italy), Franche-Comté (France) and Potsdam (Germany). He is the older brother of Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra of the Spanish National Research Council and the younger brother of Carlos Alvar Ezquerra, Romanic philologist. Their father was Manuel Alvar Ezquerra, prominent Spanish philologist. Provided by Wikipedia
Romanising oriental Gods : myth, salvation, and ethics in the cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras /
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The traditional grand narrative correlating the decline of Graeco-Roman religion with the rise of Christianity has been under pressure for three decades. This book argues that the alternative accounts now emerging significantly underestimate the role of three major cults, of Cybele and Attis, Isis and Serapis, and Mithras. Although their differences are plain, these cults present sufficient common features to justify their being taken typologically as a group. All were selective adaptations of much older cults of the Fertile Crescent. It was their relative sophistication, their combination of the imaginative power of unfamiliar myth with distinctive ritual performance and ethical seriousness, that enabled them both to focus and to articulate a sense of the autonomy of religion from the socio-political order, a sense they shared with Early Christianity. The notion of 'mystery' was central to their ability to navigate the Weberian shift from ritualist to ethical salvation.
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1 online resource (xx, 486 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 423-444) and indexes. :
9789047441847 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.