From Judaism to Christianity : tradition and transition : a festschrift for Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday /
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As a far reaching tribute to the distinguished career of Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., a team of outstanding biblical scholars has joined to offer essays on the religious milieu of the ancient Mediterranean region. Challenged by Hellenistic and Greco-Roman cultural and political domination, the religious struggles of Jewish and, later, Christian communities sought to maintain tradition as well as mitigate transition. Jewish responses to a Hellenistic world are revealed anew in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the works of Artapanus and Philo. Also, Christian views on the transitory world of the early centuries of the Common Era are brought to light in the New Testament literature, apocryphal texts, and Patristic writings. Professors and students alike will benefit from the depth and breadth of this fresh scholarship.
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Includes a biographical note on Thomas H. Tobin and a bibliography of his works (p. [xvii]-xxxii). :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-311) and indexes. :
9789004214859 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Studies in rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity : text and context /
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The question of the origins of Christianity is a theme still discussed in historical research. This book investigates the relations between the Rabbinic Judaism and the Primitive Christianity. It studies the factors of influences, the polemics in the texts and factors of mutual conceptions between two new movements: Rabbinical Judaism and Primitive Christianity. Finally it offers an analysis of the perception of Christianity in the corpus of talmudic literature. La question des origines du christianisme est un thème encore débattu par la recherche historique. Cet ouvrage choisi d'explorer les relations entre le judaïsme rabbinique et le christianisme primitif. Il étudie les facteurs d'influences, les polémiques dont témoignent les textes et les emprunts réciproques entre les deux mouvements naissant : le judaïsme rabbinique et le christiansime primitif. Il propose également une analyse sur la perception du christianisme à l'oeuvre dans la littérature talmudique.
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"This volume emerged from the symposium held at Paris in March 2007 on the theme 'Rome, Athens or Jerusalem. Where does Christianity come from?' under the auspices of the Alliance Israelite Universelle" -- Introd. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004190627 :
1871-6636 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Friendship, flattery, and frankness of speech : studies on friendship in the New Testament world /
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This volume deals with the topics of friendship, flattery, and frankness of speech in the Greco-Roman world. The three topics were often related, with candor or frank criticism viewed as the trait that distinguished the true friend from the flatterer. The book's eleven essays are divided into three parts. The first part introduces the volume and discusses the three topics in the thought of Philodemus and Plutarch. Part two deals with Paul's use of friendship language in his correspondence with the Church at Philippi. Part three examines the concept of frankness (parrhesia) in Paul, Luke-Acts, Hebrews, and the Johannine corpus. The volume will be particularly useful to NT Scholars, classicists, and modern theologians and ethicists who are interested in the theory and practice of friendship in antiquity.
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1 online resource (xiv, 291 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004267282 :
0167-9732 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Early Christian ethics in interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts /
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Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts focuses upon the nexus of early Christian Ethics and its contexts as a dynamic process. The ongoing interaction with Jewish, Greco-Roman or early Christian traditions as well as with the social-historical context at large continuously transformed early Christian ethics. The volume proposes a dynamic model for studying culture and its various expressions in a society composed of several ethnic and religious groups. The contributions focus on specific transformations of ethics in key documents of early Christianity, or take a more comparative perspective pointing to similar developments and overlaps as well as particularities within early Christian writings, Hellenistic-Jewish writings, Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish inscriptions.
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1 online resource (ix, 305 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004242159 :
1566-208X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The imperial cult and the development of church order : concepts and images of authority in paganism and early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian /
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Recent studies have re-assessed Emperor worship as a genuinely religious response to the metaphysics of social order. Brent argues that Augustus' revolution represented a genuinely religious reformation of Republican religion that had failed in its metaphysical objectives. Against this backcloth, Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to that metaphysical failure. Callistus and Pseudo-Hippolytus gave different responses to Severan images of imperial power. The early, Monarchian theology of the Trinity was thus to become a reflection of imperial culture and its justification that was later to be articulated both in Neo-Platonism, and in Cyprian's view of episcopal Order. Contra-cultural theory is employed as a sociological model to examine the interaction between developing Pagan and Christian social order.
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1 online resource (xxii, 369 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-343) and indexes. :
9789004313125 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Revelation of the Name YHWH to Moses : Perspectives from Judaism, the Pagan Graeco-Roman World, and Early Christianity /
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The revelation of YHWH's name to Moses is a momentous event according to the Old Testament. The name 'Yahweh' is of central importance in Judaism, and 'Yahwism' became tantamount to Jewish monotheism. As such, this designation of God also attracted the attention of pagan writers in the Graeco-Roman period. And early Christians had to deal with this divine name as well. These three perspectives on YHWH constitute the framework for this volume. It appears that the Name of God and its revelation to Moses constitute a major theme which runs from the book of Exodus through the Old Testament, early Judaism, and early Christianity. It also attracted pagan philosophical interest, both positive and negative. The Name of God was not only perceived from an insider's perspective, but also provoked a reaction from outsiders. The combined perspectives show the fundamental importance of the divine Name for the formation of Jewish and Christian identities.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047411031
9789004153981
Divine images and human imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome /
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The polytheistic religious systems of ancient Greece and Rome reveal an imaginative attitude towards the construction of the divine. One of the most important instruments in this process was certainly the visualisation. Images of the gods transformed the divine world into a visually experienceable entity, comprehensible even without a theoretical or theological superstructure. For the illiterates, images were together with oral traditions and rituals the only possibility to approach the idea of the divine; for the intellectuals, images of the gods could be allegorically transcended symbols to reflect upon. Based on the art historical and textual evidence, this volume offers a fresh view on the historical, literary, and artistic significance of divine images as powerful visual media of religious and intellectual communication.
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Paperback version published 2015. :
1 online resource (xvi, 437 pages) : illustrations, map, plans. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-359) and indexes. :
9789047441656 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Roman gods : a conceptual approach /
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The book is concerned with the question of how the concept of \'god\' in urban Rome can be analyzed along the lines of six constituent concepts, id est space, time, personnel, function, iconography and ritual. While older publications tended to focus on the conceptual nature of Roman gods only in those (comparatively rare) instances in which different concepts patently overlapped (as in the case of the deified emperor or hero-worship), this book develops general criteria for an analysis of pagan, Jewish and Christian concepts of gods in ancient Rome (and by extension elsewhere). While the argument of the book is exclusively based on the evidence from the capital up to the age of Constantine, in the concluding section the results are compared to other religious belief systems, thus demonstrating the general applicability of this conceptual approach.
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1 online resource (219 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-209) and index. :
9789047428480 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Cybele, Attis, and related cults : essays in memory of M.J. Vermaseren /
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This volume brings together articles on the cult of the mother-goddess Cybele and her consort Attis, from the emergence of the religion in Anatolia through its expansion into Greece and Italy to the latest times of the Roman Empire and its farthest extent west, the Iberian Peninsula. It combines the work of established scholars with that of young researchers in the field, and represents a truly international perspective. The reader will find treatment inter alia of Cybele's emasculated priests, the Galli; the dissemination of Cybele-cult through the harbour city, Miletus; the cult of Cybele in Ephesus; the rock-cut sanctuary of Cybele at Akrai in Sicily; the competition between the Cybele-cult and Christianity; and the role of Attis in Neo-Platonic philosophy.
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1 online resource (ix, 441 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004295889 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell'Impero romano : atti del Colloquio internazionale su la soteriologia dei culti orientali nell'Impero romano, Roma, 24-28 settembre 1979 : p...
: 1 online resource (xxv, 1025 pages, [3] folded leaves of plates) : illustrations. : Includes bibliographical references and indexes. : 9789004295704 : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ancient angels : conceptualizing angeloi in the Roman Empire /
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Although angels are typically associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ancient Angels demonstrates that angels (angeloi) were also a prominent feature of non-Abrahamic religions in the Roman era. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the study uses literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence to examine Roman conceptions of angels, how residents of the empire venerated angels, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion. The book brings together the evidence for popular beliefs about angels in Roman religion, demonstrating the widespread nature of speculation about, and veneration of, angels in the Roman Empire
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1 online resource (xviii, 181 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-177) and index. :
9789004210899 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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.
Empire and religion : religious change in Greek cities under Roman rule /
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This volume explores the nature of religious change in the Greek-speaking cities of the Roman Empire. Emphasis is put on those developments that apparently were not the direct result of Roman actions: the intensification of idiosyncratically Greek features in the religious life of the cities (Heller, Muñiz, Camia); the active role of a new kind of Hellenism in the design of imperial religious policies (Gordillo, Galimberti, Rosillo-López); or the locally different responses to central religious initiatives, and the influence of those local responses in other imperial contexts (Cortés, Melfi, Lozano, Rizakis). All the chapters try to suggest that religion in the Greek cities of the empire was both conservative and innovative, and that the 'Roman factor' helps to explain this apparent paradox.
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1 online resource (xvii, 221 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004347113 :
1572-0500 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Life and loyalty : a study in the socio-religious culture of Syria and Mesopotamia in the Graeco-Roman period based on epigraphical evidence /
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The formula 'for the life of' is often found in votive inscriptions, cast in Aramaic and other languages, which originate from the Syrian-Mesopotamian desert and adjacent areas and which roughly date from the first three centuries A.D. They belong to objects like statues and altars that usually were erected in temples and other structures with a ritual or sacred function. The inscriptions establish a relationship between the dedicator and one or more beneficiaries, those persons for whose life the dedication was made. Since the social context evidently bears on both the meaning of the inscriptions as well as the status of the dedications, this volume deals with the nature of the relationships and the socio-religious function the dedications perform.
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1 online resource (xii, 375 pages) : color illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 351-366) and index. :
9789004295865 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion. Isis, Dionysos, Hermes : three studies in Henotheism /
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This is the first of a two-volume collection of studies in inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion. Their common aim is to argue for the historical relevance of various types of ambiguity and dissonance. The first volume focuses on the central paradoxes in ancient henotheism. The term 'henotheism' -- a modern formation after the stereotyped acclamation: #EIS O QEOS# (\'one is the god\'), common to early Christianity and contemporaneous paganism -- denotes the specific devotion to one particular god without denying the existence of, or even cultic attention to, other gods. After its prime in the twenties and thirties of this century the term fell into disuse. Nonetheless, the notion of henotheism represents one of the most remarkable and significant shifts in Graeco-Roman religion and hence deserves fresh reconsideration.
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1 online resource (xiv, 268 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004296725 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Isis en occident : actes du IIème Colloque international sur les études isiaques, Lyon III 16-17 mai 2002 /
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In this volume, 16 contributions by specialists of political and religious history of Antiquity give a precious general overview of the diffusion of Egyptian cults in the West. The first part gives a very precise survey of the diffusion of Egyptian cults in the western Roman world, while the second part of the book is devoted to special fields usually considered as subsidiary (numismatics, lychnology, gemmology), but in fact essential for a better understanding of the success of the Isiac cults in the Graeco-Roman world between 330 BC and 400 AD.
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1 online resource (xxv, 510 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047412328 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Isis and Sarapis in the Roman world /
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Isis and Sarapis in the Roman World deals with the integration of the cult of Isis among Roman cults, the subsequent transformation of Isis and Sarapis into gods of the Roman state, and the epigraphic employment of the names of these two deities independent from their cultic context. The myth that the guardians of tradition and Roman religion tried to curb the cult of Isis in order to rid Rome and the imperium from this decadent cult will be dispelled. A closer look at inscriptions from the Rhine and Danubian provinces shows that most dedicators were not Isiac cult initiates and that women did not outnumber men as dedicators. Inscriptions that mention the two deities in connection with a wish for the well-being of the emperor and the imperial family are of special significance.
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1 online resource (xiv, 235 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-230) and index. :
9789004283466 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The imperial cult in the Latin West : studies in the ruler cult of the western provinces of the Roman Empire. Volume 2. Part 2.2 /
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Open worship of the Roman Emperor with sacrifice, priests, altar and temple was in theory contrary to official policy in Rome. The cult of the living emperor by less direct means, however, might be achieved in various ways: the offering of cult to his companion genius or the divine numen immanent within him; the elevation of the Imperial house to a level at which it became godlike; the formal placing of the emperor on a par with the gods by making dedications to him ut deo ; the conversion of divinities of every kind into Augustan gods that served as the Emperor's helper and protector; the creation of Augustan Blessings and Virtues that personified the qualities and benefactions of the emperor. Volume II, 2 completes the preliminary set of studies with a select bibliography, indexes and corrigenda to Vols. I, 1-2 and II, 1.
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1 online resource (i-vii, pages 627-867) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004295766 :
0531-1950 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.