Religious Competition in the Third Century CE:
Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World
Nathaniel DesRosiers, Jordan D Rosenblum, Lily Vuong, (eds), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Supplement edition, 2013
Description
The essays in this work examine issues related to authority, identity, or change in religious and philosophical traditions of the third century CE. This century is of particular interest because of the political and cultural developments and conflicts that occurred during this period, which in turn drastically changed the social and religious landscape of the Roman world. The specific focus of this volume edited by Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily Vuong, and Nathaniel DesRosiers is to explore these major creative movements and to examine their strategies for developing and designating orthodoxies and orthopraxies. Contributors were encouraged to analyze or construct the intersections between parallel religious and philosophical communities of the third century, including points of contact either between or among Jews, Christians, pagans, and philosophers. As a result, the discussions of the material contained within this volume are both comparative in nature and interdisciplinary in approach, engaging participants who work in the fields of Religious Studies, Philosophy, History and Archaeology. The overall goal was to explore dialogues between individuals or groups that illuminate the mutual competition and influence that was extant among them, and to put forth a general methodological framework for the study of these ancient dialogues. These religious and philosophical dialogues are not only of great interest and import in their own right, but they also can help us to understand how later cultural and religious developments unfolded.
(Text from the publisher)
Table of content
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I: Assessing Religious Competition in the Third Century : Methods and Approaches
Daniel C. Ullucci – What Did He Say ? The Ideas of Religious Experts and the 99 %
Heidi Marx-Wolf – Pythagoras the Theurgist Porphyry and Iamblichus on the Role of Ritual in the Philosophical Life
Arthur P. Urbano – Narratives of Decline and Renewal in the Writing of Philosophical History
Steven J. Larson – The Trouble with Religious Tolerance in Roman Antiquity
Kevin M. McGinnis – Sanctifying Interpretation The Christian Interpreter as Priest in Origen
Andrew B. McGowan – Rehashing the Leftovers of Idols Cyprian and Early Christian Constructions of Sacrifice
II: Ritual Space and Practice
Gregg E. Gardner – Competitive Giving in the Third Century CE Early Rabbinic Approaches to Greco-Roman Civic Benefaction
Nathaniel P. DesRosiers – Oath and Anti-Oath Alternating Forms of Community Building in the Third Century
Jordan D. Rosenblum and Daniel C. Ullucci – Qualifying Rabbinic Ritual Agents Cognitive Science and the Early Rabbinic Kitchen
Lily C. Vuong – The Temple Persists Collective Memories of the Jewish Temple in Christian Narrative Imagination
Jacob A. Latham – Battling Bishops, the Roman Aristocracy, and the Contestation of Civic Space in Late Antique Rome
III: Modes of Competition
Karen B. Stern – Inscription as Religious Competition in Third-Century Syria
Gil P. Klein – Spatial Struggle Intercity Relations and the Topography of Intra-Rabbinic Competition
Ari Finkelstein – The Use of Jews in Julian’s Program “Dying for the Law” in the Letter to Theodorus – A Case Study
Todd S. Berzon – Heresiology as Ethnography Theorising Christian Difference
Todd C. Krulak – The Damascian Dichotomy Contention and Concord in the History of Late Platonism
Ross S. Kraemer – Gendering (the) Competition Religious Competition in the Third Century : Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World
List of Abbreviations
Collected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
Link
