Download or read book Religion in Roman Phrygia written by Robert Parker and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Phrygia in the second and third centuries CE offers more vivid evidence for what has been termed 'lived ancient religion' than any other region of the ancient world. The evidence from Phrygia is neither literary nor, in the main, issued by cities or their powerful inhabitants. It comes from farmers and herders: they have left behind numerous stone memorials of themselves and dedications to their gods, praying for the welfare of their families, their crops, and their cattle. A rare window is opened into the world of what Sir Ronald Syme called 'the voiceless earth-coloured rustics' who are 'conveniently forgotten'. The period in which Phrygian paganism flourished so visibly to our eyes was also the period in which Christianity, introduced by the apostle Paul, took root, as early and as successfully as in any part of the Roman world. In Religion in Roman Phrygia: From Polytheism to Christianity, Robert Parker presents this rich body of evidence and uses it to explore one of history's great stories and enigmas: how and why the new religion overtook its predecessor, the Christian God now meeting the needs of Phrygians hitherto satisfied by Zeus and the other gods"--

Download or read book Roman Phrygia written by Peter Thonemann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first synthesis of the remarkable cultural history of the highlands of inner Anatolia under Roman rule.

Download or read book Roman Phrygia written by Peter Thonemann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bleak steppe and rolling highlands of inner Anatolia were one of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of the Roman empire. Still today, for most historians of the Roman world, ancient Phrygia largely remains terra incognita. Yet thanks to a startling abundance of Greek and Latin inscriptions on stone, the cultural history of the villages and small towns of Roman Phrygia is known to us in vivid and unexpected detail. Few parts of the Mediterranean world offer so rich a body of evidence for rural society in the Roman Imperial and late antique periods, and for the flourishing of ancient Christianity within this landscape. The eleven essays in this book offer new perspectives on the remarkable culture, lifestyles, art and institutions of the Anatolian uplands in antiquity.

Download or read book Christianizing Asia Minor written by Paul McKechnie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the growth of Christianity in inland Roman Asia, as cities and rural communities moved away from polytheistic Greco-Roman religion.

Download or read book Divine Institutions written by Dan-el Padilla Peralta and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Stanford University, 2014, titled Divine institutions: religious practice, economic development, and social transformation in mid-Republican Rome.

Download or read book Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion written by Jessica Hughes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a type of object that was widespread and very popular in classical antiquity - votive offerings in the shape of parts of the human body. It collects examples from four principal areas and time periods: Classical Greece, pre-Roman Italy, Roman Gaul and Roman Asia Minor. It uses a compare-and-contrast methodology to highlight differences between these sets of votives, exploring the implications for our understandings of how beliefs about the body changed across classical antiquity. The book also looks at how far these ancient beliefs overlap with, or differ from, modern ideas about the body and its physical and conceptual boundaries. Central themes of the book include illness and healing, bodily fragmentation, human-animal hybridity, transmission and reception of traditions, and the mechanics of personal transformation in religious rituals.

Download or read book Pantheon written by Joerg Ruepke and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, an innovative and comprehensive account of religion in the ancient Roman and Mediterranean world In this ambitious and authoritative book, Jörg Rüpke provides a comprehensive and strikingly original narrative history of ancient Roman and Mediterranean religion over more than a millennium—from the late Bronze Age through the Roman imperial period and up to late antiquity. While focused primarily on the city of Rome, Pantheon fully integrates the many religious traditions found in the Mediterranean world, including Judaism and Christianity. This generously illustrated book is also distinguished by its unique emphasis on lived religion, a perspective that stresses how individuals’ experiences and practices transform religion into something different from its official form. The result is a radically new picture of Roman religion and of a crucial period in Western religion—one that influenced Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even the modern idea of religion itself.

Download or read book Roman Phrygia written by Peter Thonemann and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hellenic Religion and Christianization c 370 529 Volume II written by Trombley and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work discusses the decline of Greek religion and the christianization of town and countryside in the eastern Roman Empire between the death of Julian the Apostate and the laws of Justinian the Great against paganism, c. 370-529. It examines such questions as the effect of the laws against sacrifice and sorcery, temple conversions, the degradation of pagan gods into daimones, the christianization of rite, and the social, political and economic background of conversion to Christianity. Several local contexts are examined in great detail: Gaza, Athens, Alexandria, Aphrodisias, central Asia Minor, northern Syria, the Nile basin, and the province of Arabia. It lays particular emphasis on the criticism of epigraphy, legal evidence, and hagiographic texts, and traces the demographic growth of Christianity and the chronology of this process in select local contexts. It also seeks to understand the behavioral patterns of conversion.

Download or read book The Peace of the Gods written by Craige B. Champion and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Peace of the Gods takes a new approach to the study of Roman elites' religious practices and beliefs, using current theories in psychology, sociology, and anthropology, as well as cultural and literary studies. Craige Champion focuses on what the elites of the Middle Republic (ca. 250–ca. 100 BCE) actually did in the religious sphere, rather than what they merely said or wrote about it, in order to provide a more nuanced and satisfying historical reconstruction of what their religion may have meant to those who commanded the Roman world and its imperial subjects. The book examines the nature and structure of the major priesthoods in Rome itself, Roman military commanders' religious behaviors in dangerous field conditions, and the state religion's acceptance or rejection of new cults and rituals in response to external events that benefited or threatened the Republic. According to a once-dominant but now-outmoded interpretation of Roman religion that goes back to the ancient Greek historian Polybius, the elites didn't believe in their gods but merely used religion to control the masses. Using that interpretation as a counterfactual lens, Champion argues instead that Roman elites sincerely tried to maintain Rome's good fortune through a pax deorum or "peace of the gods." The result offers rich new insights into the role of religion in elite Roman life.

Download or read book Revelation and Material Religion in the Roman East written by Nathan Leach and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays from a diverse group of internationally recognized scholars builds on the work of Steven J. Friesen to analyze the material and ideological dimensions of John’s Apocalypse and the religious landscape of the Roman East. Readers will gain new perspectives on the interpretation of John’s Apocalypse, the religion of Hellenistic cities in the Roman Empire, and the political and economic forces that shaped life in the Eastern Mediterranean. The chapters in this volume examine texts and material culture through carefully localized analysis that attends to ideological and socioeconomic contexts, expanding upon aspects of Friesen’s research and methodology while also forging new directions. The book brings together a diverse and international set of experts including emerging voices in the fields of biblical studies, Roman social history, and classical archeology, and each essay presents fresh, critically informed analysis of key sites and texts from the periods of Christian origins and Roman imperial rule. Revelation and Material Religion in the Roman East is of interest to students and scholars working on Christian origins, ancient Judaism, Roman religion, classical archeology, and the social history of the Roman Empire, as well as material religion in the ancient Mediterranean more broadly. It is also suitable for religious practitioners within Christian contexts.

Download or read book Paganism in the Roman Empire written by Ramsay MacMullen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "MacMullen...has published several books in recent years which establish him, rightfully, as a leading social historian of the Roman Empire. The current volume exhibits many of the characteristics of its predecessors: the presentation of novel, revisionist points of view...; discrete set pieces of trenchant argument which do not necessarily conform to the boundaries of traditional history; and an impressive, authoritative, and up-to-date documentation, especially rich in primary sources...A stimulating and provocative discourse on Roman paganism as a phenomenon worthy of synthetic investigation in its own right and as the fundamental context for the rise of Christianity.”--Richard Brilliant, History "MacMullen’s latest work represents many features of paganism in its social context more vividly and clearly than ever before.”--Fergus Millar, American Historical Review "The major cults...are examined from a social and cultural perspective and with the aid of many recently published specialized studies...Students of the Roman Empire...should read this book.”--Robert J, Penella, Classical World "A distinguished book with much exact observation...An indispensable mine of erudition on a grand theme.” Henry Chadwick, Times Literary Supplement Ramsay MacMullen is Dunham Professor of History and Classics at Yale University and the author of Roman Government’s Response to Crisis, A.D. 235-337 and Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284

Download or read book The Gods the State and the Individual written by John Scheid and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman religion has long presented a number of challenges to historians approaching the subject from a perspective framed by the three Abrahamic religions. The Romans had no sacred text that espoused its creed or offered a portrait of its foundational myth. They described relations with the divine using technical terms widely employed to describe relations with other humans. Indeed, there was not even a word in classical Latin that corresponds to the English word religion. In The Gods, the State, and the Individual, John Scheid confronts these and other challenges directly. If Roman religious practice has long been dismissed as a cynical or naïve system of borrowed structures unmarked by any true piety, Scheid contends that this is the result of a misplaced expectation that the basis of religion lies in an individual's personal and revelatory relationship with his or her god. He argues that when viewed in the light of secular history as opposed to Christian theology, Roman religion emerges as a legitimate phenomenon in which rituals, both public and private, enforced a sense of communal, civic, and state identity. Since the 1970s, Scheid has been one of the most influential figures reshaping scholarly understanding of ancient Roman religion. The Gods, the State, and the Individual presents a translation of Scheid's work that chronicles the development of his field-changing scholarship.

Download or read book Mother of the Gods written by Philippe Borgeaud and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2004-11-12 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worshiped throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, the "Mother of the Gods" was known by a variety of names. Among peoples of Asia Minor, where her cult first began, she often shared the names of local mountains. The Greeks commonly called her Cybele, the name given to her by the Phrygians of Asia Minor, and identified her with their own mother goddesses Rhea, Gaia, and Demeter. The Romans adopted her worship at the end of the Second Punic War and called her Mater Magna, Great Mother. Her cult became one of the three most important mystery cults in the Roman Empire, along with those of Mithras and Isis. And as Christianity took hold in the Roman world, ritual elements of her cult were incorporated into the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary. In Mother of the Gods, Philippe Borgeaud traces the journey of this divine figure through Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome between the sixth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. He examines how the Mother of the Gods was integrated into specific cultures, what she represented to those who worshiped her, and how she was used as a symbol in art, myth, and even politics. The Mother of the Gods was often seen as a dualistic figure: ancestral and foreign, aristocratic and disreputable, nurturing and dangerous. Borgeaud's challenging and nuanced portrait opens new windows on the ancient world's sophisticated religious beliefs and shifting cultural identities.

Download or read book The Americas First Theologies written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Theologia Indorum by Dominican friar Domingo de Vico was the first Christian theology written in the Americas. Made available in English translation for the first time, Americas' First Theologies presents a selection of exemplary sections from the Theologia Indorum that illustrate Friar Vico's doctrine of god, cosmogony, moral anthropology, understanding of natural law and biblical history, and constructive engagement with pre-Hispanic Maya religion. Rather than merely condemn the Maya religion, Vico appropriated local terms and images from Maya mythology and rituals that he thought could convey Christianity. His attempt at translating, if not reconfiguring, Christianity for a Maya readership required his mastery of not only numerous Mayan languages but also the highly poetic ceremonial rhetoric of many indigenous Mesoamerican peoples. This book also includes translations of two other pastoral texts (parts of a songbook and a catechism) and eight early documents by K'iche' and Kaqchikel Maya authors who engaged the Theologia Indorum. These texts, written in Highland Mayan languages both by fellow Dominicans and by Highland Maya elites demonstrate the wider influence of Vico's ethnographic approach shared by a particular school of Dominicans. Altogether, The Americas' First Theologies provides a rich documentary case example of the translation, reception, and reaction to Christian thought in the indigenous Americas

Download or read book In Search of God the Mother written by Lynn E. Roller and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-07-13 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first thorough account of the nature and the spread of the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, and the first to present her worship soberly as a religion rather than sensationally as an orgiastic celebration of self-castrated priest-attendants.

Download or read book Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism written by Franz Cumont and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2003-10-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study by the great Belgian historian Franz Cumont describes one aspect of the cultural meeting of east and west in the early Roman empire. It describes the great pagan religions of the orient, and tells how their religious thought and ceremonies permeated, altered, and revivified Roman paganism. It provides a coverage of all the more important eastern religions of the time, from their first appearance in Rome, 204 B.C., when the great Mother of the Gods was first imported from Syria: The ecstatic cults of Phrygia and Syria; the worship of Cybele, the Magna Mater, Attis, Adonis; their orgies and mutilatory rites. The mysteries of Egypt; the worship of Serapis, Isis, Osiris, their closely hidden secret rites, redemption ceremonies. The dualism of Persia; the elevation of cosmic evil, to a full and equal partnership with the deity; the mysteries of Mithra. The worship of Hermes Trismegistos, and the documents ascribed to him; Sabazios, Ishtar, Astarte. The magic, thaumaturgy, judicial astrology of the ancient near east. The emotional and intellectual impact of the great civilized traditions of Egypt and Babylonia upon still barbarian Europe. Cumont's 'Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism' is the best general picture, on an intermediate level, of this important moment in cultural history. It is also of great value in analyzing an era which shared certain cultural problems with our own time.