Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine

Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine PDF Author: Zeev Weiss
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine introduces readers to the panoply of public entertainment that flourished in Palestine from the first century BCE to the sixth century CE. Drawing on a trove of original archaeological and textual evidence, Zeev Weiss reconstructs an ancient world where Romans, Jews, and Christians intermixed amid a heady brew of shouts, roars, and applause to watch a variety of typically pagan spectacles. Ancient Roman society reveled in many such spectacles—dramatic performances, chariot races, athletic competitions, and gladiatorial combats—that required elaborate public venues, often maintained at great expense. Wishing to ingratiate himself with Rome, Herod the Great built theaters, amphitheaters, and hippodromes to bring these forms of entertainment to Palestine. Weiss explores how the indigenous Jewish and Christian populations responded, as both spectators and performers, to these cultural imports. Perhaps predictably, the reactions of rabbinic and clerical elites did not differ greatly. But their dire warnings to shun pagan entertainment did little to dampen the popularity of these events. Herod’s ambitious building projects left a lasting imprint on the region. His dream of transforming Palestine into a Roman enclave succeeded far beyond his rule, with games and spectacles continuing into the fifth century CE. By then, however, public entertainment in Palestine had become a cultural institution in decline, ultimately disappearing during Justinian’s reign in the sixth century.

Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine

Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine PDF Author: Zeev Weiss
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book Here

Book Description
Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine introduces readers to the panoply of public entertainment that flourished in Palestine from the first century BCE to the sixth century CE. Drawing on a trove of original archaeological and textual evidence, Zeev Weiss reconstructs an ancient world where Romans, Jews, and Christians intermixed amid a heady brew of shouts, roars, and applause to watch a variety of typically pagan spectacles. Ancient Roman society reveled in many such spectacles—dramatic performances, chariot races, athletic competitions, and gladiatorial combats—that required elaborate public venues, often maintained at great expense. Wishing to ingratiate himself with Rome, Herod the Great built theaters, amphitheaters, and hippodromes to bring these forms of entertainment to Palestine. Weiss explores how the indigenous Jewish and Christian populations responded, as both spectators and performers, to these cultural imports. Perhaps predictably, the reactions of rabbinic and clerical elites did not differ greatly. But their dire warnings to shun pagan entertainment did little to dampen the popularity of these events. Herod’s ambitious building projects left a lasting imprint on the region. His dream of transforming Palestine into a Roman enclave succeeded far beyond his rule, with games and spectacles continuing into the fifth century CE. By then, however, public entertainment in Palestine had become a cultural institution in decline, ultimately disappearing during Justinian’s reign in the sixth century.

Music at Social Meals in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Music at Social Meals in Greek and Roman Antiquity PDF Author: Charles H. Cosgrove
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009161040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 459

Get Book Here

Book Description
Comprehensive history of one of the greatest pleasures of ancient life, recreational music, and the various purposes it served.

Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus

Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus PDF Author: Andrew R. Krause
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004342044
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus, Andrew Krause analyses the place of the synagogue within the cultural and spatial rhetoric of Flavius Josephus. Engaging with both rhetorical critical methods and critical spatial theories, Krause argues that in his later writings Josephus portrays the Jewish institutions as an important aspect of the post-Temple, pan-diasporic Judaism that he creates. Specifically, Josephus consistently treats the synagogue as a supra-local rallying point for the Jews throughout the world, in which the Jewish customs and Law may be practiced and disseminated following the loss of the Temple and the Land. Conversely, in his earliest extant work, Bellum judaicum, Josephus portrays synagogues as local temples in order to condemn the Jewish insurgents who violated them.

The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity

The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity PDF Author: Bruce W. Longenecker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108671292
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 864

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, and multiple permutations in the formative period of Christian history. Within those multiples lie numerous contests, as varieties of Christian identity laid claim to authority and authenticity in different ways. The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity addresses these contested areas with both nuance and clarity by reviewing, synthesizing, and critically engaging recent scholarly developments. The 27 thematic chapters, specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of scholars, also offer constructive ways forward for future research.

Imperial Identities in the Roman World

Imperial Identities in the Roman World PDF Author: Wouter Vanacker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317118480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume, rather than concentrating on politics and imperial administration, studies the manifold ways in which people were ritually engaged in producing, consuming, organising and worshipping that fitted the changing realities of empire, focusing on how individuals and groups tried to do things 'the right way', the Greco-Roman imperial way. Given the deep cultural entrenchment of ritualistic practices, an imperial identity firmly grounded in such practices might well have been instrumental not just to the long-lasting stability of the Roman imperial order but also to the persistency of its ideals well into post-Roman times.

The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity

The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Catherine Hezser
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315280957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 746

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume focuses on the major issues and debates in the study of Jews and Judaism in late antiquity (third to seventh century C.E.), providing cutting-edge surveys of the state of scholarship, main topics and research questions, methodological approaches, and avenues for future research. Based on both Jewish and non-Jewish literary and material sources, this volume takes an interdisciplinary approach involving historians of ancient Judaism, scholars of rabbinic literature, archaeologists, epigraphers, art historians, and Byzantinists. Developments within Jewish society and culture are viewed within the respective regional, political, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts in which they took place. Special focus is given to the impact of the Christianization of the Roman Empire on Jews, from administrative, legal, social, and cultural points of view. The contributors examine how the confrontation with Christianity changed Jewish practices, perceptions, and organizational structures, such as, for example, the emergence of local Jewish communities around synagogues as central religious spaces. Special chapters are devoted to the eastern and western Jewish Diaspora in Late Antiquity, especially Sasanian Persia but also Roman Italy, Egypt, Syria and Arabia, North Africa, and Asia Minor, to provide a comprehensive assessment of the situation and life experiences of Jews and Judaism during this period. The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity is a critical and methodologically sophisticated survey of current scholarship aimed primarily at students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Study of Religions, Patristics, Classics, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Iranology, History of Art, and Archaeology. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Judaism and Jewish history.

The Oxford Handbook of Origen

The Oxford Handbook of Origen PDF Author: Ronald E. Heine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199684030
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 625

Get Book Here

Book Description
This interrogation of Origen's legacy for the 21st Century returns to old questions built upon each other over eighteen centuries of Origen scholarship-problems of translation and transmission, positioning Origen in the histories of philosophy, theology, and orthodoxy, and defining his philological and exegetical programmes. The essays probe the more reliable sources for Origen's thought by those who received his legacy and built on it. They focus on understanding how Origen's legacy was adopted, transformed and transmitted looking at key figures from the fourth century through the Reformation. A section on modern contributions to the understanding of Origen embraces the foundational contributions of Huet, the twentieth century movement to rehabilitate Origen from his status as a heterodox teacher, and finally, the identification in 2012 of twenty-nine anonymous homilies on the Psalms in a codex in Munich as homilies of Origen. Equally important has been the investigation of Origen's historical, cultural, and intellectual context. These studies track the processes of appropriation, assimilation and transformation in the formation and transmission of Origen's legacy. Origen worked at interpreting Scripture throughout his life. There are essays addressing general issues of hermeneutics and his treatment of groups of books from the Biblical canon in commentaries and homilies. Key points of his theology are also addressed in essays that give attention to the fluid environment in which Origen developed his theology. These essays open important paths for students of Origen in the 21st century.

Bathhouses in Iudaea, Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia from Herod the Great to the Umayyads

Bathhouses in Iudaea, Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia from Herod the Great to the Umayyads PDF Author: Arleta Kowalewska
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789256607
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bathing culture was one of the pillars of Roman society and bathhouses are one of the largest categories of a particular type of construction excavated in the Roman world. The large number of surviving remains and their regional variety make bathhouses vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine period. This book presents the archaeological evidence of close to 200 Roman-style bathhouses from the region of Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia, part of the provinces of the Roman East, constructed from the reign of Herod the Great (second half of the 1st century BCE) to the end of the Umayyad rule (mid-8th century CE). The bathing complexes of the Roman, Byzantine, and the Early Islamic periods, ranging from large public thermae to small bathing suites, are for the first time analyzed as unified data with an unprecedented amount of detail, considering a variety of parameters – from dating and setting, through building techniques and materials, to plans and decorations. Typologies of the bathhouses and their components are supplemented by exploration of the socio-cultural insight provided by this particular type of construction. The historical narrative of the regional bathing facilities is updated in the light of new information. The full raw data used for the study is provided in the expandable open-access online database.

The Literature of the Sages

The Literature of the Sages PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004515690
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 672

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume abandons the document-based approach of standard introductions and investigates aggregates of classical rabbinic texts through three broad perspectives – intertextuality, east and west, halakhah and aggadah – generating fresh insights that will reset the scholarly agenda.

Jews and Their Roman Rivals

Jews and Their Roman Rivals PDF Author: Katell Berthelot
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691264805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Get Book Here

Book Description
How encounters with the Roman Empire compelled the Jews of antiquity to rethink their conceptions of Israel and the Torah Throughout their history, Jews have lived under a succession of imperial powers, from Assyria and Babylonia to Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jews and Their Roman Rivals shows how the Roman Empire posed a unique challenge to Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Josephus, and the Palestinian rabbis, who both resisted and internalized Roman standards and imperial ideology. Katell Berthelot traces how, long before the empire became Christian, Jews came to perceive Israel and Rome as rivals competing for supremacy. Both considered their laws to be the most perfect ever written, and both believed they were a most pious people who had been entrusted with a divine mission to bring order and peace to the world. Berthelot argues that the rabbinic identification of Rome with Esau, Israel's twin brother, reflected this sense of rivalry. She discusses how this challenge transformed ancient Jewish ideas about military power and the use of force, law and jurisdiction, and membership in the people of Israel. Berthelot argues that Jewish thinkers imitated the Romans in some cases and proposed competing models in others. Shedding new light on Jewish thought in antiquity, Jews and Their Roman Rivals reveals how Jewish encounters with pagan Rome gave rise to crucial evolutions in the ways Jews conceptualized the Torah and conversion to Judaism.