Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era

Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era PDF Author: Judith Perkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134152647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Through the close study of texts, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era examines the overlapping emphases and themes of two cosmopolitan and multiethnic cultural identities emerging in the early centuries CE – a trans-empire alliance of the Elite and the "Christians." Exploring the cultural representations of these social identities, Judith Perkins shows that they converge around an array of shared themes: violence, the body, prisons, courts, and time. Locating Christian representations within their historical context and in dialogue with other contemporary representations, it asks why do Christian representations share certain emphases? To what do they respond, and to whom might they appeal? For example, does the increasing Christian emphasis on a fully material human resurrection in the early centuries, respond to the evolution of a harsher and more status based judicial system? Judith Perkins argues that Christians were so successful in suppressing their social identity as inhabitants of the Roman Empire, that historical documents and testimony have been sequestered as "Christian" rather than recognized as evidence for the social dynamics enacted during the period, Her discussion offers a stimulating survey of interest to students of ancient narrative, cultural studies and gender.

Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era

Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era PDF Author: Judith Perkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134152647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through the close study of texts, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era examines the overlapping emphases and themes of two cosmopolitan and multiethnic cultural identities emerging in the early centuries CE – a trans-empire alliance of the Elite and the "Christians." Exploring the cultural representations of these social identities, Judith Perkins shows that they converge around an array of shared themes: violence, the body, prisons, courts, and time. Locating Christian representations within their historical context and in dialogue with other contemporary representations, it asks why do Christian representations share certain emphases? To what do they respond, and to whom might they appeal? For example, does the increasing Christian emphasis on a fully material human resurrection in the early centuries, respond to the evolution of a harsher and more status based judicial system? Judith Perkins argues that Christians were so successful in suppressing their social identity as inhabitants of the Roman Empire, that historical documents and testimony have been sequestered as "Christian" rather than recognized as evidence for the social dynamics enacted during the period, Her discussion offers a stimulating survey of interest to students of ancient narrative, cultural studies and gender.

Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era

Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Imperial Identities in the Roman World

Imperial Identities in the Roman World PDF Author: Wouter Vanacker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317118472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
In recent years, the debate on Romanisation has often been framed in terms of identity. Discussions have concentrated on how the expansion of empire impacted on the constructed or self-ascribed sense of belonging of its inhabitants, and just how the interaction between local identities and Roman ideology and practices may have led to a multicultural empire has been a central research focus. This volume challenges this perspective by drawing attention to the processes of identity formation that contributed to an imperial identity, a sense of belonging to the political, social, cultural and religious structures of the Empire. Instead of concentrating on politics and imperial administration, the volume studies the manifold ways in which people were ritually engaged in producing, consuming, organising, believing and worshipping that fitted the (changing) realities of empire. It focuses on how individuals and groups tried to do things 'the right way', i.e., 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 persistence of its ideals well into (Christian) Late Antiquity and post-Roman times.

Imperial Identities in the Roman World

Imperial Identities in the Roman World PDF Author: Wouter Vanacker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367879709
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In recent years, the debate on Romanisation has often been framed in terms of identity. Discussions have concentrated on how the expansion of empire impacted on the constructed or self-ascribed sense of belonging of its inhabitants, and just how the interaction between local identities and Roman ideology and practices may have led to a multicultural empire has been a central research focus. This volume challenges this perspective by drawing attention to the processes of identity formation that contributed to an imperial identity, a sense of belonging to the political, social, cultural and religious structures of the Empire. Instead of concentrating on politics and imperial administration, the volume studies the manifold ways in which people were ritually engaged in producing, consuming, organising, believing and worshipping that fitted the (changing) realities of empire. It focuses on how individuals and groups tried to do things 'the right way', i.e., 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 persistence of its ideals well into (Christian) Late Antiquity and post-Roman times.

Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World

Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World PDF Author: Yair Furstenberg
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004321691
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Jews and Christians under the Roman Empire shared a unique sense of community. Set apart from their civic and cultic surroundings, both groups resisted complete assimilation into the dominant political and social structures. However, Jewish communities differed from their Christian counterparts in their overall patterns of response to the surrounding challenges. They exhibit diverse levels of integration into the civic fabric of the cities of the Empire and display contrary attitudes towards the creation of trans-local communal networks. The variety of local case studies examined in this volume offers an integrated image of the multiple factors, both internal and external, which determined the role of communal identity in creating a sense of belonging among Jews and Christians under Imperial constraints.

The Narrative Self in Early Christianity

The Narrative Self in Early Christianity PDF Author: Janet E. Spittler
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 0884143988
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Essays that explore early Christian texts and the broader world in which they were written This volume of twelve essays celebrates the contributions of classicist Judith Perkins to the study of early Christianity. Drawing on Perkins's insights related to apocryphal texts, representations of pain and suffering, and the creation of meaning, contributors explore the function of Christian narratives that depict pain and suffering, the motivations of the early Christians who composed these stories, and their continuing value to contemporary people. Contributors also examine how narratives work to create meaning in a religious context. These contributions address these issues from a variety of angles through a wide range of texts. Features: Introductions to and treatments of several largely unknown early Christian texts Essays by ten women and two men influenced or mentored by Judith Perkins Essays on the Deuterocanon, the New Testament, and early Christian relics

Reading Hebrews and 1 Peter with the African American Great Migration

Reading Hebrews and 1 Peter with the African American Great Migration PDF Author: Jennifer T. Kaalund
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567679977
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Kaalund examines the constructed and contested Christian-Jewish identities in Hebrews and 1 Peter through the lens of the “New Negro,” a diasporic identity similarly constructed and contested during the Great Migration in the early 20th century. Like the identity “Christian,” the New Negro emerged in a context marked by instability, creativity, and the need for a sense of permanence in a hostile political environment. Upon examination, both identities also show complex internal diversity and debate that disrupts any simple articulation as purely resistant (or accommodating) to its hegemonic and oppressive environment. Kaalund's investigation into the construction of the New Negro highlights this multiplicity and contends that the rhetoric of place, race, and gender were integral to these processes of inventing a way of being in the world that was seemingly not reliant on one's physical space. Putting these issues into dialogue with 1 Peter and Hebrews allows for a reading of the formation of Christian identity as similarly engaging the rhetoric of place and race in constructive and contested ways.

The Care of the Self in Early Christian Texts

The Care of the Self in Early Christian Texts PDF Author: Deborah Niederer Saxon
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319647504
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book presents the first three Christian centuries through the lens of what Foucault called “the care of the self.” This lens reveals a rich variation among early Christ movements by illuminating their practices instead of focusing on what we anachronistically assume to have been their beliefs. A deep analysis of the discourse of martyrdom demonstrates how writers like Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp represented self-care. Deborah Niederer Saxon brings to light an entire spectrum of alternative views represented in newly-discovered texts from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere. This insightful analysis has implications for feminist scholarship and exposes the false binary of thinking in terms of “orthodoxy” versus “heresy”/”Gnosticism.”

SpaceTime of the Imperial

SpaceTime of the Imperial PDF Author: Holt Meyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110418754
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
This volume works through spatio-temporal concepts to be found in imperial practices and their representations in a wide range of media. The individual cases investigated in the volume cover a broad spectrum of historical periods from ancient times up to the present. Well-known international scholars treat special cases of the topic, using cutting-edge theory and approaches stemming from historical, cartographic, religious, literary, media studies, as well as ethnography.

Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine

Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine PDF Author: Terence L. Donaldson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467459550
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
Originally an ascribed identity that cast non-Jewish Christ-believers as an ethnic other, “gentile” soon evolved into a much more complex aspect of early Christian identity. Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine is a full historical account of this trajectory, showing how, in the context of “the parting of the ways,” the early church increasingly identified itself as a distinctly gentile and anti-Judaic entity, even as it also crafted itself as an alternative to the cosmopolitan project of the Roman Empire. This process of identity construction shaped Christianity’s legacy, paradoxically establishing it as both a counter-empire and a mimicker of Rome’s imperial ideology. Drawing on social identity theory and ethnography, Terence Donaldson offers an analysis of gentile Christianity that is thorough and highly relevant to today’s discourses surrounding identity, ethnicity, and Christian-Jewish relations. As Donaldson shows, a full understanding of the term “gentile” is key to understanding the modern Western world and the church as we know it.