01_-_Table_of_Contents.pdf

This essaye xamines earlyC hristian literaturea se vidence for at rend in religious movements with an increasinglyl iteraryo ro therwise intellectual profile. Self-proclaimed authorities on Christ clustered in the urban spaces of the empire wheret hey joined and rivaled assorted aspirings pecialists who boasted ar angeo fs kills and, in some cases, derivedw isdom or mysteries from the samewritings. All partook in abroader phenomenon of religious innovation that was propelled by urban resources: the book industry,agrowth in libraries, the heightened status of writings, and awidespread enthusiasm for paideia. Iargue that Christian authorsare prime,ifunexceptional, examples of this more general religious development.Thus situated, their writingshold important clues for theorizing the activities of non-Christian religious actors and groups that are less well attested in this earlyp eriod.

Gremium, 2022

The synthesis edited by Jörg Rüpke and Greg Woolf and authored with seven further authors represents the latest volume in the famous Kohlhammer series on World Religions, one of the oldest and most prestigious series on history of religions in German Religionswissenschaft. The volume entitled Religion in the Roman Empire (and not "Roman religion" in the empire, which is a great difference as we will see) presents the major religious changes, transformations, and specificities of religious communication occurred in the first four centuries of our common era. The book is the result of a fruitful and paradigmatic collaboration between the ERC Advanced Grant winner Jörg Rüpke and his team from Erfurt (Lived Ancient Religion project 2012-2017) and Greg Woolf, who had a research project focusing on sanctuaries and religious experience in the ancient world in the Max Weber Kolleg. 1 This book-as most of the volumes of the series-intends to be a companion, a synthesis and detailed introduction in the topic, addressing the greater public, students but also the specialists. The book proposes also a new methodological approach, well-known already in the previous, paradigmatic books on Lived Ancient Religion: the relativisation of ancient Roman religiosity, a special focus on individual religion, urban religion and citification of religion, and the appropriation of various religious ideas in the context of an empire. The introduction by Jörg Rüpke and Greg Woolf also proposed a relativisation of the literary sources, interpreted here as a "momentary crystallization of discourse" and not as authoritative sources, as it was interpreted in the 19th century and early 20th century scholarship. The authors emphasize also, that the contemporary approaches of social sciences can open new doors in the research of ancient Roman religion too. The second part of the introduction is focusing on the problematic terminology of

2011

A comprehensive treatment of the significant symbols and institutions of Roman religion, this companion places the various religious symbols, discourses, and practices, including Judaism and Christianity, into a larger framework to reveal the sprawling landscape of the Roman religion. - An innovative introduction to Roman religion - Approaches the field with a focus on the human-figures instead of the gods - Analyzes religious changes from the eighth century BC to the fourth century AD - Offers the first history of religious motifs on coins and household/everyday utensils - Presents Roman religion within its cultural, social, and historical contexts

Religious Studies Review, 2017

and the individual. After outlining the scope and methodology of the volume in the introduction, Scheid offers a very comprehensive presentation of the arguments presented by the adversaries of the polis-religion model in Chapter 1. The fallacy of the city-states' end with the coming of Rome is addressed in Chapter 2, whereas Chapter 3 discusses the place of the individual in the city-states. Chapter 4 fends off the position that civic religion was nothing but a discourse of the elite. In Chapter 5, Scheid supports the functionalist nature of the civic-religion model, which he further explores in relation to rituals in Chapter 6. Chapters 7 and 8 further demonstrate the civic nature of Roman religion by discussing occasions of impiety and oppression by the Roman political administration, as well as the different smaller scale religious activities that were also administered by a central power. Chapter 9 tackles the important issue of belief and emotion in Roman civic religion. Chapter 10 discusses the reasons for religious change in Rome-according to Scheid not based on the assumption of a different "religiosity" as the critics of the polis model maintain-whereas Chapter 11 summarizes his argumentation. Scheid's call to return to the sources is valuable and accurate considering the peculiarity of Roman religion; his erudition and ability to offer a clear and concise discussion makes the volume an indispensable source for anybody interested in Roman religion.

Journal of Religion in Europe, 2009

Scholia, 2002

2014

The eighteen papers collected in this volume - fifteen of which are published in English for the first time - explore the transformations of religious practices between the third and the fifth centuries in the Western part of the Roman Empire.

Beyond Priesthood

This paper is devoted to the 'public' priesthoods of imperial Rome and their contribution to the wider patterns of religious innovation. It focuses on two key areas of interaction: betweenp riests and the wider public in the city of Rome, through ac lose reading of the evidenceo fC assius Dio,a nd betweenp riests and emperor,e specially in the first decades of the Principate.I nf ocusing on the impact of priesthoods 'beyond duty',a nd looking beyond the setting of priesthoods within the elite networks of Republican Rome, it focuses on two key issues:choice and power.What degree of choice could be exercised in testing ande xceeding the remit of collectively-defined prerogatives? What rangeo f optionsw ereo pen, both to agents who exceeded the remit of their duty and to those affected by their actions? What powers did religious expertsd ispose of, which allowed or enabled them to exceed the remit of their duty? What factors prompted them to seek to modify the tasksthat theywereexpected to perform? Any decision to exceed the remit of one'sduty implied some degree of challenge to existing power arrangements or institutional frameworks. * This paper is ac ollaborative development of the contributions that we presenteda tt he Beyond Duty conference in January 2015.The Introduction and Conclusion areo ur shared work; JörgR üpkei sc hieflyr esponsible for section 2a nd FedericoS antangelo for section 3, but we take joint responsibility for the whole text. We should like to thank RichardG ordon for his valuable comments on ap revious version.