Product Description: This volume addresses the dynamics of religions in the past and present. As such it also addresses the dynamics of the study of religion. Bringing together programmatic contributions and exemplary case studies, it focuses on the different fields of change, namely that of the individual as subject and object of religion, of community and society, of practices and discourses, and of the narratives of such developments...read more

Product Description: Ce livre propose d'aborder l'histoire des religions de l'epoque imperiale sous un angle tout a fait innovant: celui des variations du comportement religieux. Ces disparites ne s'observent pas seulement dans l'opposition entre un ritualisme paien collectif et la foi chretienne individuelle; elles se trouvent aussi dans une gestion plus personnelle de la religiosite par les fideles...read more

Product Description: To understand the past, we necessarily group people together and, consequently, frequently assume that all of its members share the same attributes. In this ground-breaking volume, Eric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke bring renowned scholars together to challenge this norm by seeking to rediscover the individual and to explore the dynamics between individuals and the groups to which they belong...read more

Product Description: The public/private distinction is fundamental to modern theories of the family, religion and religious freedom, and state power, yet it has different salience, and is understood differently, from place to place and time to time. The volume examines the public/private distinction in the cultures and religions of the ancient Mediterranean, in the formative periods of Greece and Rome and the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam...read more

Product Description: The concepts of memory and experience have stimulated interest in a wide range of recent cultural studies. In the history of scholarship on religion in Mediterranean antiquity, scholars have focused on the emotional dimension of both terms by employing the concepts of ‘Christianity' and its derivative, ‘oriental religion'...read more

What is a religion? What triggered the spontaneous development of distinct religions throughout the ancient world? How do religions evoke the ultimate realities they claim to address? Such questions are as evergreen as belief itself. The Hellenistic and Roman worlds were a fertile seedbed of the monotheistic faiths that dominate today's western image of religion, as well as many global conflicts. In this concise and elegant overview, Jörg Rüpke addresses the similarities and differences of religions in antiquity, tracing their sometimes complex lineage into modern systems of belief. Greek and Roman religion is discussed not in isolation, but in the broader context of western Asia and Egypt. The author also addresses developments relating to early Islam on the south-eastern margins of the Byzantine Empire.Examining such topics as the functions of priests and religious functionaries; religious individualism; the relationship between religion and political identity; the acceptance of the pagan Julian calendar by Christians; and contrasting ancient and modern understandings of divination, Rüpke shows that study of pre-modern culture enables us more daringly to explore the contemporary religious world.

Product Description: Ancient religions are usually treated as collective and political phenomena and, apart from a few towering figures, the individual religious agent has fallen out of view. Addressing this gap, the essays in this volume focus on the individual and individuality in ancient Mediterranean religion...read more

Product Description: Roman religion as we know it is largely the product of the middle and late republic, the period falling roughly between the victory of Rome over its Latin allies in 338 B.C.E. and the attempt of the Italian peoples in the Social War to stop Roman domination, resulting in the victory of Rome over all of Italy in 89 B...read more

Product Description: English summary: The assumption that the religious communication between individuals and the gods was authentic and binding was a widely shared perception from Cicero up to the laws in late antiquity. This caused considerable problems for the standardization of religious behavior...read more

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