Religious Violence in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Trends and Issues

AbstractThis paper traces the historical development of the discourse of violent retribution in Jewish culture over the course of Late Antiquity. The paper argues that, although Jews had long engaged in anti-Roman rhetoric, Jewish anti-imperial sentiment intensified in the fifth to seventh centuries CE. This heightened level of antipathy toward the Roman state is perhaps best exemplified by a number of texts that present tableaux of graphic violence directed against the figure of the Roman emperor. The paper shows that these fantasies of revenge redeployed and inverted specific elements of Roman imperial ideology and practice, while at the same time internalizing the pervasive stereotype of Jews in sixth- and especially seventh-century Christian sources as violent troublemakers. The paper argues that, in attempting to assert some measure of control over the "symbolic weapons" of religious violence at play in their society, the Jewish creators of this vivid discourse of retributive justice colluded with their Christian counterparts in constructing the Jew as a member of an oppositional and even dangerous religious minority.

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Religious Violence in Late Antiquity

The Cambridge World History of Violence ◽

10.1017/9781316341247.027 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 512-530

Author(s):

Peter Van Nuffelen

Keyword(s):

Late Antiquity ◽

Religious Violence

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Religious Violence and Hagiography in Late Antiquity

Numen ◽

10.1163/15685276-12341362 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 62 (2-3) ◽

pp. 169-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mar Marcos

Keyword(s):

Early Development ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

Fourth Century ◽

Religious Violence ◽

Conversion Process ◽

Sixth Century ◽

Late Antique ◽

Social Construct ◽

Form Part ◽

The Subject

Sanctity is in many ways a social construct, and hence the profile of saints and the practices that qualify them as such change with the passing of time. The destruction of temples and idols as a way to signal sanctity is a good example of this. The subject came to form part of hagiography in the late fourth century, reached its peak in the Theodosian period, and fell off in the sixth century when Christianization was believed to be complete. Hagiography made iconoclasm one of the most extraordinary expressions of divine power, adding it to the saint’s repertoire of miracles and ascetic virtues. The aim of this article is to study the origins and early development of this motif, which legitimated — and subtly encouraged — the use of violence in the conversion process. It is within apologetic and polemical contexts that the episodes of the violent destruction of late antique paganism have to be assessed.

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Christian Martyrs under Islam

Christian Martyrs under Islam ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691179100.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 1-28

Author(s):

Christian C. Sahner

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

Religious Violence

This introductory chapter sets out the book's objective, which is to explain the earliest stages of a long-term process whereby the predominantly Christian Middle East of late antiquity became the predominantly Islamic region of today. In particular, it explores the role of religious violence in the process of de-Christianization, as well as how Christians adopted the mentality of a minority through memories of violence. To tell the story, this book investigates a neglected group of Christian martyrs who died at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries AD. They were known by their contemporaries as “new martyrs” or “neomartyrs.” An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

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