9. Babylonia in later ages: (6th century bc to 2nd century ad )

2016 ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
Trevor Bryce
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Persian Empire

‘Babylon in later ages’ begins with Babylonia under Persian rule when Cyrus invaded in 539. He honoured, preserved, and maintained Babylon’s and Babylonia’s time-honoured traditions, cults, gods, and religious customs and sought to remove every trace of Nabonidus’s reign. Babylonia remained under Persian control until the year 330 when the final remnants of the Persian empire fell to Alexander the Great, who died in Babylon in 323. Then came the Seleucid empire under Seleukos, followed by control under the Parthians. Despite numerous changes in rule, the traditional elements of Babylonian religious life and some of the traditional elements of Babylonian intellectual life survived well into the first century ad.

The Social and Cultural Background of Rashi’s Work

Rashi ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Avraham Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
First Century ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Polemics

This chapter discusses the social and cultural background of Rashi's work. According to evidence preserved in the literary accounts and archaeological findings, Jews began to settle in what is now France during Roman times, in the first century CE. That settlement continued uninterrupted until Rashi's time. In general, Jews continued to do well in France. Nevertheless, the weakness of the central government and the ascendancy of local fiefdoms meant that their social and political status differed in each of the feudal states that made up eleventh-century France, depending upon the good will of the local rulers. Two developments during the eleventh and twelfth centuries influenced Jewish economic and intellectual life and the internal organization of the Jewish community: the growth of cities and the European intellectual renaissance. The chapter then looks at the Jewish community in Troyes and the Jewish centre in Champagne; the twelfth-century renaissance; and the Jewish–Christian religious polemics.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions

1974 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 608
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Harrington ◽  
S. Safrai ◽  
M. Stern ◽  
D. Flusser ◽  
W. C. van Unnik
Keyword(s):  
Historical Geography ◽  
Political History ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
First Century

Introduction: The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory McMahon ◽  
Sharon Steadman
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Early Years ◽  
First Century ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Group Language ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Twenty First Century

This introductory article presents an overview of the current book. The early years of the twenty-first century mark roughly a century of serious scholarly study of ancient Anatolia, and this book represents a synthesis of current understanding at the end of this century of scholarship. It documents close to ten millennia of human occupation in Anatolia, from the earliest Neolithic to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. The book is also defined geographically, rather than by a culture, ethnic group, language, or polity. A brief description of its five parts is presented.

Thessalonica

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clyde E. Fant ◽  
Mitchell G. Reddish
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
The Road ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The Family ◽  
New City ◽  
The City ◽  
Point Of Departure

In 315 B.C.E. Cassander, king of Macedonia, once a general in the army of Alexander the Great, founded a new city in his kingdom. He named it for his wife, Thessalonike, daughter of Philip II of Macedon and the half sister of Alexander. In the centuries that followed, Thessalonica became the premier city of northern Greece, enduring and flourishing under Hellenistic, Roman, and Greek control. Many famous figures in world history played important roles throughout its lengthy and colorful existence, including Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Cicero, Pompey, and Sulëyman I the Magnificent, among others. But no resident or visitor to Thessalonica had a greater influence on the city than an obscure Christian missionary who visited there in the first century, Paul of Tarsus. The first New Testament writing is believed to be Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. Modern Thessaloniki (biblical Thessalonica), second only to Athens among the cities of Greece, is easily reached by automobile or by frequent flights from Athens. Although its ancient ruins and monuments are overshadowed by those of Athens, this city is well worth visiting for its fine archaeological museum and as a point of departure for the spectacular Royal Tombs at Vergina, home to the amazing riches of the family of Alexander the Great. Increasingly, more of ancient Thessalonica is being unearthed by archaeologists and made available to public view. According to Strabo, Thessalonica was established at the site of ancient Therme and formed from the incorporation of twenty-five smaller villages. The ancient city was laid out according to the Hippodamian plan, that is, in rectangular blocks. Its development was encouraged by its fine port and, during the Roman period, by being made the capital of Macedonia. When the Romans connected the Via Egnatia, the historic road linking east and west, to Thessalonica, the city prospered even more. The Roman orator Cicero was exiled in Thessalonica (58–57 B.C.E.) and wrote to his friend Atticus on July 21, 57 B.C.E., that he had delayed leaving the city “owing to the constant traffic along the road” (the Via Egnatia; M. Tullius Cicero, Letters 69).

The Art of Imperial Politics and the Interminable Frustrations of History

2021 ◽  
pp. 610-622
Author(s):  
John Bew
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
World Order ◽  
Middle Part ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Politics

This short chapter considers the renewed interest in Niebuhr’s legacy from the middle part of the first decade of the twenty-first century, through the presidency of Barack Obama and into the era of Donald Trump, following his victory in the 2016 presidential election. It places what might be called the Niebuhrian ‘world view’—understood as Christian theology set upon an international historical canvas—against the backdrop of the so-called ‘crisis of world order’, about which much has been written since 2014. It argues that Niebuhr plays a similar role in American intellectual life as Edmund Burke has done in Britain and that his ideas continue to provide a useful guide to the world today.

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