Echoes of Plato’s Apology of Socrates in Luke-Acts

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-197
Author(s):  
Steve Reece
Keyword(s):  
Acts Of The Apostles ◽  
Gospel Of Luke ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Educated Person

Abstract As a literate and well-educated person, the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (“Luke”) would have been familiar with Plato’s Apology of Socrates, one of the most widely-known ancient Greek texts in the Mediterranean world in the 1st century CE. Indeed, it appears that “Luke” may have used his, and his readers’, familiarity with stories about the life, trial, and death of Socrates, and with the account in Plato’s Apology of Socrates specifically, as an interpretive tool in three “trial” scenes narrated in Luke-Acts: those of Jesus, Peter, and, most obviously, Paul.

Mapping Tartaros: Observation, Inference, and Belief in Ancient Greek and Roman Accounts of Karst Terrain

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Connors ◽  
Cindy Clendenon
Keyword(s):  
Complex Matrix ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Material World ◽  
Karst Terrain ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Scientific Facts ◽  
Karst Terrains

This interdisciplinary article argues that ancient Greek and Roman representations of Okeanos, Tartaros, and the underworld demonstrate an observational awareness of the hollow underground spaces that characterize the geomorphology of karst terrains in the Mediterranean world. We review the scientific facts that underlie Greek and Roman accounts of karstic terrain in observation-based discourse and in myths, and we demonstrate that the Greek words barathron (pit), limnē (lake), koilos (hollow), and dinē (whirling current) are used with precision in observational accounts of karst terrain. Ancient accounts of the dynamic limnē and barathrum systems characteristic of much karst terrain offer a complex matrix of observation-based and belief-based discourse: at the edge of the barathrum, the imaginative or spiritual realm of the underworld has a material plausibility and the closely observed material world has a plausible potential to connect to a world we cannot see.

‘Aesop’, ‘Q’ and ‘Luke’

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Reece
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of Luke ◽  
First Century ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Animal Fables ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Village

The last chapter of the gospel of Luke includes a story of the risen Christ meeting two of his disciples on their way from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and chastising them with the poetic expression ὦ ἀνόητοι καὶ βραδεῖς τῇ καρδίᾳ ‘O foolish ones, and slow in heart’ (Luke 24.25). No commentator has ever observed that Jesus' expression occurs verbatim, in the same iambic trimeter metre, in two poetic versions of animal fables attributed to the famous Greek fabulist Aesop. It is plausible that Luke is here, as at least twice elsewhere in his gospel, tapping into the rich tradition of Aesopic fables and proverbs that were widely known throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century ce.

Crossing the Pomerium

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Religion And Law ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city—a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. This book explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule. The book probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. The book explores a problem faced by generations of Romans—how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.

Diachronic trends in the evolution of civilizations in the Nile valley

2018 ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Элеонора Кормышева ◽  
Eleonora Kormysheva
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

The diachronic trends in socio-economic and cultural development of the societies in the Nile valley are revealed based on the materials from Giza necropolis (the 3rd millennium BC) and the settlement of Abu Erteila (1st century AD). The research made it possible to trace the typological similarities in the evolution of the studied societies in cultural and historical contexts. The main fields of the research were epigraphy, iconography, social history, and material culture. Many previously unknown monuments discovered by Russian archaeologists in Egypt and Sudan were introduced into scientific discourse. The basis was created for studying the Nile valley as a contact zone between the Mediterranean world and Africa.

Lykophron's Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
South Italy ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Area Of Origin

This book is an original, accessibly written, contribution to Roman and Hellenistic history. Its subject is a long (1474-line) ancient Greek poem, Lykophron’s Alexandra, probably written about 190 BC. The Trojan Kassandra foretells the conflicts between Europe and Asia from the Trojan Wars to the establishment of Roman ascendancy over the Greek world in the poet’s own time, including the founding of new cities by returning Greeks through the Mediterranean zone, and of Rome by the Trojan refugee Aineias, Kassandra’s kinsman. Simon Hornblower now follows his detailed commentary (OUP 2015, paperback 2017) with a monograph asserting the Alexandra’s importance as a historical document of interest to political, cultural, and religious historians and students of myths of identity. Part One explores Lykophron’s geopolitical world, especially south Italy (perhaps the poet’s area of origin), Sicily, and Rhodes, and argues that the recent (in the 190s) hostile presence of Hannibal in south Italy is a frequent if indirectly expressed concern of the poem. Part Two investigates the poem’s relation to Sibylline and other anti-Roman writings, and argues for its cultural and religious topicality. The Conclusion shows that the 190s BC were a turning-point in Roman history, and that Lykophron was aware of this.

America and the Mediterranean World, 1776-1882

1970 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
William Stinchcombe ◽  
James A. Field
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

Private Associations in the Ancient Greek World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Private Associations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Greek World

Private associations abounded in the ancient Greek world and beyond, and this volume provides the first large-scale study of the strategies of governance which they employed. Emphasis is placed on the values fostered by the regulations of associations, the complexities of the private-public divide (and that divide's impact on polis institutions) and the dynamics of regional and global networks and group identity. The attested links between rules and religious sanctions also illuminate the relationship between legal history and religion. Moreover, possible links between ancient associations and the early Christian churches will prove particularly valuable for scholars of the New Testament. The book concludes by using the regulations of associations to explore a novel and revealing aspect of the interaction between the Mediterranean world, India and China.

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