Before Animal Sacrifice, A Myth of Innocence

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 357-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ullucci
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
Meat Eating ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Interpretive Model ◽  
Field Of Cultural Production ◽  
Roman Antiquity

AbstractAnimal sacrifice was one of the most pervasive and socially significant practices of Graeco-Roman religion. Yet, numerous Greek and Latin writers tell of a golden before the advent of sacrifice and meat eating. In this idealized world, humans lived at one with the gods and animal sacrifice did not exist. Such texts are often seen as part of a wider ancient critique of Greco-Roman religion in general and animal sacrifice in particular. This interpretive model, largely sprung from Christian theologizing, sees animal sacrifice as a meaningless and base act, destined to be superseded. As a result of this 'critique model', scholars have not asked what the myth of a world without sacrifice means in a world in which sacrifice predominated. This paper seeks to correct the above view by analyzing these texts as instances of created myth. It approaches each occurrence of the myth as an instance of position-taking by a player in the field of cultural production. The paper seeks to further a redescription of Greco-Roman antiquity by revealing the variety of ancient positions on sacrifice and their strategic use by competing cultural producers.

“I Go Against the Grain of Your Memory”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Field Of Cultural Production

This chapter charts the artistic trajectory of northeastern Brazilian poet, singer, writer, playwright and actor José Paes de Lira, known as Lirinha, situating his experiments as a long-standing attempt to reject and revise the regional folklorism within which audiences and critics often received his performances. The chapter examines Lirinha’s work, both as the visionary behind the nationally acclaimed group Cordel do Fogo Encantado (1998–2010) and in his subsequent musical and theatrical efforts. It also traces Lirinha’s turn away from folklorism as a reaction against narratives of “cultural rescue” that pressured him to uphold static notions of cultural roots. Reinforcing an overarching argument within this volume, Sharp argues that Lirinha’s work is culturally transformative within its particular field of cultural production, even if it is not always audible as experimental.

Early Christian Attitudes Towards Dietary Impurity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Normal Order ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Individual

This chapter describes how purity and defilement were practiced and discussed in diverse cults throughout the Hellenistic and Roman Empires and in contemporary Judaism. There were several types of purity and defilement. The first, a “truce” impurity perception, was temporary and mundane, a defilement occurring when there was an obstruction to the normal order or when categories were mixed up. A second type, the “battle” impurity perception, followed exceptional actions, typically deliberate, such as murder or adultery. Here purification required both punishment by the community and ritual actions, such as sacrifice. A third type became more and more significant in the first centuries CE. This was the defilement of the individual by his or her evil actions and dispositions, conceptualized at times as a “defilement of the soul,” and its purification through asceticism, philosophy, or repentance. Though purity and defilement also featured in Greco-Roman religion, it received an unusually central role in Judaism.

Classics and Media Theory

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Of Greece

The aim of this volume is to introduce a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory. It addresses the question of why interactions in this area matter, and how they might be developed further. The volume seeks to promote more media attentiveness among scholars of Greece and Rome. It also aims to create more awareness of the presence of the classics in media theory. It foregrounds the persistency of Greco-Roman paradigms across the different strands of media theory. And it calls for a closer consideration of the conceptual underpinnings of scholarly practices around the transformation of ancient Greece and Rome into ‘classical’ cultures.

Das frühe Christentum und die Bildung

2015 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udo Schnelle
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Urban Congregations ◽  
Intellectual Level

Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

Pity the Women and Children: Punishment by Siege in Josephus’s Jewish War

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caryn A. Reeder
Keyword(s):  
Greco Roman ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Roman Antiquity

Abstract This paper analyzes the neglected theme of suffering women and children in Josephus’s Jewish War. Women and children did suffer the effects of sieges in Greco-Roman antiquity, but historiographers also use the stories of their suffering to interpret warfare. Josephus participates in this tradition by using the imagery of suffering women and children to condemn the Jewish rebels, a presentation which is also influenced by Deut 28 and Lamentations. The warnings against rebellion in J.W. 2.237, 400, and 5.418 heighten the rhetorical power of this condemnation by offering the alternative of surrender for the sake of women and children.

scholarly journals CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL, HIERARCHICAL AND EGALITARIAN: SOCIAL-POLITICAL USES OF THE CONCEPT OF “HOME” IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Strijdom
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
The Family ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The One ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Point Of Departure

The cognitive linguist George Lakoff has argued that in the human brain two concepts of the family are mapped onto two contrasting political concepts, which reveal two kinds of systemic morality: a hierarchical, strict and disciplining father morality of conservatives on the one hand, and an egalitarian, nurturing parent morality of progressives or liberals on the other. Taking Lakoff’s thesis as point of departure, I offer a critical comparison of social-political uses of the concept of “home” in the early Roman Empire and Pauline Christianity. For this case study I engage primarily with the work of John Dominic Crossan, a prominent scholar of early Christianity within its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Although “home” does not constitute the focus of his analysis, a close reading of his oeuvre does allow us to identify and highlight this as a crucial theme in his work. The focus will be on the patriarchal home under Greco-Roman imperial conditions as model of the imperial system, the Pauline egalitarian concept of the Christian home and house churches, and the deutero-Pauline return to the imperial model. By comparing these case studies from another epoch and another culture, thevalidity of Lakoff’s thesis will be tested and our understanding of the concepts “liberal” and “conservative” will be enriched.

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