Jews and Christians in the Polis

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Christopher Stroup
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Acts Of The Apostles ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the importance of ethnicity and ethnic rhetoric to the formation of ancient Christian identity. The cities of the Roman Empire were filled with gods and the citizens who honored them with festivals, processions, buildings, and benefactions. The followers of Jesus—later called Christians—lived and moved in these cities, navigating avenues lined with statues honoring various deities, organizing their days and months around the feast days that structured civic calendars, and wandering past (and through) the many temples and shrines that populated the busy urban landscape. The importance of this urban context should not be overlooked: civic, ethnic, and religious identities were intertwined with these visible, material, and practical signs of communal life, wherever one was placed within the city's bustling topography. Connections between life in the city and daily religious practices were therefore fundamental to the development of Christian identity. This book then compares the literary construction of Jewish and Christian identity in Acts of the Apostles with the material construction of various ethnic and civic identities by inhabitants of Roman-era cities. It argues that Acts represents Jewish identity as hybrid and multiple in order to situate the earliest Christians within the Greco-Roman city as members of an ideal Jewish community, which was both ancestral and accepted in the city.

Environmental Change, the Acts of John, and Shifting Cultic Landscapes in Late Antique Ephesus

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-215
Author(s):  
Travis Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The City

The city of Ephesus experienced a marked civic transformation in Late Antiquity. After having centered its settlements and economic fortunes on its proximity to a deep-water harbor for over a millenium, late antique Ephesus gradually shifted to an inland, fortified settlement on Ayasoluk Hill. While several factors undoubtedly informed this civic reorientation, the most commonly cited impetus for Ephesus’s late antique reorientation was the infilling of its deep-water harbor. This article argues that, in addition to this environmental cause, an important cultural shift correspondingly informed Ephesus’s late antique reconfigurations. Namely, the emergence and development of the tomb of John on Ayasoluk Hill, informed by an array of literary legends associating the apostle with the city, increasingly positioned this site as a cultic and economic focal point in Late Antiquity. This article argues that an important early strand in this cultural fabric was the Acts of John, a collection of apocryphal tales that narrate John’s exploits in Ephesus. Significantly, the Acts of John articulates a “counter-cartography” that disassociates Christian identity from prominent Ephesian cultic sites and accentuates the importance of spaces “outside the city” of Ephesus, including and especially the tomb of John. Through its own circulation as well as its influence on later Johannine narratives, the early Acts of John helped inform a shift in the cultural cartographies of Ephesus, where Greco-Roman polytheistic spaces were gradually devalued in favor of Christian sites, the tomb of John on Ayasoluk chief among them.

Introduction

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
David H. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many ◽  
Jews In France

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how the Jews of post-war France, Belgium, and the Netherlands reconstructed their communities in the period between 1945 and the early 1960s. During these years, the Jews of the three countries attempted not only to recover from the devastation of their recent past but also to lay the foundations for their future. International and American Jewish relief and political organizations played a seminal role in these efforts. As relief organizations began to realize that the majority of the surviving Jews in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands intended to remain where they were, they took an interest in helping to reshape communal life. The goal, as it emerged in discussions beginning in 1947, was to implement a ‘Jewish Marshall Plan’ that would enable viable settlements, such as those in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, to achieve stability and growth. Of the many external Jewish agencies that played a role in the efforts to reconstruct Jewish life in western Europe after 1945, three stand out: the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (known popularly in America as the JDC and in Europe as the Joint), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the World Jewish Congress (WJC).

scholarly journals City of Dog

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422091013
Author(s):  
Sam Ottewill-Soulsby
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
The City

To be fully human in the Greco-Roman world was to be a member of a city. This is unsurprising as cities were the building blocks of Greek and Roman culture and society. The urban landscape of post-Roman Western Europe looked dramatically different, with smaller, less economically diverse cities which played a smaller role in administration. Despite this, Greco-Roman ideas of humans as city-beings remained influential. This article explores this by investigating early medieval descriptions of cynocephali, which sought to determine whether the dog-headed men were human or not. Accounts of the cynocephali that presented them as human showed them living in urban settlements, whereas in reports of non-human cynocephali there are no cities. In exploring interactions between cynocephali and urban settings through ethnographic portrayals and hagiography, this article traces the lingering importance of the city for concepts of humanity.

Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Ancient Science ◽  
Classical World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The Many ◽  
Reading Key

The book offers 50 essays introducing, surveying, summarizing, and analyzing the many sciences of the classical world, that is, ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The opening section offers 10 essays on mathematics, astronomy, and medicine in other ancient cultures that may have either influenced the Greek world or else served as informative alternative accounts of ancient science. There is a brief section on Greek science of the 6th through 4th centuries bce, then a long section on Greek science of the Hellenistic era, the period in which ancient Greek science was most active. The Greco-Roman era, that is the early Roman Empire, is treated in a fourth section, and the final section addresses the sciences of Late Antiquity, or Early Byzantine, period, the 4th through 7th centuries ce. Throughout, the volume insists on the close integration of the ancient sciences with one another and on the consequent necessity to study them as a whole, not in isolation. Sciences elsewhere neglected or excluded are here included as first-class citizens, such as alchemy, astrology, paradoxography, pharmacy, and physiognomy. The essays invite readers to study these fascinating disciplines, and in many cases offer new interpretations and syntheses. Each essay includes a bibliography supporting its content and providing further reading. Key figures in the history of ancient science, Pythagoras with Plato, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy, each receive their own essay.

Sing, O Daughter(s) of Zion

Melania ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City ◽  
Ritual Practices

As the Christianization of civic life progressed rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, one of the most effective means by which Christianity came to inhabit the Empire’s cities was through the development of public liturgy.  Ritual practices that had once been held in private, often in the homes of individual Christians, now emerged into the public sphere, even in the streets of the city itself, with the establishment of stational and processional liturgies.  Memories of the apostles and saints were also inscribed onto the urban landscape, as shrines and pilgrimage presented another means of Christianizing this space.  Perhaps nowhere are all of these elements more on display than in Jerusalem during the lifetimes of Melania the Elder and Melania the Younger. This chapter explores the unprecedented knowledge of the songs that were sung in late ancient Christian worship, made known through the recently published Jerusalem Georgian Chantbook (iadgari/tropologion).

Rome: Empire, City, and Church

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-38
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Food Riots ◽  
New Form ◽  
The City ◽  
Imperial Reforms ◽  
Cooperative Venture

Chapter 2 describes the Roman Empire in the fourth and early fifth centuries and important emperors of the period. Among imperial reforms was the introduction of a new form of coinage, the gold solidus. The chapter introduces the emperor Honorius’ important general of the western imperial troops, Stilicho, and his wife, Serena, who will figure in Melania and Pinian’s attempts at divestment. It describes the life of cities in that era, especially the city of Rome, and the role of Christianization in changing its urban landscape. Rome’s inhabitants were dependent on food brought from elsewhere and distributed to them by a system called the annona; disruption of the supply could lead to food riots, one of which plays a role in the couple’s attempts to divest. The building of churches and martyr shrines in and around Rome, importantly spurred by the emperor Constantine and his family in the early fourth century, later often became a cooperative venture between bishops (especially Damasus) and local elites. The cult of Saint Lawrence plays a significant role in the life of Melania: at his shrine or church, Pinian was persuaded to adopt a life of ascetic renunciation with her.

scholarly journals Revitalising the Heart: Addressing the vacant CBD of Rotorua

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Zakary Dittmer
Keyword(s):  
Central City ◽  
Design Methods ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Commercial Activity ◽  
Suburban Sprawl ◽  
Central Business Districts ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City ◽  
High Building

<p>The issue of abandoned retail stores is one that is evident throughout the country and at different scales throughout the world. The appearance leaves main streets and central business districts’ looking tired and run down and does little to benefit the local economy. The rise and demand of international retail corporations in provincial cities, has transformed inner city infrastructure. This combined with suburban sprawl has resulted in high building vacancies and poor community moral.  Looking to new theories around Urban Interior Architecture, this research explores the boundary between internal and external design methods and pushes for a merger of the design disciplines to create a coherent spatial context. In order to repopulate the city, human focused design methods are explored to encourage social interactions, commercial activity and habitation of the many vacant sites.  Through the use of site-specific design, Rotorua will be investigated to understand the reasoning for the abandoned stores and will look to the urban context to identify potential remedies to solve the neglect. The identity of Rotorua its Placemaking and Cultural Heritage of its people will inform the design response to bring the community back into the heart of the central city.</p>

scholarly journals Revitalising the Heart: Addressing the vacant CBD of Rotorua

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Zakary Dittmer
Keyword(s):  
Central City ◽  
Design Methods ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Commercial Activity ◽  
Suburban Sprawl ◽  
Central Business Districts ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City ◽  
High Building

<p>The issue of abandoned retail stores is one that is evident throughout the country and at different scales throughout the world. The appearance leaves main streets and central business districts’ looking tired and run down and does little to benefit the local economy. The rise and demand of international retail corporations in provincial cities, has transformed inner city infrastructure. This combined with suburban sprawl has resulted in high building vacancies and poor community moral.  Looking to new theories around Urban Interior Architecture, this research explores the boundary between internal and external design methods and pushes for a merger of the design disciplines to create a coherent spatial context. In order to repopulate the city, human focused design methods are explored to encourage social interactions, commercial activity and habitation of the many vacant sites.  Through the use of site-specific design, Rotorua will be investigated to understand the reasoning for the abandoned stores and will look to the urban context to identify potential remedies to solve the neglect. The identity of Rotorua its Placemaking and Cultural Heritage of its people will inform the design response to bring the community back into the heart of the central city.</p>

scholarly journals The Interior World of Books, Browsing, and Collecting Inside the City

Interiority ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Alison B Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Material Object ◽  
First Person ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Interior Spaces ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
Book Collectors ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

A most desirable and collectable material object is the ubiquitous book. A bound composite of printed pages with words and images, it contains a microcosm of myriad narrative viewpoints, experiences, and imaginations. Metaphorically, a book compactly conceals a kind of interior space that protects the provocative lives of people, their character, ideas, and explorations, thus communicating different scales of interiority. Book collectors, called bibliophiles, revere and covet books as their object of desire. The bibliophile as seeker-collector-seller partakes of simple and complex transactions that essentially protect the lives of the books. This essay concentrates on two main book browsing locations within the urban context of Istanbul, Turkey, and the everyday interior spaces of the sahaf, the secondhand bookseller, who continues a tradition of selling new, pre-owned or secondhand ordinary or rare books. Its text moves between historic information and first-person narrative based on fieldwork to express and expand views of interiority theory, through reality and metaphor. The many scales of individual and collective impulses found inside the city streets and their inserted passage structures are exemplified by the significant simultaneity of the desire for the hand-held object and its hand-to-hand exchange.

scholarly journals Ontological Boundaries or Contextual Borders: The Urban Ethics of the Asylum

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 106-120
Author(s):  
Ebba Högström ◽  
Chris Philo
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Royal Hospital ◽  
Healthcare Facilities ◽  
Border Zones ◽  
The City

What and where is ‘the asylum’ today? To what extent do mental healthcare facilities stand out as clearly bounded entities in the modern urban landscape, perhaps reflecting their history as deliberately set-apart and then often stigmatised places? To what extent have they maybe become less obtrusive, more sunk into and interacting with their urban surroundings? What issues of urban ethics are at stake: concerning who/what is starkly demarcated in the city, perhaps subjected to exclusionary logics and pressures, or more sensitively integrated into the city, planned for inclusion and co-dwelling? These questions underscore our article, rooted in an in-depth case study of Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow, opened as a ‘lunatic asylum’ on its present, originally greenfield, site in the 1840s and remaining open today surrounded by dense urban expansion. Building from the ‘voices’ of patients, staff and others familiar with the site, we discuss the sense of this asylum as ‘other’ to, as ‘outside’ of, or merely ’beside’ the urban fabric. Drawing from concepts of ‘orientations’ (Ahmed, 2006), sites as spatial constructions (Burns &amp; Kahn, 2005), the power of borders and boundaries (Haselsberger, 2014; Sennett, 2018), issues of site, stigma and related urban ethical matters will be foregrounded. Where are the boundaries that divide the hospital campus from the urban context? What are the material signifiers, the cultural associations or the emotional attachments that continue to set the boundaries? Or, in practice, do boundaries melt into messier, overlapping, intersecting border zones, textured by diverse, sometimes contradictory, bordering practices? And, if so, what are the implications?

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