The World of Ancient Greco­Roman Magic

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The World ◽  
Ritual Activity

This chapter discusses the world of ancient Greco-Roman magic. When approaching the evidence from the ancient Greco-Roman world for ritualized action, one must analyze not only what kind of evidence one is examining but also what sort of action is depicted in the evidence. One must also analyze who is performing it and for whom, where and when it is performed, why it is being performed, and how the performance works. In this study, the chapters are organized primarily by what sort of practice is involved, but the analysis probes each of the other factors as well to determine when a ritualized action may be labeled “magic.” The survey of different varieties within the discourse of magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world provides one with a better sense of the categories and criteria by which the Greeks and Romans evaluated normative and non-normative ritual activity in the ancient world.

Ritualistic Formulae In Greek Dramatic Texts

1982 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-234
Author(s):  
Howard Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman

Ritualistic formulae and acts pervade the political, legal, societal and religious life of the ancient world. In many instances there are striking similarities between the formulae of the Greco-Roman world and those of the Near East. Often illumination exists from one to the other. Here I wish to notice a few passages in Greek drama where I think such illumination is possible.

New Testament

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wheeler-Reed
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Sexual Intercourse ◽  
New Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Pastoral Epistles ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Thessalonians 1 ◽  
The New Testament

This chapter maintains that two ideologies concerning marriage and sex pervade the New Testament writings. One ideology codifies a narrative that argues against marriage, and perhaps, sexual intercourse, and the other retains the basic cultural values of the upper classes of the Greco-Roman world. These two ideologies are termed “profamily” and “antifamily.” The chapter proceeds in a chronological fashion starting with 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Mark. It concludes by examining Matthew, Luke, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Acts of Paul and Thecla.

No Patriotic Fervor for Pella: Aelius Aristides and the Presentation of the Macedonians in the Second Sophistic

Mnemosyne ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sulochana Ruth Asirvatham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

AbstractThis paper examines four speeches by Aelius Aristides that contrast the image of Macedonian history negatively with Greek past and Roman present. Aristides' literary milieu of the 'Second Sophistic' is characterized by Greek self-consciousness and nostalgia in the Roman Empire. While writers like Plutarch and Arrian mythologize the figure of Alexander as a second Achilles and a philosopher-of-war as a means of offering subtle proof of 'Hellenic' primacy over the Romans, Aristides chooses to focus on the more negative aspects of the Macedonian legacy. To the Thebans I and II elaborately update the 'barbaric' image of Philip II found in Demosthenes, making him parallel not only, perhaps, to the Persian enemy of old but also to Rome's contemporary Parthian enemy. The Panathenaic Oration and To Rome, on the other hand, idealize the world of the present, where Athens reigns supreme in culture, Rome in conquest. Aristides' stance suggests that, despite the attractions of the 'Hellenic' Alexander, pride in Greece does not necessarily have to include Macedonian history. What is more important is that writers have some means of Hellenizing Rome, whether by idealizing a 'Greco-Roman' Alexander, or by seeing Rome as the ultimate polis.

scholarly journals The Catalogs of Vices and Virtues in the Pauline Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
José David Padilla
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Virtuous Life

It was common to find in the writings of the different Greco-Roman philosophical schools of the first century certain catalogs of two or more vices and virtues. They were used to teach that a virtuous life ensured well-being and health while encouraging their disciples to abandon their vicious life leading to ruin. These catalogs influenced the composition of moral catalogs in the New Testament, especially in the letters written or attributed to Paul. Their catalogs were used as a rhetorical tool where the moral teachings of Christianity were developed and taught. According to the divine plan in Christ Jesus, good acts or virtues were considered divinely inspired because they helped the growth of the human person. On the other hand, bad actions or vices were seen as unworthy or sinful because they go against God’s plan and as a sign of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Thus, the catalogs of vices and virtues invited conversion and invited us to wait for the day when God will make all evil and corruption disappear from the world when love (agape), the Christian virtue per excellence, would be the norm for all.

scholarly journals Responsibility, God and society: The cry of the Other in the sacred texts as a challenge towards responsible global citizenship

2009 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann-Albrecht Meylahn
Keyword(s):  
Global Citizenship ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
The World ◽  
Cosmopolitan Citizenship ◽  
Global World

The article seeks to respond to the question: What role can the sacred texts play in the construction of a Christian identity that is responsible to the Other in a pluralistic global world? The sacred texts of the Judaic-Christian tradition offer not only an understanding of the wholly otherness of God, but also form the basis of our understanding and perception of humanity (anthropology), the world and ourselves (personhood/identity). This understanding is constructed in the context of responding to the call of the wholly Other and the others. Identities are traditionally constructed through the identification and exclusion of differences (otherness), thus leading to an ethic of exclusion and responsibility only to oneself/ourselves. Yet these identity-forming texts harbour a persistent otherness, which challenges these traditional identities by interrupting them with a call to responsibility toward the other. The otherness harboured in these texts takes various forms, namely: The otherness of the ancient world to our world, the otherness of the transcendental Other, and the otherness of the text itself, as there is always a différance that has not yet been heard. These various forms of otherness, of our identity-forming texts, deconstruct our identity constructions, thus calling us to a continuous responsibility towards the other. This call could form the basis of a Christian identity and ethic of global cosmopolitan citizenship that is always responding to the eschatological interruption by the other, who is not yet present or who has not been offered presence.

Introduction. La technê et la connaissance des causes : Aristote et le modèle de la médecine

Elenchos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Cristina Viano
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Four Causes

Abstract The theme of the specificity of medical causes in the Greco-Roman world is part of a wider research project on the notion of causality, the starting point of which is Aristotle and his seminal theorisation of the four causes. It therefore seemed useful to introduce this collection with a synthetic presentation of the Aristotelian conception of medicine, which is characterised by the knowledge of causes and represents a paradigm for the other arts and practical knowledge.

Healing and Protective Magic: Defense against the Dark Arts

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-148
Author(s):  
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Potential Harm ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Special Knowledge ◽  
Everyday Problems ◽  
Extraordinary Means

This chapter looks at the tradition of protective and healing magic in the Greco-Roman world. While normal strategies of defense and protection against one's enemies and the ordinary perils of life in the ancient world could be employed in everyday problems, for extraordinary crises, extraordinary means with extraordinary efficacy were needed. Such means were needed not only to ward off potential harm but also to heal the damage already done. Special knowledge might be required to determine the necessary remedy for an unusual or serious problem, whether that knowledge was transmitted in the traditional lore about various plants and minerals or in systematic treatises that compiled the arcane lore for scholarly minded philosophers and doctors. Either the traditional lore or the occult knowledge might be labeled as “magic.” Protective and curative magic channeled divine power in special ways to achieve its extraordinary effects, and so, like other forms of magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world, it was at times viewed askance as superstition and at other times eagerly sought as the only solution to otherwise insuperable problems.

The idea of becoming an individual in the context of early Christianity

1997 ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Pavlo Pavlenko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Parts

The last centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, the first centuries after that, were enveloped in the history of mankind as a period of the total crisis and the decline of the Greco-Roman civilization, a crisis that covered virtually all spheres of the social life of the Roman world and which, as ever before, experienced almost every one, whether he is a slave or a free citizen, a small merchant or a big slave or an aristocrat. As a reaction to the crisis, in various parts of the empire the civil wars and the slavery uprising erupt in different parts of the empire. Under such conditions of life, the world around itself no longer seemed to man to be self-sufficient, harmonious, stable, "good" and warded by a cohort of traditional deities. Yes, and the gods themselves were now turned out to be incapable, unable to change the unceasing flow of fatal doom.

Magic and maleficia in the Ancient World: The case of Roman Sardinia

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 293-302
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Cultures

Abstract This paper will focus on magic rituals aimed at causing maleficia in a specific area: Sardinia. Although difficult to retrace, there is some evidence, on the island, of the existence of forms of both necromancy and oracular divination that refer, with their own forms, to the culture spread in the Roman empire. Among the most significant documents, there are the tabellae defixionum, some epigraphic texts widely documented in the Roman world, and even earlier in the Punic world. The evidence, in this case, is quite interesting, also, because it reflects the combination of different cultures in Sardinia, whose results are “original”, also in the world of magic.

Mr. Chamberlain's Foreign Policy

1939 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-443
Author(s):  
Christopher Hollis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Culture ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

WESTERN Europe—what we may call the Roman world—is an wessential unit. The nations that go to make it up share a common culture. They have no cause either to despise or to quarrel with other nations. Yet their first business is to preserve unity among themselves and to show a common front to the rest of the world. In unity lies their security, whereas, if they quarrel among themselves, the true victory goes neither to the one group nor to the other of quarrelling Europeans but to the tertius gaudens outside Europe who profits from their divisions.

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