scholarly journals MONOTHEISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY. THEOS HYPSISTOS AND THE ORACLE OF APOLLO OF CLAROS

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Evgeny Afonasin
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Philosophical Ontology

Monotheism in Late Antiquity is a multidimensional topic. The article deals with only one aspect of the formation of monotheistic tendencies in Greco-Roman religious conceptions, both traditional pagan and Judeo-Christian, including "Judaizing" paganism and Gnosticism. Both folk cults (an epigraphically attested cult of the Theos Hypsistos) and the new monotheistic religion of the revived oracles (the inscription from Oenoanda and the Tübingen Theosophy 13) are considered. We also see how the eschatological and soteriological motifs characteristic of monotheistic religions are revealed in the context of a kind of philosophical ontology.

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.

Reviving the Memory of the Apostles: Apocryphal Tradition and Travel Literature in Late Antiquity

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Travel Literature ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Greco Roman

In this essay I aim to consider the association of place with apostolic personae. The imaginative worlds generated between the time of the apostles in the first century and the rise of the medieval Christian world in the seventh and eighth centuries can be seen as an integral part of what we now label ‘late antiquity’. The period of late antiquity, roughly from 300 to 600 AD (from Constantine to Mohammed), is substantively a period of consolidation and reorientation: knowledge from the ancient Greco-Roman civilizations was queried, repackaged, and disseminated; classical literature was copied, commented upon, and imitated; Roman law was collected, rearranged, and declared authoritative. What has been less studied in this period is the reception of the apostolic world as a realm of knowledge in its own right.

“A Heart of Many Chambers”: The Theological Hermeneutics of Legal Multivocality

2015 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven D. Fraade
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Theological Hermeneutics ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
The One

Given the multiplicity of legal interpretations and opinions, the question of the place of legal debate within early rabbinic literature of late antiquity—both as textual practice and as hermeneutical and legal theory—has occupied a particularly busy space within recent scholarship. This question centers on several issues of broad significance for the history of rabbinic Judaism and its literature: Does this phenomenon (if we can speak of it in the singular) represent a defining characteristic of rabbinic culture overall, or rather an aspect better attributed to specific times, places, and rabbinic “schools”? Did it emerge and develop internally within rabbinic Judaism, or is it, on the one hand, the continuation of antecedents in the pre-rabbinic, late Second Temple period, or, on the other hand, the result of external influences or pressures (e.g., Greco-Roman or early Christian) of a later time? Does such legal multivocality reflect the actual nature of either/both rabbinic jurisprudence or/and pedagogy, or the editorial choices of the later anonymous redactors of the composite and anthological texts that have come down to us (or, as I shall demonstrate, both)? Finally, what are its hermeneutical and theological underpinnings (as well as sociopolitical ramifications)? While these four questions will frame what follows, it is the latter two that will particularly demand our attention. They will be addressed, whether explicitly or implicitly, in several comparative textual analyses that will constitute the body of this article.

Crucifixion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Granger Cook ◽  
David W. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Multidisciplinary Study ◽  
The New Testament

Crucifixion and related bodily suspension penalties were widely employed in Antiquity for the punishment of criminals and in times of war. Jesus of Nazareth is the most famous victim of the cross, and many scholars of crucifixion approach the topic with interest in Jesus’ death; however, scholarship on crucifixion also provides insights into (among other fields) ancient warfare, criminal law, political history, and cultural imagery. Invariably, such a subject requires multidisciplinary study. Current areas of discussion include the definition of crucifixion itself, especially in light of the range of use of ancient terminology. Further debates concern the origins of the punishment, the cessation of its practice (at least in the West), the precise means of death, and whether certain cultures (e.g., Second Temple Judaism) endorsed the penalty. A large portion of this article examines the many issues related to crucifixion as a form of execution in Antiquity. The topic of crucifixion in the ancient world includes a variety of issues: Near Eastern suspensions, Greek and Roman extreme penalties and crucifixion, the practice of penal suspension and crucifixion in Second Temple Judaism, the terminology for crucifixion and suspension, crucifixion in the New Testament, the practice of crucifixion in Late Antiquity, crucifixion and law in the ancient world, the question of crucifixion and martyrdom, Greco-Roman imagery of crucifixion and related punishments, Christian iconography of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the later history of the punishment. The last sections of this article then turn to understandings of Jesus’ crucifixion in the New Testament and other early Christian literature.

Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman Literature

2019 ◽  
pp. 670-683
Author(s):  
Josephine Crawley Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
The Way

The picture painted of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Greco-Roman literature is a paradoxical one. Distinct themes continue to characterize them from the archaic period to late antiquity, but their definition as a distinct group of people remains vague throughout. Military conflict with Greeks and Romans means that they are presented more positively by intellectuals than politicians, and more positively in the east than the west, but identifications with them tell the most interesting stories. In the end, the very notion of “Phoenician” is slippery, as sources from Homer to Augustine show us. The continuities in the way that the Phoenicians are depicted reinforce the porous nature of their definition as a group, from their identifications with the Greeks and then Romans themselves, to their lasting association with the sea.

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.

“Is This Like the Nile that Riseth Up?”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Littman ◽  
Jay E. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Classical Archaeology ◽  
Greco Roman

This chapter uses data from Tell Timai, Egypt to examine political dymanics in a Greco-Roman Egyptian city (Thmuis) in Late Antiquity, focusing on the Greek period of rule in Egypt and the influence of Hellenism from Alexander’s conquest of Egypt (332 B.C.E.) to the death of Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic pharaoh (30 B.C.E.). The succeeding Ptolemaic dynasty strove to establish legitimacy through what Hellenization of the Egyptians, or Egyptization of the Greeks, generating new hybrid icons and deities. Yet as Ptolemy V took the throne, rebellion consumed Egypt. This Classical archaeology study offers insights into the dynamic processes of colonization and imperialism in a realm that was a crucible for Western ideology. Excavation data from north Timai reveal the violence of Hellenistic

History, Faith, Fortuna

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

Chronologically and conceptually, this chapter links classical antiquity to the middle ages. Most of its focus is on the second to sixth centuries, and especially the overlap of ‘late antiquity’ and the ‘patristic era’, or the era of the church fathers. It addresses historical thinking in Christianity in the context of Christianity’s relationship to Greco-Roman and Jewish influences. It is a story of intellectual novelty, and of imposition, but just as much it is a tale of syncretism. Of the rationales for History identified in the introduction, the two figuring largest in this chapter are History as Speculative Philosophy and History as Identity, the latter especially in its genealogical form. Along the way in the chapter, attention is devoted to the relationship between grand conceptualizations of the overall historical process and the study of human choice and agency. That discussion illustrates similarities as well as contrasts in the way causal explanations can operate in disparate sorts of historical account, whether or not divine or quasi-divine forces are involved. The point looking forward is that at certain levels secular and non-secular Histories need not conflict.

The late Greco-Roman and Byzantine contribution towards the evolution of laboratory examinations of bodily excrement. Part 2: sputum, vomit, blood, sweat, autopsies

2005 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanasios A. Diamandopoulos ◽  
Pavlos C. Goudas
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
Medical Laboratory ◽  
Pathophysiological Mechanism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Macroscopic Findings ◽  
Laboratory Examinations ◽  
Technological Means ◽  
Materials Used

AbstractAlthough the establishment of medical laboratory institutions was a continuous process that matured only after the 16th century, several attempts had already been made to attain a diagnosis by investigating bodily excrement. In the first part of our work, published in a previous issue of this journal, we presented data on urine, sperm, menses and stools. In this paper we present data on sputum, vomit, blood, sweat, and autopsies, thus completing the list of human materials used for laboratory examinations. All the data used are extracted from codices of Late Antiquity and Byzantium and translated by us. We did not study medical texts from the other great ancestors of Western medicine, namely Arabic and Jewish writings. From the texts cited, it is apparent that the lack of technological means was no obstacle for the doctor to create an “examinational” mind, i.e., to try to correlate the macroscopic findings in the excrement with the pathophysiological mechanism that induced them, solely with the use of the senses. This not only applies to the examination of urine, as is commonly assumed, but also to many other excrements of the upper and lower orifices of the body, as well as the human body as a whole.

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