Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Georgia Frank ◽  
Susan R. Holman ◽  
Andrew S. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Many

This essay surveys the many ways that embodiment shaped religious identity in late antiquity, drawing on the metaphor of garb: transformative, expressive, transcendent, interpretive and interpreted. This introductory chapter also provides a summary and overview of the essays in the book.

Why Dreams Mattered in Late Antiquity

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Bronwen Neil
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Dream Vision ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Many ◽  
Key Terms

The introductory chapter outlines the standard methods of approach that have been adopted in post-Foucauldian scholarship on dreams and their cultural importance. It reviews the history of recent scholarship on dreams and the various methods of approach to modern and pre-modern dreaming, including the gender studies perspective adopted here. It defines key terms such as ‘dream-vision’ and ‘divination’, and introduces the main themes of the chapters to follow. The study of the three monotheistic traditions—rabbinic Judaism, Byzantine Christianity, and early Islam—together in this volume shows the many ways in which dreams and spiritual authority were inextricably linked across the various cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Ancient religious approaches to dreams are contrasted with modern psychoanalytic and social psychology approaches. The book adopts an ‘ecumenic perspective’ on dream interpretation, treating it as a shared ideology of pagans and monotheists in the East and West. An ecumenic perspective focuses on the common idea that the prophetic dream carried a message from the realm of the divine, rather than focusing on what prophetic dreams can tell us about the dreamer’s subconscious mind. The chapter offers a summary of the scope of the study and of the contents of the remaining six chapters.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Caimari
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Neighborhood Associations ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Many

This introductory chapter begins with the author's account of the origins of the present volume, which can be traced back to her interest in a late nineteenth-century set of concepts, images, and metaphors that grew up around the figure of the modern criminal. It then discusses the population growth in Buenos Aires, which jumped from about 1.5 to 2.5 million in the two decades between the world wars and the corresponding urban expansion. This sets the stage for a description of the book's purpose, namely to explore the many dimensions of porteño life in the early decades of the twentieth century: its vital network of neighborhood associations, its literacy campaigns, its grassroots politics, its many reformist projects, and so forth.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
P. J. E. Peebles
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
First Century ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Big Science ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
The Many ◽  
Gathering Data

This introductory chapter provides an overview of cosmology. The starting assumption for cosmology, as in all branches of natural science, is that nature operates by kinds of logic and rules that one can discover by careful examination of what is observed, informed by past experience of what has worked. But despite the many demonstrations of its power, physics, along with all the rest of natural science, is incomplete. Research in cosmology in the twentieth century usually was done in small groups, often an individual working alone or maybe with a colleague or a student or two. In the twenty-first century, ongoing research in cosmology grew richer and called for larger groups to develop special-purpose equipment for data acquisition, which in turn called for groups of comparable size to reduce the data and interpret it. Big Science has become important to this subject: One has to get used to gathering data in vast amounts, analyzing these data, and employing massive numerical simulations that help bridge the gap between theory and observation. This book provides an account of how cosmology grew, presenting histories of six lines of research that were developing more or less separately.

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 The Religion of Idumea and Its Relationship to Early Judaism

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 487
Author(s):  
Yigal Levin
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many

For several hundred years, from the late Iron Age to the end of the 2nd century BCE, the southern neighbor of Judea was “Idumea”, populated by descendants of Edomites, together with Qedarite and other Arabs and a mix of additional ethnicities. This paper examines the known data on the identity, especially religious identity, of these Idumeans, using a wide range of written sources and archaeological data. Within the Bible, “Edom” is presented as Israel’s twin and its harshest enemy, but there are hints that the Edomites worshipped the God of Israel. While the origins of the “Edomite deity” Qaus remain obscure, as does the process of their migration into southern Judah, the many inscriptions from the Persian period show that Qaus became the most widely worshipped deity in the area, even if other gods, including Yahweh, were also recognized. The Hellenistic period brought heightened Greek and Phoenician influence, but also the stabilization of “Idumea” as an administrative/ethnic unit. Some of the practices of this period, such as male circumcision, show an affinity to the Judaism of the time. This paper also discusses the outcome of the Hasmonean conquest of Idumea and the incorporation of its inhabitants into the Jewish nation.

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