Religious Identity in Athenian Forensic Oratory: Public Cases of Eisangelia Trials

Attic orators skillfully deployed reference to ancestral cults, sacred laws, traditional rites and other types of religious actions to construct religious identity as a means of persuasion. The present chapter explores the use of a variety of forms of religious argumentation and addresses issues of religious identity in public cases of eisangelia. Emphasis is placed on the question of how orators reconstruct ideal forms of religious identity in their arguments; particularly, the main interest of this chapter lies in the techniques by which orators use their religious argumentation to construct pictures of religious identity, both collective and individual, as well as their own identity.

Rituele normen

This article is an introduction to a group of Ancient Greek inscriptions that may be called ‘ritual norms’ (also known as leges sacrae, ‘sacred laws’). These are epigraphical documents concerning rituals that are performed in the context of specific cults, and which are of a prescriptive character. The article discusses three key questions. In the first part of the article I aim to answer a basic question: what are ritual norms? The second question concerns the function of ritual norms. The third part of the article is about the way in which ritual norms acquire authority. How were they considered legitimate and enforceable? A separate section concerning authority is reserved for the use of tradition (anchoring and anchoring innovation) in this genre.

The Basic Principles for Combating Injustice in the Islamic State

This chapter examines the solutions in Islamic thought that can curb state tyranny, for the benefit of freedom, justice, and the human rights of citizens. It shows that Islam has the power to absorb the democratic process and repurpose it so it becomes the rule of the people enlightened by the divine law. It has the power especially to nudge the Islamists in a clearly democratic direction. In the end, however, the chapter argues that freedom and human rights in Islam are not slogans like political lobbying or power equations; they are creeds and religious rituals that are taught to young Muslims. No political party or state enacts them; neither does a particular class or people in order to bolster their privileges. Rather, they are mandatory, sacred laws that that must be put into practice as duties and not simply as rights.

Two Notes on the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms

Launched in 2017, the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms provides an open-access commentary on selected ancient Greek inscriptions which define parameters of ritual practice. These short notes address two issues superficially concerning the name of the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms, but more deeply engaging with what one means by the notion of 'ritual norm' and what one implies in considering such norms 'Greek'. A term like 'cult regulation' might conveniently be used to replace the misnomer 'sacred law', but this encompasses a similarly broad and miscellaneous group of inscriptions. By contrast, the category of 'ritual norm' aims to reframe the discussion by focussing on normativity – paradigms and exceptions – with regard to two key rituals, sacrifice and purification. It thus only partly reprises the corpus of 'sacred laws', while also including other inscriptions or excerpts from them. Calling such norms 'Greek' is not intended as an 'ethnic' designation of the rituals they describe but rather as a reference to the language of the inscriptions. The label 'Greek ritual norms' is thus programmatic, allowing for a wider investigation of the normative characteristics of rituals within the religious 'middle grounds' of the ancient Greek world.

Léxico, usos y espacios de las imágenes de culto en las leyes sagradas griegas = Lexicon, uses and spaces of the cult images in the Greek sacred laws

Resumen: El léxico griego ofrece una enorme variedad de conceptos para definir el uso y la presencia de las imágenes en el contexto religioso y ritual. Tomando como campo de estudio las leyes sagradas griegas y sus corpora epigráfica, nos proponemos en este trabajo definir la presencia de άγαλμα y εἰκών en estas “fuentes directas”, y los usos más significativos de los colores y las vestimentas de los actores rituales en el espacio de estas imágenes.Abstract: The Greek lexicon offers a huge variety of concepts to define the use and presence of images in the religious and ritual context. Taking as a field of study the sacred Greek laws and their epigraphic corpora, we propose in this article to define the presence of άγαλμα and εἰκών in these “direct sources”, and the most significant uses of the colors and costumes of the ritual actors in the space of these images.Palabras clave: Leyes sagradas, άγαλμα, εἰκών, imágenes, color, vestimenta, Cos. Key words: Sacred laws, άγαλμα, εἰκών, images, color, costumes, Cos.

The Casuistic Priestly Law in Ancient Mediterranean Context: The History of the Genre and itsSitz im Leben

While numerous scholars have compared the Priestly regulations in the Pentateuch to ancient Near Eastern “ritual texts,” the Priestly legal material more generally corresponds in form and style to ancient Near Eastern casuistic law collections than to descriptive or prescriptive “ritual texts.” At the same time, ancient Near Eastern law collections do not contain any ritual or religious ordinances, relating instead primarily to civil and financial affairs or social law and order. This paper examines the formal, substantive, and generic affinities between the Priestly laws and the casuistic Greek “Sacred Laws” inscribed on stone and other materials throughout the eastern Mediterranean basin from the sixth century BCE onwards. Analysis of related Northwest-Semitic and Punic texts, as well as potential precedents from the Hittite world, further contributes to our understanding of theSitz im Lebenof the casuistic Priestly law.