In this volume, Anne-Marie Luijendijk presents for the first time a new early Christian divinatory text, preserved in a fifth-or sixth-century Coptic miniature codex, entitled The Gospel of the Lots of Mary, and places it within the context of practices of and debates about divination in the ancient Mediterranean world. Casting lots to obtain answers was applied in decision-making on all levels of ancient society. As a religious practice, lot divination was also highly contested, as access to these practices and thus to the divine meant control of powers, religiously and socially. The text,...

The preferred moral curriculum of a Roman education abounded with exemplary stories of Rome's native heroes. To inculcate conceptions of virtuous leadership, politicians and populace alike deployed exempla as rhetorical vehicles of the mos maiorum (way of the ancestors). James Petitfils explores Jewish and Christian participation in this widespread pedagogical practice. After surveying Roman discourse on exemplary leadership, the author consults several texts, written in significantly Romanized environments, celebrating Jewish or Christian ancestral leaders (Josephus' Antiquities 2-4, Philo's...

William Furley and Victor Gysembergh bring together in a new edition the papyrus fragments of ancient Greek manuals of extispicy, that is, the inspection of animal entrails to predict the future. From art and literature we already know that the practice was important throughout the historical period in military and civic life, representing a widespread and respected way of taking the omens before embarking on any venture. Now, for the first time, the papyrological texts relating to this branch of the ancient mantic art have been collected, reedited and interpreted. The results show a refined...

Courtney J. P. Friesen explores shifting boundaries of ancient religions by way of the reception of a popular tragedy, Euripides' Bacchae. As a play staging political crises provoked by the arrival of the "foreign" god Dionysus and his ecstatic cult, audiences and readers found resonances with their own cultural moments. This dramatic deity became emblematic of exuberant and liberating spirituality and, at the same time, a symbol of imperial conquest. Thus, readings of the Bacchae frequently foreground conflicts between religious autonomy and political authority, and between ethnic diversity...

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott examine the provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices and defend the view that they were produced and read by Christian monks of Upper Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries. Eschewing the modern classification of these texts as "Gnostic," the authors analyze the codices in the context of the diverse monastic culture of late antique Egypt, with special attention to monasticism in the Thebaid and controversies over extra-canonical books and the theological legacy of Origen. The question of ownership is examined by means of a detailed study of the Nag Hammadi...

Manolis Papoutsakis explores the conception of -vicarious kingship,- a theme in Syriac political theology in Late Antiquity. Although the idea that the ruler on earth serves as the vicegerent of God in heaven is not an invention of Syriac writers, it appears that, within the Christian tradition, Syriac poets and homilists between the fourth and sixth centuries -the period covered in this monograph- are the first to introduce -vicarious kingship- into a carefully thought-out and consistent eschatological pattern. These learned intellectuals elaborate on the imperial office by commenting on,...