E.A. Judge's collection of Augustan and New Testament essays explores the intersection of the social practices of the first Christians in the eastern Mediterranean basin with the Roman world. In the first part of the collection, Judge examines the Augustan principate against the competitive culture of the republican noble houses. Because of the unparalleled ascendancy of the Julian house, Augustus progressively acquired an eschatological aura as a ruler. The imperial propaganda emphasized more his status than his official rank and presented him as the culmination of the famous republican...

James A. Kelhoffer examines an often overlooked aspect of New Testament constructions of legitimacy, namely the value of Christians' withstanding persecution as a means of corroborating their religious identity as Christ's followers. The introductory chapter defines the problem in interaction with sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital. Chapters 2-10 examine the depictions of persecuted Christians in the Pauline letters, First Peter, Hebrews, Revelation, the NT Gospels, and Acts. These exegetical analyses support the conclusion that assertions of standing, authority, and...

The volume brings together essays that explore the topic of memory and remembrance in the ancient world, taking into account the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Kings), ancient Judaism (1 and 2 Maccabees, Psalms of Solomon, Dead Sea Scrolls), the classical world, the New Testament (Jesus, Synoptic Gospels and Acts, Gospel of John, Pauline letters) and Early Christianity (Petrine tradition). The essays, which focus on a wide range of sources from antiquity, open up new questions about the social and religious function of memory. As a collection, they demonstrate how much social memory...

George L. Parsenios explores the legal character of the Gospel of John in the light of classical literature, especially Greek drama. Johannine interpreters have explored with increasing interest both the legal quality and the dramatic quality of the Fourth Gospel, but often do not connect these two ways of reading John. Some interpreters even assume that the one approach excludes the other, and that John is either legal or dramatic, but not both. Legal rhetoric and tragic drama, however, were joined throughout antiquity in a complex pattern of mutual influence. To connect John to drama,...

What is a Galilean? What were the criteria of defining a person as a Galilean - archaeologically or with respect to literary sources such as Josephus or the rabbis? What role did religion play in the process of identity formation? Twenty-two articles based on papers read at conferences at Cambridge, Wuppertal and Yale by experts from 7 countries shed light on a complex region, the pivotal geographic and cultural context of both earliest Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. In these papers, ancient Galilee emerges as a dynamic region of continuous change, in which religion, 'ethnicity', and...

How did the visual, the oral, and the written interrelate in antiquity? The essays in this collection address the competing and complementary roles of visual media, forms of memory, oral performance, and literacy and popular culture in the ancient Mediterranean world. Incorporating both customary and innovative perspectives, the essays advance the frontiers of our understanding of the nature of ancient texts as regards audibility and performance, the vital importance of the visual in the comprehension of texts, and basic concepts of communication, particularly the need to account for...

Following a scholarly conference given in honor of Adela Yarbro Collins, this collection of essays offers focused studies on the wide range of ways that women and gender contribute to the religious landscape of the ancient world. Experts in Greek and Roman religions, Early Christianity, Ancient Judaism, and Ancient Christianity engage in literary, social, historical, and cultural analysis of various ancient texts, inscriptions, social phenomena, and cultic activity. These studies continue the welcomed trend in scholarship that expands the social location of women in ancient Mediterranean...

The study of Mark and Matthew from a comparative perspective has a long history. Ever since the theory of Markan priority became firmly established in the 19th century however, many studies, especially commentaries on either Mark or Matthew, make observations related primarily to one of the Gospels only. Thus the most frequent result of studying Mark and Matthew is that one Gospel is overshadowed by the other. This collection of papers employs a sustained multiperspectival comparative approach which contributes simultaneously to the synoptic problem discourse and sheds light on the individual...

Even though the canonical Jesus' infancy stories have always provoked great interest in popular culture and in the arts, they have been neglected in research during the last decades due to the relatively late date of their redaction. Since the monograph by Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, the researchers working on this topic have not attempted to consider its historical impact. In this volume, an international team of scholars proposes firstly a reconsideration of the historical background of these stories in terms of early Jewish and Christian identity quests. Secondly, they deal...