Prophets And Emperors

Author : David Stone Potter
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Prophets and Emperors written by David Stone Potter and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the practical modern mind, the idea of divine prophecy is more ludicrous than sublime. Yet to our cultural forebears in ancient Greece and Rome, prophecy was anything but marginal; it was in fact the basic medium for recalling significant past events and expressing hopes for the future, and it offered assurance that divinities truly cared about mere mortals. Prophecy also served political ends, and it was often invoked to support or condemn an emperor's actions. In Prophets and Emperors, David Potter shows us how prophecy worked, how it could empower, and how the diverse inhabitants of the Roman Empire used it to make sense of their world. This is a fascinating account of prophecy as a social, religious, and political phenomenon. The various systems of prophecy--including sacred books, oracles, astrological readings, interpretation of dreams, the sayings of holy men and women--come into sharp relief. Potter explores the use of prophecy as a nieans of historical analysis and political communication, and he describes it in the context of the ancient city. Finally, he traces the reformation of the prophetic tradition under the influence of Christianity in the fourth century. Drawing on diverse evidence--from inscriptions and ancient prophetic books to Greek and Roman historians and the Bible--Potter has produced a study that will engage anyone interested in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean and in the history and politics of the Roman Empire.

Author : David Potter
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780674437050
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Prophets and Emperors written by David Potter and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the practical modern mind, the idea of divine prophecy is more ludicrous than sublime. Yet to our cultural forebears in ancient Greece and Rome, prophecy was anything but marginal; it was in fact the basic medium for recalling significant past events and expressing hopes for the future, and it offered assurance that divinities truly cared about mere mortals. Prophecy also served political ends, and it was often invoked to support or condemn an emperor's actions. In Prophets and Emperors, David Potter shows us how prophecy worked, how it could empower, and how the diverse inhabitants of the Roman Empire used it to make sense of their world. This is a fascinating account of prophecy as a social, religious, and political phenomenon. The various systems of prophecy--including sacred books, oracles, astrological readings, interpretation of dreams, the sayings of holy men and women--come into sharp relief. Potter explores the use of prophecy as a nieans of historical analysis and political communication, and he describes it in the context of the ancient city. Finally, he traces the reformation of the prophetic tradition under the influence of Christianity in the fourth century. Drawing on diverse evidence--from inscriptions and ancient prophetic books to Greek and Roman historians and the Bible--Potter has produced a study that will engage anyone interested in the religions of the ancient Mediterranean and in the history and politics of the Roman Empire.

Author : Leslie Kelly
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351243519
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Prophets, Prophecy, and Oracles in the Roman Empire written by Leslie Kelly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-06 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys the uses and function of prophecy, prophets, and oracles among Jews, Christians, and pagans in the first three centuries of the Roman Empire and explores how prophecy and prophetic texts functioned as a common language that enabled religious discourse to develop between these groups. It shows that each of these cultures believed that it was in prophetic texts and prophetic utterances that they could find the surest proof of their religious beliefs and a strong confirmation of their group identity.

Author : Panayiotis Christoforou
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009362518
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imagining the Roman Emperor written by Panayiotis Christoforou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was the Roman emperor viewed by his subjects? How strongly did their perception of his role shape his behaviour? Adopting a fresh approach, Panayiotis Christoforou focuses on the emperor from the perspective of his subjects across the Roman Empire. Stress lies on the imagination: the emperor was who he seemed, or was imagined, to be. Through various vignettes employing a wide range of sources, he analyses the emperor through the concerns and expectations of his subjects, which range from intercessory justice to fears of the monstrosities associated with absolute power. The book posits that mythical and fictional stories about the Roman emperor form the substance of what people thought about him, which underlines their importance for the historical and political discourse that formed around him as a figure. The emperor emerges as an ambiguous figure. Loved and hated, feared and revered, he was an object of contradiction and curiosity.

Author : Richard Valantasis
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0567498735
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The New Q written by Richard Valantasis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-11-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American and European public has a voracious appetite for more information about Jesus and the formation of early Christianity. The best-selling books on the subject by Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Meyer, and Luke Timothy Johnson, among many others, attest to this hunger. But each of these scholars presents his own reading of the historical information, usually beginning with the earliest known Jesus-related material, Jesus' sayings, and leads the public into a particular understanding of Jesus and the early Jesus movements. The New Q will provide the general public with the original source through a fresh translation of the early Sayings Gospel known as Q. This book will guide people through their reading of the texts themselves so that readers will be able to judge the validity of other scholars' reconstructions. The New Q is the companion volume necessary to understand the current writing on the historical Jesus and the history of earliest Christianity. Valantasis provides a new translation of the Synoptic Sayings Source, Q. He translates each section from the Greek of the critical edition of Robinson and Kloppenborg, and he gathers the translation of the full text as a coherent collection of sayings at the end of the book. Avoiding the scholarly arguments that make Q inaccessible, as well as the constant comparison of Matthew and Luke, this commentary will straightforwardly present the text based on the work of those scholars who have provided a critical edition. It provides an initial reading in a language appropriate to religious seekers. The translation itself will be fresh and provocative, since its meaning and interpretation are not linked to its later use in the narrative gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. In fact, readers of this translation will be able to hear the sayings of Jesus as Matthew and Luke heard them before the writing of their gospels. The goal is to recreate the kind of challenging and intellectually stimulating engagement with the sayings that probably put Christianity on the Roman map. Readers will be able to encounter Jesus' voice and the voices of early Christians directly, without the intrusion of the later use of these sayings by the gospel writers. Valantasis also provides a commentary on each of the sayings. The commentary will focus on three facets: what the saying says, what it could have meant at the time, and how is was used by early Christians. The first two questions provide the basic information by developing a literary analysis of the sayings (a reading of Jesus' words) and by positing a significance for the saying in the context of earliest Christianity (what the saying could have meant). The final question directs the reading of the saying toward its use by religious people then and now as a means of forging an alternative subjectivity, defining new religious and social relationships, and constructing an alternative understanding of the nature of the spiritual and physical world. In other words, this commentary will provide an ascetical reading of the sayings to explore the manner in which the sayings source might have been read by individuals and communities in antiquity, and it will provide an alternative to the currently established reading of the sayings in modern scholarship primarily as a window on the historical Jesus' doctrines and teaching.

Author : David S. Potter
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134694849
Total Pages : 986 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395 written by David S. Potter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 986 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman Empire at Bay is the only one volume history of the critical years 180-395 AD, which saw the transformation of the Roman Empire from a unitary state centred on Rome, into a new polity with two capitals and a new religion—Christianity. The book integrates social and intellectual history into the narrative, looking to explore the relationship between contingent events and deeper structure. It also covers an amazingly dramatic narrative from the civil wars after the death of Commodus through the conversion of Constantine to the arrival of the Goths in the Roman Empire, setting in motion the final collapse of the western empire. The new edition takes account of important new scholarship in questions of Roman identity, on economy and society as well as work on the age of Constantine, which has advanced significantly in the last decade, while recent archaeological and art historical work is more fully drawn into the narrative. At its core, the central question that drives The Roman Empire at Bay remains, what did it mean to be a Roman and how did that meaning change as the empire changed? Updated for a new generation of students, this book remains a crucial tool in the study of this period.

Author : David Stone Potter
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780415100571
Total Pages : 804 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395 written by David Stone Potter and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 804 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the outset of the period covered by this book, Rome was the greatest power in the world. By its end, it had fallen conclusively from this dominant position. David Potter's comprehensive survey of two critical and eventful centuries traces the course of imperial decline.

Author : John Matthews
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119481562
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Empire of the Romans written by John Matthews and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-01-20 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a broad range of texts spanning six centuries of imperial Roman history—Volume II of Empire of the Romans, from Julius Caesar to Justinian Empire of the Romans: From Julius Caesar to Justinian: Six Hundred Years of Peace and War, Volume II: Select Anthology is a compendium of texts that trace the main historical changes of the empire over six hundred years, from the death of Julius Caesar to the late Middle Ages. The second volume of Empire of the Romans, from Julius Caesar to Justinian, this anthology balances literary texts with other documentary, legal, and epigraphic sources. Acclaimed author John Matthews presents texts that reflect individual, first-person experiences rather than those from historians outside of the time periods of which they write. Each selection includes an introduction, annotations on points of interest, author commentary, and suggestions for further reading. Excerpts are organized thematically to help readers understand their meaning without requiring an extensive knowledge of context. Six sections—running in parallel to the structure and content to Volume I—explore the topics such as the building of the empire, Pax Romana, the new empire of Diocletian and Constantine, and barbarian invasions and the fall of the Western Empire. Selected texts span a wide array of subjects ranging from political discourse and Roman law, to firsthand accounts of battle and military service, to the civic life and entertainment of ordinary citizens. This volume: Covers a vast chronological and topical range Includes introductory essays to each selected text to explain key points, present problems of interpretation, and guides readers to further literature Balances the different categories and languages of original texts Enables easy cross-reference to Volume I Minimizes the use of technical language in favor of plain-English forms Whether used as a freestanding work or as a complement to Volume I, the Select Anthology is an ideal resource for students in Roman history survey courses as well as interested general readers seeking a wide-ranging collection of readings on the subject.

Author : Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. North China Branch, Shanghai
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 872 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society written by Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. North China Branch, Shanghai and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 872 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains list of members.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Journal of the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society written by and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: