Roman Imperial Identities In The Early Christian Era

Author : Judith Perkins
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134152639
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era written by Judith Perkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the close study of texts, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era examines the overlapping emphases and themes of two cosmopolitan and multiethnic cultural identities emerging in the early centuries CE – a trans-empire alliance of the Elite and the "Christians." Exploring the cultural representations of these social identities, Judith Perkins shows that they converge around an array of shared themes: violence, the body, prisons, courts, and time. Locating Christian representations within their historical context and in dialogue with other contemporary representations, it asks why do Christian representations share certain emphases? To what do they respond, and to whom might they appeal? For example, does the increasing Christian emphasis on a fully material human resurrection in the early centuries, respond to the evolution of a harsher and more status based judicial system? Judith Perkins argues that Christians were so successful in suppressing their social identity as inhabitants of the Roman Empire, that historical documents and testimony have been sequestered as "Christian" rather than recognized as evidence for the social dynamics enacted during the period, Her discussion offers a stimulating survey of interest to students of ancient narrative, cultural studies and gender.

Author : Judith Perkins
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134152647
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era written by Judith Perkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the close study of texts, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era examines the overlapping emphases and themes of two cosmopolitan and multiethnic cultural identities emerging in the early centuries CE – a trans-empire alliance of the Elite and the "Christians." Exploring the cultural representations of these social identities, Judith Perkins shows that they converge around an array of shared themes: violence, the body, prisons, courts, and time. Locating Christian representations within their historical context and in dialogue with other contemporary representations, it asks why do Christian representations share certain emphases? To what do they respond, and to whom might they appeal? For example, does the increasing Christian emphasis on a fully material human resurrection in the early centuries, respond to the evolution of a harsher and more status based judicial system? Judith Perkins argues that Christians were so successful in suppressing their social identity as inhabitants of the Roman Empire, that historical documents and testimony have been sequestered as "Christian" rather than recognized as evidence for the social dynamics enacted during the period, Her discussion offers a stimulating survey of interest to students of ancient narrative, cultural studies and gender.

Author : Wouter Vanacker
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317118472
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imperial Identities in the Roman World written by Wouter Vanacker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the debate on Romanisation has often been framed in terms of identity. Discussions have concentrated on how the expansion of empire impacted on the constructed or self-ascribed sense of belonging of its inhabitants, and just how the interaction between local identities and Roman ideology and practices may have led to a multicultural empire has been a central research focus. This volume challenges this perspective by drawing attention to the processes of identity formation that contributed to an imperial identity, a sense of belonging to the political, social, cultural and religious structures of the Empire. Instead of concentrating on politics and imperial administration, the volume studies the manifold ways in which people were ritually engaged in producing, consuming, organising, believing and worshipping that fitted the (changing) realities of empire. It focuses on how individuals and groups tried to do things 'the right way', i.e., the Greco-Roman imperial way. Given the deep cultural entrenchment of ritualistic practices, an imperial identity firmly grounded in such practices might well have been instrumental, not just to the long-lasting stability of the Roman imperial order, but also to the persistence of its ideals well into (Christian) Late Antiquity and post-Roman times.

Author : Wouter Vanacker
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9780367879709
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Imperial Identities in the Roman World written by Wouter Vanacker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the debate on Romanisation has often been framed in terms of identity. Discussions have concentrated on how the expansion of empire impacted on the constructed or self-ascribed sense of belonging of its inhabitants, and just how the interaction between local identities and Roman ideology and practices may have led to a multicultural empire has been a central research focus. This volume challenges this perspective by drawing attention to the processes of identity formation that contributed to an imperial identity, a sense of belonging to the political, social, cultural and religious structures of the Empire. Instead of concentrating on politics and imperial administration, the volume studies the manifold ways in which people were ritually engaged in producing, consuming, organising, believing and worshipping that fitted the (changing) realities of empire. It focuses on how individuals and groups tried to do things 'the right way', i.e., the Greco-Roman imperial way. Given the deep cultural entrenchment of ritualistic practices, an imperial identity firmly grounded in such practices might well have been instrumental, not just to the long-lasting stability of the Roman imperial order, but also to the persistence of its ideals well into (Christian) Late Antiquity and post-Roman times.

Author : Geoffrey Dunn
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004301577
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium written by Geoffrey Dunn and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians Shaping Identity explores different ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them to the 12th century C.E. It also illustrates how modern readings of that past continue to shape Christian identity.

Author : Yair Furstenberg
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004321691
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World written by Yair Furstenberg and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The studies in this volume examine the unique communal patterns among Jews and Christians within Roman civic culture and their diverse responses to shared challenges under Imperial rule.

Author : Éric Rebillard
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801465559
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE written by Éric Rebillard and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For too long, the study of religious life in Late Antiquity has relied on the premise that Jews, pagans, and Christians were largely discrete groups divided by clear markers of belief, ritual, and social practice. More recently, however, a growing body of scholarship is revealing the degree to which identities in the late Roman world were fluid, blurred by ethnic, social, and gender differences. Christianness, for example, was only one of a plurality of identities available to Christians in this period. In Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE, Éric Rebillard explores how Christians in North Africa between the age of Tertullian and the age of Augustine were selective in identifying as Christian, giving salience to their religious identity only intermittently. By shifting the focus from groups to individuals, Rebillard more broadly questions the existence of bounded, stable, and homogeneous groups based on Christianness. In emphasizing that the intermittency of Christianness is structurally consistent in the everyday life of Christians from the end of the second to the middle of the fifth century, this book opens a whole range of new questions for the understanding of a crucial period in the history of Christianity.

Author : Terence L. Donaldson
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1467459550
Total Pages : 748 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine written by Terence L. Donaldson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally an ascribed identity that cast non-Jewish Christ-believers as an ethnic other, “gentile” soon evolved into a much more complex aspect of early Christian identity. Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine is a full historical account of this trajectory, showing how, in the context of “the parting of the ways,” the early church increasingly identified itself as a distinctly gentile and anti-Judaic entity, even as it also crafted itself as an alternative to the cosmopolitan project of the Roman Empire. This process of identity construction shaped Christianity’s legacy, paradoxically establishing it as both a counter-empire and a mimicker of Rome’s imperial ideology. Drawing on social identity theory and ethnography, Terence Donaldson offers an analysis of gentile Christianity that is thorough and highly relevant to today’s discourses surrounding identity, ethnicity, and Christian-Jewish relations. As Donaldson shows, a full understanding of the term “gentile” is key to understanding the modern Western world and the church as we know it.

Author : Philip A. Harland
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0567457362
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians written by Philip A. Harland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study sheds new light on identity formation and maintenance in the world of the early Christians by drawing on neglected archaeological and epigraphic evidence concerning associations and immigrant groups and by incorporating insights from the social sciences. The study's unique contribution relates, in part, to its interdisciplinary character, standing at the intersection of Christian Origins, Jewish Studies, Classical Studies, and the Social Sciences. It also breaks new ground in its thoroughly comparative framework, giving the Greek and Roman evidence its due, not as mere background but as an integral factor in understanding dynamics of identity among early Christians. This makes the work particularly well suited as a text for courses that aim to understand early Christian groups and literature, including the New Testament, in relation to their Greek, Roman, and Judean contexts. Inscriptions pertaining to associations provide a new angle of vision on the ways in which members in Christian congregations and Jewish synagogues experienced belonging and expressed their identities within the Greco-Roman world. The many other groups of immigrants throughout the cities of the empire provide a particularly appropriate framework for understanding both synagogues of Judeans and groups of Jesus-followers as minority cultural groups in these same contexts. Moreover, there were both shared means of expressing identity (including fictive familial metaphors) and peculiarities in the case of both Jews and Christians as minority cultural groups, who (like other "foreigners") were sometimes characterized as dangerous, alien "anti-associations". By paying close attention to dynamics of identity and belonging within associations and cultural minority groups, we can gain new insights into Pauline, Johannine, and other early Christian communities.

Author : Janet E. Spittler
Publisher : SBL Press
ISBN 13 : 0884143988
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Narrative Self in Early Christianity written by Janet E. Spittler and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays that explore early Christian texts and the broader world in which they were written This volume of twelve essays celebrates the contributions of classicist Judith Perkins to the study of early Christianity. Drawing on Perkins's insights related to apocryphal texts, representations of pain and suffering, and the creation of meaning, contributors explore the function of Christian narratives that depict pain and suffering, the motivations of the early Christians who composed these stories, and their continuing value to contemporary people. Contributors also examine how narratives work to create meaning in a religious context. These contributions address these issues from a variety of angles through a wide range of texts. Features: Introductions to and treatments of several largely unknown early Christian texts Essays by ten women and two men influenced or mentored by Judith Perkins Essays on the Deuterocanon, the New Testament, and early Christian relics