A collection of essays on early Christian, Jewish and Greco-Roman religious discourses in antiquity, focusing on the construction of gender in relationship to broader cultural and religious themes, argumentation and identity formation in the early centuries of the common era.
In this book, Colleen Conway looks at the construction of masculinity in New Testament depictions of Jesus. She argues that the New Testament writers necessarily engaged the predominant gender ideology of the Roman Empire, whether consciously or unconsciously. Although the notion of what constituted ideal masculinity in Greek and Roman cultures certainly pre-dated the Roman Empire, the emergence of the Principate concentrated this gender ideology on the figure of the emperor. Indeed, critical to the success of the empire was the portrayal of the emperor as the ideal man and the Roman citizen as one who aspired to be the same. Any person who was held up alongside the emperor as another source of authority would be assessed in terms of the cultural values represented in this Roman image of the "manly man." Conway examines a variety of ancient ideas of masculinity, as found in philosophical discourses, medical treaties, imperial documents, and ancient inscriptions. Manliness, in these accounts, was achieved through self-control over passions such as lust, anger, and greed. It was also gained through manly displays of courage, the endurance of pain, and death on behalf of others. With these texts as a starting point, Conway shows how the New Testament writings approach Jesus' gender identity. From Paul's early letters to the Gospels and Acts, to the book of Revelation, Christian writings in the Bible confront the potentially emasculating scandal of the cross and affirm Jesus as ideally masculine. Conway's study touches on such themes as the relationship between divinity and masculinity; the role of the body in relation to gender identity; and belief in Jesus as a means of achieving a more ideal form of masculinity. This impeccably researched and highly readable book reveals the importance of ancient gender ideology for the interpretation of Christian texts.
Advances in the History of Rhetoric: The First Six Years is a comprehensive collection of 29 scholarly essays published during the first phase of the journal’s history. Research from prominent and developing scholars that was once difficult to acquire is now offered in a coherent and comprehensive collection that is complemented by a detailed index and unified bibliography. This collection covers a range of periods and topics in the history of rhetoric, including Greek and Roman rhetoric, rhetoric and religion, women in the history of rhetoric, rhetoric and science, Renaissance and British rhetorical theory, rhetoric and culture, and the development of American rhetoric and composition. The editors, Richard Leo Enos and David E. Beard, provide a preface and afterword that synthesize the mission and meaning of this work for students and scholars of the history of rhetoric.
This volume provides a unique and critical perspective on how Chinese, Japanese and Korean scholars engage and critique the West in their historical thinking. It showcases the dialogue between Asian experts and their Euro-American counterparts and offers valuable insights on how to challenge and overcome Eurocentrism in historical writing.
I hate and I love.' The Roman poet Catullus expressed the disorienting experience of being in love in a stark contradiction that has resonated across the centuries. While his description might seem to modern readers natural and spontaneous, it is actually a response planned with great care and artistry. It is that artistry, and the way in which Roman love poetry works, that this book explores. Focusing on Catullus and on the later genre of elegy - so-called for its metre, and a form of poetry practiced by Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid - Denise Eileen McCoskey and Zara Martirosova Torlone discuss the devices used by the major Roman love poets, as well as the literary and historical contexts that helped shape their work. Setting poets and their writings especially against the turbulent backdrop of the Augustan Age (31 BCE-14 CE), the book examines the origins of Latin elegy; highlights the poets' key themes; and traces their reception by later writers and readers.
What we think of our bodies and what we wear says something about who we are and how we belong. This was the same in the ancient world. Rosemary Canavan explores the imagery of clothing and body in the first century CE Christian writing. An examination of statuary, funerary monuments and coins in this geographical location contemporaneous with the letter's writing reveals how clothing and body images were understood. This is then placed in dialogue with the metaphorical use of clothing and body in other texts, especially the Letter to the Colossians. Social identity and rhetorical studies draw on archaeological, epigraphical, iconographical and literary sources to formulate a new approach to biblical interpretation aptly named "visual exegesis."
As one surveys the scholarship on the canonical letter to the Philippians, one notices the lack of attention to women within many scholars' analyses. To a certain extent, this lack of attention exists because ancient texts often leave out information about women. Using ritual studies, archaeology, and textual evidence, this work brings life to the ritual lives of ancient Philippian women in their own cultural context. The discipline of ritual studies provides new questions that shed more specific light on the lives of women in this fledgling Jesus group. Therefore, ritual studies brings clarity to early Philippian women's reception of the letter. Furthermore, this ritual background helps modern readers visualize a more diverse community of Jesus followers in Philippi and provides a clearer picture of the struggles this nascent Jesus community was experiencing.
English summary: Flavius Josephus' works are an invaluable source of material for the history of Judaism in the 1st century AD. The articles in this conference volume deal mainly with the 'mutual perceptions between Josephus' works and New Testament writings. In a discussion between theologians, experts in Jewish studies, ancient historians, philologists and art historians, the authors focus on a wide range of subjects. Leaving the previous selective use of Josephus behind, they engage a productive interdisciplinary discussion. German description: Die Werke des judischen Historikers Flavius Josephus gehoren zu den wichtigsten Quellen fur die Kenntnis des Judentums im 1. Jh. n. Chr. Sie beschreiben jene Welt, in der auch die Jesusbewegung beginnt und in der sich die christlichen Gemeinden der Fruhzeit entwickeln. Im Rahmen eines Projektes zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), das eine Aufarbeitung der judischen Literatur aus hellenistisch-romischer Zeit fur die Interpretation der neutestamentlichen Schriften zum Inhalt hat, spielt Josephus deshalb eine herausragende Rolle. Die Beitrage des vorliegenden Tagungsbandes, die auf das Greifswalder Symposium im Mai 2006 zuruckgehen, thematisieren vor allem die 'wechselseitigen Wahrnehmungen' zwischen den Werken des Josephus und den Schriften des Neuen Testamentes. Theologen, Judaisten, Althistoriker, Philologen und Kunstgeschichtler treten hier in ein fruchtbares interdisziplinares Gesprach, in dem sie die fruhere selektive 'Benutzung' des Josephus hinter sich lassen. Was die Josephusforschung in den letzten Jahrzehnten an intensiver Arbeit geleistet hat, stellt ein Potential dar, das mit diesem Gesprachsforum fur die Arbeit des CJHNT auf neue Weise nutzbar wird.
