Gender and Social Norms in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Texts and Material Culture

Gender and Social Norms in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism and Early Christianity: Texts and Material Culture
Author: Michaela Bauks
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2019-03-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647552674

The aim of the present conference volume is to study the interrelationship of literary and material approaches to historical investigation of gender. Paradigmatically the significance and meaning of gender and sexuality is explored in the context of private and public, religious and secular spaces. Historical, cultural, and social norms (and deviations) of daily life are examined through the lens of textual, archaeological, and art historical investigations to interpret relics of ancient Israelite, Jewish, and Christian communities from the Iron Age through Late Antiquity. Scholars from varied disciplines such as biblical and classical archaeology, epigraphy, Old and New Testament exegesis and religious studies assembled to engage in a dialogue involving both texts and material culture.

Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel

Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel
Author: Susan Ackerman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300264887

A synthetic reconstruction of women’s religious engagement and experiences in preexilic Israel “This monumental book examines a wealth of data from the Bible, archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography to provide a clear, comprehensive, and compelling analysis of women’s religious lives in preexilic times.”—Carol Meyers, Duke University Throughout the biblical narrative, ancient Israelite religious life is dominated by male actors. When women appear, they are often seen only on the periphery: as tangential, accidental, or passive participants. However, despite their absence from the written record, they were often deeply involved in religious practice and ritual observance. In this new volume, Susan Ackerman presents a comprehensive account of ancient Israelite women’s religious lives and experiences. She examines the various sites of their practice, including household shrines, regional sanctuaries, and national temples; the calendar of religious rituals that women observed on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis; and their special roles in religious settings. Drawing on texts, archaeology, and material culture, and documenting the distinctions between Israelite women’s experiences and those of their male counterparts, Ackerman reconstructs an essential picture of women’s lived religion in ancient Israelite culture.

Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt

Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt
Author: Thomas R. Blanton IV
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000598373

This volume introduces new perspectives on taxation policies in the Roman Empire, the Galilee, and Egypt, with unique insights into the economic effects of imperial pacification on local and regional microlevel economies in the Galilee both before and after the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Through examining tax documents and other ancient texts in detail, this book offers innovative perspectives on the mechanisms, ideological justifications, and politically hierarchizing functions of taxation and tribute, particularly in the Roman Empire. Moreover, leading archaeologists present important information about the economic effects of the First Jewish Revolt on local economies in the Galilee, based on findings from recent archaeological excavations. Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt is of interest to students and scholars in Classical, Biblical, and Jewish Studies, as well as economic history and Mediterranean archaeology.

Jewish Women

Jewish Women
Author: Katharina Galor
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2023-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1003805515

Jewish Women: Between Conformity and Agency examines the concepts of gender and sexuality through the primary lens of visual and material culture from antiquity through to the present day. The backbone of this transhistorical and transcontextual study is the question of Jewish women’s agency in four different geographical, chronological, and methodological contexts, beginning with women’s dress codes in Roman-Byzantine Syro-Palestine, continuing with rituals of purity in medieval Ashkenaz, worship in papal Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, and ending with marriage and divorce in Israeli film. Each of these explorations is interested in creating a dialogue between the patriarchal legacy of the traditional texts and the chronologically corresponding visual and material culture. The author challenges traditional approaches to the study of Jewish culture by employing tools from art history, archaeology, and film and media studies. In each of these different contexts, there is ample evidence that women—despite persistent overall structural discrimination—have found ways to challenge male constructs of gender norms. Ultimately, these examples from past and present times highlight women’s eminence in shaping Jewish history and culture. Bringing a new interdisciplinary lens to the study of the history of gender and sexuality, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of Jewish history and culture, art history, archaeology, and film studies.

The Lives of Jewish Things

The Lives of Jewish Things
Author: Gabrielle Anna Berlinger
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2024-12-03
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 081435047X

Tracing the paths of Jewish things across time, place, and culture, this collection reveals complex stories of individual and collective struggles to survive.

Galilaea and Northern Regions: 5876-6924

Galilaea and Northern Regions: 5876-6924
Author: Walter Ameling
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 1092
Release: 2023-03-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110715775

Volume V of the CIIP contains inscriptions from Galilee during the time of Alexander the Great until the end of the Byzantian rule in the 7th century in all the languages used during that period, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Samaritan, Palmyrene Aramaic, and Christian Aramaic. The volume encompasses more than 2,000 texts grouped by their find-sites, from the Northwest to the Southeast.

Galilean Spaces of Identity

Galilean Spaces of Identity
Author: Joseph Scales
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2024-02-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900469255X

We understand the world around us in terms of built spaces. Such spaces are shaped by human activity, and in turn, affect how people live. Through an analysis of archaeological and textual evidence from the beginnings of Hasmonean influence in Galilee, until the outbreak of the First Jewish War against Rome, this book explores how Judaism was socially expressed: bodily, communally, and regionally. Within each expression, certain aspects of Jewish identity operate, these being purity conceptions, communal gatherings, and Galilee's relationship with the Hasmoneans, Jerusalem, and the Temple in its final days.

What Jesus Learned from Women

What Jesus Learned from Women
Author: James F. McGrath
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2021-02-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532680627

Dehumanization has led to serious misinterpretation of the Gospels. On the one hand, Christians have often made Jesus so much more than human that it seemed inappropriate to ask about the influence other human beings had on him, male or female. On the other hand, women have been treated as less than fully human, their names omitted from stories and their voices and influence on Jesus neglected. When we ask the question this book does, what Jesus learned from women, puzzling questions that have frustrated readers of the Gospels throughout history suddenly find solutions. Weaving cutting edge biblical scholarship together with an element of historical fiction and a knack for writing for a general audience, James McGrath makes the stories of women in the New Testament come alive, and sheds fresh light on the figure of Jesus as well. This book is a must read for scholars, students, and anyone else interested in Jesus and/or in the role of ancient women in the context of their times.

Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside

Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside
Author: Markus Tiwald
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2021-04-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 364756494X

Ever since Jesus walked the hills of Galilee and Paul travelled the roads of Asia Minor and Greece, Christianity has shown a remarkable ability to adapt itself to various social and cultural environments. Recent research has demonstrated that these environments can only be very insufficiently termed as "rural" or "urban". Neither was Jesus' Galilee only rural, nor Paul's Asia only "urban". On the background of ongoing research on the diversity of social environments in the Early Empire, this volume will focus on various early Christian "worlds" as witnessed in canonical and non-canonical texts. How did Early Christians experience and react to "rural" and "urban" life? What were the mechanisms behind this adaptability? Papers will analyze the relation between urban Christian beginnings and the role of the rural Jesus-tradition. In what sense did the image of Jesus, the "Galilean village Jew", change when his message was carried into the cities of the Mediterranean world from Jerusalem to Athens or Rome? Papers will not only deal with various personalities or literary works whose various attitudes towards urban life became formative for future Christianity. They will also explore the different local milieus that demonstrate the wide range of Christian cultural perspectives.

The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends

The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends
Author: Rick Bonnie
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2020-12-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647522147

This book brings together leading experts in the field of ancient synagogue studies to discuss the current issues and emerging trends in the study of synagogues in ancient Palestine. Divided into four thematic units, the different contributions apply archaeological, textual, historical and art historical methodologies to questions related to ancient synagogues. Part One addresses issues related to the origins and early development of synagogues up to 200 CE. The contributions provide different explanations to the alleged lack of evidence for synagogues built in the second and third centuries CE and ask how much continuity or change there is between the late Second Temple and late Roman/early Byzantine synagogues. Part Two deals with architecture and dating of ancient synagogues. It gives an overview of all synagogues found so far, approaches the dating of Galilean synagogues in the light of the recently-exposed synagogue at Huqoq, and provides a stylistic re-evaluation of the Capernaum synagogue decoration. Part three examines leadership, power and daily life in late antique synagogue contexts, illustrating non-monumental inscriptions, amulets and dining in synagogue contexts as well as the role of individual benefactors. Section four contextualizes synagogue art. An overview of synagogue mosaics in late antique Palestine is complemented with reinterpretations of the mosaics two synagogues. The section also offers a discussion of the appearance of the menorah.