In the first century of the Common Era, two new belief systems entered long-established cultures with radically different outlooks and values: missionaries started to spread the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in Rome and the Buddha in China. Rome and China were not only ancient cultures, but also cultures whose elites felt no need to receive the new beliefs. Yet a few centuries later the two new faiths had become so well-established that their names were virtually synonymous with the polities they had entered as strangers. Although there have been numerous studies addressing this phenomenon in each field, the difficulty of mastering the languages and literature of these two great cultures has prevented any sustained effort to compare the two influential religious traditions at their initial period of development. This book brings together specialists in the history and religion of Rome and China with a twofold aim. First, it aims to show in some detail the similarities and differences each religion encountered in the process of merging into a new cultural environment. Second, by juxtaposing the familiar with the foreign, it also aims to capture aspects of this process that could otherwise be overlooked. This approach is based on the general proposition that, when a new religious belief begins to make contact with a society that has already had long honored beliefs, certain areas of contention will inevitably ensue and changes on both sides have to take place. There will be a dynamic interchange between the old and the new, not only on the narrowly defined level of "belief," but also on the entire cultural body that nurtures these beliefs. Thus, this book aims to reassess the nature of each of these religions, not as unique cultural phenomena but as part of the whole cultural dynamics of human societies.

In antiquity, the Mediterranean region was linked by sea and land routes that facilitated the spread of religious beliefs and practices among the civilizations of the ancient world. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Mediterranean Religions provides an introduction to the major religions of this area and explores current research regarding the similarities and differences among them. The period covered is from the prehistoric period to late antiquity, that is, ca.4000 BCE to 600 CE. The first nine essays in the volume provide an overview of the characteristics and historical developments of the major religions of the region, including those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria-Canaan, Israel, Anatolia, Iran, Greece, Rome, and early Christianity. The last five essays deal with key topics in current research on these religions, including violence, identity, the body, gender and visuality, taking an explicitly comparative approach and presenting recent theoretical and methodological advances in contemporary scholarship.

Much like our world today, Late Antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries CE) is often seen as a period rife with religious violence, not least because the literary sources are full of stories of Christians attacking temples, statues and 'pagans'. However, using insights from Religious Studies, recent studies have demonstrated that the Late Antique sources disguise a much more intricate reality. The present volume builds on this recent cutting-edge scholarship on religious violence in Late Antiquity in order to come to more nuanced judgments about the nature of the violence. At the same time, the focus on Late Antiquity has taken away from the fact that the phenomenon was no less prevalent in the earlier Graeco-Roman world. This book is therefore the first to bring together scholars with expertise ranging from classical Athens to Late Antiquity to examine the phenomenon in all its complexity and diversity throughout Antiquity.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZNW) is one of the oldest and most highly regarded international scholarly book series in the field of New Testament studies. Since 1923 it has been a forum for seminal works focusing on Early Christianity and related fields. The series is grounded in a historical-critical approach and also explores new methodological approaches that advance our understanding of the New Testament and its world.

Many scholars today believe that early Greek literature, as represented by the great poems of Homer and Hesiod, was to some extent inspired by texts from the neighbouring civilizations of the ancient Near East, especially Mesopotamia. It is true that, in the case of religious poetry, early Greek poets sang about their gods in ways that resemble those of Sumerian or Akkadian hymns from Mesopotamia, but does this mean that the latter influenced the former, and if so, how? This volume is the first to attempt an answer to these questions by undertaking a detailed study of the ancient texts in their original languages, from Sumerian poetry in the 20th century BC to Greek sources from the times of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The Gods Rich in Praise presents the core groups of sources from the ancient Near East, describing the main features of style and content of Sumerian and Akkadian religious poetry, and showing how certain compositions were translated and adapted beyond Mesopotamia. It proceeds by comparing selected elements of form and content: hymnic openings, negative predication, the birth of Aphrodite in the Theogony of Hesiod, and the origins and development of a phrase in Hittite prayers and the Iliad of Homer. The volume concludes that, in terms of form and style, early Greek religious poetry was probably not indebted to ancient Near Eastern models, but also argues that such influence may nevertheless be perceived in certain closely defined instances, particularly where supplementary evidence from other ancient sources is available, and where the extant sources permit a reconstruction of the process of translation and adaptation.

In Ancient Egypt: State and Society, Alan B. Lloyd attempts to define, analyse, and evaluate the institutional and ideological systems which empowered and sustained one of the most successful civilizations of the ancient world for a period in excess of three and a half millennia. The volume adopts the premise that all societies are the product of a continuous dialogue with their physical context - understood in the broadest sense - and that, in order to achieve a successful symbiosis with this context, they develop an interlocking set of systems, defined by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists as culture. Culture, therefore, can be described as the sum total of the methods employed by a group of human beings to achieve some measure of control over their environment. Covering the entirety of the civilization, and featuring a large number of up-to-date translations of original Egyptian texts, Ancient Egypt focuses on the main aspects of Egyptian culture which gave the society its particular character, and endeavours to establish what allowed the Egyptians to maintain that character for an extraordinary length of time, despite enduring cultural shock of many different kinds.

In Ancient Egypt: State and Society, Alan B. Lloyd attempts to define, analyse, and evaluate the institutional and ideological systems which empowered and sustained one of the most successful civilizations of the ancient world for a period in excess of three and a half millennia. The volume adopts the premise that all societies are the product of a continuous dialogue with their physical context - understood in the broadest sense - and that, in order to achieve a successful symbiosis with this context, they develop an interlocking set of systems, defined by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists as culture. Culture, therefore, can be described as the sum total of the methods employed by a group of human beings to achieve some measure of control over their environment. Covering the entirety of the civilization, and featuring a large number of up-to-date translations of original Egyptian texts, Ancient Egypt focuses on the main aspects of Egyptian culture which gave the society its particular character, and endeavours to establish what allowed the Egyptians to maintain that character for an extraordinary length of time, despite enduring cultural shock of many different kinds.

In response to her own mother’s death, Starhawk, the bestselling author of the classic Spiral Dance, along with other Pagan authors, created in inspiring collection of essays, original prayers, blessings, and meditations that present the Pagan way of dying. In the tradition of such bestsellers as How We Die and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, it offers a new understanding of death and the rituals that surround it, adding insight and depth to spirituality.An inclusive, respectful, and deeply spiritual guidebook for those in the Pagan community and beyond, this powerful resource will help the dying make the transition between life and death, and their loved ones will find spiritual comfort and strength through the grieving process. It shows us that death can be a process of renewal and transformation.

This engaging and accessible textbook provides an introduction to the study of ancient Jewish and Christian women in their Hellenistic and Roman contexts. This is the first textbook dedicated to introducing women's religious roles in Judaism and Christianity in a way that is accessible to undergraduates from all disciplines. The textbook provides brief, contextualising overviews that then allow for deeper explorations of specific topics in women's religion, including leadership, domestic ritual, women as readers and writers of scripture, and as innovators in their traditions. Using select examples from ancient sources, the textbook provides teachers and students with the raw tools to begin their own exploration of ancient religion. An introductory chapter provides an outline of common hermeneutics or "lenses" through which scholars approach the texts and artefacts of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. The textbook also features a glossary of key terms, a list of further readings and discussion questions for each topic, and activities for classroom use. In short, the book is designed to be a complete, classroom-ready toolbox for teachers who may have never taught this subject as well as for those already familiar with it. Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean is intended for use in undergraduate classrooms, its target audience undergraduate students and their instructors, although Masters students may also find the book useful. In addition, the book is accessible and lively enough that religious communities' study groups and interested laypersons could employ the book for their own education.

Drawing on two years of ethnographic field research among the Navajos, this book explores a controversial Native American ritual and healthcare practice: ceremonial consumption of the psychedelic Peyote cactus in the context of an indigenous postcolonial healing movement called the Native American Church (NAC), which arose in the 19th century in response to the creation of the reservations system and increasing societal ills, including alcoholism. The movement is the locus of cultural conflict with a long history in North America, and stirs very strong and often opposed emotions and moral interpretations. Joseph Calabrese describes the Peyote Ceremony as it is used in family contexts and federally funded clinical programs for Native American patients. He uses an interdisciplinary methodology that he calls clinical ethnography: an approach to research that involves clinically informed and self-reflective immersion in local worlds of suffering, healing, and normality. Calabrese combined immersive fieldwork among NAC members in their communities with a year of clinical work at a Navajo-run treatment program for adolescents with severe substance abuse and associated mental health problems. There he had the unique opportunity to provide conventional therapeutic intervention alongside Native American therapists who were treating the very problems that the NAC often addresses through ritual. Calabrese argues that if people respond better to clinical interventions that are relevant to their society's unique cultural adaptations and ideologies (as seems to be the case with the NAC), then preventing ethnic minorities from accessing traditional ritual forms of healing may actually constitute a human rights violation.

This fascinating history explores the cultural roots of our civilization's obsession with the end of the world. Busting the myth of the ancient Maya prediction that time would end in 2012, Matthew Restall and Amara Solari build on their previous book, 2012 and the End of the World, to use the Maya case to connect such seemingly disparate historical events as medieval European millenarianism, Moctezuma's welcome to Cortes, Franciscan missionizing in Mexico, prophetic traditions in Yucatan, and the growing belief today in conspiracies and apocalypses. In demystifying the 2012 phenomenon, the authors draw on their decades of scholarship to provide an accessible and engaging explanation of what Mayas and Aztecs really believed, how Judeo-Christian apocalypticism became part of the Indigenous Mesoamerican and modern American worlds, and why millions continue to anticipate an imminent Doomsday.

This book focuses primarily on the end of the pagan religious tradition and the dismantling of its material form in North Africa (modern Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD. Leone considers how urban communities changed, why some traditions were lost and some others continued, and whether these carried the same value and meaning upon doing so. Addressing two main issues, mainly from an archaeological perspective, the volume explores the change in religious habits and practices, and the consequent recycling and reuse of pagan monuments and materials, and investigates to what extent these physical processes were driven by religious motivations and contrasts, or were merely stimulated by economic issues.

Kinyras, in Greco-Roman sources, is the central culture-hero of early Cyprus: legendary king, metallurge, Agamemnon's (faithless) ally, Aphrodite's priest, father of Myrrha and Adonis, rival of Apollo, ancestor of the Paphian priest-kings, and much more. Kinyras increased in depth and complexity with the demonstration in 1968 that Kinnaru-the divinized temple-lyre-was venerated at Ugarit, an important Late Bronze Age city just opposite Cyprus on the Syrian coast. John Curtis Franklin seeks to harmonize Kinyras as a mythological symbol of pre-Greek Cyprus with what is known of ritual music and deified instruments in the Bronze Age Near East, using evidence going back to early Mesopotamia. Franklin addresses issues of ethnicity and identity; migration and colonization, especially the Aegean diaspora to Cyprus, Cilicia, and Philistia in the Early Iron Age; cultural interface of Hellenic, Eteocypriot, and Levantine groups on Cyprus; early Greek poetics, epic memory, and myth-making; performance traditions and music archaeology; royal ideology and ritual poetics; and a host of specific philological and historical issues arising from the collation of classical and Near Eastern sources. Kinyras includes a vital background study of divinized balang-harps in Mesopotamia by Wolfgang Heimpel. This paperback edition contains minor corrections, while retaining the foldout maps of the original hardback edition as spreads, alongside illustrations and artwork by Glynnis Fawkes.

In this study of the ritual of animal sacrifice in ancient Greek religion, Judaism, and Christianity in the period between 100 BC and AD 200, Maria-Zoe Petropoulou explores the attitudes of early Christians towards the realities of sacrifice in the Greek East and in the Jerusalem Temple (up to AD 70). Contrary to other studies in this area, she demonstrates that the process by which Christianity finally separated its own cultic code from the strong tradition of animal sacrifice was a slow and difficult one. Petropoulou places special emphasis on the fact that Christians gave completely new meanings to the term sacrifice'. She also explores the question why, if animal sacrifice was of prime importance in the eastern Mediterranean at this time, Christians should ultimately have rejected it.

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions - analogism, pantheism, and naturalism - found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice.

The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya is the first-ever English-language dictionary of Mesoamerican mythology and religion. Nearly 300 entries, from accession to yoke, describe the main gods and symbols of the Olmecs, Zapotecs, Maya, Teotihuacanos, Mixtecs, Toltecs, and Aztecs. Topics range from jaguar and jester gods to reptile eye and rubber, from creation accounts and sacred places to ritual practices such as bloodletting, confession, dance, and pilgrimage. In addition, two introductory essays provide succinct accounts of Mesoamerican history and religion, while a substantial bibliographical survey directs the reader to original sources and recent discussions. Dictionary entries are illustrated with photographs and specially commissioned line drawings. Mary Miller and Karl Taube draw on their research in the fast-changing field of Maya studies, and on the latest Mexican discoveries, to produce an authoritative work that will serve as a standard reference for students, scholars, and travelers.

This volume presents four of the most intricate and fascinating mythological poems of the Poetic Edda, with parallel translations and individual introductions and commentaries. 'Havamal', notable for its unforgettable flashes of beauty and despair, explores the nature of human knowledge. 'Hymiskvita' is the boisterous tale of the giant Hymir. 'Grimnismal', the lay of Grimnir, the Visored God, is a dramatic monologue spoken by Otin. The final poem, 'Grottasongr', is the song of two girls kept as slaves by King Froti to work at his magic grindstone. Ursula Dronke provides new and illuminating textual readings of these celebrated works.

Two Greek cities which in their time were leading states in the Mediterranean world, Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene in Libya, set up inscriptions of the kind called sacred laws, but regulating worship on a larger scale than elsewhere - Selinus in the mid fifth century B.C., Cyrene in the late fourth. In different ways, the content and the format of both inscriptions are so unusual that they have baffled understanding.
At Selinus, a large lead tablet with two columns of writing upside down to each other is thought to be a remedy for homicide pollution arising from civil strife, but most of it remains obscure and intractable. The gods who are named and the ritual that is prescribed have been misinterpreted in the light of literary works that dwell on the sensational. Instead, they belong to agrarian religion and follow a regular sequence of devotions, the upside-down columns being reversed midway through the year with magical effect. Gods and ritual were selected because of their appeal to ordinary persons. Selinus was governed by a long enduring oligarchy which made an effort, appearing also in the economic details of sacrifice, to reconcile rich and poor.
At Cyrene, a long series of rules were displayed on a marble block in the premier shrine of Apollo. They are extremely diverse - both costly and trivial, customary and novel - and eighty years of disputation have brought no agreement as to the individual meaning or general significance. In fact this mixture of things is carefully arranged to suit a variety of needs, of rich and poor, of citizens of long standing and of new-comers probably of Libyan origin. In one instance the same agrarian deities appear as at Selinus. It is the work once more of a moderate oligarchy, which on other evidence proved its worth during the turbulent events of this period.
Religion and Reconciliation in Greek Cities provides a revised text and a secure meaning for both documents, and interprets the gods, the ritual, and the social background in the light of much comparative material from other Greek cities. Noel Robertson's approach rejects the usual assumptions based on moralizing literary works and in doing so restores to us an ancient nature religion which Greek communities adapted to their own practical purposes.