This collection of essays investigates signs of toleration, recognition, respect and other positive forms of interaction between and within religious groups of late antiquity. At the same time, it acknowledges that examples of tolerance are significantly fewer in ancient sources than examples of intolerance and are often limited to insiders, while outsiders often met with contempt, or even outright violence. The essays take both perspectives seriously by analysing the complexity pertaining to these encounters. Religious concerns, ethnicity, gender and other social factors central to identity formation were often intertwined and they yielded different ways of drawing the limits of tolerance and intolerance. This book enhances our understanding of the formative centuries of Jewish and Christian religious traditions. It also brings the results of historical inquiry into dialogue with present-day questions of religious tolerance. The book contains contributions by Ismo Dunderberg, Carmen Palmer, Michael Labahn, Nina Nikki, Anna-Liisa Rafael, Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, Galit Hasan-Rokem & Israel Yuval, Paul Middleton, Outi Lehtipuu, Elizabeth Dowling, and Amy-Jill Levine.

The series Studies of the Bible and Its Reception (SBR) publishes monographs and collected volumes which explore the reception history of the Bible in a wide variety of academic and cultural contexts. Closely linked to the multi-volume project Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), this book series is a publication platform for works which cover the broad field of reception history of the Bible in various religious traditions, historical periods, and cultural fields. Volumes in this series aim to present the material of reception processes or to develop methodological discussions in more detail, enabling authors and readers to more deeply engage and understand the dynamics of biblical reception in a wide variety of academic fields. Further information on "The Bible and Its Reception".

This volume presents a batch of incisive new essays on the relationship between Roman imperial power and ideology and Christian and Jewish life and thought within the empire. Employing diverse methodologies that include historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, and social historical studies, the contributors offer fresh perspectives on a question that is crucial for our understanding not only of the late Roman Empire, but also of the growth and change of Christianity and Judaism in the imperial period.

In Debates over the Resurrection of the Dead, Outi Lehtipuu highlights the striking observation that in many early texts the way that belief in resurrection is formulated is used as a sign of inclusion and exclusion, not only in relation to non-Christians but vis-a-vis other Christians. Those who teach otherwise have deviated from the truth, are not true Christians, and do the works of the devil. Using insights from the sociological study of deviance, Dr Lehtipuu demonstrates that labelling was used as a tool for marking boundaries between those who belonged and those who did not. This was extremely important in the fluid conditions where the small Christian minority groups found themselves. In a situation where there were no universally accepted structures that defined what constituted the true Christian belief, several competing interpretations and their representatives struggled for recognition of their views based on what they believed to be the apostolic tradition. The most hotly-debated aspect of resurrection was whether it would entail the body of flesh and blood or not. When resurrection would take place was closely related to this. Controversies died since the scriptural legacy was ambiguous enough to allow different hermeneutical solutions. The battle over resurrection was closely related to the question of how scriptures were to be understood as well as to what constituted the human self that would survive death. To demonstrate this a wide variety of texts are studied, from theological treatises (including relevant Nag Hammadi texts) to apocryphal acts and martyrologies. Acknowledging the complexity and diversity of the early Christian movement, this volume views early Christian discourse as part of the broader ancient discursive world where similar debates were going on among both Jews and the majority population.

Despite the keen scholarly interest in the Gospel parables, the afterlife scenery in the story of the rich man and Lazarus has often been overlooked. Using insights from the orality studies and intertextuality, the author places the Lukan description of the fate of the dead into the larger Hellenistic matrix, provided by a large number of Greco-Roman and Jewish sources, both literary and epigraphic. Moreover, she challenges several conventional stances in Lukan studies, such as tracing the original of the story to Egypt, or maintaining that eschatology is a key for understanding Luke's work and the purpose for writing it, or harmonizing Luke's eschatological thinking by positing an intermediate state between death and general resurrection. Thus, the book offers fresh insights both to the way the fate of the dead was understood in the ancient world and to the concept of Lukan eschatology.