The sculptural environment of the Roman Near East : reflections on culture, ideology, and power / edited by Yaron Z. Eliav, Elise A. Friedland, and Sharon Herbert.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Eliav, Yaron Z.

Friedland, Elise A.

Herbert, Sharon, 1944-

George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

Series:

Interdisciplinary studies in ancient culture and religion ; 9.

Interdisciplinary studies in ancient culture and religion ; 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sculpture, Hellenistic--Congresses.

Sculpture, Hellenistic.

Hellenism.

Idols and images--Middle East.

Idols and images.

Idols and images--Worship.

Judaism--History--Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.-210 A.D.

Judaism.

History.

Judaism--Post-exilic period (Judaism).

Middle East.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 769 pages : illustrations, maps, plans ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leuven ; Dudley, MA : Peeters, 2008.

Summary:

Public sculptures were the "mass media" of the Roman world. They populated urban centers throughout the empire, serving as a "plastic language" that communicated political, religious, and social messages. This book brings together twenty-eight experts who otherwise rarely convene: text-based scholars of the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian realms from the fields of classics, history, and religion and specialists in the artistic traditions of Greece and Rome as well as art historians and archaeologists.

Utilizing the full spectrum of ancient sources, the book examines the multiple, at times even contradictory, meanings and functions that statues served within the complex world of the Roman Near East. Moreover, it situates the discussion of sculpture in the broader context of antiquity in order to reevaluate long-held scholarly consensuses on such ideas as the essence of Hellenism (the culture that emerged from the encounter of Greco-Romans with the Near East) and the everlasting "conflict" among paganism, Christianity, and Judaism.

Contents:

Reconsidering Hellenism in the Roman Near East : introductory remarks / Glen Bowersock

The nature of Syrian Hellenism in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods / Maurice Sartre

The Jews in the Roman world / Aharon Oppenheimer

Marble sculpture of the Roman period in the Near East and its Hellenistic origins / Gideon Foerster

The sculptor's studio at Aphrodisias : the working methods and varieties of sculpture produced / Peter Rockwell

The classical heritage in late antique Palestine : the fate of freestanding sculptures / Yoram Tsafrir

The destruction of pagan statuary and Christianization (fourth-sixth century C.E.) / Frank R. Trombley

The imperial cult in the East : images of power and the power of intolerance / John Pollini

Statues on the wall : the representation of statuary in Roman wall painting / Eric M. Moormann

Narrative and identity in mosaics from the late Roman Near East : pagan, Jewish, and Christian / Fergus Millar

The missing pieces : miniature reflections of the Hellenistic artistic landscape in the East / Sharon Herbert

Statues and inscriptions in Iudaea/Syria Palaestina / Werner Eck

Baetyls as statues? : cult images in the Roman Near East / Peter Stewart

Visualizing deities in the Roman Near East : aspects of Athena ad Athena-Allat / Elise A. Friedland

Roman sculpture from the exedra in the Temenos of the Qasr al-Bint at Petra / Fawzi Zayadine

Sculptures from southern Syrian sanctuaries of the Roman period / Thomas M. Weber

The statues of the sanctuary of Allat in Palmyra / Michal Gawlikowski

The role of sculpture in worship at the temples of Dura-Europos / Susan B. Downey

Divine statues in the works of Libanius of Antioch : the actual and rhetorical desacralization of pagan cult furniture in the late fourth century C.E. / Ellen Perry

Imagining an eastern Roman empire : a riot at Antoch in 387 C.E. / Raymond Van Dam

Sculpture in Roman Palestine and its architectural and social milieu : adaptability, imitation, originality? : the Ascalon basilica as an example / Moshe L. Fischer

Caesarean sculpture in context / Rivka Gersht

Caesarea's fortune : ancient statuary and the beholder in a late antique city / Kenneth G. Holum

Sculptures and sculptural images in urban Galilee / Zeʼev Weiss

Roman victory displayed : symbols, allegories, personifications? / Benjamin Isaac

The desolating sacrilege : a Jewish-Christian discourse on statuary, space, and sanctity / Yaron Z. Eliav

Idolatry in late antique Babylonia : the evidence of the Babylonian Talmud / Richard Kalmin

The vitality of Egyptian images in late antiquity : Christian memory and response / David Frankfurter.

Notes:

"All the contributions in this volume stem from an international conference that took place on November 7 to 10, 2004, at the University of Michigan and the Toledo Museum of Art."--Acknowledgements, p. [xxiii].

Includes bibliographical references (pages [679]-750) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

ISBN:

9789042920040

9042920041

OCLC:

246917371