Belief and Unbelief in the Ancient World / Edited by Taylor O. Gray, Ethan R. Johnson, and Martina Vercesi.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gray, Taylor O., editor.

Johnson, Ethan R., editor.

Vercesi, Martina, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Belief and doubt.

Mediterranean Region--Religious life and customs.

Mediterranean Region.

Mediterranean Region--History--To 476.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 284 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2025.

Summary:

Discover what "belief" and "unbelief" meant in the ancient world Popular portrayals of the ancient world often give the impression that the ancients held uniform views of the gods. Recent scholarship, however, has started to challenge such a reductive characterization. To that end, this volume brings together top scholars from a variety of disciplines to create a more nuanced picture of the diverse spectrum of belief and unbelief in the ancient world. The contributors to this volume examine belief as it existed throughout the Mediterranean over the span of approximately a thousand years—a broader scope than most comparable studies, which tend to focus on a single period. The book's breadth is evident not only in its chronology but also in its subject matter. The authors examine religious belief and unbelief in biblical and classical sources, material culture, and iconography, all within the contexts of ancient Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman religious culture. Readers will come away with a better understanding of how diverse ancient belief was, how ancient communities expressed their faith through texts and translation, and how people in antiquity connected art and religion. Expansive and interdisciplinary, this book will be of interest to students and scholars working in classics, biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, and Greek and Roman iconography.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 - Speaking of the Gods - Religious Belief in Thucydides

2 - Αἶρε τοὺς ἀθέους (Mart. Pol. 9.2) - The Relationship between the Accusation of Atheism and a Radical Interpretation of Eschatology in Early Christianity

3 - The Empiricism of the Apostle Paul - Belief and Knowledge in the Context of Roman Divination

4 - The Relationship of Faith and Law Observance in Paul - The One Who Is Weak in Faith in Romans 14:1–15:13

5 - Augustine on Faith - Trust, Acceptance, Credence, and Belief

6 - The Point of Belief (s) - Ritual, Explanation, and the Demonstration of the Divine

7 - From Bar Rakib to Cyrus - What Do Royal Portrayals of Divinity Have to Do with Belief?

8 - Bad Blood? - Varying Attitudes on Human Sacrifice in Archaic Greek Art

9 - “God Is Our King” - How Beliefs Surrounding the Ptolemaic Monarchy Influenced the Depiction of God in the LXX Pentateuch on a Lexical Level

10 - Is Belief (or Is It Faith?) an Ancient Israelite Notion? - Thinking and/as Seeing, Seeing and/as Thinking . . . and Believing

11 - (Be)li(e)ving in a Material World - What Can Ancient Figurines Teach Us about the Modern Study of Religion?

Contributors

Index of Authors

Index of Subjects

Index of Scripture

Index of Other Ancient Sources Generated by AI.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

9781467469678

OCLC:

1528761558