Antiquities & Archaeology
- The Ascension of Authorship
- Jed Wyrick
- This book traces the history of the idea of the author in the ancient world, beginning with the attribution practices of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Wyrick argues that the fusion of Jewish and Hellenistic approaches toward attribution helped lead to St. Augustine's reinvention of the writer of scripture as an author whose texts were governed by both divine will and human intent.
- Paperback 2004 / Hardcover 2004
- Creation of the Sacred
- Walter Burkert
- Sacrifice is essential to all religions. Could there be a natural, even biological, reason? Why are sacrifice and numerous other religious rituals and concepts shared by so many different cultures? In this extraordinary book, one of the world's leading authorities on ancient religions explores the possibility of natural religion.
- Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
- The Dome of the Rock
- Oleg Grabar
- This book tells the story of the Dome of the Rock, from the first fateful decades of its creation to its modern acquisition of different and potent meanings for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish cultures. Primarily it is as a work of art that the Dome of the Rock stands out from these pages, understood for the quality that allows it to transcend the constrictions of period and perhaps even those of faith and culture.
- Hardcover 2006
- Ephesos, Metropolis of Asia
- Edited by Helmut Koester
- This volume brings together studies of Ephesos--a major city in the Greco-Roman period and a primary center for the spread of Christianity into the Western world--by an international array of scholars from the fields of classics, fine arts, history of religion, New Testament, ancient Christianity, and archaeology.
- Paperback 2004
- Greetings in the Lord
- AnneMarie Luijendijk
- This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed. Bringing the people in these dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how diverse Christians lived in this city of diverse situations.
- Paperback 2008
- Inventing Superstition
- Dale B. Martin
- Martin provides the first detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the fourth century C.E. With illuminating reference to the writings of philosophers, historians, and medical teachers he demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs, especially the belief that gods or other superhuman beings would harm people or cause disease. Tracing the social, political, and cultural influences that informed classical thinking about piety and superstition, nature and the divine, Inventing Superstition exposes the manipulation of the label of superstition in arguments between Greek and Roman intellectuals on the one hand and Christians on the other, and the purposeful alteration of the idea by Neoplatonic philosophers and Christian apologists in late antiquity.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007
- Out of the Cave
- Edna Ullmann-Margalit
- Since the inception of Dead Sea Scrolls research, a central theory has emerged, which asserts that the scrolls belonged to the Essenes, a sect whose center was at the nearby site of Qumran. In Out of the Cave, philosopher Edna Ullmann-Margalit focuses on this theory, exploring the different arenas, and ways, in which contesting theories of the scrolls do battle. In this context she finds fascinating examples of issues that only amplify the already intrinsic interest of the Dead Sea scrolls.
- Hardcover 2006
- Practitioners of the Divine
- Beate Dignas
- Kai Trampedach
- “What is a Greek priest?” The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis.
- Paperback 2008
- Thresholds of the Sacred
- Edited by Sharon E. J. Gerstel
- From the walls and curtains of first-century Judaism to the tramezzo of Renaissance Italy, screens of various shapes and sizes have been used to separate the sacred from the secular. Drawn from papers presented at a recent Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies symposium, this volume provides insightful new research on the history of the iconostasis.
- Hardcover 2007
- Urban Religion in Roman Corinth
- Edited by Daniel Schowalter
- Edited by Steven J. Friesen
- This book discusses the history, topography, and urban development of Corinth with special attention to civic and private religious practices in the Roman colony. Expert analysis of the latest archaeological data is coupled with consideration of what can be known about the emergence and evolution of religions in Corinth. The volume seeks to gain insight into the nature of the Greco-Roman city visited by Paul, and the ways in which Christianity gradually emerged as the dominant religion.
- Paperback 2005 / Hardcover 2005