Jörg Rüpke

A companion to Roman religion

A companion to Roman religion , A companion to Roman religion , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

The Roman calendar from Numa to Constantine : time, history and the fasti

Preface. Map 1 Distribution of preserved calendars (or calendar fragments) of the fasti type from the first century BCE to the fifth century CE. Table 1 List of known copies of fasti. 1 Time s social dimension. 2 Observations on the Roman fasti. 2.1 A Republican version. 2.2 Forms and functions. 2.3 The fasti and the birth of Augustan epigraphy. 2.4 The question of the archetype. 3 Towards an early history of the Roman calendar. 3.1 Notions of a prehistoric calendar. 3.2 The structure of the month. 3.3 Market cycles. 3.4 Modes of dating. 4 The introduction of the Republican calendar. 4.1 Timing and motivation. 4.2 The character and significance of the reform. 5 The written calendar. 5.1 Gnaeus Flavius. 5.2 NP days and feast-names. 5.3 Cultic and linguistic details. 5.4 The purpose of the fasti. 5.5 The law of Hortensius. 5.6 Implications for the historiography of Roman religion. 5.7 Variants on stone and paper. 6 The Acilian law and the problem of pontifical intercalation. 6.1 The nature of the measures. 6.2 How to intercalate in a ritually correct manner? 6.3 Problems of intercalation. 6.4 Regulating intercalation by means of laws. 7 Reinterpretation of the fasti in the temple of the Muses. 7.1 Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, triumphator. 7.2 Temple dedications in the fasti. 7.3 Ennius. 7.4 All fasti are Fulvian fasti. 8 From Republic to Empire. 8.1 Caesars reform of the calendar. 8.2 The calendar as collective memory. 8.3 Augustus and the power of dates. 8.4 The calendar as Roman breviary. 9 The disappearance of marble calendars. 10 Calendar monopoly and competition between calendars. 10.1 One calendar. 10.2 Coexisting and competing developments. 10.3 Eras. 10.4 The calculation of Easter. 10.5 Weekly cycles. 10.6 Fasti christiani? 11 The calendar in the public realm. Abbreviations. References. Sources Index. General Index.

Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change

Introduction 1. The Background: Roman Religion of the Archaic and Early Republican Periods 2. Institutionalizing and Ordering Public Communication 3. Changes in Religious Festivals 4. Incipient Systematization of Religion in Second-Century Drama: Accius 5. Ritualization and Control 6. Writing and Systematization 7. The Pontifical Calendar and the Law 8. Religion and Divination in the Second Century 9. Religion in the Lex Ursonensis 10. Religious Discourses in the Second and First Centuries: Antiquarianism and Philosophy 11. Enniuss Fasti in Fulviuss Temple: Greek Rationality and Roman Tradition 12. Varros tria genera theologiae: Crossing Antiquarianism and Philosophy 13. Ciceros Discourse on Religion 14. Greek Rationality and Roman Traditions in the Late Republic Notes Bibliography Index Locorum General Index Acknowledgments

You shall not kill. Hierarchies of norms in ancient Rome

Different kinds of norms regulate the problem of killing in Rome, custom and law being the most important of them. This survey is extended by an analysis of the exceptions to the general ban on killing: capital punishment, killing in sacred contexts and in war. Religion plays a specific legitimizing role in offering models of killing as well as in enciphering hierarchic structures of the Roman society. Stories like the one of the Horatii (Dion. H. 3,12-22) offer an insight into the processes of legitimization and their changing patterns. Furthermore, exempla literature is an important instrument of reflecting-and teaching-the solution of conflicts of norms by narrative hierarchization.

Reflections on Religious Individuality: Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian Texts and Practices

Did ancient religions know religious individuality? How did it work in texts and practices related to texts? The creation of texts offered opportunities to express ones own religious experience and shape ones own religious personality - within the boundaries of what is acceptable. Greek and Latin, Jewish and Christian texts from the Hellenistic period down to Late Antiquity created exemplary individuals or condemned individual deviance. The volume presents exemplary cases and analyses, which open a new field for research in the history of religion, covering ritual and literary innovations.

Controllers and professionals : Analyzing religious specialists

Based on a critique of Joachim Wachs typology of religious authority, the article attempts to describe religious specialists as agents of control within their religions symbolic universe. Special attention is given to processes of professionalization.

Is history important for a historical argument in religious studies

This review article addresses the historical argument of Norenzayans Big Gods. It questions the claim that there is enough historical evidence to support the thesis that gods, who are observing human behaviour from high, enable societies to grow beyond the stage of face-to-face groups.

Triumphator and ancestor rituals between symbolic anthropology and magic

This article argues that the Roman triumph with the figure of the triumphator and the burial of Roman nobles with the pompa imaginum should be interpreted within the framework of the prestige and practices related to honori fic statues. Using the red colour of the triumphators skin as the main argument, the figure of the triumphator is interpreted as a temporary statue, and the triumph as an attempt on part of the senate to regulate the prestige of honori fic statues by tying it to a public ritual. Likewise, the bearers of imagines are interpreted as representing the ensemble of all legitimate — i.e. as based on public positions — statues used to construct a family. Both rituals, as known from late republican sources, developed from the fourth century BC onwards.

Religious agency, identity, and communication: reflections on history and theory of religion

Abstract This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individuals appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication. These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.

Neighborhood as Ritual Space: The Case of the Rabbinic Eruv

As pointed out by David Frankfurter in his essay, J. Z. Smith’s model of the juxtaposition of domestic and civic religion is meant to operate as a heuristic model, rather than as “an absolute model”. Heuristic or absolute, the question to be examined here is how helpful Smith’s model might be for gaining insights into some of the permutations of Judaism in Late Antiquity, in particular the religion of the rabbinic sages. Most obviously, since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the loss of Jewish political control over Jerusalem to the Romans, Smith’s “there”, “the sphere of civic and national religion”1 associated with temples, courts and public square, lay beyond the grasp of any pragmatic law-oriented rabbinic design and concern.2 In concrete terms the rabbinic sages devote much more attention to