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This volume investigates the central role of physical bodies, ritual technologies, healing practices, gender constructions, and visual imagery in creating and sustaining religious meaning in antiquity.
Religious life in the ancient world was profoundly shaped by the interplay of materiality, ritual, embodiment, and visuality. Far from being purely intellectual or doctrinal, religious practices across Greco-Roman and early Christian contexts were enacted through tangible, sensory, and embodied experiences that engaged worshippers physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Drawing from a rich array of primary sources and theoretical frameworks, especially gender studies and ritual studies, the chapters collectively emphasize that religion in this period was fundamentally experienced through ritualized actions, embodied transformations, and visually charged sacred spaces. With its focus on ritual, gender, and the body, the book offers readers a fresh approach to ancient Christianity and the Greco-Roman world in which it emerged.
This interdisciplinary volume is suitable for students and scholars working on the New Testament and early Christianity, and issues of ritual, gender, and the body in the early Christian world.
List of contents
Introduction: Embodying belief - Richard E. DeMaris; 1. Theorizing ritual and gender: The case of masculinity - Eric C. Stewart; 2. Readjusting enslavement ritually: The case of Paul's Letter to Philemon - Suzan Sierksma-Agteres, Ilse Swart, and Peter-Ben Smit; 3. Alexander the Great submits to a Judean high priest?! Ritual and masculine performance in Josephus' account of their meeting - Eric C. Stewart; 4. Ritual failure and masculinity in the martyrdom of Polycarp - Peter-Ben Smit; 5. Gender and early Christian visual discourse: The pictorial program of the Dura-Europos baptismal room - Richard E. DeMaris; 6. Female agency in ancient Greek religion - Anne Gürlach; 7. - Katrina Rosie; 8. "The girl with the Pythian spirit": Women's ritual labor in Acts 16 - Brigidda Zapata; 9. Naked in court-humiliation and salvation: A comparison of Phryne, Thecla, and the naked young man of Mark 14:50-52 - Henrike Block; 10. The body and its parts: Divided tongues as votive body parts in Acts 2:3 - Soham Al-Suadi; 11. Holy oil, haptics, and healing - Alicia J. Batten; 12. Healthy water, harmful water, and early Christian ambivalence toward it - Richard E. DeMaris and Henrike Block; 13. Geographic potency: Using magical papyri to find good drugs - Jon-Philippe Ruhumuliza; Conclusion: Richard S. Ascough.
About the author
Richard E. DeMaris is Senior Research Professor of Religious Studies at Valparaiso University (USA).
Soham Al-Suadi is Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Rostock (Germany), with a research focus on early Christian ritual practices, meals in antiquity, and gender-critical biblical interpretation.
Richard S. Ascough is Professor of Religious Studies at Queen's University (Canada) and has published widely on the social dynamics of early Christ groups as well as Greek and Roman associations.
