"Religious history in the making" (original) (raw)
Related papers
JAHA - Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, 2020
Jörg Rüpke, Pantheon. A new history of Roman religion. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2018, 551 p. 64 photos, ISBN 9780691156835. Pantheon is the last great synthesis on Roman religion, published first in German, later translated in Italian and English too It is a monumental work of Jörg Rüpke, permanent fellow and vice-director of the Max Weber Center in Erfurt, one of the leading experts and innovative voices in Roman religious studies His work was focusing in the last decade on Lived Ancient Religion, a concept developed by him and his team from Erfurt and transformed into numerous paradigmatic works-monographs, proceedings and studies-as part of an ERC Advanced grant Pantheon is the final result of this intellectual journey and paradigmatic shift represented by Rüpke and his school in the broader study of Roman religion and generally, in religious studies as such. The large number of reviews shows the impact of the book within the discipline.
Gremium, 2022
The synthesis edited by Jörg Rüpke and Greg Woolf and authored with seven further authors represents the latest volume in the famous Kohlhammer series on World Religions, one of the oldest and most prestigious series on history of religions in German Religionswissenschaft. The volume entitled Religion in the Roman Empire (and not "Roman religion" in the empire, which is a great difference as we will see) presents the major religious changes, transformations, and specificities of religious communication occurred in the first four centuries of our common era. The book is the result of a fruitful and paradigmatic collaboration between the ERC Advanced Grant winner Jörg Rüpke and his team from Erfurt (Lived Ancient Religion project 2012-2017) and Greg Woolf, who had a research project focusing on sanctuaries and religious experience in the ancient world in the Max Weber Kolleg. 1 This book-as most of the volumes of the series-intends to be a companion, a synthesis and detailed introduction in the topic, addressing the greater public, students but also the specialists. The book proposes also a new methodological approach, well-known already in the previous, paradigmatic books on Lived Ancient Religion: the relativisation of ancient Roman religiosity, a special focus on individual religion, urban religion and citification of religion, and the appropriation of various religious ideas in the context of an empire. The introduction by Jörg Rüpke and Greg Woolf also proposed a relativisation of the literary sources, interpreted here as a "momentary crystallization of discourse" and not as authoritative sources, as it was interpreted in the 19th century and early 20th century scholarship. The authors emphasize also, that the contemporary approaches of social sciences can open new doors in the research of ancient Roman religion too. The second part of the introduction is focusing on the problematic terminology of
2018 - Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion - Princeton University Press - 551 pp.
2018
In this ambitious and authoritative book, Jörg Rüpke provides a comprehensive and strikingly original narrative history of ancient Roman and Mediterranean religion over more than a millennium—from the late Bronze Age through the Roman imperial period and up to late antiquity. While focused primarily on the city of Rome, Pantheon fully integrates the many religious traditions found in the Mediterranean world, including Judaism and Christianity. This generously illustrated book is also distinguished by its unique emphasis on lived religion, a perspective that stresses how individuals’ experiences and practices transform religion into something different from its official form. The result is a radically new picture of both Roman religion and a crucial period in Western religion—one that influenced Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even the modern idea of religion itself. Drawing on a vast range of literary and archaeological evidence, Pantheon shows how Roman religion shaped and was shaped by its changing historical contexts from the ninth century BCE to the fourth century CE. Because religion was not a distinct sphere in the Roman world, the book treats religion as inseparable from political, social, economic, and cultural developments. The narrative emphasizes the diversity of Roman religion; offers a new view of central concepts such as “temple,” “altar,” and “votive”; reassesses the gendering of religious practices; and much more. Throughout, Pantheon draws on the insights of modern religious studies, but without “modernizing” ancient religion. With its unprecedented scope and innovative approach, Pantheon is an unparalleled account of ancient Roman and Mediterranean religion.
Religion in the Roman Empire, ed. by Jörg Rüpke and Greg Woolf
Religionen der Menschheit 16,2, 2021
The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices. This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.
Rewriting Roman Religion. Historiography of a decade (2013-2023)
Memoria Antiquitatis, 2023
Roman religious studies represent one of the booming fields of humanities and the study of the Roman Empire. The major changes and paradigmatic „turns” of social sciences had a transformative effect also in the discipline of Roman religious studies. In this article I will present the major methodological changes of the last decade, focusing on a selective list of works from the approximatively 300 volumes published on Roman religion since 2013.