Jitse H. F. Dijkstra - Böcker

Appropriation, 'making something one's own', is a modern way of thinking about social practices. This volume highlights the potential of this critical concept for the investigation of everyday religious practice - and more generally, everyday social practice - in Antiquity. Appropriation foregrounds the agency of the social actors against the strictures imposed by the dominant culture's social order, whose ideas and practices they make their own, altering them in multiple, often subtle ways. How does appropriation transform pre-existing, traditional practices? What are the dominant structures against which the actors operate? Which tactics do they use? These are only some of the questions this volume seeks to address. The critical term 'appropriation' has yet to be fully discovered by classicists; the case studies in this volume, ranging from classical Greece to Late Antique Egypt, endeavour to demonstrate its pertinence to the study of religion in Antiquity.

Appropriation, 'making something one's own', is a modern way of thinking about social practices. This volume highlights the potential of this critical concept for the investigation of everyday religious practice - and more generally, everyday social practice - in Antiquity. Appropriation foregrounds the agency of the social actors against the strictures imposed by the dominant culture's social order, whose ideas and practices they make their own, altering them in multiple, often subtle ways. How does appropriation transform pre-existing, traditional practices? What are the dominant structures against which the actors operate? Which tactics do they use? These are only some of the questions this volume seeks to address. The critical term 'appropriation' has yet to be fully discovered by classicists; the case studies in this volume, ranging from classical Greece to Late Antique Egypt, endeavour to demonstrate its pertinence to the study of religion in Antiquity.

Much like our world today, Late Antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries CE) is often seen as a period rife with religious violence, not least because the literary sources are full of stories of Christians attacking temples, statues and 'pagans'. However, using insights from Religious Studies, recent studies have demonstrated that the Late Antique sources disguise a much more intricate reality. The present volume builds on this recent cutting-edge scholarship on religious violence in Late Antiquity in order to come to more nuanced judgments about the nature of the violence. At the same time, the focus on Late Antiquity has taken away from the fact that the phenomenon was no less prevalent in the earlier Graeco-Roman world. This book is therefore the first to bring together scholars with expertise ranging from classical Athens to Late Antiquity to examine the phenomenon in all its complexity and diversity throughout Antiquity.