Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, Issue 130

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Walter de Gruyter, 2004 - Bibles - 310 pages
Combining classical, epigraphical, and biblical sources with social-scientific methodology, this monograph questions the way in which modern scholarship has tended to discuss ancient conversion. The author challenges long-held assumptions of psychological continuity between ancient and modern people, and offers in place of these assumptions a model founded on the categories the ancients used themselves. Graeco-Roman and Mediterranean religions and philosophies, including Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity, framed their religion in the language of patronage / benefaction and loyalty, and thus an understanding of ancient conversion must start there.
 

Contents

The Influence of Psychology
13
General Reciprocity
53
The Rhetoric of Patronage and Benefaction
91
The Rhetoric of Patronage and Benefaction
151
Patronage and Benefaction
199

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Page 265 - Zenon Papyri in the University of Michigan Collection (University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series, Vol.

About the author (2004)

Expanded Ph.D. dissertation (2003) under the supervision of Prof. John S. Kloppenborg, University of Toronto, Canada. Zeba A. Crook is now an assistant professor in the department of Classics and Religion at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.