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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Theory Of Disasters In The Letter Of Mara Bar Serapion: Competition Within Philosophical And Religious Doctrines Of Disaster, Ilaria Ramelli
The Theory Of Disasters In The Letter Of Mara Bar Serapion: Competition Within Philosophical And Religious Doctrines Of Disaster, Ilaria Ramelli
Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity
This essay investigates an aspect of religious competition in antiquity: theories of disasters, individual and collective, elaborated by religious and philosophical movements. This investigation intends to contribute to enlightening popular philosophical and religious theories of disasters in Roman imperial times through the case study of a Stoicizing document of (apparently) a Syrian Hellenized author of the Roman imperial times: the Letter of Mara Bar Serapion (or Sarapion) to his son, from the Roman imperial period. This will be examined in a systematic comparison with Stoic theories of disasters and within the larger issue of the Stoicizing ideas that this Letter …
Competition Without Groups: Maintaining A Flat Methodology, Daniel Ullucci
Competition Without Groups: Maintaining A Flat Methodology, Daniel Ullucci
Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity
This essay suggests ways to refine the concept of “competition” as a scholarly lens for analyzing religion in the ancient Mediterranean. It applies Bruno Latour’s critique of “the social” as an explanatory agent to the much used but rarely clarified concept “social competition.” Conceptualizing ancient data as competition can, and at times has, encouraged the projection of distinct groups and “sides” for which we have little to no empirical evidence. Keeping analysis “flat,” in Latour’s terms, can prevent this and push analysis of competition more secure, and potentially more useful directions. Pliny’s Epistle 10.96 to Trajan on Christians is analyzed …