Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

Ritual Legitimacy And Scriptural Authority, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

In this essay, James W. Watts explains the interdependence of texts and rituals with regard to ancient religions. Specifically, he outlines patterns of practice and developments in the ritual use of texts and the texual authorization of rituals in antiquity.

Watts also makes the case that beyond the interplay of texual authority and ritual legitimacy that most ancient cultures engaged in, Judaism was unique in elevating the Torah along with its other laws and stories to special "scriptural" status.

Mimicking Virgins: Colonial Ambivalence And The Ancient Romance, Virginia Burrus

Religion - All Scholarship

Burrus pursues juxtapositional readings of two sets of novelistic texts that cut across religious affiliations and the politics commonly associated therewith: the Acts of Paul and Thekla and Achilles Tatius's Kleitophon and Leukippe, on the one hand, and Heliodorus's Ethiopian Story and Joseph and Aseneth, on the other. Reading for resistance, she also reads for virginity, which functions as a site of articulated cultural ambivalence in each of the romances. That virginity is a characteristic and historically innovative preoccupation of ancient romances is scarcely a novel proposition.