Egypt and Empire

Egypt and Empire PDF

Author: Elisabeth R. O'Connell

Publisher:

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9789042940314

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Across Eurasia and North Africa in the First Millennium AD, empires rose and fell, each adopting a universalizing faith which distinguished it broadly from its neighbours. In Egypt, our sources are particularly rich, owing to the landâe(tm)s arid climate and the unparalleled survival not only of stone, ceramic and metalwork, but also of organic material such as textiles, wood and manuscripts found on papyrus, parchment and paper. This volume brings together over a dozen of the worldâe(tm)s leading specialists to explore the dialectical interplay between empire and religious identity through a series of case studies from Egypt. Evidence from Egypt suggests that it was precisely in the context of empire that âe~religious identityâe(tm) emerged as a distinctive marker. Using the unrivalled abundance and variety of surviving material culture, this volume explores the formation, renegotiation and reconstitution of religious identities from the Roman period forward. Whereas Egyptâe(tm)s âe~pharaonicâe(tm) millennia (c. 3000-30 BC) have been studied as a coherent whole, later eras are often studied as fragments. Egypt and Empire offers a different approach by covering together periods that are usually treated separately in different academic disciplines.

Empire, Religion, and Identity

Empire, Religion, and Identity PDF

Author: Soumen Mukherjee

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-02-19

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 9004694331

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This collection brings together case studies that cover a wide spectrum: from Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina traditions through reformist ventures such as the Brahmos, to issues in modern Islam and Judaism. The first part of the book explores idioms of self-fashioning in global platforms and religious congresses. The second part explicates the nature of movements of such ideas. Cumulatively, they offer fresh and invaluable insights into their histories in modern South Asia against the backdrop of, and in relation to, wider transcultural global flows. Contributors: Soumen Mukherjee, Toshio Akai, Jeffery D. Long, Arpita Mitra, Philip Goldberg, Ankur Barua, Oyndrila Sarkar, Madhuparna Roychowdhury, Navras J. Aafreedi, and Faridah Zaman.

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity PDF

Author: Jeremy M. Schott

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0812203461

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.

Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium

Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium PDF

Author: Geoffrey Dunn

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9004301577

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Christians Shaping Identity explores different ways in which Christians constructed their own identity and that of the society around them to the 12th century C.E. It also illustrates how modern readings of that past continue to shape Christian identity.

Constantine and the Captive Christians of Persia

Constantine and the Captive Christians of Persia PDF

Author: Kyle Smith

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0520308395

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

It is widely believed that the Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity politicized religious allegiances, dividing the Christian Roman Empire from the Zoroastrian Sasanian Empire and leading to the persecution of Christians in Persia. This account, however, is based on Greek ecclesiastical histories and Syriac martyrdom narratives that date to centuries after the fact. In this groundbreaking study, Kyle Smith analyzes diverse Greek, Latin, and Syriac sources to show that there was not a single history of fourth-century Mesopotamia. By examining the conflicting hagiographical and historical evidence, Constantine and the Captive Christians of Persia presents an evocative and evolving portrait of the first Christian emperor, uncovering how Syriac Christians manipulated the image of their western Christian counterparts to fashion their own political and religious identities during this century of radical change.

The Aga Khan Case

The Aga Khan Case PDF

Author: Teena Purohit

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0674071581

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An overwhelmingly Arab-centric perspective dominates the West’s understanding of Islam and leads to a view of this religion as exclusively Middle Eastern and monolithic. Teena Purohit presses for a reorientation that would conceptualize Islam instead as a heterogeneous religion that has found a variety of expressions in local contexts throughout history. The story she tells of an Ismaili community in colonial India illustrates how much more complex Muslim identity is, and always has been, than the media would have us believe. The Aga Khan Case focuses on a nineteenth-century court case in Bombay that influenced how religious identity was defined in India and subsequently the British Empire. The case arose when a group of Indians known as the Khojas refused to pay tithes to the Aga Khan, a Persian nobleman and hereditary spiritual leader of the Ismailis. The Khojas abided by both Hindu and Muslim customs and did not identify with a single religion prior to the court’s ruling in 1866, when the judge declared them to be converts to Ismaili Islam beholden to the Aga Khan. In her analysis of the ginans, the religious texts of the Khojas that formed the basis of the judge’s decision, Purohit reveals that the religious practices they describe are not derivations of a Middle Eastern Islam but manifestations of a local vernacular one. Purohit suggests that only when we understand Islam as inseparable from the specific cultural milieus in which it flourishes do we fully grasp the meaning of this global religion.

Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity

Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity PDF

Author: Richard Flower

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-08-31

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0198813198

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity takes an interdisciplinary approach to the question of how individuals and groups ascribed religious categories during late antiquity. Particular focus is given to the role of rhetoric in the expression of religious identity, in order to give mutual illumination to both phenomena in this period.

Religious Identity in Late Antiquity

Religious Identity in Late Antiquity PDF

Author: Elizabeth Digeser

Publisher: Edgar Kent

Published: 2006-01-08

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Explore the different aspects of religious identity as it evolved from the third century onward from multiple contributors and different methodological approaches.