Gaming Greekness: Cultural Agonism among Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire

Allan Georgia

Published by Gorgias Press 2020

Gaming Greekness

Cultural Agonism among Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire

Allan Georgia

Volume 76 in the series Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and Patristics

https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463241247

Overview
Contents

About this book

How the Jewish and Christian communities that emerged in the early Roman Empire navigated a ‘Hellenistic’ world is a longstanding and unsettled question. Recent scholarship on the intellectual cultures that developed among Greek speaking subjects of Rome in the so-called Second Sophistic as well as models for culture and competition informed by mathematical and economic game theories provide new ideas to address this question. This study offers a model for a kind of culture-making that accounts for how the cultural ecosystems of the Roman Empire enabled these religious communities to win legitimacy and build discourses of self-expression by competing on the same cultural fields as other Roman subjects. By considering a range of texts and figures—including Justin Martyr, Tatian, the ‘second’ Paul of the Acts of the Apostles, Lucian of Samosata, 4 Maccabees, and Favorinus of Arelate—this study contends that competing for legitimacy enabled those fledgling religious communities to express coherent cultural identities and secure social credibility within the complex milieu of Roman Imperial society.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
TABLE OF CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
CHAPTER ONE. GAMING THE SYSTEM: CULTURAL COMPETITION AND THE STAKES OF “GREEKNESS” IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER TWO. “IN AND OUT OF THE GAME”: FAVORINUS, LUCIAN AND THE STRATEGIC POSSIBILITIES OF COMPETING FOR GREEKNESS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
CHAPTER THREE. PAUL’S UNDERSTUDY: RECASTING PAUL AS A 2^ND CENTURY CULTURAL COMPETITOR Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
CHAPTER FOUR. PIETY AND PAIDEIA: JEWS DYING LIKE GREEKS IN FRONT OF ROMANS IN ₄ MACCABEES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
CHAPTER FIVE. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS HAD GREEK ROAD SIGNS: POSTURE, DEPORTMENT AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL MARKETPLACE IN THE FRAME NARRATIVE OF JUSTIN MARTYR’S DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
CHAPTER SIX. THE MONSTER AT THE END OF [T]HIS BOOK: HYBRIDITY AS THEOLOGICAL STRATEGY AND CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN TATIAN’S AGAINST THE GREEKS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
CONCLUSION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
INDICES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	345

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Gorgias Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 374
Keywords: Religion; History

eBook

Published: January 18, 2021
ISBN: 9781463241247