BMCR REVIEWS:
Philip A. Harland, Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians: Associations, Judeans, and Cultural Minorities. New York: T & T Clark, 2009. Pp. xii, 239. ISBN 9780567111463. $29.95 (pb).
Reviewed by Guy Stroumsa, University of Oxford (guy.stroumsa@lmh.ox.ac.uk)
Preview
This book includes eight studies (two of them new), presented together within a general framework, developed in a long introduction. The eight chapters of the book deal with various aspects of group identity of Jews and Christians in the Roman world (more precisely, in the Eastern Mediterranean). The fist chapter deals with associations and group identity among Jews and Christians (Harland speaks of Judeans rather than of Jews; the present reviewer, perhaps because he belongs to an older generation, admits to being unable to appreciate the real advantage obtained in transforming our traditional vocabulary). Chapter 2 studies local cultural life and Christian identity. Chapter 3 analyses the word “brothers” in associations and congregations, while Chapter 5 discusses “Mothers” and “Fathers. Chapter 3 studies the concept of “brothers.” In a second part, Harland deals in turn with other diasporas, and with the problem of acculturation of immigrants (Chapter 5) and with interaction and integration among Jews (Chapter 6). The last two chapters study group interactions and rivalries, through the study of Sardis and Smyrna (Chapter 7) and the anti-associations and their banquets (Chapter 8).
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Philip Harland has a blog called
Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean.
Gregor Weber (ed.), Alexandreia und das ptolemäische Ägypten: Kulturbegegnungen in hellenistischer Zeit. Berlin: Verlag Antike, 2010. Pp. 232. ISBN 9783938032374. € 49.90.
Reviewed by M. Weiskopf (mnweiskopf@aol.com)
[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Weber has edited an excellent, well-written collection of essays investigating the Ptolemaic era, a collection (whose origins lie in 2007/2008) indicative of the advances made in the field since the 1980s when the imprecise term "multicultural" was first used to placate the “politically correct.” Weber’s introduction (pp. 9-29) makes clear that one is investigating cultural interactions, Kulturbegegnungen: a plural. The cultures and interactions are never static, nor is there a single Leitkultur. Weber proposes the investigation of five Problembereiche that cut across disciplines: a. the concept of monarchy, in which the desire for dynastic unity led to the adaptation of the Egyptian concept of sibling marriage; b. the elite of the land, Egyptian and Greco-Macedonian maintaining their respective positions, but prosopographical details preclude assigning ethnics based on one’s name; c. religion, in which the Ptolemies were active patrons, but a clear division between divine worlds seems to have persisted; d. the situation in the chora, illuminated for the most part by papyrus-preserved “personal” histories; e. dislike of the Ptolemaic rule: the priesthood saw the Ptolemies as the bulwark against a Sintflut of chaos and anarchy; it remains difficult to assign specific reasons for others’ dissatisfaction. Weber ends with advice (p. 24): “Generalisierende Aussage in grosser Stil ueber die griechische Elite oder die Aegypter verbieten sich daher.”
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Livia Capponi, Roman Egypt. Classical World Series. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010. Pp. 89. ISBN 9781853997266. $23.00.
Reviewed by Nikolaos Lazaridis, California State University, Sacramento (lazaridis.nikolaos@gmail.com)
Livia Capponi, an enthusiastic and experienced papyrologist who is currently a lecturer in Ancient History at Newcastle University, has written a modest but well-documented introduction to Roman Egypt, a long historical period that begins with Augustus’ arrival at Alexandria on 1 October, 30 BC and ends with the Arab conquest of Egypt sealed by a treaty signed by the general ‘Amr ibn al-‘As and the patriarch Cyrus on 8 November 641. This introduction is intended for “students and teachers of Classical Civilization at late school and early university level”, according to the series’ mission statement on the back cover, even for “those with no previous knowledge of the classical languages and those who, before reading, did not even know what a papyrus was”, according to the author’s preface.
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