Review of Harland (ed.), Travel and Religion in Antiquity

BOOK REVIEW at H-Judaic:

Philip A. Harland, ed. Travel and Religion in Antiquity. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2011. xii + 289 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-55458-222-8.

Reviewed by David Frankfurter (Boston University)
Published on H-Judaic (June, 2012)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Beyond Pilgrimage

Philip Harland has produced an exceptionally interesting and theoretically astute collection of essays, based on seminars of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and thoroughly in dialogue with new work like Jaś Elsner and Ian Rutherford’s Seeing the Gods (although too late for some of the participants to engage Catherine Heszer’s new Jewish Travel in Antiquity).[1] In some ways the volume follows new questions in the area of New Testament studies about itinerancy and cult migration; and yet only two of the papers in the volume address New Testament materials. The collection is far more eclectic, including discussions of Mesopotamian mythology, Nabataean ritual, and Tacitus’s interpretations of barbarian gods.

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Philip Harland runs the blog Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. An earlier review of this book is noted here.