Theodora Suk Fong Jim, Saviour gods and soteria in ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xii, 319. ISBN 9780192894113Review by
Tony Keddie, The University of Texas at Austin. tony.keddie@austin.utexas.edu[...]
This book is in many ways a groundbreaking investigation of a significant religious concept. It should be widely read by scholars of religion in the ancient Mediterranean. Unfortunately, its reduction of “Christian monotheism” to an orientation toward otherworldly soteria is a well-intentioned strawman that nonetheless reproduces a longstanding metanarrative of Christian exceptionalism. Researchers building on this study would do well to recast Jim’s division between this-worldly “protection” and other-worldly “salvation” along the lines of the fluidity Jim has so effectively illustrated elsewhere.
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