Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art

Elsner, Jaś

doi:10.1017/s0075435800062742

Cited by 29 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…26 We cannot even say that the lamp was used by a Jewish person at all. 27 As for "group," in a recent article Daniel Ullucci rightly notes that presumed religious groups in the Roman Empire-including Gnostics, Pharisees, Judaizers, and Jewish-Christians-likely did not exist as groups at all, but were conjured into being largely through faulty scholarly assumptions. 28 Clearly, when it comes to thinking about religion in the ancient world, we are constrained by our own categories, including the deeply problematic term "religion" itself.…”

Section: Imagine Some Degree Of Human Emotional Continuitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ordinary Religion in the Late Roman Empire

Lewis

2021

Studies in Late Antiquity

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Drawing convulsive gasps that wracked her tiny body, little Julia Florentina lay limp in her father's arms. It did not matter what precisely had sickened her-there was neither time nor need in this world for medical diagnoses. The only thing that mattered was whether she would live or die, and as the daylight grew thin, the ominous answer became stealthily clearer. The child's mother reached for a small container kept high up in a recessed wall shrine next to the small bronze images of the family gods, the lares; the box's precious contents were safe there, far from hungry mice. Time was short, and the mother needed to take matters in her own hands, for her daughter's salvation was at stake. She placed a small piece of dry bread in her child's parched mouth, already open in the O-shape that signaled that death was near. A moment of confusion, hesitation: the toddler had, somehow, swallowed the bread. Julia Florentina the elder took this as a hopeful sign; her child could swallow, and breathe…and now, having received the fullness of the Lord's body into her tiny, distended belly, her child was in any event a Christian. Four more agonizing hours passed, the child gently cradled by different people, a house of hushed voices and sighs. Her breaths grew more irregular, and then, suddenly quiet. Everyone in the room stood poised, unsure. Finally, Julia's mother put her fingers gently, tenderly, into the baby's mouth…finding it empty again, she put in the last morsel of consecrated bread, and just as tenderly, smoothed the mouth closed and kissed her child for the last time.Julia Florentina's parents had carefully engraved, on the stone that would cover her tiny, shrouded body, what they believed were the most important 104

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Section: Imagine Some Degree Of Human Emotional Continuitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ordinary Religion in the Late Roman Empire

Lewis

2021

Studies in Late Antiquity

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“…Doves appear as a decorative device in the Jewish catacombs at Rome, e.g. in the Vigna Randanini (some of which are of second‐, but the majority of which are of third‐ and fourth‐century AD date, Elsner 2003: 115) and in Monteverde (Greßmann 1920/1921: 328). Greßmann believed that, for the Jews, the dove was a broadly conceived symbol of the soul, as it was in the pagan Greco‐Roman world and for early Christians (1920/1921: 329; cf.…”

Section: Male With Bird and Grape Cluster (Fig 2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The deacon and the dove: on some early Christian (?) grave stelae from al‐Maqsha and Shakhura (Bahrain)

Potts

2008

Arab Archaeol Epigr

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“…Kirsch 1918, critiqued by Duval 1978; Pietri 1978b). The confidence that a discernibly ‘Christian’ material culture exists and can be archaeologically defined has been challenged by a series of new studies (Elsner 2003; Rebillard 2003) that question the degree to which religious affiliation is reflected in the material record, and highlight the amorphous and misleading quality of pagan/Jewish/Christian categorization.…”

Section: Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Christian Archaeology: A State of the Field

Bowes

2008

Religion Compass

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This article considers the history and trajectory of early Christian archaeology. Focusing principally on the built environment, it addresses the status of research on third‐century Christian domus ecclesiae or house churches, urban topography, Christian euergetism, pagan/Christian temple conversion, monasticism and pilgrimage, parish churches, and rural Christianity. It suggests that this largely conservative field continues to wrestle with its relationship with Christian texts, and remains dominated by formalist and positivist paradigms. The expansion of the discipline into adjacent fields in recent years signals something of a shift, but more holistic studies are needed that contextualize Christian remains within their local topographic, social, ecclesiastical, and, above all, economic circumstances.

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Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art

Cited by 29 publications

References 10 publications

Ordinary Religion in the Late Roman Empire

Ordinary Religion in the Late Roman Empire

The deacon and the dove: on some early Christian (?) grave stelae from al‐Maqsha and Shakhura (Bahrain)

Early Christian Archaeology: A State of the Field

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