Actualities: Law and religion

Felix sit annus novus!

The strict relationship between Law and Religion in the Roman civilization was always an obvious observation of the historiography (see the basic book of  Wissowa about Roman Religion).  The reinterpretation of Roman Law and Religion is now a very fertile topic of the current historiography of Roman Religion.

The last work of this kind is a collective volume appeared as the 336.th volume of  the Brill series "History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity". The book "Law and Religion in the Roman Republic" edited by Olga Tellegen - Couperus (223.p.) is the first monograph of this kind in the last years, concentrating on the aspects of Law and Religion in the Roman Republic. After a short introduction by the editor, the book has three parts:

I. Law and Religion as means to control the future (2 articles by Leon ter Beek and Federico Santangelo)

II. Priests, magistrates and the state (4 articles by Michel Humm, Jörg Rüpke, Jan Hendrik Valgaeren and Linda Zollschan)

III. Sacred law, civil law and the citizen (Olga Tellegen - Couperus)

A short description of the book: "Over the past two hundred plus years, scholarship has admired Roman law for being the first autonomous legal science in history. This biased view has obscured the fact that, traditionally, law was closely connected to religion and remained so well into the Empire. Building on a variety of sources – epigraphic, legal, literary, and numismatic – this book discloses how law and religion shared the same patrons (magistrates and priests) and a common goal (to deal with life’s uncertainties), and how, from the third century B.C., they underwent a process of rationalization. Today, Roman law and religion deserve our admiration because together they supported and consolidated the growing power of Rome (loc.cit.)

Similar books in the field:

Clifford - Rüpke: Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome, 2006

Actualities: Ancient Angels

The volume Ancient Angels - conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire (BRILL, 2011, 181.p.) by Rangar Cline is probably the first monograph in this topic using a large amount of literary sources. This topic - angels in the Roman "Paganism" - was first researched by Franz Cumont in 1915 ,(“Les Anges du Paganisme,” Révue de l’histoire des religions 12:159–82.). This work analyzing the concept and various apparition of some minor or secondary deities, named after the II.century B.C. as "angeloi" or "angelus", word used also by ancient auctors (such as Homer) simply as "messeger". Using especially but not only literary sources (one of the most interesting archaeological sources used in this book are the Fountain of the Lamps at Corinth) Cline proved in his book, that angels  - messengers or avatars of Gods, deities or symbols of the soul- are omnipresent in the Roman Empire and not only in the Jewish or Christian contexts. 

About the book: "Although angels are typically associated with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ancient Angels demonstrates that angels (angeloi) were also a prominent feature of non-Abrahamic religions in the Roman era. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the study uses literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence to examine Roman conceptions of angels, how residents of the empire venerated angels, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion. The book brings together the evidence for popular beliefs about angels in Roman Religion, demonstrating the widespread nature of speculation about, and veneration of, angels in the Roman Empire"(loc. cit.)

Content of the book:

 List of Illustrations .................................................................. vii
Acknowledgements ................................................................... ix
List of Abbreviations ................................................................ xi
List of Epigraphic Sigla ........................................................... xiii
Preface ..................................................................................... xv
Chapter One Introduction: The Words of Angels ...................... 1
Chapter Two Angels of the Aether ........................................... 19
Chapter Three Angels of a Pagan God .................................... 47
Chapter Four Angels of the Grave .......................................... 77
Chapter Five Angels of the Spring: Variations on Local
Angelos Veneration and Christian Reaction .......................... 105
Chapter Six Angels of a Christian God: Christian Angelos
Veneration in Late Roman Anatolia ...................................... 137
Conclusion ............................................................................ 167
Bibliography ...........................................................................169
Index ..................................................................................... 179

Other or similar books in the topic:

     

                                                                   

Actualities: A new book about the images of the Gods

Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome  2010, 456.pp. (edited by Joannis Mylonopoulos ) is the 170.th volum of the famous Brill Editure in the series of RGRW (continuation of EPRO).

The topic of the images of Gods is a problematic discussion especially in the focus of the art historians and historians of religion (see the debate in the article of Richard Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World, Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art, Variorum, Aldershot, 1996).

Short presentation of the book on the page of Brill:

"The polytheistic religious systems of ancient Greece and Rome reveal an imaginative attitude towards the construction of the divine. One of the most important instruments in this process was certainly the visualisation. Images of the gods transformed the divine world into a visually experienceable entity, comprehensible even without a theoretical or theological superstructure. For the illiterates, images were together with oral traditions and rituals the only possibility to approach the idea of the divine; for the intellectuals, images of the gods could be allegorically transcended symbols to reflect upon. Based on the art historical and textual evidence, this volume offers a fresh view on the historical, literary, and artistic significance of divine images as powerful visual media of religious and intellectual communication" (loc.cit.)

The book's review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review: here

Other books in this topic:

Green, Miranda, An Archaeology of Images – Iconology and cosmology in Iron Age and Roman Europe, London – New York, 2004