The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean

2013 OUP hardcover edition. Unread copy in very good condition. From the cover: Ancient religions are usually treated as collective and political phenomena and, apart from a few towering figures, the individual religious agent has fallen out of view. Addressing this gap, the essays in this volume focus on the individual and individuality in ancient Mediterranean religion. Even in antiquity, individual religious action was not determined by traditional norms handed down through families and the larger social context, but rather options were open and choices were made. On the part of the individual, this development is reflected in changes in ‘individuation’, the parallel process of a gradual full integration into society and the development of self-reflection and of a notion of individual identity. These processes are analysed within the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, down to Christian-dominated late antiquity, in both pagan polytheistic as well as Jewish monotheistic settings. The volume focuses on individuation in everyday religious practices in Phoenicia, various Greek cities, and Rome, and as identified in institutional developments and philosophical reflections on the self as exemplified by the Stoic Seneca. Contents: 1. Individualization and Individuation as Concepts for Historical Research - Jorg Rupke Historical Change 2. The Religious Life in Hellenistic Phoenicia: 'Middle Ground' and New Agencies - Corinne Bonnet 3. Disguising Change in the First Century - John A. North 4. Subjects, Gods, and Empire, or Monarchism as a Theological Problem - Clifford Ando Individual and Society 5. Individual and Common Cult: Epigraphic Reflections - Fritz Graf 6. Ritual and the Individual in Roman Religion - Greg Woolf Experiences and Choices 7. The Religious Anthropology of Late-Antique 'High' Magical Practice - Richard Gordon 8. Individualization and the Cult of the Martyrs: Examples from Asia Minor in the Fourth Century - Johan Leemans Conceptualizing Religious Experience 9. Dimensions of Individuality in Ancient Mystery Cults: Religious Practice and Philosophical Discourse - Katharina Waldner 10. Individualization and Religious Rhetoric in Imperial Anatolia - Nicole Belayche Agency 11. Mark's Gospel and the Pre-History of Individuation - Ian H. Henderson 12. The Individual and the Word in Hellenistic Judaism: Cases in Philo and Josephus - Tessa Rajak 13. Fighting for Differences: Forms and Limits of Religious Individuality in the 'Shepherd of Hermas' - Jorg Rupke 14. Willing to Die for God: Individualization and Instrumental Agency in Ancient Christian Martyr Literature - Karen L. King Master and Disciple 15. Religio mentis: The Hermetic Process of Individualization - Giulia Sfameni Gasparro 16. The Discourse of Revelation as Source for the Gnostic Process of Individuation - Giovanni Filoramo Beyond the Empirical Individual 17. Cicero and Seneca on the Fate of the Soul: Private Feelings and Philosophical Doctrines - Aldo Setaioli 18. 'Humanity was Created as an Individual': Synechdocical Individuality in the Mishnah as a Jewish Response to Romanization - Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert.…