The scholarly study of new religious movements focuses on the contemporary period, but religious innovation is nothing new. This Element explores a historical epoch characterized by a multitude of emergent religious concepts and practices – the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A precondition for the intense degree of religious innovation during this time was a high level of cultural exchange. Religious elements crossed porous cultural borders and were adapted to suit new purposes. The resulting amalgams were presented in a vast corpus of texts, largely produced by a literate elite. Charismatic leaders played a particularly important role in creating new religious options and were described in genres that were infused with ideological agendas. Novel religious developments were accepted by the Roman authorities unless suspected of undermining the social order. The rise of one of the many new religions of the period, Christianity, ultimately changed the religious landscape in profound ways.

The Black Hebrew Israelite movement claims that African Americans are descendants of the Ancient Israelites and has slowly become a significant force in African American religion. This Element provides a general overview of the BHI movement, its diverse history/ies, ideologies, and practices. The Element shows how different factions and trends have taken the forefront at different periods over its 140-year history, leading to the current situation where diverse iterations of the movement exist alongside each other, sharing some core concepts while differing widely. In particular, the questions of how and why BHI has become a potent and attractive movement in recent years are addressed, arguing that it fulfils a specific religious need to do with identity and teleology, and represents a new and persistent form of Abrahamic religion.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems– both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

In Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, Benedikt Eckhardt brings together a group of experts to investigate a problem of historical categorization. Traditionally, scholars have either presupposed that Jewish groups were “Greco-Roman Associations” like others or have treated them in isolation from other groups. Attempts to begin a cross-disciplinary dialogue about the presuppositions and ultimate aims of the respective approaches have shown that much preliminary work on categories is necessary. This book explores the methodological dividing lines, based on the common-sense assumption that different questions require different solutions. Re-introducing historical differentiation into a field that has been dominated by abstractions, it provides the debate with a new foundation. Case studies highlight the problems and advantages of different approaches.

Expanded from the author's dissertation--University of Chicago, 1999.

This selection of essays by Luther Martin brings together studies from throughout his career—both early as well as more recent—in the various areas of Graeco-Roman religions, including mystery cults, Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism. It is hoped that these studies, which represent spatial, communal, and cognitive approaches to the study of ancient religions might be of interest to those concerned with the structures and dynamics of religions past in general, as well as to scholars who might, with more recent historical research, confirm, evaluate, extend, or refute the hypotheses offered here, for that is the way scholars work and by which scholarship proceeds.

20ths century research in St. Paul is widely impacted by Adolf Deissmann's prominent view on the apostle as a "homo novus" (1911). But where does this concept originate from, and what does it imply? This collection of articles does not only re-evaluate Deissmann's concept by tracing it back to its historical and socio-political origins in Cicero and exploring how authors from (early) Imperial Time perceive and transform the homo novus paradigm by diverse modes and strategies of literary self-fashioning. Scholars ranging the fields of New Testament Studies, Greek and Latin Philology, Ancient History, Patristics, and Comparative Literature also examine how the Ciceronian paradigm was early on transformed, disseminated, and applied as a literary concept and an authorial topos of self-molding. One of the leading questions throughout the volume thus is: How do authors like Cicero, Horace, Paul, Tacitus, Seneca, Athanasius, and Augustine fashion themselves in accordance to or in difference from the idea of being a "new man"? It is argued that by means of literary self-configuration, indeed, some of these writers – such as Paul and Augustine – want to appear as "new men" by either altering traditional social, moral, religious, or political roles, or by creating new patterns of social behavior and religious self-understanding.

Who marched in religious processions and why? How were blood sacrifice and communal feasting related to identities in the ancient Greek city? With questions such as these, current scholarship aims to demonstrate the ways in which religion maps on to the socio-political structures of the Greek polis ('polis religion'). In this book Dr Kindt explores a more comprehensive conception of ancient Greek religion beyond this traditional paradigm. Comparative in method and outlook, the book invites its readers to embark on an interdisciplinary journey touching upon such diverse topics as religious belief, personal religion, magic and theology. Specific examples include the transformation of tyrant property into ritual objects, the cultural practice of setting up dedications at Olympia, and a man attempting to make love to Praxiteles' famous statue of Aphrodite. The book will be valuable for all students and scholars seeking to understand the complex phenomenon of ancient Greek religion.

Religious ideas, practices, discourses, institutions, and social expressions are in constant flux. This volume addresses the internal and external dynamics, interactions between individuals, religious communities, and local as well as global society. The contributions concentrate on four areas: 1. Contemporary religion in the public sphere: The Tactics of (In)visibility among Religious Communities in Europe; Religion Intersecting De-nationalization and Re-nationalization in Post-Apartheid South Africa; 2. Religious transformations: Forms of Religious Communities in Global Society; Political Contributions of Ancestral Cosmologies and the Decolonization of Religious Beliefs; Esoteric Tradition as Poetic Invention; 3. Focus on the individual: Religion and Life Trajectories of Islamists; Angels, Animals and Religious Change in Antiquity and Today; Gaining Access to the Radically Unfamiliar in Today’s Religion; Religion between Individuals and Collectives; 4. Narrating religion: Entangled Knowledge Cultures and the Creation of Religions in Mongolia and Europe; Global Intellectual History and the Dynamics of Religion; On Representing Judaism.

Mark, Manuscripts, and Monotheism is organized into three parts: Mark's Gospel, Manuscripts and Textual Criticism, and Monotheism and Early Jesus-Devotion. With contributors hailing from several different countries, and including both senior and junior scholars, this volume contains essays penned in honor of Larry W. Hurtado by engaging and focusing upon these three major emphases in his scholarship. The result is not only a fitting tribute to one of the most influential New Testament scholars of present times, but also a welcome survey of current scholarship.