Religious Lives of Image-Things, Avodah Zarah, and Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine

Datos Bibliográficos

ID19476284
AutoresRachel Neis (0000-0002-8076-4312, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen17
Número1
Páginas91-122
Fecha de publicación2016-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaArchiv für Religionsgeschichte (BOOK_SERIES)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1436-3038 • E-ISSN: 1868-8888
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/arege-2015-0006
OpenAlexW2559771934
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas8

Drawing on rabbinic sources redacted in the early third and late fourth/ early fifth centuries, this paper tracks the intertwined lives of divine image-things and rabbis living in late Roman and Byzantine period Palestine. The paper argues that the religious image-things of others (or avodah zarah, in rabbinic terms) pressed in different ways on rabbinic notions of animation, materiality, agency, and representation, as well as on the boundaries between the thing, the human, and the divine. Additionally, the paper argues that while rabbis attempted to neutralize the claims of such image-things, in part by exposing their materiality, their excess nonetheless escaped such rabbinic efforts. Finally, the paper argues that in the fourth century, along with the “material turn” in the Roman world inspired by Christian engagement, we find not only a greater sense of the excess in the things of avodah zarah, but also a concomitant thingification of the rabbinic sage

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Antique · Art · Byzantine architecture · Epistemology · Late Antiquity · Palestine · Politics · Visual arts · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Philosophy