It Moves Me to Wonder
Narrating Violence and Religion under the Roman Empire
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8204948 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chris Frilingos (Michigan State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 825-852 |
| Publication date | 2009-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jaarel/lfp055 |
| OpenAlex | W2147839576 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 10 |
My focus will be on ancient narratives that, contrary to expectations, use religion and violence to interrogate and confound oppositional thinking: Josephus's paraphrase of the book of Esther in the Jewish Antiquities; the Greek romance of Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon; and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. A close reading of these writings shows that the textual interlacing of violence, religion, and the production of the self in antiquity was not inevitably bound to a narrative of victimhood and retribution. Each story elevates sources of local religious authority at a time of growing confidence in ostensibly universal modes of knowledge disseminated in the political, judicial, and educational discourses of the Roman era. In this setting, the narrative elaboration of insider forms of knowledge forms a noteworthy interreligious pattern and suggests a common interest in thinking locally about “global” or universalizing claims. In my reading, these texts do not call for the overthrow of “global” political, judicial, and educational regimes of knowledge so much as enter into asymmetrical relations of power to appropriate and re-inscribe these claims of authority. In doing so, I contend, a measure of cultural permeability is instantiated in the narrative play between such global claims and the insider claims of some Jews, pagans, and Christians.
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Insider · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Political theology · Politics · Sociology · Wonder · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.07 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2011 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |