Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity Seeing the Gods

by Elsner, Jas'; Rutherford, Ian

• ISBN13: 9780199250790
• ISBN10: 0199250790
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book presents a range of case-studies of pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman antiquity, drawing on a wide variety of evidence. It rejects the usual reluctance to accept the category of pilgrimage in pagan polytheism and affirms the significance of sacred mobility not only as an important factorin understanding ancient religion and its topographies but also as vitally ancestral to later Christian practice.

Author Biography

Jas' Elsner is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Ian Rutherford is Professor of Greek, University of Reading.

Table of Contents

List of figures	x
Abbreviations	xiii
Contributors	xvi
Introduction	1	(40)
Jas Elsner
Ian Rutherford
PART I. CLASSICAL AND HELLENISTIC PILGRIMAGE
Mapping out Communitas: Performances of Theoria in their Sacred and Political Context	41	(32)
Barbara Kowalzig
Hiketai and Theoroi at Epidauros	73	(24)
Fred Naiden
Pilgrimage to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi: Patterns of Public and Private Consultation	97	(14)
Michael Arnush
`Pilgrimage' and Greek Religion: Sacred and Secular in the Pagan Polis	111	(20)
Scott Scullion
Down-Stream to the Cat-Goddess: Herodotus on Egyptian Pilgrimage	131	(20)
Ian Rutherford
The Philosopher at the Festival: Plato's Transformation of Traditional Theoria	151	(32)
Andrea Wilson Nightingale
PART II. PILGRIMAGE IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The Body in Space: Visual Dynamics in Graeco-Roman Healing Pilgrimage	183	(36)
Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis
Mucianus and a Touch of the Miraculous: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Roman Asia Minor	219	(34)
George Williamson
Pilgrimage as Elite Habitus: Educated Pilgrims in Sacred Landscape During the Second Sophistic	253	(38)
Marco Galli
The Construction of Religious Space in Pausanias	291	(28)
William Hutton
A Journey to the End of the World	319	(14)
Andrew Fear
Pilgrims and Ethnographers: In Search of the Syrian Goddess	333	(20)
J.L. Lightfoot
Divine and Human Feet: Records of Pilgrims Honouring Isis	353	(20)
Sarolta A. Takacs
PART III. JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE
Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome: A Jewish Pilgrimage in Reverse?	373	(14)
David Noy
`Intermingled Until the End of Time': Ambiguity as a Central Condition of Early Christian Pilgrimage	387	(24)
Wendy Pullan
Piety and Passion: Contest and Consensus in the Audiences for Early Christian Pilgrimage	411	(24)
Jas Elsner
Urban Shrine and Rural Saint in Fifth-Century Alexandria	435	(16)
David Frankfurter
Bibliography	451	(50)
Index	501