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Look Inside Rethinking the Gods

Rethinking the Gods
Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period

Name: Rethinking the Gods
Price: 41.99 USD
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ISBN: 9781139181204

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Part of Greek Culture in the Roman World

Author: Peter van Nuffelen, Universiteit Gent, Belgium

Date Published: March 2012
availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
format: Adobe eBook Reader
isbn: 9781139181204

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About the Authors

Ancient philosophers had always been fascinated by religion. From the first century BC onwards, the traditionally more hostile attitude of Greek and Roman philosophy was abandoned in favour of the view that religion was a source of philosophical knowledge. This book studies that change, not from the perspective of the history of religion, as is usual, but understands it as part of the wider tendency of Post-Hellenistic philosophy to open up to external, non-philosophical sources of knowledge and authority. It situates two key themes, ancient wisdom and cosmic hierarchy, in the context of Post-Hellenistic philosophy and traces their reconfigurations in contemporary literature and in the polemic between Jews, Christians and pagans. Overall, Post-Hellenistic philosophy can be seen to have a relatively high degree of unity in its ideas on religion, which should not be reduced to a preparation for Neo-Platonism.
- Proposes a new understanding of how philosophy relates to religion in the Roman Empire
- Integrates the study of philosophy and literature and shows the benefits of such an approach
- Provides ancient parallels for modern religious legitimisation of power
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Reviews & endorsements
"Reading this very exciting, independent and wide-ranging contribution to the debate about the relationship between religion and philosophy in the early imperial period calls out with a variety of new impulses in different directions and is highly recommended reading."
BMCR
"… [Nuffelen] has provided us here with a most stimulating, well-researched and well-argued monograph on a complex of topics central to the intellectual concerns of a wide range of thinkers in the first two centuries of the Common Era."
Literaturkritik
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Product details
- Date Published: March 2012
- format: Adobe eBook Reader
- isbn: 9781139181204
- availability: This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I. Ancient Wisdom:
1. Tracing the origins: ancients, philosophers, and mystery cults
2. Plutarch of Chaeronea: 'History as a basis for a philosophy that has theology as its end'
3. Numenius: philosophy as a hidden mystery
4. Dio Chrysostom, Apuleius and the rhetoric of ancient wisdom
Part II. Cosmic Hierarchy:
5. Towards the pantheon as the paradigm of order
6. The Great King of Persia and his satraps: ideal and ideology
7. Dio Chrysostom: virtue and structure in the Kingship Orations
8. Plutarch: a benevolent hierarchy of gods and men
Part III. Polemic and Prejudice: Challenging the Discourse:
9. Lucian, Epicureanism and strategies of satire
10. Philo of Alexandria: challenging Greco-Roman culture
11. Celsus and Christian superstition
Epilogue.
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Author
Peter van Nuffelen, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
Peter van Nuffelen is Professor of History at Universiteit Gent, Belgium. His interests cover Hellenistic history, ancient historiography, ancient religion and philosophy and late antique history and literature, including in oriental languages. He has published widely in these fields, including the monograph Un héritage de paix et de piété. Étude sur les Histoires ecclésiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomène (2004) and the edited volumes Faces of Hellenism (2009), Monotheism in Late Antiquity Between Christians and Pagans (2010, with S. Mitchell) and One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (First–Fourth Centuries AD) (2010, with S. Mitchell). He is currently working on projects on late antique historiography and on ritual communication in Late Antiquity.