In this provocative book Éric Rebillard challenges many long-held assumptions about early Christian burial customs. For decades scholars of early Christianity have argued that the Church owned and ...operated burial grounds for Christians as early as the third century. Through a careful reading of primary sources including legal codes, theological works, epigraphical inscriptions, and sermons, Rebillard shows that there is little evidence to suggest that Christians occupied exclusive or isolated burial grounds in this early period.
In fact, as late as the fourth and fifth centuries the Church did not impose on the faithful specific rituals for laying the dead to rest. In the preparation of Christians for burial, it was usually next of kin and not representatives of the Church who were responsible for what form of rite would be celebrated, and evidence from inscriptions and tombstones shows that for the most part Christians didn't separate themselves from non-Christians when burying their dead. According to Rebillard it would not be until the early Middle Ages that the Church gained control over burial practices and that "Christian cemeteries" became common.
In this translation ofReligion et Sépulture: L'église, les vivants et les morts dans l'Antiquité tardive, Rebillard fundamentally changes our understanding of early Christianity.The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquitywill force scholars of the period to rethink their assumptions about early Christians as separate from their pagan contemporaries in daily life and ritual practice.
A new reconstruction of cultic practices surrounding
death in ancient Israel
In Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel , Kerry M.
Sonia examines the commemoration and care for the dead in ancient
...Israel against the broader cultural backdrop of West Asia. This
cult of dead kin, often referred to as ancestor cult, comprised a
range of ritual practices in which the living provided food and
drink offerings, constructed commemorative monuments, invoked the
names of the dead, and protected their remains. This ritual care
negotiated the ongoing relationships between the living and the
dead and, in so doing, helped construct social, political, and
religious landscapes in relationship to the past. Sonia explores
the nature of this cult of dead kin in ancient Israel, focusing on
its role within the family and household as well as its
relationship to Israel's national deity and the Jerusalem
temple.
Features:
A reevaluation of whether burial and necromantic rituals were
part of the cult of dead kin
A portrait of the various roles Israelite women played in the
cult of dead kin
A reassessment of biblical writers' attitudes toward the cult
of dead kin
From the tombs of the elite to the graves of commoners, mortuary remains offer rich insights into Classic Maya society. In Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul, the ...anthropological archaeologist and bioarchaeologist Andrew K. Scherer explores the broad range of burial practices among the Maya of the Classic period (AD 250–900), integrating information gleaned from his own fieldwork with insights from the fields of iconography, epigraphy, and ethnography to illuminate this society’s rich funerary traditions.Scherer’s study of burials along the Usumacinta River at the Mexican-Guatemalan border and in the Central Petén region of Guatemala—areas that include Piedras Negras, El Kinel, Tecolote, El Zotz, and Yaxha—reveals commonalities and differences among royal, elite, and commoner mortuary practices. By analyzing skeletons containing dental and cranial modifications, as well as the adornments of interred bodies, Scherer probes Classic Maya conceptions of body, wellness, and the afterlife. Scherer also moves beyond the body to look at the spatial orientation of the burials and their integration into the architecture of Maya communities. Taking a unique interdisciplinary approach, the author examines how Classic Maya deathways can expand our understanding of this society’s beliefs and traditions, making Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya an important step forward in Mesoamerican archeology.
Funerary Practices in Serbiais the first book to offer a concise yet highly informative study of the historical development and current state of funerary practices in Serbia. It explores the ...historical roots of contemporary funerary practices in the country and provides illuminating insight into how death is "managed" in Serbia today.
The centrality of death rituals has rarely been documented in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism. Bringing together a range of perspectives including ethnographic, textual, historical and ...theoretically informed accounts, this edited volume presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. While the contributions show that the ideas and ritual practices related to death are continuously transformed in local contexts through political and social changes, they also highlight the continuities of funeral cultures. The studies are based on long-term fieldwork and covering material from Theravāda Buddhism in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and various regions of Chinese Buddhism, both on the mainland and in the Southeast Asian diasporas. Topics such as bad death, the feeding of ghosts, pollution through death, and the ritual regeneration of life show how Buddhist cultures deal with death as a universal phenomenon of human culture.
The distinctions and similarities among Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials can provide evidence of social networks, family life, and, perhaps, religious sensibilities. Is the Roman development from ...columbaria to catacombs the result of evolving religious identities or simply a matter of a change in burial fashions? Do the material remains from Jewish burials evidence an adherence to ancient customs, or the adaptation of rituals from surrounding cultures? What Greco-Roman funerary images were taken over and "baptized" as Christian ones? The answers to these and other questions require that the material culture be viewed, whenever possible, in situ, through multiple disciplinary lenses and in light of ancient texts. Roman historians (John Bodel, Richard Saller, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill), archaeologists (Susan Stevens, Amy Hirschfeld), scholars of rabbinic period Judaism (Deborah Green), Christian history (Robin M. Jensen), and the New Testament (David Balch, Laurie Brink, O.P., Margaret M. Mitchell, Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J.) engaged in a research trip to Rome and Tunisia to investigate imperial period burials first hand. Commemorting the Dead is the result of a three year scholarly conversation on their findings.
Il volume che qui vede la luce costituisce il secondo capitolo del progetto METra (Mapping Epic in Tragedy – Epica e tragedia greca: una mappatura) e contiene i contributi presentati durante il ...Seminario Internazionale METra 2, tenutosi a Verona nel giugno 2022. Proseguendo sulle direttrici di ricerca i cui esiti sono ora disponibili in METra 1 (Lexis Supplementi 11, 2022), questa seconda raccolta indaga ulteriori aspetti dell’eredità omerica ed epica in tragedia. Come nel volume precedente, i saggi propongono approcci disciplinari diversificati: dallo studio metrico, linguistico e stilistico all’intertestualità, dalla ricerca dell’allusione alla riflessione sull’eventuale persistenza, tra Grecia arcaica e classica, di sistemi culturali ed etico-religiosi, senza trascurare il dialogo con la modernità.
