Alexandria: A Cultural and Religious Melting Pot

by George Hinge (Editor), Jens A Krasilnikoff (Editor)

Overview

Throughout the entire span of Graeco-Roman antiquity, Alexandria represented a meeting place for many ethnic cultures and the city itself was subject to a wide range of local developments, which created and formatted a distinct Alexandrine 'culture' as well as several distinct 'cultures'. Ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish observers communicated or held claim to that particular message. Hence, Arrian, Theocritus, Strabo, and Athenaeus reported their fascination with the Alexandrine melting pot to the wider world as did Philo, Josephus and Clement. In various fashions, the four papers of Part I of the volume, Alexandria from Greece and Egypt, deal with the relationship between Ptolemaic Alexandria and its Greek past. However, the Egyptian origin and heritage also plays important roles for the arguments. The contributions to the second part of the book are devoted to discussions of various aspects of contact and development between Rome, Judaism and Christianity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788779344914
Publisher:	Aarhus University Press
Publication date:	12/31/2009
Series:	Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity , #9
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction George Hinge Jens A. Krasilnikoff 9

Part I Alexandria from Greece and Egypt

Chapter 1 Alexandria as Place: Tempo-Spatial Traits of Royal Ideology in Early Ptolemaic Egypt Jens A. Krasilnikoff 21

Chapter 2 Theatrical Fiction and Visual Bilingualism in the Monumental Tombs of Ptolemaic Alexandria Marjorie Susan Venit 42

Chapter 3 Language and Race: Theocritus and the Koine Identity of Ptolemaic Egypt George Hinge 66

Chapter 4 Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria Minna Skafte Jensen 80

Part II Rome, Judaism and Christianity

Chapter 5 Philo as a Polemist and a Political Apologist An Investigation of his Two Historical Treatises Against Flaccus and The Embassy to Gaius Per Bilde 97

Chapter 6 Alexandrian Judaism: Rethinking a Problematic Cultural Category Anders Klostergaard Petersen 115

Chapter 7 From School to Patriarchate: Aspects on the Christianisation of Alexandria Samuel Rubenson 144

Chapter 8 Religious Conflict in Late Antique Alexandria: Christian Responses to "Pagan" Statues in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries CE Troels Myrup Kristensen 158

List of Contributors 176

Editorial Reviews

"Alexandria: A Cultural and Religious Melting Pot is an excellent collection of papers. The theoretical and methodological sophistication that characterises them is especially welcome. ..the volume is a welcome addition to Alexandrian scholarship that will interest scholars interested in the history of the Ptolemaic and Roman city." — Stanley M. Burstein, East & West, vol. 12, 2013

From the Publisher