Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, Volume 2

by Arthur Darby Nock, Zeph Stewart

Overview

Throughout his career Arthur Darby Nock (1902-1963) made unique and lasting contributions to classical scholarship and the history of religion, especially to the study of ancient religion, magic, and the relation of paganism to early Christianity and Judaism. Nock's genius showed itself early: endowed with a prodigious memory and an unerring linguistic skill, he combined speed and accuracy in reading and a delight in the discovery, ordering and establishment of facts. At the age of twenty he was made annual reviewer of Latin literature for The Year's Work in Classical Studies; and at twenty-four he produced an important edition of a fourth-century Greek text, Sallustius On the Gods and the Universe, which included a translation and a masterly introduction.

At twenty-seven, having come to the United States from England the year before, Nock was appointed Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard University. In his early thirties he wrote two books, Conversion—an imaginative and exacting study of religious currents in the Hellenistic and Roman world—and St. Paul.

Mainly, however, A. D. Nock poured his immense learning into articles and reviews, which heretofore have been scattered through many different journals. Representing a formidable range of learning, these essays deal for the most part with historical evidence (from all sources, including papyri, inscriptions, and coins) of the beliefs, superstitions, and religious practices of ordinary people. Nock saw the essence of religion not only in philosophy ortheology, but in piety and cult, in the practices and the expressions of the common man. His unusual combination of genius and common sense allowed him to treat the actual manifestations of religious sentiment without condescension.

For this edition of Arthur Darby Nock's writings, Zeph Stewart has garnered a substantial selection of Nock's most important essays and has indexed and cross-referenced them as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674021136
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1972
Pages:	534
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Zeph Stewart is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Greeks and Magi

Tomb Violations and Pontifical Law

Religious Attitudes of the Ancient Greeks

Ruler-Worship and Syncretism

Philo and Hellenistic Philosophy

Later Egyptian Piety

The Cult of Heroes

Mana and Roman Religion

Sarcophagi and Symbolism

Word-Coinage in Greek

The Emperor's Divine Comes

Christianity and Classical Culture

The Problem of Zoroaster

Graeco-Egyptian Religious Propaganda

Tertullian and the Ahori

Soter and Euergetes

The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year

Hellenistic Mysteries and Christian Sacraments

The Book of Acts

Deification and Julian

A Cult Ordinance in Verse

Posidonius

Religious Symbols and Symbolism I

Religious Symbols and Symbolism II

Religious Symbols and Symbolism III

Nymphs and Nereids

'Son of God' in Pauline and Hellenistic Thought

Gnosticism

Isopoliteia and the Jews

Obiter Dicta

BIBLIOGRAPHICA

Bibliography of the published writings of A. D. Nock

Index of cross-references

Index of books reviewed

INDEXES

Names and Subjects

Texts Emended or Interpreted

Modern Authors