Household and Family Religion in Antiquity - Paperback

by John Bodel (Editor), Saul M. Olyan (Editor)

The first book to explore the religious dimensions of the family and the household in ancient Mediterranean and West Asian antiquity.

• Advances our understanding of household and familial religion, as opposed to state-sponsored or civic temple cults
• Reconstructs domestic and family religious practices in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Israel, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, Emar, and Philistia
• Explores many household rituals, such as providing for ancestral spirits, and petitioning of a household's patron deities or of spirits associated with the house itself
• Examines lifecycle rituals - from pregnancy and birth to maturity, old age, death, and beyond
• Looks at religious practices relating to the household both within the home itself and other spaces, such as at extramural tombs and local sanctuaries

Back Jacket

Traditional scholarship on religion in antiquity has favoured the study of national, regional, or municipal worship, overlooking the significant day-to-day rituals and beliefs that existed beyond the contexts of state-sponsored or civic temple cults. Household and Family Religion in Antiquity: Contextual and Comparative Perspectives is the first book to explore the religious dimensions of the family and the household in ancient Mediterranean and West Asian antiquity.

With an approach that is both contextual and comparative, essays examine domestic and familial religious practices in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Israel, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, Emar, and Philistia. Taking in a range of religious expression, from supplication of a household's patron deities to contact with dead ancestors, Household and Family Religion in Antiquity advances our understanding of a distinct and widespread ancient religious phenomenon.

Author Biography

John Bodel is Professor of Classics and History at Brown University. He writes about Roman social and cultural history, Latin epigraphy, and Latin literature of the Empire. His books include Roman Brick Stamps in the Kelsey Museum (1983), Graveyards and Groves: A Study of the Lex Lucerina (1994), Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient History from Inscriptions (editor, 2001), and Dediche sacre nel mondo greco-romano: Diffusione, funzioni, tipologie (edited with Mika Kajava, 2008).

Saul M. Olyan is Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University. He is the author of Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (1988), A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism (1993), Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (2000), Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (2004), and Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (2008).